Iowa Writers’ Workshop alum Kevin Brockmeier is always prepared to talk about his favorite books. In fact, as he reveals in this February 2011 On the Fly interview, he always has a list of his 50 favorite books with him.
In the interview, he speaks of a few of his favorite authors and books, discusses words he shies away from, and considers the “ineffable something that lies hidden inside each word.”
Brockmeier is the author of two short story collections (Things That Fall from the Sky and The View From the Seventh Layer), three novels (The Truth About Celia, The Brief History of the Dead, and The Illumination), and a memoir (A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade). He has also written two books for younger readers (City of Names and Grooves: A Kind of Mystery)
He has won two O. Henry Awards, the Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award, and the Nelson Algren Award, and has received the James Michener-Paul Engle Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.
