Since my last post, some great things have happened. The first is that HUSTLE was named a finalist for the PEN Center USA Award for Fiction. This was stunning news for me and the novel, and I am thrilled and humbled by this huge honor.

Another is an interview I wrote with Lauren Groff is now up at The Rumpus. I am very happy to have this piece up at one of my favorite online sites, and appreciative of Lauren for answering my questions. Here is a link to the interview.

That’s about it. I have a few other things happening, namely work on the new book and a few side projects happening. More to come soon.

Currently Listening To: The Japandroids
Currently Reading: The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf

Here is the link: http://www.bookslut.com/bookslut_in_training/2012_05_018931.php

In other news, I’ve been busy in the past few months working on my new book and doing a couple more readings. My most recent reading was at Texas Christian University, where I met with two of Professor Nat O’Reilly’s classes, examining the literature of suburbia. I had a great time with Nat and the students, discussing topics ranging from music that influenced the writing of HUSTLE to economic, class, and gender issues presented in the book. During the reading that night, I got to hang out a bit with the awesome poet and memoirist Alex Lemon, then take questions from the audience. One was from my ninth grade English teacher, Mrs. DeLotto, who asked what I miss most about Texas. Though I was tempted to say Whataburger, I answered, “The way people talk, especially the vendors at Farmer’s Markets. Have you seen them? Those guys selling vegetables out of the backs of their pick-ups, sitting in lawnchairs, keeping track of their sales with little notebooks they keep in their overall chest pockets? They say things like ‘critter doctor’ instead of ‘veterinarian’.”

Other stuff happening:
1.) I just bought and moved into my first house. It is massive and kind of creepy looking, and I love it. My writing space is the entire third floor/attic, which is 24 feet by 15 feet, all fir hardwood floors and pine wood panel walls. It’s where I’m at now, in fact.
2.) I’m prepping for my fall fiction writing classes, incorporating new stories by writers like Lori Ostlund, Andrew Scott, Lauren Groff and several others that I’m excited to teach. Looking forward to meeting my new students.
3.) Elliott Bay in Seattle sold out of all its copies of Hustle.
4.) I’m about to summit Mt. St. Helens.

BTW, Nat is a really good poet with two great chapbooks, Symptoms of Homesickness (Picaro Press, 2010) and Suburban Exile: American Poems (Picaro Press, 2011), and you should check out his work. Here is one of his poems (originally published in Cordite Poetry Review):

Russian Daughters

Currently Reading: Virginia Woolf’s biography, by Hermione Lee
Currently Listening To: I’m admittedly on a Weezer kick and feel awful about it. It’s like eating at Pancho’s. I am feeling equally awful about also being on a Red Hot Chili Peppers kick. I used to listen to them a lot in high school (when Mother’s Milk came out), and loved them, but they fell off my radar. I recently saw a live performance and was reminded what an amazing band they are, so I’ve been playing catch-up. Also, AC/DC…. Sheez. I’m just now adding all this up. What the hell?

Okay, so: I once wrote a letter to Kurt Vonnegut, and Kurt Vonnegut responded. In my letter I explained why I was writing him: I’d been instructed by an English teacher to pick someone I’d always admired and send her/him a letter, expressing my admiration and gratitude. I told Kurt that I had intended to write Carl Sagan, but sometime between putting pen to paper, Carl had died. I told Kurt that with Carl’s passing he had moved up my ranks and was thus receiving my letter. I discussed in the letter some personal things about my life that had taken place that past year – the passing of my younger brother and my house burning down, among a few other things – and said his work had helped me get through the tough times, and I appreciated him for that. To make sure Kurt actually got the letter (it had to go through his publicist at DoubleDay) I included a thank you card to his publicist. I never expected to hear back. However, three months later I went to visit my mother at our house in Arlington, Texas (I was living in Denton at the time) when she handed me an envelope with no return address. I figured this was someone wanting me to apply for a credit card or something. But instead it was a single piece of paper, and on it, there was typed:

Dear Skippy,

Find here my thanks for your friendly and wide-open letter. You are smart and brave and I hope you stay okay.

