Gary Lutz, who in many circles is already known as a master of sentences, takes it to another level in his new collection, Divorcer (Calamari Press). Some of the sentences are so loaded and wild with commas and compound words, that they’re like an alchemy of what future historians will call the “Lutzian” style–emotionally dense, perverse, and grammatically audacious. It’s like Lutz has turned the volume on his style up to 11. The whole collection is like guitar amps catching on fire, like stereo speakers getting blown out, over and over. …more

Beijing was changing under his feet, and expatriate Alan Paul was changing, too.

A transplanted suburban dad, he was a “trailing spouse” who followed his wife on her promotion and relocation from New Jersey to Beijing. A writer used to watching the kids while working for Guitar Magazine and Slam, the leisure of overseas domestic help gave him time to begin a personal blog, and later, the online column “Expat Life” for The Wall Street Journal. …more

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.

We eventually sat down to talk, and our conversation led to the Leningrad Blockade during World War II. …more

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 dig Terry’s blog. That photo of him when he tweezed his eyebrows is terrific! Above all, Terry has a big heart. …more

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. …more

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. Margaret took my place. Grux, the singer, used to stomp on my foot to indicate section changes, and I never defended myself. So I was secretly pleased when Margaret punched him on tour (though, she tells me, she loves him).

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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. She never did.

As an adult, I have seen her struggle to find a “passion” and when I heard she may have found one, I sat down to talk to her about it. …more

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. …more

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. Judy doesn’t. She’s actually nice.”

Hey, kids know. …more

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. …more

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. …more

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. The Manning sisters’ generosity came naturally to them. In the mid-1970s they grew up as part of a commune in the Sierra foothills and played pranks on the swami when they decided he was morally corrupt. …more

We at The Rumpus get bored with reading the same old interviews with the same old people. So, every now and again we like to publish “mini-interviews,” our readers talking with people we wouldn’t normally get to learn about. We like to hear from your friend with a Neil Diamond obsession, your neighbor fawning over his pet ferret, your best friend’s mom; the random nooks and crannies of planet earth.

Here are five of our favorites. …more

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. …more

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. That was a time when everyone “knew each other’s business” and news about the neighborhood was carried by voices, window to street. …more

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. …more

I met Eric Larson (a pseudonym) in a Bay Area writing workshop around ten years ago. He’s had the most intriguing job of anyone I’ve met in that often-myopic fiction-writing world—he’s a Death Row attorney, primarily for clients at San Quentin State Prison, paid separately on contract for each case.

Here are some questions I’ve always had about a career I’ll never have: …more

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

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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.

[Numbers indicate hours, minutes and seconds elapsed.]

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Dave “The Fugitive” Jansen, 30, is a professional mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter with Oregon’s Team Quest Fight Club.  Our talks took place prior to his World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC) bout in Las Vegas against Ricardo Lamas on August 18, 2010. …more

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.

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The last time I saw Lucinda was around July 4, 2003. Marching around with sparklers in her back yard, drinking beer and laughing, she showed no ill-effects of being a California parole officer. Lucinda, 41, is now a California state investigator of lifers, and an aspiring roller derby vixen. Her boss approved this interview; but, due to the sensitive nature of her job, we changed her name. …more

Mohaned works at a small hotel in Palmyra, a desert town in northeast Syria. On the side, he helps a friend pitch taxi rides to tourists. (Mohaned speaks Arabic and English; his friend, only Arabic.) The following is an edited account of our conversation during the three hour taxi journey between Palymra and Damascus. …more

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. “Come back Friday.” …more

John grew up in Hong Kong, the son of a missionary. Before becoming a commercial photographer he was a radio disc jockey, oil field roustabout, pizza delivery guy and funeral home attendant. Now he’s selling everything he owns and is leaving the country for a couple of years at least.

Katherine Tanney: Like most people with homes, you bought a lot of stuff over the years, even collected groups of things like ceramic suns and little decorative spheres that sit on stands. Now you’re getting rid of everything. Care to comment? …more

Alex Smith lives in New York City, where he works as a homepage editor at MSN and as a freelance contributor for the New Yorker. During the interview, Alex drank a Kingfisher, and Rombes an Oberon. Some of Alex’s writing can be found at Flaming Pablum.

Alex: Okay, hitting “random article” button on Wikipedia. Wow. Barbus parawaldroni. ‪Sounds a bit like the name of an Italian death metal ensemble. …more

Ronnie Lucero and I work together at Nelson’s Meats, a small, independently owned meat market in Albuquerque’s South Valley. He is what used to be called a ‘butcher.’ Nowadays they call them ‘meat cutters.’ I sell his handiwork to the public, as well as a few other mammal-flesh goodies. We’ve worked together for eight years. This interview was conducted in a store that sits adjacent to the market. We talked next to a pizza oven that was recently converted into a giant roaster for green chile. It was hot. …more

Michaela Drapes and Shannon Robertson write the irreverent knitting blog Yarneteria . They create bespoke hand knit garments and accessories for discerning gentlemen at Kindling and Tinder where they believe you should “wear your love like heaven.” I recently got to speak with Michaela:

Martha Burzynski: Growing up knitting, do you remember what was produced as being out of necessity or as creative outlet? …more

Laura Stevens has great hair. The best hair in the room, 94.3% of the time.  It makes me jealous.

She is the only non-adopted of her parents’ six children.  …more

Paula: Tim Guthrie is an internationally exhibited and award-winning multimedia artist.  He is also the best movie-dialogue-reciter I have ever met, which endeared him to me immediately.  We met at an artist colony and bonded over late-night poker and blackjack and good-natured mocking.  Tim is a card shark.  Did I ever win, Tim?

Tim: Yes.

Paula: He’s being nice.  Multi- is a good description of you, yes?

Tim: I paint ambidextrously. …more