Michael Kimball
Encyclopedia
Biography & Career
Michael Kimball was born February 1, 1967 in Lansing, MichiganLansing, Michigan
Lansing is the capital of the U.S. state of Michigan. It is located mostly in Ingham County, although small portions of the city extend into Eaton County. The 2010 Census places the city's population at 114,297, making it the fifth largest city in Michigan...
and is the author of The Way the Family Got Away (2000), How Much of Us There Was (2005); Us (2011), and Dear Everybody (2008). He has also published the book Words (2010) under the conceptual pseudonym Andy Devine
Andy Devine
Andrew Vabre "Andy" Devine was an American character actor and comic cowboy sidekick known for his distinctive raspy voice.-Early life:...
. He studied at Michigan State University and New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
, and now lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
Kimball is a founding editor of Taint Magazine, and the recipient of a grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts
New York Foundation for the Arts
The New York Foundation for the Arts was created in conjunction the in 1971. The organization gives grants to individual artists and writers and developing arts organizations with a mission to '.'-NYFA's Programs:...
, a Boswell and Johnson Award, and the Lidano Fiction Prize. His short fiction has also appeared in numerous literary magazines, including Open City
Open city
In war, in the event of the imminent capture of a city, the government/military structure of the nation that controls the city will sometimes declare it an open city, thus announcing that they have abandoned all defensive efforts....
, Prairie Schooner, Post Road
Post Road (magazine)
Post Road is an American literary magazine founded in 1999 that publishes fiction, nonfiction, criticism, poetry, art, and theatre. In addition to these traditional genres, the magazine also features a "Recommendations" section in which established writers suggest their favorite work and an...
, Gigantic (magazine)
Gigantic (magazine)
Gigantic is an American literary journal that publishes fiction, art and interviews. In particular, it focuses on short prose or flash fiction. Print issues also have included a special poetry section entitled "The Seizure State," curated by celebrated American poet Joe Wenderoth. It publishes...
and New York Tyrant. Sam Lipsyte
Sam Lipsyte
Sam Lipsyte is an American novelist and short story writer.The son of the sports journalist Robert Lipsyte, Sam Lipsyte was born in New York City and raised in Closter, New Jersey...
(author of Home Land, The Subject Steve, and Venus Drive) calls Kimball "a hero of contemporary fiction."
Us (2011)
Us was published by Tyrant Books in 2011. The novel was originally published in the UK and translated as How Much of Us There Was.Time Out Chicago gave Us 5 stars: "The sentences and even paragraphs simulate the stunned but dutiful response to the suffering of a loved one: short, raw and somewhat elliptical, wrapping themselves around the small tasks at hand and the larger questions constantly raised. ... Kimball’s short chapters cast such a hypnotic spell, the reader is able to plug directly into the character’s grief. It’s a simply gorgeous and astonishing book, the kind that makes the outside world disappear once you open its pages."
Dear Everybody (2008)
Dear Everybody (2008) was published in the US and Canada, and in the UK, Australia, and South Africa. It has been translated into Greek, Korean, Chinese-Complex, and Chinese-Simplified. Dear Everybody developed from a short story published in Post Road Magazine called "Excerpts from the Suicide Letters of Jonathon Bender (b.1967-d.2000)." Both Stephen KingStephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
and Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers
Dave Eggers is an American writer, editor, and publisher. He is known for the best-selling memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and for his more recent work as a screenwriter. He is also the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia.-Life:Eggers was born in Boston, Massachusetts,...
selected it for their lists of notables in The Best American Series Best American Short Stories
Best American Short Stories
The Best American Short Stories yearly anthology is a part of The Best American Series published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since 1915, the BASS anthology has striven to contain the best short stories by some of the best-known writers in contemporary American literature.-Edward O'Brien:The...
and Best American Non-Required Reading. Time Out-New York says that Dear Everybody includes "stunning prose" and that the letters "harbor such a strange emotional power that you’ll find them hard to forget." The LA Times comments: "There is a whole life contained in this slim novel, a life as funny and warm and sad and heartbreaking as any other, rendered with honest complexity and freshness by Kimball's sharp writing."
Jonathon Bender, the main character, had something to say, but the world wouldn’t listen. That’s why he writes to everybody he has ever known—including his mother and father, his brother and other relatives, his childhood friends and neighbors, the Tooth Fairy, his classmates and teachers, his psychiatrists, his ex-girlfriends and his ex-wife, the state of Michigan, a television station, and a weather satellite. Taken together, these unsent letters tell the remarkable story of Jonathon’s life.
