Sun, Apr 15 2012 09:41
We Are Meant to Be Robots
There's a super nice review of Us up at Insatiable Booksluts. It says, in part: "I really loved this book. It’s a very quick read – I finished it in one day. The last stretch was in the breakroom at work, and I was blinking away tears. We’re not to show emotion at work. WE ARE MEANT TO BE ROBOTS. So my coworkers were not overly impressed with the crying. I passed it off as allergies. Yay for reading this in springtime! Excellent little book. Kimball’s great with emotion and realism and pain and the truth behind a lifetime of love. Highly recommended."
Comments
Sun, Apr 15 2012 09:33
"Since reading Us, I wish most books were Us instead."
The human kindness that is Joseph Riippi is interviewed at The L Magazine where he is asked: "What have you read/watched/listened to/looked at/ate recently that will permanently change our readers' lives for the better?" And where he answers: "Always and forever, Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje is a book to love. And Michael Kimball’s Us makes me cry each time. I wish I had written Us. Since reading Us, I wish most books were Us instead. I love Us so much. You should love Us, too."
Thu, Apr 12 2012 08:44
Call + Response
I'm excited to be a part of Call + Response--an annual art show pairing writers and artists--along with Amber Sparks, Reb Livingston, Danielle Evans, Kyle G. Dargan, Trevor Young, Matthew Mann, Lisa Marie Thalhammer, Mia Feuer, and YAY Team.
Wed, Mar 21 2012 09:37
Writing Machine
I first met Cynthia Gray through her Don't Give Up project and immediately became a distributor. We've been friends ever since and she recently asked me to be part of her collaborative Writing Machine, which I was excited to try. The way it worked: Cynthia would write a line and then I would write a line. We could rewrite, revise, add, cut, etc. as each of us thought best. By the end, I couldn't remember which parts started with me and which parts started with Cynthia, which was a new place for me to get to as a writer. The most fascinating part was writing a line and then watching Cynthia take the next line someplace I never would have thought.
Wed, Mar 7 2012 11:18
Audacious Ideas
Ilse Munro has a really nice write up about the postcard life story project for the Audacious Ideas series over at Little Patuxent Review. There are links to a bunch of my favorite postcard life stories over there at the right (scroll down).
Sun, Feb 26 2012 12:21
Literary Equations
There's a really thoughtful review of Us up at Literary Equations. The good Matt Rowan says, in part: "The novel is heartbreaking, crushing ... powerfully so. It's the good kind of crushing, too."
Fri, Dec 16 2011 09:52
Us for City Paper's The Year In Books
I'm excited that City Paper named Us to its Top Ten list for The Year in Books, along with books by some of my favorite writers—Joan Didion, David Foster Wallace, Errol Morris, Lawrence Weschler, etc. City Paper says, in part: "We’re all familiar with the classic boy-meets-girl scenario, but what would happen if the tale kept going? Kimball takes the reader to the end of the love story—the real end—and shows just how crushing it can be. "
Sat, Nov 26 2011 10:52
Running
Fri, Nov 18 2011 08:12
The Bomb Interview: My Mind Zooming In
My friend and genius Adam Robinson interviewed me about Us for Bomb. He asks me some impossible questions and I tell him what I'd be doing if I wasn't writing novels.
Comments (1)
| Bomb, Big Ray, softball, Us, Adam Robinson
Fri, Nov 18 2011 08:01
Us Named a Top Ten Indie by Book Page
Wed, Nov 9 2011 08:08
BIG RAY
I love this cover -- the presence in the absence, at once beautiful and unsettling. Click on it for a bigger version. Bloomsbury will publish BIG RAY Fall 2012.
Comments (1)
| Big Ray
Fri, Nov 4 2011 10:42
Tin House: The Circumstances of My Birth
Tin House is publishing fiction online and I have a new piece there called The Circumstances of My Birth.
Many thanks to Tony Perez.
Comments (2)
Thu, Nov 3 2011 01:47
BIG RAY
There will probably be some tweaks -- a bigger font size for the title and maybe white for my name and the placement of "a novel" might move -- but I love this cover too much to not show it to everybody already. Bloomsbury will publish BIG RAY Fall 2012.
Comments (3)
Thu, Oct 20 2011 09:15
Matter Press: Compressed Forms
I have a new piece called Translation #1 up at Matter Press, the Journal of Compressed Arts. Many thanks to the good Randall Brown.
