Michael Kimball
Michael Kimball, interviewed by Peter Schwartz for Full Of Crow. Michael Kimball’s third novel, Dear Everybody, is available now- and he is still working on the ongoing interactive art project: Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story On A Postcard. Links at the end.
P.S.: I’d like to start out by thanking you, Michael Kimball, for agreeing to do this interview. My first question is when did you become so interested in other people and their stories? I think your life story on a postcard project is brilliant, I’d love to know exactly how that came about and what you’ve learned from what you’ve done so far.
M.K.: I’ve always been interested in other people and their stories. My older brother used to get annoyed with me for asking so many questions, so did my father. But the postcard life story project came about because my friend Adam Robinson (#45) was curating a performance art festival, the Transmodern in Baltimore, and he asked me if I wanted to participate. We joked about what a writer could do as performance and I suggested that I could write people’s life stories for them as they waited. The idea was absurd, but it was also fascinating, and it seemed oddly possible if it were contained to a postcard. Adam insisted that I give it a try and that’s how the postcard life story project started. I thought it would be fun and funny, that I would ask a few questions and write on the backs of a few postcards and that would be it. The first postcard life story I wrote was for a painter, Bart O’Reilly (#1). When I finished writing his postcard and looked up, a line had formed. For the rest of the night, I interviewed dozens of people and wrote their postcard life stories. It was intense and intimate. I remember being struck by how earnest and forthcoming most people were, how eager they were to share their life stories, how grateful they were for their postcard. It was later that I started the blog and opened the project up to everybody. Continue Reading…
LA: You say that ‘philosophy’s vast history and rich language enhances the mind’s ability to articulate and think critically’. You connect this to your practice of writing poetry. Do you mean in the sense of process, or the ways by which elements are incorporated into the construction of the poem?