Cheers,

Kurt Vonnegut

He signed the letter with an asterisk, and if you know the novel BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS, you know what that means. Also, he drew a picture of himself smoking a cigarette.

I was OVER THE MOON with joy. Today the letter is framed and hanging in my office at the university where I teach, PLU. You should come by and see it.

So, why am I writing about Kurt Vonnegut? Because I recently got to walk in his monstrous footsteps by participating in the annual GET LIT! Festival in Spokane, Washington, hosted by Eastern Washington University. He too read at GET LIT! a few years ago and I almost went but could not because of grading. I knew at the time his health was poor (was he ever healthy, smoking 40 packs a day?), and he did pass away soon afterward. Anyhow, it was amazing and humbling to now find myself taking part in a festival in which he took part, just a few years ago.

And what an amazing event it was. This year, other readers included Susan Orlean, Colson Whitehead, Steve Almond, and Jess Walter. I got to do a panel on setting, moderated by Jonathan Frey, at North Idaho College with Lori Ostlund, author of THE BIGNESS OF THE WORLD (whose dialogue is incomparable – untouchable, it is so precise) and another great writer K. L. Cook (who speaks of craft with an eloquence I’ve rarely seen in any writer, definitely not from someone so young). I read with Christina Garcia and taught an in-depth workshop on setting with about twenty-five students. All great. All great. The reading was kind of my favorite part, admittedly, because I thought of Kurt. The experience was transcendent. Also, it was fun to see Gabrielle Calvocoressi read (filling in for Ted Kooser, who couldn’t come out because of weather/flight issues). Gabby’s most recent collection APOCOLYPTIC SWING is like taking a grater to your soul, it is so stirring and wonderful and surprising. And finally it was wonderful to hang out with Jonathan Johnson and Melissa Huggins, my former PLU student, who is now organizing the festival. Talk about coming full circle. And really-finally, thanks to Melissa Opal at Auntie’s for making sure HUSTLE was available, and thanks also to Wendy Call. Rock on..

Here is an article on the panel that Joyce Hargrove wrote for The Sentinel. The article does a really good job of capturing our different thoughts and approaches, and it reminded me of the very smart thoughts and advice on setting that Lori and K.L. offered up. Also there are pictures of badasses doing tricks on motorcycles, so there’s that to entice you. Here’s the link.

What I’m currently reading: Aeneid, Virgil
What I’m currently listening to: Master of Puppets, Metallica

The islands are always great to visit. Hippy pastoral with tremendous heart. Land and farms galore.  Here is one place, later in the day:

Orcas has this terrific art salon. In their literary series, guest authors read and talk about their books, then everyone shares their work, drinks wine, and eats.  It is typically hosted at the charming Kangaroo House, a Bed and Breakfast owned by Jill and her husband Charles (also a Texas native).

 The day was awesome. After arriving on the island, I only got lost once while trying to find the Kangaroo House (because I get lost everywhere I go); I got to spend some time reading beside a lake before the event; and Orcas has a great independent bookstore, Darvill’s. Most importantly, I got to meet, hang out with, and hear work by all the writers, except Jennifer (which was too bad, because I’ve since read some of her material, and it’s great). I had a great time sitting up late into the night with Jill (whose work I already knew, and whose short story floored me when she read it that night), talking about our current projects. I can’t wait to get back, to see more of the island and to hang out with these folks again. Here are two pictures (JB standing, Jill seated).

I feel lucky and honored to have gotten this invitation and this experience. Thanks so much to everyone involved.

