“What people are really reading for is some quality of obsession,” Almond says. “they have this instinctual sense that the person who’s writing can’t stop talking about this, is super into it—scarily into it. Because everybody has what they’re obsessed with, but you’re sort of taught not to get into it because it seems crazy and makes you weird, and you should be able to get past that and stop collecting Cabbage Patch Kids or whatever your obsession is . . . But we are all, inside, obsessed.”
Steve Almond is the author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction, three of which he published himself. In 2004 his second book, Candyfreak, was a New York Times bestseller and won the American Library Association Alex Award. In 2005, it was named the Booksense Adult Nonfiction Book of the Year. His story, “Donkey Greedy, Donkey Gets Punched,” from his latest collection, God Bless America, was selected for Best American Short Stories 2010. He is a regular contributor to the New York Times and writes regularly for the literary website, The Rumpus. Two of his stories have been awarded Pushcart Prizes.
Willow Springs contributing interviewers Michael Bell, Katrina Stubson, and Ericka Taylor met with Mr. Almond at the Brooklyn Deli in Spokane, where they discussed small publishers and big publishers, politics in 2ction and nonfiction, obsession and more obsession, what makes a good editor, and how, “in the most emotional moments of a story, writers are trying to sing.”
