MS: Although all your works feel so personal that I’m shocked when a character name is dropped which isn’t “Michael Kimball,” BIG RAY seems to be even closer to autobiographical account. You call the book “memoir as fiction”; explain this coinage a little more.

MK: When I started writing BIG RAY, it was going to be a memoir. I wrote everything exactly as I remembered it and I wrote everything as true as I could. But I eventually made BIG RAY a novel—in part because it seemed too messy as a memoir and also because I wanted more control over how it was told, a fiction writer’s prerogative. So this novel is a retelling of my life (and my father’s life) as a way to reclaim a part of my life. The character Big Ray is still mostly my father and the narrator is mostly me and my father did most of the things described in the book, but that character is a composite now. That is, most of the novel is still based on real events, in particular the father’s abuse and his obesity, as well as the all the events surrounding his death. Also, I decided to keep many of the devices of the memoir, so the novel still reads like nonfiction. I like the tension that creates.

MS: I understand the process by which you wrote this book is drastically different than anything you’ve written before. What was this process, and how do you think it affected the end product?

MK: I’ve never written a book in under three years before, but BIG RAY was written in an intense rush, three months start to finish. I was emotionally exhausted by the end of it, but also changed. I was a different person—lighter, happier, released. I found a way to reconcile the love and the hate I had for my father and that gave me myself back.

MS: You’re developing something of a reputation for writing “slim novels,” as the reviews always are sure to point out. What compels you to pursue this length of work?

MK: I could write longer novels. BIG RAY could have been over 300 pages, but I decided to cut out lots of unnecessary material and description—all that set up and explanation. I wanted the book to move faster than other books. I didn’t want any of the filler that I read in so many other books. I like the tension that kind of tight narrative creates.

MS: The piece published in the “Correspondences” issue of Moonshot, “I Am a Providence,” seems like a departure from the rest of your work. When did you start working in a purely linguistic experimental vein, both professionally and on your own?

MK: If you consider THE WAY THE FAMILY GOT AWAY and WORDS by Andy Devine (my conceptual pseudonym), “I Am a Providence” isn’t so much of a departure. For years, I’ve been trying to find different ways to tell stories and write novels, whether it’s using a new language for children or alphabetizing stories or writing a novel that reads like a memoir.

MS: Is there any non-literature-based media that inspires your work?

MK: Oh, man, so much—it feels like everything I like inspires and influences me: counting cards in blackjack, playing pool with Adam Robinson, going to museums, all kinds of conceptual art, large installations, random number tables, psychological research on emotion, the DSM, learning anything new, etc.

MS: Walk us through how a day of writing might go for you.

MK: It depends on so many things, but when things are going well, which they aren’t right now, I get up and write in bed, longhand on a legal pad. Then I get up and type all of that into a Word document, making changes and additions and deletions, etc. That’s the first few hours of my writing day, but that hasn’t happened in a while.

MS: What are you reading now?

MK: I’ve been through so much life trauma lately that I’ve found it difficult to read. I haven’t been able to focus in that way for months.

MS: DEAR EVERYBODY is another experimental work, though in a different form—nearly multimedia, a sort of epistolary collage. You’ve also branched into postcards as a medium for storytelling. How did these two projects arise, and how do they inform one another?

MK: DEAR EVERYBODY published not too long after the postcard life story project started, but I don’t know that they informed one another so much. DEAR EVERYBODY was long finished by the time I started the postcards. I do think both of those projects (and US) informed BIG RAY. I feel as if I took the emotional sentences from those middle sections of US, some of the form from DEAR EVERYBODY, and the condensed ways of telling lots of story from the postcard life story project. BIG RAY feels like an aesthetic and an emotional culmination of sorts. So I’m still trying to figure out what comes next.

Michael Kimball is the author of four novels, including Dear Everybody (which The Believer calls “a curatorial masterpiece”) and Us (which was named to Oprah’s Reading List). His newest novel, Big Ray, was published September 18, 2012 (Bloomsbury). His work has been on NPR’s All Things Considered and in Vice, as well as The Guardian, Bomb, and New York Tyrant, and has been translated into a dozen languages. He is also responsible for Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard). Visit him at michael-kimball.com.

On Wednesday, some of Brooklyn’s brightest literary magazines came together at powerHouse Arena in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn, to discuss the economics of running literary magazines—both print and digital—and developing new strategies to reach more readers. Joining our own JD Scott was A Public Space‘s Brigid Hughes, Tin House‘s Emma Komlos-Hrobsky, Electric Literature‘s Halimah Marcus, SET‘s David James Miller, Slice‘s Celia Johnson. CLMP’s Managing Director Jamie Schwartz moderated the discussion.