NOW ONTO WILCO AND THE BRIEF STORY OF WHY HUSTLE HAS NO EPIGRAPH…

The next night, I met my friend Kelly in Seattle, and we saw the band Wilco at the Paramount. Wilco was important to writing Hustle. Revising it, really, because I wrote the final version toward a line from a Wilco song that I’d intended to use as the book’s epigraph (a trick I learned while reading Kurt Vonnegut’s archive in Bloomington). It’s from a song titled “She’s a Jar.” The line – which is perfect – is: “When I forget how to talk, I sing.” Unfortunately I couldn’t use it because I couldn’t get the rights. Not because of singer/songwriter Jeff Tweedy or Wilco’s management – neither had any idea this was happening – but because a person working for one of the two (yes, two) companies holding the rights to the lyrics made it impossibly difficult. I went back and forth with him for over two months, until the conversation reached Kafka-esque absurdity. As the publication date approached, I decided to let it go. When I tried to think of a new one, my editor Robin suggested I only use an epigraph that would be meaningful like that one. Finally I decided to go without, and I’m glad for the decision.

If you’re interested, here is a link to a video of Wilco performing the song:

She’s a Jar

What I’m Currently Reading: Blueprints of the Afterlife by Ryan Boudinot
What I’m Currently Listening To: Whatever the name is of the new Maroon 5 album and REM’s new collection

Here is the link to the announcement and here is the full list:

A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (Anchor)
Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer, Wesley Stace (Picador)
Hustle, by Jason Skipper (Press 53)
Irma Voth, by Miriam Toews (Harper)
The Coffins of Little Hope, by Timothy Schaffert (Unbridled Books)
The Family Fang, by Kevin Wilson (Ecco)
The Marriage Plot, by Jeffrey Eugenides (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern (Doubleday)
The Tiger’s Wife, by Téa Obreht (Random House)
The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortise, by Julia Stuart (Doubleday)

Go here for the article

So….I recently did a very fun interview with Craig Lancaster for A Mind Adrift in the West, where we talked about Hustle, teaching, Xanadu, book touring, and the salvation in anthemic punk rock…

Here is a sample Q/A:

You’ve done a lot of traveling in support of Hustle. What’s been your worst road experience? Your best?

This year I was away from home almost constantly between September 2nd and December 1st, visiting bookstores and universities, and doing house readings. Self-funded and self-organized, with advice I got from friends and my publicists. Writers talk about the crazy loneliness of touring alone, but no one can prepare you for the ways it manifests throughout many of the days: waking up in a different place, often under threadbare blankets in an old motel room that reeks of decades of carpet cleaner, so you know it’s hiding some awful history (one room was so bad I slept fully clothed, wearing a hoodie); putting another $35.00 in the gas tank each morning (then getting lost several times while en route); passing all the dead raccoons on the roadside (gross but completely true!); eating salt-soaked fast food and growing rounder while learning the temperament of drivers in each new state (if you don’t go ninety in parts of Michigan, you get run over); the severity of introspection that comes with being alone in a car for hours (salvation comes from singing loudly to anthemic punk rock); that mild relief/panic before opening the door on another motel room (you know if the a/c is on full blast, it’s thinning out some smell); and hoping the reading would go smoothly (which it almost always does). At the same time all of this is quite beautiful, and it was great to stay with friends and family when I could. I knew it would be challenging, but, like most things I end up doing, I wanted the experience.

The events themselves are the best part. So no two readings are ever the same, I do something different each time: I’ve sung Dwight Yoakam as I read, and I’ve sung Wilco songs during Q&A’s as part of an answer. I’ve had audience members read with me. I’ve truly – above all else – enjoyed meeting the many people that I have met along the way. Bookstores owners and booksellers who are excited about Hustle. Other writers and teachers. Book clubs are great. People who have read the book and are nervous to talk about it. People who say they finished the book in a single plane ride or they couldn’t go to sleep because they couldn’t put it down, which really surprised me. People who want to tell me which actors should play which parts in the movie version, if there is a movie version. Someone said Gary Busey for the grandfather, and I thought that was a riot. Also I’ve been able to hand off books to Rhett Miller, the singer for the Old 97’s who appears in the novel at a crucial time in Chris’s life, and to Dorothy Allison, who is a hero of mine. Many times, over the nine years it took to write and publish the book, I thought it would never come out, and I still freak out when I see it on a shelf at a store. Now people are reading it, and I’m reading it to people, and to me that is amazing.

For the rest of this interview, go here.