Comments (1)
Tue, Oct 11 2011 09:34
LitLive @ MICA
I'm excited to be reading with my pal Justin Sirois at MICA. The event is called LitLive and it's happening this Thursday, October 13th, 5pm, at MICA, Bunting Center Room 452, 1401 Mt. Royal Avenue (Corner of Lafayette & Mt. Royal). Thanks to Dan Gutstein for setting everything up and for bringing the cupcakes. I hope to see you there.
Comments (1)
Fri, Sep 23 2011 09:36
#299 Matty Byloos: Absolutely Everything Right Now
Matty Byloos was born in Los Angeles and raised in various parts of the San Fernando Valley (a Valley Boy, if there were such a thing). Matty’s childhood was great and his family was pretty typical of Italian-American families. There was lots of extended family around and everybody played a ton of cards. They all loved baseball and large meals. Everybody had a sarcastic sense of humor, so teasing was prevalent. Then, when Matty was 11, his grandfather, the family patriarch, died and everything fell apart.
His immediate family stayed close—Matty and his sister have always been friends and his parents stayed together—but everybody else drifted away. For some reason, as a kid, Matty loved the movie Wall Street. Also, he attended an all-boys, Jesuit high school near the city center of Los Angeles, just a few miles from the LA riots that happened in 1992. The school was shut down for a while and it was like entering a warzone when they went back—entire city blocks reduced to rubble and ash, blackened and charred. That has always stuck with Matty. The other standout thing from high school time was visiting Mabel King during his community service commitment, which he did at the Motion Picture Country Home, a rest home and hospice care facility for anybody involved in show business. She was blind and dying at the time, but also so full of life—a kind of magical grandmother. After high school, Matty attended a Jesuit college where he played rugby on and off and also played bass in a punk band called Vietnun. 
Once, he was held up at gunpoint and almost killed. Besides that, he studied literature and creative writing and it was great. For his Masters, he studied painting and critical theory. Matty’s girlfriend is also his best friend and she knows more about what is going on in his brain at any given time than anybody else but him. She's divine and a poet. They met through mutual friends and, after some difficult middle years, sorted things out. Matty loves that she'll fight like a hellion and forgive just as fast. They don’t have kids, but do have two cats—Patchen and Parsley (who thinks Matty is her mom—most nights he wakes up with her suckling on the two cherry blossom tattoos on his forearm). 
Matty always wanted to see Japan and he did in 2005 when the cherry blossoms were in bloom. During the trip, Matty ate apple pie and ice cream in a tiny house after seeing the Buddha statue in Kamakura. Another time, Matty was almost killed again when he was almost hit by a car going 100mph in the wrong direction during a high-speed chase. That combined with the Jesuit life principles of treating every day like it’s your last have made him a workaholic and somebody who tries to do absolutely everything right now. Now Matty does online marketing stuff. He owns and operates a network of websites. He still paints and has been working on a large-scale drawing installation that functions like a novel in pictures—with every single page on display at the same time. 
Matty is feeling pretty good about writing these days, even more so than painting, which is a big shift after mostly existing in the art world. He’s working on a novel that is built out of independent flash pieces. It's about a motorcycle gang and the apocalypse and Detroit and lots of birds that wear jackets and ponder their own evolution.
Thu, Sep 22 2011 10:55
Fall for the Book
I'm excited to be reading from Us tonight at George Mason University's Fall for the Book with the wonderful Amelia Gray and Matt Bell. It's 8pm tonight in the Student Union Building, Rooms 3, 4, & 5.
Mon, Sep 19 2011 07:06
A Weird Kind of Beauty
I interview Michael Bible about the weird beauty of Simple Machines, which is just out from Awesome Machine. It's over at Htmlgiant.
Wed, Sep 14 2011 09:00
What Are Some of the Best Books of the Year?
The wonderful Penina Roth answers the question at Flavorwire and places Us on the list -- along with books by Blake Butler, Deb Olin Unferth, Emma Straub, Joshua Cohen, Karen Russell, Seth Fried, Stefan Merrill Block, and Teju Cole.
Comments (1)
Mon, Sep 5 2011 08:18
Reading @ Rosemont College, Philadelphia
Dear Philadelphia, I'm excited to be visiting on Wednesday -- looking forward to reading in the evening, 6:15pm @ Rosemont College. Many thanks for Randall Brown for the invitation.
© 2008-2012 Michael Kimball