Gregory is an 82-year-old Russian Jewish man who works across the aisle from me at a nonprofit community center in Palo Alto.  I’d always been curious about why he was still working.  When I asked him for an interview, he said he wasn’t very interesting.

Terry Gearlds and I have never met. We’re friends on Facebook. We share some stuff in common like True Blood and horror movies. Also, anytime either of us see a picture of Bradley Cooper with no shirt on our nipples get hard.

I met Grace Smith (Yup’ik) when I was researching an article for The Circle, a Native American newspaper in the Twin Cities.

The Native community in the Twin Cities is very complex, with people from many different tribes and nations.

I heard about Margaret Murray before I met her: strange rumors about her being a kept woman in LA and a sad, true story of her apartment burning down in San Francisco.

Of course I wanted to befriend her. In the early ’90s we played together in combustible “super-mini-groups”—Job’s Daughters and Heavenly Ten Stems—and I had the chick-bassist slot for two months in (then-named) Caroliner Open Wound Chorale before quitting.

My sister is six years younger, and as kids we never got along. In high school, I went through a phase that involved a lot of sneaking out to drink coffee and do pink-hearts with my friends. I had to creep past her room and, I always worried that she was going to wake up and sound an alarm.

There’s fisherman who is famous in my town in northern Holland, near the sea. They say he has been around the world a few times, so I thought I would ask him some questions. A very short interview followed.

I’ve known Judy Salamon two years. We work together, and she’s one of the main reasons I enjoy my job. Judy tells the best stories. She’s also a kind and accepting person. After meeting her the first time my son said, “A lot of people pretend to be nice.

Varun and I met shortly before we graduated from college, and then I moved across the country. We remained in good touch until he visited me. We fought and then we didn’t talk for a long while until now.

This was an excuse to ask him all the questions I’ve been wanting to ask him since that fight.

Angie is my 19-month-old son Charlie’s nanny.  She’s been living with us since October 12, 2010.  Angie is 30 years old, and is currently reading John Williams’s novel Stoner.

In the late 1980s, Terri Manning and her sister, Barbara, lived in one of San Francisco’s painted ladies near Golden Gate Park. This lady, a huge, rambling Victorian with peeling paint, opened its door to touring bands, local musicians, artists, and whomever else needed a place to crash or a home-cooked meal.

When last we heard from Brian he had gotten work as a Xerox copier mechanic in his hometown of Rochester, New York. Robert Tumas’ latest conversation with his itinerant best friend finds Brian on the Island of San Clemente, off the coast of San Diego, where he is currently employed as a wildlife technician controlling the ballooning population of wild feral house cats with .22 rifles, traps, and ATV’s.

When your mother-in-law pushes aside Elizabeth Street, the acclaimed novel by Laurie Fabiano, and says “She didn’t get it right,” it’s time to pull up a chair and listen.

Christina Randazzo tells great stories that span decades but her most compelling tales date back to her growing up in the 1940s in New York City’s Little Italy.

My husband, Sam Putnam, is the chef of a popular new restaurant, which I’m not going to name because it’s already gotten plenty of publicity.

I wanted to interview him because I haven’t seen him much lately and people are always asking me how he’s doing.  He also tends to be a quiet guy, and I wanted to get him to talk.

Paula Whyman talks with SM Shrake about his annual witch costume in The Rumpus’ thirty-first mini-interview!

Three years ago I interviewed a number of friends in their mid-20s, seemingly bright kids with no direction. I lost the digital recordings; here is all that remains from an interview with C.W., 27. We spoke at length in his dad’s kitchen while his sister cared for her new baby in the next room.

Aaron Wendland is a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he works on Heidegger and reads widely in the history of philosophy. Originally from Canada, Aaron brought over 1,000 philosophy books to Oxford, which he organizes by height, color, publisher, theme and alphabet, “so far as all of this is possible.”

Over Scotch one night we talked about his previous career in the foundry of a car manufacturing plant in Windsor, Ontario.

I know very little about Richard.

I know that he is from Rhode Island, Jewish, has lived in Puebla, Mexico for 20 years, lives and owns an antiques store with his partner Victor. They have two dogs and 19 canaries.

When I return to the shop a second time to schedule the interview Richard warns me that New Englanders are “very direct.” “I’ll tell the truth, he says.