Kalamazoo, Michigan is known for many things, among them:
1.) The city was established by an “eccentric” man named Bronson who initially named the city Bronson. You know when you hear someone described as “eccentric” it means the person was a little off his rocker. One way to know he was off his rocker is because there was already a Bronson, Michigan just 50 miles away.

A way to know that a city is a little “eccentric” is when it renames itself Kalamazoo.

2.) Bell’s Brewery. Bell’s has some of the best beer in the world, but I learned that no two batches of the same beer are the same. For instance, you can drink an Oberon one day, and it’s fine – a regular beer. The next day, you can drink an Oberon, and find yourself swerving the bicycle home, unsure where home is. That makes the beer “interesting.”

3.) Lake effect snow. Because I’m not a meteorologist I won’t try to explain the causes of this weather. I can say it mean this: You can walk into a grocery store and the ground is starting to dust with snow; you walk out half an hour later, and sixteen feet have accumulated. In this same amount of time, everyone in the city will have forgotten how to drive, yourself included.

4.) The birthplace of Gibson guitars. Also the home of a great music scene, known to many. Luna wrote a song about the town. Many bands passed through recently, including Wilco, The New Pornographers, and Love as Laughter – one of the best bands on the planet. I once had a band here, called Wishek, that you can hear here. Now it is home to my current favorite band, the Minutes.

5.) Lots of good writers live here or have lived here recently. Among them, Adam Schuitema, Arnold and Debbie Johnston, Bonnie Jo Campbell, Brad Land, Darin Doyle, JD Dolan, Jaimy D’Agostino,  Jaimy Gordon, Jonathan Johnson, Kellie Link, Kelly Wells, Marcel Brouwers, Nancy Eimers, Peter Geye, Ricahrd Katrovas, Steve Feffer, Stuart Dybek, Thisbe Nissen, William Olsen.  And the amazing teacher and poet, Herbert Scott.

On November 29, I traveled out to Kalamazoo to do a reading with Melinda Moustakis and Elizabeth Knapp. I too have lived in this city. From 2001-2005 I did my doctorate here. I chose WMU because I wanted to study with Stuart Dybek after having studied with him at the Prague Summer Seminar in 2000 and learning he is hands down one of the best teachers on the planet. I can say the lake effect snow did not agree with this Texas boy. I once shoveled the driveway at the huge blue house where I lived with my partner Jen, and I piled three-foot hills on both sides of the entrance. This is a really stupid thing to do, because it freezes and makes obstacles for the entire winter. She never let me shovel again. Kalamazoo is also where I finished the first draft of Hustle, writing the four final chapters in Jaimy Gordon’s workshop. I took a practicum with Stuart Dybek, and so almost everything I know about teaching I learned from working directly with him, in this aspect. Now, who gets to say that?

So, after traveling with Melinda from Tacoma, we met with Jaimy Gordon in the Detroit airport, and the three of us ventured on to Kalamazoo, touching down in the evening to fields of scattered snow, and me remembering that I had not flown into Kalamazoo since February 2005, on a plane trip where I got the message from the chair of the department at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma – where I’d gone for a job interview the week before – offering me a position, which I would accept, and I still hold. On this evening in November, we were picked up by the current Assistant Coordinator of the Creative Writing Program, Dustin Hoffman, who drove me to the Holiday Inn, where they have a hot tub that sits in front of the glass windows of the hotel restaurant/bar.

The next day – December 1 – was packed. It began for me at 2 pm, when I went into the studios of WIDR radio to do an interview. There I was greeted by my former student and now the director at WIDR, Johanna Kelly. She guided me to the booth, where I sat down across from Emily Short. This was my third radio interview. There are reasons the first two are nowhere to be found. But I think I did a better job this time, except when I was playing a Centro-matic song (yes, I got to DJ for one song!) and I accidentally made the song go back to its start, halfway through. Still – it was a blast. This was mainly due to the amazingly relaxed atmosphere and Emily’s great questions. Thanks so much to Johanna and Emily!!!!

