February 8, 2021
MM) When I met you, you had already been writing voluminously, though none of it was shared. Ruthless Little Things was born before you were even A-list. Tell me about how/why you used to write, and what made you start sharing your work?
EVA) You’re a writer, you just write! I don’t know why.
I grew up in the age of personal websites,
December 18, 2020
MM) You are a brilliant writer. It’s not hyperbolic to say you are operating at a genius level, and we lesser animals can only regard your work with a kind of stunned awe.
JN) Thank you, you are very kind. I have accepted, more or less, career-wise, that I am doomed to be a David Markson and not a David Foster Wallace. I was bitter about it for the longest time,
December 11, 2020
MM) So you wrote a provincial period novel set in Tsarist Russia. You are something of a history buff, a Dostoevksky scholar/enthusiast. Still, you’ve lived in Wisconsin your whole life. And still, you’ve traveled more than me thanks to your various musical pursuits. Why and/or how did you start writing in Tsarist Russia?
TP) Ha ha ha. First question and already I laugh deeply from my belly.
October 5, 2020
MM) Tell me about how Fucked Up was conceived and written. The process seems to have been very personal, and the characters and situations strike a reader as authentic. Did you live through a lot of Fucked Up? To what degree is it autobiographical? When did you finish it, and how was it in a sense a gateway to your more recent writing, which is significantly different?