Author on Author: Cairo Smith and David Polonoff – Part One
Part One – David’s Questions to Cairo about Scenebux (New Ritual Press, 2025). Part Two will publish tomorrow. Is Scenebux a Kind of IRL Cyberpunk? David Polonoff: Many of your readers (myself included) have noted the parallels between Scenebux and the work of William Gibson in its fluid mixture of hard-boiled detective/thriller narrative and post-human technology. You’ve quoted ARX-Han on the difficulty of “writing cyberpunk now, because real-life just is cyberpunk.” To what degree is that true? Is it like reading Jules Verne in the 20th century and marveling at the inventions and gadgets he foresaw or more that the cyborgian
Art, Oxy, & L.A.: An Interview With Luke Goebel By Kevin Maloney
Luke Goebel is a unicorn in the literary world: an outlaw writer with an underground classic in the indie lit community (Fourteen Stories, None of Them Are Yours, 2014) who has also collaborated on screenplays for two major Hollywood films, Causeway and Eileen, cowritten with Ottessa Moshfegh (the two married in 2018). His new novel, Kill Dick, seeks to bridge these worlds, bringing all of the fire, guts, and intelligence of an experimental indie to a page-turning sunshine noir thriller that feels ready for the big screen (and is in the works). The result is an imminently readable crime novel
One Late Summer Morning by Louis Scantlebury
1 One late summer morning, we found two ladybugs humping doggy-style in Max’s garden. We held each other and watched them. “Look,” Max said, “the top one is pinning down the legs of the bottom one.” “The thrusting is so smooth,” I said. “Their bodies are so shiny,” Max said. “They remind me of us,” I said, and bent down to pick them up. “Amy, what the fuck!” Max said. “But I want them to come inside and be with us when we have sex,” I said. “That’s so sweet,” Max said. “OK, pick them up.” I placed my finger
Richard Cabut Recommends: Constructed Situations and Torn Surfaces
We launched my current book Ripped Backsides: Postcards from Beneath the Pavement at Flux Lumina, an arts loft both luminous and dark, as well as fab, on the Bowery in NYC last summer. As is the custom, I made a short introduction to the book, treating the cross section of subway-annotated-novel types, tote-bag literati, bookstore-event lurkers, Downtown creatives – no ironic moustache wearers to be seen unfortunately, but you can’t have everything – in other words a lovely crowd; my kind of people. Ripped Backsides is a personal post-punk drift tracing ruined maps of the noir cities… A fragmentary situationist
City Limits by Hannah Smart
“They’re saying it hurt a lot.” “Well, yeah. Dying tends to do that.” “But this wasn’t, like, a typical death.” Four people sit at the table next to mine—two men and two women. One woman is blonde; the other is brunette. The guy talking has black hair gelled straight backwards. The diner loudspeakers blare some decade-old Taylor Swift tune. “Dumb Teenager Dies in Car Crash,” the blonde says, making flashing motions with her hands to signify BREAKING NEWS. “More at eight.” “Are we sure it was a car crash?”—the other guy. His face is that of someone who takes steroids
Spiritual Holes: Stephanie Yue Duhem interviews Audrey Lee
Audrey Lee’s Utter Goodness (Farthest Heaven, 2026) is a collection of ambitious range. The stories traverse American landscapes from Malibu to small-town Idaho, ventriloquizing fearlessly across gender, class, and generation. Lee, who has previously published two poetry collections, has made a decisive turn toward fiction, trading the mirror of confessional poetry for what she calls the “larger container” of the short story. The result is a book concerned with judgment and redemption, with “spiritual holes” and the dubious ways Americans try to fill them. What follows is our conversation about genre, place, absurdity, faith, and inspiration. Stephanie Yue Duhem:
by Mike Topp
$25 | Perfect bound | 72 pages
Paperback | Die-cut matte cover | 7×7″
Mike Topp’s poems defy categorization. That’s why they are beloved by seamstresses, pathologists, blackmailers and art collectors.
–Sparrow