That evening, I went to dinner with my co-readers, WMU professors, and several alumni. I admittedly had not been so nervous about a reading in a while. Probably because this event was my last in this stint, and because the hometown crowd can be the strangest. As I say that, I think back to having read three months earlier in my actual hometown, in Arlington, Texas – what a strange passage of time this has been.

At the reading, I got to sit near my former teacher Jaimy Gordon. What Stuart didn’t teach me about teaching, Jaimy pretty much did. Not to mention all that I learned from her about writing: everything from how to nurture ideas to how to lay out a sentence. Thus it was amazing, after my good friend Melanie Crow gave me a phenomenal introduction (wherein I think she hinted to the possibility of me having participated in criminal activities at some point…), to get to see Jaimy up front. I dedicated the reading to Melanie’s and my former bandmate Ike’s daughter, Adeline, explained how certain chapters were written while in Stuart and Jaimy’s classes while at WMU, sang Dwight Yoakam, and ended by toasting the crowd, and saying, “Thanks, y’all.” Which felt surprisingly very Texas.

Now I am headed to Massachusetts to continue research for my new project.

After checking into my hotel – the Bayside Continental, located downtown – I headed for the Bookfair, where Dorothy Allison was giving a talk. I sometimes speak of her short story “River of Names” as having inspired me to start writing literary fiction. Its characters are people I know, and the narrative design opened my eyes to fiction’s possibilities. Nothing was the same for me after I read it; funny what can happen in about thirty minutes of reading a story. So…I was thrilled that I might actually see her in person. I got lost for a while on the Miami Dade campus, trying to find the building in the dark, but finally I made it to the brightly lit, air-conditioned lecture hall. Her talk was mostly about the need for more of what she calls “mean fiction,” and she spoke of writing initial drafts that come from a place of anger, and how the revisions are about understanding the source of that anger. Then she did a booksigning. Even though I have copies of all her books, I got a new copy of Bastard Out of Carolina for her to sign. I was nervous, but I felt it necessary to speak to her and tell her what her work has meant to me. Waiting in line, I had to write down what I wanted to say, and when I finally did meet her, she held my hands across the table and let me babble on. I got choked up, and it was strange because I was afraid to look her in the eyes, but she’s like a Jedi. I don’t give away many copies of Hustle, but I gave one to her, and she asked me to inscribe it. To write, “For Dorothy – “ Wow… nothing on Earth compares.

On Saturday I did a radio interview, and ten minutes into it – sitting in a dark closet-sized room, speaking to the interviewer via the internet through a laptop – I realized, when I said “sells shrimp from the side of the road” for the third time, that this was the first conversation beyond ten minutes that I’d had with a person in over a week! I’d all but forgotten how to talk. When I was done, I got to hang out with Carolyn Bass, moderator of the groundbreaking online show “LitChat,” who wrote an amazing review of Hustle this summer.

Right afterward, I went to the lecture hall where I was scheduled to read with Nathan Larson, author of The Dewey Decimal System, and Yan Lianke, who is one of China’s most acclaimed and controversial contemporary writers. We took questions from the audience, and I was asked if I felt a certain burden to find myself within the long history of Southern writers, and if I felt a burden with Hustle being labeled a “coming-of-age” novel. Also, our introducer, Chauncey, asked how we managed to stay at writing novels, particularly in the age of blogs and social media. All very fun and challenging to consider.

That night, I attended a reading by Chuck Palahniuk, who threw out blow up dolls and read a story that led to someone passing out. There I met the friendly and uber-talented memoirist and poet Sandra Beasley, author of Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl and I am the Jukebox. She is currently touring relentlessly in support of her two books, and as we drove in her car to the fair’s author party we talked about the difficulties of spending so much time on the road, as well as its payoffs.

On Sunday, I was lucky to spend some time with my former professor Jaimy Gordon, who won the National Book Award for her novel Lord of Misrule, and friend John Dufresne, who I pretty much believe to be one of the best writers on the planet; in fact, I always keep multiple copies of his first collection The Way That Water Enters Stone on hand to give to my students. It was amazing to be at the fair this year, with my book just out and me participating in a fair with them, as a writer. Though the weekend did have its moments of weird, awkwardness – that feeling of being the new kid in school, going to your first big party – it was a thrill, all around. And it looks like I will be returning to Florida in May to do a conference, teaching and giving a reading. And I’m looking forward to seeing Jaimy in Kalamazoo next week, when I do my final reading of the tour in Kalamazoo.