Christine Schutt
Christine Schutt
Christine Schutt is an American novelist. Schutt received her BA and MA from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her MFA from Columbia University...
, author of Florida, writes of Dear Everybody that “In Bender’s unsent letters of apology or thanks, Michael Kimball transforms the familiar into the strange again and the simplest confessions are made moments of sublime wonder.”
Italian filmmaker and artist Luca Dipierro made a short film based on Dear Everybody.
How Much of Us There Was (2005)
Kimball's second novel, How Much of Us There Was, is the story about a man's love for his wife as she dies and how he attempts to manage his griefGrief
Grief is a multi-faceted response to loss, particularly to the loss of someone or something to which a bond was formed. Although conventionally focused on the emotional response to loss, it also has physical, cognitive, behavioral, social, and philosophical dimensions...
. Meanwhile, their adult grandson learns from them what real love is.
Rebecca Seal, in The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
, called it "powerful and moving." Mariko Kato in Time Out London observes: "A deep love between an aging husband and wife is given a heartbreaking voice in Michael Kimball’s second novel … Told through the eyes of the husband, the story is tender and poignant. His despair moves us because it is neither fantastic nor indulgent." Betty Williams of Telegraph & Argus writes, "This is the saddest book I have ever read and one of the most beautiful and unusual."
The Way the Family Got Away (2000)
Kimball's first novel, The Way the Family Got Away, is the story of a family who suffers from the tragedy of an infant son dying. Told from the alternating perspectives of the surviving boy and girl, the novel takes the reader on an emotional journey across the American landscape, as both children try, in their different ways, to reconcile what their family was with what it has become. The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
called Kimball's novel "moving and clever: the open road, so long a symbol of freedom and self-discovery in American fiction, is here rendered as denuded of promise, embodying desertion, desolation and rootlessness. ... Kimball’s novel reads as parable
Parable
A parable is a succinct story, in prose or verse, which illustrates one or more instructive principles, or lessons, or a normative principle. It differs from a fable in that fables use animals, plants, inanimate objects, and forces of nature as characters, while parables generally feature human...
about the death of the family, of how impossible family life is in a numbedly materialistic society.”
The Way has been translated into Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Dutch
Dutch language
Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
, German
German language
German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
, Portuguese
Portuguese language
Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
, Spanish
Spanish language
Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
, and Hebrew.
Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard) (2008-present)
Kimball is responsible for a collaborative art project, "Michael Kimball Writes Your Life Story (on a postcard)", which he performs at festivals; the project was has been covered in The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
. Kimball was also featured on NPR's All Things Considered.
Films and television
Working with Luca Dipierro, Kimball produced two documentaries, I Will Smash You (2009) and 60 Writers/60 Places (2010). He also contributed three scripts to the television horror anthology MonstersMonsters (TV series)
Monsters is a syndicated horror anthology series which originally ran from 1988 to 1991 and reran on the Sci-Fi Channel during the 1990s. As of 2011, Monsters airs on NBC Universal's horror/suspense-themed cable channel Chiller in sporadic weekday marathons.In a similar vein to Tales from the...
.
External links
Interviews- Kimball's interview column at The Faster Times Writers on Writing
- Kimball discusses The Way the Family Got Away http://avatarreview.net/AV6/Review.Kimball.html
- Kimball discusses How Much of Us There Was http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/authors/interview.aspx?aid=3157&id=650
- Kimball interviews Noy HollandNoy HollandNoy Holland is an American writer and National Book Award nominee. She is married to the writer Sam Michel.-Literature-related:...
in Avatar Review - Kimball interviews Sam LipsyteSam LipsyteSam Lipsyte is an American novelist and short story writer.The son of the sports journalist Robert Lipsyte, Sam Lipsyte was born in New York City and raised in Closter, New Jersey...
about the craft of writing fiction in Avatar Review
Links
- Michael Kimball, official website
- Michael Kimball's Biography and Agent
- Michael Kimball's Blog
- Kimball on Facebook
- Dear Everybody: A Short Film Inspired by the Novel
- Michael Kimball reads from Dear Everybody on Apostrophe Cast (apostrophecast.com)
- Michael Kimball reads from Us for InDigestInDigestInDigest is a literary journal founded in 2007 by editors and David Doody. It is an online quarterly literary magazine, as well as a reading series, podcast, and publishing house located in New York City and Minneapolis, MN.-The Magazine:...
's InDefinite Podcast