#upright beasts

It's time for Beginnings, the podcast where writer and performer Andy Beckerman talks to the comedians, writers, filmmakers and musicians he admires about their earliest creative experiences and the numerous ways in which a creative life can unfold.

On today's episode, I talk to author Lincoln Michel. Originally from Virginia, Lincoln's fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, Pushcart Prize anthology and his essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Believer, The Guardian and many other places. His debut story collection, Upright Beasts, was published by Coffee House Press in 2015, and his debut novel, The Body Scout, was published by Orbit just last year!

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A very nice review from the Kenyon Review today: 

Over the past couple decades, the dominance of realist fiction in the literary landscape has been challenged by the rise of weird fiction. Prominent examples include the steampunk fairy tales of Kelly Link, Karen Russell’s swamp-gothic surrealism, and Jeff VanderMeer’s eco-sci-fi Southern Reach trilogy. What links these writers is not a singular, driving aesthetic so much as a disregard for the strictures of mainstream realism. Weird fiction is a genre of possibility and exploration, of fantasy and philosophy, and although its boundaries as a genre are somewhat slippery, it has a deep-rooted history, reaching back to writers such as Silvina Ocampo, H.P. Lovecraft, and Bruno Schulz, among others. Lincoln Michel’s decidedly weird debut collection of stories, Upright Beasts, offers an example of the genre’s possibilities and the scope of its heritage. Though influenced by pop culture fixtures such as horror movies and stand-up comedy, Michel’s work also takes many cues from modernist writers, especially the sense of puzzling whimsy found in the writing of Clarice Lispector and Kobo Abe. In their omnivorous approach to genre and form, these twenty-four stories testify to literary fiction’s continued shift into the strange.

“There is a bold, unpremeditated feel to Upright Beasts, a debut whose great strength is a changeability that keeps the pages turning as it veers from lucidity to madness and back again.”

Weird, whimsical, horrific, romantic—very short stories can make room for some of the strangest, most wonderful things. On today’s episode, Rahawa Haile and Lincoln Michel illuminate the mundane, the eccentric, and the extraordinary in six very short stories.

Lincoln’s collection Upright Beasts, is out now from Coffee House Press. Also mentioned in this episode: The Birthday of the World by Ursula K. Le Guin and Super Flat Times by Matthew Derby.

(Note: Due to a technical error (a hard drive falling on the floor) there is no outtro music on this episode. Please keep the hard drive in your thoughts and prayers so that there may be outtro music again on future episodes.)

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If you’d like to read more

by Rahawa:

“A Low and Distant Paradise” (Pacific Standard)

“One Short Story, Every Day” (interview @ The Oyster Review)

“The Lives and Loves of Intricate Cakes” and “When The Seltzer’s Like ‘Nah’ and You’re Like ‘Oh Please, Please Be Cold’ and the Seltzer’s Like ‘Nah’” (Midnight Breakfast)

by Lincoln:

“The Room Inside My Father’s Room” (Catapult)

“My Life in the Bellies of Beasts” (VICE)

“Dark Air” (Granta)

About the writers:

Rahawa Haile is an Eritrean-American writer of short stories and essays. Find her on Twitter at @RahawaHaile.