Literary Birthday – 8 October – Lincoln Michel

Happy Birthday, Lincoln Michel, born 8 October 1982.

Quotes

1. I want art that makes the world seem more unreal. I want fiction that can crumble the world and build it back into something new.
2. I used to write primarily short work—500 to 1,500 words—but over time my stories have gotten longer and longer, and now I’m increasingly drawn toward novel writing. I don’t know why that is exactly, although I do think you can still see the influence of short prose in my longer writing (especially in the way the stories are structured).
3. I really do think that editing a magazine, or even just working as a reader, is a great experience for any young writer. Learning how to edit other people’s work forces you to clarify and articulate what you care about in writing, which then makes it far easier to edit your own work. I think I’m a more careful writer, and much better about finishing work before sending it out, because of editing.
4. Aren’t the most interesting monsters the sad and wrongfully persecuted ones? The Frankenstein’s monsters, or else the monsters inside us—the werewolves we transform into. I think you could probably classify the monsters in Upright Beasts into one of those two categories. Monsters are a many-faced metaphor. They can represent the other or the self, the unjustly persecuted or the rightfully condemned, strength or weakness. That versatility, and ambiguity, is really powerful in art.
5. Time is pretty much the most precious thing for any writer.

Lincoln Michel is an American writer and editor. His fiction has been published in The Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, NOON, Pushcart Prize anthology, and elsewhere. His essays and criticism have appeared in The New York Times, The Believer, The Guardian, Buzzfeed, Vice, and elsewhere. He is the former editor-in-chief of electricliterature.com and a founding editor of Gigantic. He is the co-editor of Gigantic Worlds, an anthology of science flash fiction, and Tiny Crimes, an anthology of flash noir. His debut story collection, Upright Beasts, was published by Coffee House Press in 2015. His latest book is The Body Scout.  He tweets at @thelincoln.

Source for image

Author’s website

“lincolnmichel.com/about-2/”

Source for quotes

 by Amanda Patterson

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