Here’s Jaimy, reading:

And here’s John, second farthest from the left:

As I kid, I spent parts of many summers in the Florida panhandle and in eastern Alabama, visiting the criminally-minded Skipper half of my family. Mainly great aunts and uncles. They grew up in the quaint, balmy town of Cottondale, Florida during the twenties, until their father – a railroad worker – was shot in a card game and his body thrown overboard. It wasn’t until many years later that this was discovered; to the family of six, he simply never came home. My great aunt Lois – who would later become the first female realtor in Florida – took care of everyone and moved them further south.  The four younger kids grew older, married off, and my grandfather Buster became heavily involved with criminal activities. Having recently learned where my father’s half of the family came from, I ventured out to Cottondale, where they now sell Bonzai trees for $20.00 at wooden stands on the roadside. I’ve always wanted a Bonzai tree – despite the fact I decimate every plant I touch – and I was tempted to get one. But this was early into my travels and I had two more plane rides ahead; I couldn’t see myself getting on a plane and sitting with this tree in my lap, or how I’d explain it. So, instead, I stopped off at an antique store and bought these wooden salt and pepper shakers for Jen. As they proudly announce, they are magnetic:

Tuesday I drove east to Panama City, where my aunt Lois lived. Every summer that my two brothers and I visited we were promised a trip to Disney World, using coins she’d collected in a large glass jug over the year. We would spend a day counting and rolling the money, then take it to the bank. Only we never went to Disney World; instead we went to Pensacola and blew the money on arcade games. To this day, I still love skee-ball, collecting the gazillion tickets, and selecting whichever ashtray or switchblade comb these gazillion tickets can buy. Years later, I learned that my aunt had not actually collected the coins over the year, but had in fact bought them at the bank just prior to our arrival and made us spend a day counting them, so she could work.

On Wednesday I headed west to Alabama. Here, I visited Atmore and the house where Buster and my father once set up an operation to run roofing scams (similar to those discussed in Hustle), where my mother flew in from Massachusetts to meet up with my father, before they married. As I neared the small town, passing acres of cotton fields, I happened upon a radio show on FM WYDH 105.9 where people call in to try to sell their things or name what they want to buy – a sort of radio classifieds. The most interesting was a man who had fifteen feet of ribbon, and he wanted to pay someone to tie  the ribbon into bows for his Christmas tree. Here’s a picture of the house where Buster and my father slept on the porch:

Then I went to Mobile to see the courthouse where my parents married – only to learn from a police officer (who gave me a weird look) that the courthouse was recently torn down. To culminate the day, and the trip, I drove out to Theodore and visited the property where they had their first house, a trailer, and I was promptly engulfed in a swarm of mosquitoes while trying to take pictures.

As the sun set, I headed back to Navarre and I decided to not eat at the Chinese buffet where I’d been eating, because – though it was the only place to get vegetables with my food – going alone to buffets is a sad affair. I personally don’t care, but it’s that look you get when people pass by… examining you for the reason you are eating at a buffet alone. Instead I stopped at a place called Daddy’s for BBQ, where I was the day’s final customer. Afterward I went back to my hotel room, where I did laundry, and I was reminded by the first load why I don’t use powder detergent..

All in all, a good trip, despite some minor hiccups along the way. It might sound a bit dosconcerting unless you’re me, but it wasn’t until my next trip (to the Miami Book Fair) that I realized, just before going to do a radio interview, that I’d not had a face-to-face conversation with anyone that lasted for over five minutes in approximately nine days. This means loneliness, but also something kind of wonderful, especially when you’re trying to get to know the people your parents were when they were in their late teens and early twenties. I am happy I get to say I’ve done this, even if I went a little bonkers at times.

Currently Reading: Arcadia, by Lauren Groff
Currently Listening To: The Minutes, by The Minutes