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

May 5, 2026 · Interviews & Reviews

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…

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Art, Oxy, & L.A.: An Interview With Luke Goebel By Kevin Maloney

April 23, 2026 · Interviews & Reviews

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…

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One Late Summer Morning by Louis Scantlebury

April 22, 2026 · Fiction

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…

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Richard Cabut Recommends: Constructed Situations and Torn Surfaces

April 21, 2026 · Interviews & Reviews

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…

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City Limits by Hannah Smart

April 20, 2026 · Fiction

“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…

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Spiritual Holes: Stephanie Yue Duhem interviews Audrey Lee

April 9, 2026 · Interviews & Reviews

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:…

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Fruit Cutting Factory by Chuckie Smith

April 7, 2026 · Fiction

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…

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THE BOARD GAME (33 CONSECUTIVE BLOG ENTRIES FROM GOODSUNFUN.WORDPRESS.COM) by Tyler Plofker

April 3, 2026 · Fiction

July 9, 2025 Today I started a wonderful new project! Im making a board game! The board is made of dirt. The dirt is 300 yards by 300 yards and is outside. there is one piece (so far) and it is a little bird. The little bird is dead. (I did not kill the little bird)!!! July 11, 2025 I was trying to think of rules. I was thinking of rules for the game for how many spaces to move. I thought maybe the player will throw their bird (dead) into a dirt patch (maybe) and depending on which…

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‘HIT REPEAT UNTIL I HATE MUSIC’: A SPLIT LIP ANTHOLOGY GROUP INTERVIEW

March 31, 2026 · Fiction

Founded a decade ago as a competition between sad songs known as March Sadness, the tradition of pitting tracks against each other has persisted year on year, mutating in theme, but forever guided by deep music appreciation. Enthusiasts make their argument for a particular song in passionate essays, all in the spirit of friendly combat. Hit Repeat Until I Hate Music: The March Xness Anthology (Spilt/Lip Press, 2026) brings together a selection of essays to showcase the vibes of this enduring contest. With that in mind, I put the following question to a selection of the anthology’s contributors: When was…

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DESSINS D’ENFANTS by Tom Snarsky

March 30, 2026 · Fiction

Chauncey skipped five grades. When he took his seat in English 9 with Mrs. Sotomayor he looked like a mushroom in an arboretum. He was very quiet, only answering when called on directly and sheepish in groupwork, but he paid attention every second. At the end of one class he overheard an older girl say smoke in a low voice. Another day he saw an older boy put his hand down his pants, which choreography not even the boy noticed. Chauncey could feel that he was developing an excess of attention. He would notice things that had no causal effect…

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