Left to Right: Komlos-Hrobsky, Marcus, Johnson, Schwartz, Scott, Miller, and Hughes

Photos Courtesy of Sam Gold

When did you get into curating events?
Well, my first literary curation was at the age of, I don’t know…15? I had dropped out of high school, presumably because the curriculum was distracting me from my destiny of being a writer with banal subjects like government and biology. I grew up in this little Cape Cod town and there wasn’t much of a literary scene to speak of, so I tried to start one in the basement of our public library. It was called “Speakeasy” and, if I remember correctly, I not only read my own terrible poetry but also sang a Billie Holiday song. Pretty cute at fifteen, though it sound like the stuff of nightmares to me as an adult.

More recently, I founded the Mixer Reading and Music Series in 2007, with my cohort Rebecca Keith. It’s been going strong for over five years. I also do one-off things too. Recently, I curated a show called “Shameless” for Pride, with Ariel Levy, Laurie Weeks, Pamela Sneed, and a bunch of other queer lady geniuses. It was a great night and a huge honor.

Why prompted you to continue producing literary events?
The same reason I produced them as a teenager: I wanted to find my people, and I wanted to create a place where we could bring our work. It’s also a great excuse to introduce yourself to people you admire.

Why the name “Mixer”?
Well, we happen in the basement of a place called Cake Shop, so it seemed apropos. We also were committed from conception to the idea of a series that mixed not only forms of writing, but also mediums. And, having both come of age in the early ’90s, Rebecca and I both have a long love story with mix tapes. The meanings just go on and on.

How’d you guys end up at Cake Shop?
It was important to us that Mixer be a really warm, intimate place for writers and musicians to perform. Cake Shop is a great combination of ambient and cozy, but not in a knitting club way; in a sticky floor-Christmas lights-people-sitting-on-the-floor-in-front kind of way. One of our prouder moments was when Paul Muldoon effused after reading, “This is just like Berlin in the old days!” We will never be a fancy reading, but will always love up our performers, and Cake Shop just seemed like the perfect place for us.

What kind of dialogue do you think your events brings to how people are consuming/creating written work currently?
I don’t think we’re doing anything new. Literature and music began as performed arts, and I think it’s important for an audience to connect work to the people who make it, and for artists to connect with the people absorbing their work. And for artists to connect with each other. At their best, that’s what all readings do.

What are some of the more daunting parts of running Mixer?
Dealing with email influx can be the pits, but we have an amazing intern, Michelle Campagna, who helps with that. But being inspired is the best part of almost everything, and it happens to me a lot at Mixer.

How long do you and Rebecca intend to keep Mixer going?
Mixer has a life of its own. We are just its handmaidens. It will end when it’s ready. Although we are booked into Winter 2013.

You had a book Whip Smart come out a while ago. Did those responsibilities make Mixer difficult?
I think that publishing a book made me both a better host, and a more appreciative audience member. After going on book tour, and having to pimp my own work so intensely, it’s really, really wonderful to just listen.

How do you think hosting Mixer has changed you?
I’ve grown up a lot in the five years since we started Mixer, and even more so since my days in the library basement. I have so much admiration for anyone who commits to this spectacular and spectacularly difficult task of trying to commit the experience of being human to words. And I’ve really learned to be generous in all possible ways to other artists. It’s easy to yield to the fears that we all have: that there isn’t enough room for us, or enough recognition to go around, or enough time to create something meaningful, or that we won’t be seen for our true intentions, or that we should be skeptical of others. It’s all bullshit, and I really believe that we can manifest a warm, bountiful, brave atmosphere if we do so in our own selves and in our work. Does that sound too much like a yoga class? I don’t care. It’s been true for me.

There have been whispers about Cake Shop possibly shutting down. Would Mixer move to another venue if that happened?
I think Cake Shop is the sort of place that people will rally to save if it comes to that. I know we will.

If someone with no experience came up to you and told you they wanted to start up a reading series or run a one-off event, what advice would you tell them?
Go for it.

Melissa Febos is the author of Whip Smart (St. Martin’s Press, 2010), a critically acclaimed memoir about her years as a professional dominatrix that Kirkus Reviews said, “expertly captures grace within depravity.” Her work has appeared in Glamour, Salon, Dissent, The Southeast Review, The New York Times, Bitch Magazine, BOMB, among many others. She has appeared on the cover of the New York Post to NPR’s Fresh Air to Dr. Drew. A 2010 & 2011 MacDowell Colony fellow, and 2012 Breadloaf fellow, she teaches at Sarah Lawrence College, Purchase College, NYU, and privately. Febos holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence. For five years, she has co-curated the Mixer Reading & Music Series in Manhattan. She lives in Brooklyn, and is currently at work on a novel.

A Night With Brooklyn Indie Lit Mags will be held at at powerHouse ARENA (37 Main Street; A, C trains to High Street, F train to York Street, 2, 3 trains to Clark Street) in the DUMBO neighborhood of Brooklyn on Wednesday, July 18, 2012.

Other series and journals also presenting at Popsickle tomorrow include Fireside Follies, Hatchet Job, Metro Rhythm,PeopleHerd at Milk&Roses, Private Line, Stain of Poetry , these signals press / SET, Between the Frog & Conch, Lyre Lyre, The HomeOf, Belladonna*, Red Lemonade, and Feminist Press .