My Conversation With Kyle Minor

Kyle Minor, Author of In The Devil's Territory

Conversation with Kyle Minor

By Joy Quarmiley

            First, I would like to thank you so very much for taking time out to allow me to have this conversation with you. I am honored and I hope to do you justice.

Second, I want to congratulate you on the win of the 2012 Iowa Review Prize for Short Fiction for your story “Seven Stories About Kenel of Koulev-Ville”. I also read that you’re a three-time honoree in The Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Awards and a winner of Random House’s Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers contest, where your short story, “You Shall Go Out With Joy & Be Led Force With Peace”, was featured. Not to mention all of the magazines you’ve been featured in! Those are all great achievements for such a young writer (I’m 35, so, yes, we’re young! ;) and many were accomplished before you were even published! That’s amazing!

 Your novella In the D evil’s Territory is quite a hot commodity. I had to order it to get my hands on a copy, which I am still anxiously waiting on. Every copy in the libraries in the state of Ohio was checked out and had a lengthy waiting list. I hope to be that popular of a writer one day.

Now, let’s converse…I’m going to start with the basics first.

JQ

I know that you were inspired by many books and writers, like Nabokov & Kate Bernheimer but how did it come about that you really determined that writing was your passion?

KM

I started out writing for magazines, and while I was writing for magazines I began to get interested in literature. I was reading rather haphazardly. Someone would tell me about Don DeLillo, so I’d read all of his books, straight through, in chronological order. Then I’d find out Donald Antrim liked DeLillo, so I’d read all his books. I was working my way, sideways, through contemporary literature. These books were making me feel things, and I wanted to make things that made other people feel things.

JQ

You write both fiction and nonfiction, correct? Which do you think is more difficult to write? Why?

KM 

I think that fiction, along with poetry, is the higher calling, and also that it generally attracts the better writers. Most of the better writers of nonfiction also write fiction or poetry, and that’s why they’re better writers – they’ve appropriated from fiction and poetry. But I don’t think it’s usually very easy to write anything well. Most good things come slowly.

JQ

Which genre do you prefer?

KM 

I read in all the genres. I love books in all of them.

JQ

What is your writing process?

KM 

Right now, it’s summer, and I don’t have to teach, so I get up around six in the evening, play with my kids until eight. If there’s a basketball game on, I’ll watch it until eleven-thirty or so. If not, or when it’s over, I get to work, and I work until around eight in the morning. Then I play with my kids for awhile. Then I go to bed. Then I do it again the next day. I’m doing this seven days a week right now. It’s great.

JQ

How do you find time to write, attend readings all over and still mentor aspiring artists?

KM 

I say no to as many things as I can. And I choose to spend my time writing instead of doing other things that are more pleasurable.

JQ

Like I said before, you achieved many high accolades prior to being published. Was it difficult to get published?

KM 

It’s not difficult, in this age, for anyone to get published. What’s difficult is to make something that is worth the reader’s time. If you attend to that, you’ll find a good home for your work.

JQ

How was your experience with editing, with Okla Elliott, The Other Chekhov? 

KM 

It was great. We read all 13 volumes of Constance Garnett’s Chekhov translations, and then we picked the ones we liked the most. We found that there was a grittier Chekhov lurking among the popular “subtle” Chekhov, in stories such as “Gusev,” “The Murder,” “The Two Volodyas,” and so on. We liked this Chekhov better than the Chekhov of “The Lady with the Lapdog.”

JQ

I read that you were named in The Columbus Dispatch in their “20 Under 30 Artists to Watch” in 2007. I imagine that being so young, maybe other ‘experienced’ authors may not really give you a lot of credit or it may be difficult for them to accept that you’re so well established so early on in life. Is this a barrier for you? What other barriers, if any, do you encounter in this profession- personally or professionally?

KM 

I’m not so young anymore. I’m 35, and there are a lot of younger writers who have had more worldly success. No one seemed to be bothered by my age when I was younger.

JQ

Do you have any suggestions to help me become a better writer? If so, what are they?

KM 

Read everything, and devote your whole life to writing. Hardly anyone is willing to do those two things.

JQ

Your novel, The Sexual Lives of Missionaries, is due to make its much anticipated debut in the spring. Do you have any other projects lurking in the wings?

KM 

I don’t think it will be out until 2014 or so. It’s not yet gone to market – probably this fall is when my agent will sell it. When it’s done, I’ll write another one.