Christopher Mohar was the recipient of the 2009-10 Carol Houck Smith Fiction Fellowship from the University of Wisconsin. He co-teaches a weekly poetry workshop in a men’s correctional institution, and has previously worked as a metallurgical researcher, a literacy tutor, a computer programmer, a busboy, and a legal assistant’s assistant. Chris is a fiction editor for Devil’s Lake, and his recent writing appears in The Southwest Review, Word Riot, decomP, Ink Node, and on his blog at TurboBoosting the Panopticon. He is currently at work on a novel about meat. Three books he recommends: Our Lady of the Forest by David Guterson, The Seas by Samantha Hunt, and The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead.
From the Archives: Christopher Mohar talks with Anthony Doerr about the politics of writing, the importance of curiosity, the role science plays in his fiction, why he likes the novella as a form, and how we can successfully inhabit characters different from ourselves.
“Trying to be weird and strange isn’t as interesting as coming up with a reason for it,” Arthur Bradford says of his 2001 short story collection, Dogwalker, in an interview with Robert Birnbaum. Labeling Bradford’s work “weird” may be a bit of an understatement, given stories that include a woman giving birth to a glowing frog, a family of cat-faced carnival workers, a human/canine love affair, and all manner of mutant dogs: talking, three-legged, Siamese triplets, born with furry flippers instead of legs, etc. But Bradford makes the strange seem not only usual, but welcome and beautiful. Bradford’s weirdness is […]
