Archives

Chatting with the Meat Puppeteer: Ben Gross interviews Hannah Smart

May 12, 2026

Hannah Smart’s debut novel Meat Puppets (Apocalypse Confidential, 2026) is a metafictional romp through the lives of people who know they want more without being entirely sure of what they want more of. Weaving her way through drug-use, acting seminars, and a celebrity-based stock exchange where people can put up real money in the hopes of cashing in on the soon-to-be-famous (or-not), Smart crafts characters whose lack of self-transparency makes them as relatable as they are complicated, as charming as they are repulsive, and as touching as they are fantastic—then she puts them through the wringer. Like all great works of experimental fiction, Meat Puppets’ formal fireworks

Miracle on Route 45 by Owen Harrington

May 11, 2026

There was only one way things could end. I was trying to find something else to think about and he emerged, covered in red clay mud like the first or last man, right onto state route 45. The ride back to State College was just long enough to fixate on something, but not long enough to work up the nerve to turn around. It strung together Mifflinburg, Harleton, and Milheim like the dim lights of a dying civilization in the heart of darkest Amish country, and had few features to catch the wandering eye. But just past Mifflinburg, a man

Author on Author: Cairo Smith and David Polonoff – Part Two

May 6, 2026

Part Two: Cairo’s Questions to David about Wannabeat (Trouser Press Books, 2024). Click here for Part One. The Novel Within the Novel Cairo Smith: Your hero, Philip, spends much of WannaBeat working on (or avoiding working on) his book, which seems like a deliberate parallel to your own project. It features thinly veiled versions of the people around him (Sally Sassafras for Wendy, Heine for himself), an elaborate Gold Rush allegory, and eventually the arrival of El Nihilismo to destroy everything he’s built. Is the novel-within-the-novel a parody of WannaBeat itself, or a record of an earlier failed attempt,

Author on Author: Cairo Smith and David Polonoff – Part One

May 5, 2026

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

April 23, 2026

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

April 22, 2026

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

April 21, 2026

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

April 20, 2026

“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

April 9, 2026

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:

Fruit Cutting Factory by Chuckie Smith

April 7, 2026

There are bugs in the watermelon. They’re supposed to be bugless but they always have the little white maggot bugs and sometimes, like today, they have the black scarab weevil bugs even though they’re supposed to be bugless. I never know if I should remove the bugs or not. Nobody else seems to mind them but it bothers me to label containers “bugless watermelon” when they clearly contain watermelon that contain bugs. We’re not supposed to deviate from the label’s ingredient list. But if I took the time to meticulously pull each bug out, the others would look at me