The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.

Rachel Maier

Chris Cole was born in Los Angeles before the Internet and now lives in Northern California. He is a board member of the S.F. lit series Quiet Lightning (full disclosure: founded by the author), and has been published in several anthologies, magazines, journals, websites and bathroom walls. He runs the West Coast office for a killer user experience agency called EffectiveUI and he coaches West Marin Little League games like nobody's business. And, he is nice to animals.

Chris is also co-founder of Pints and Prose, the Fairfax-based reading series founded by the Tuesday Night Writers. He writes daily verse and prose under the name Disembodied Poetics. Such Great Heights is his first novel.

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Ben Aronoff, Fogline Studio

The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.

Andrew Touhy is a founding member of the Flat Earth Writing Collective. He teaches creative writing at the Writing Salon and weighs his thoughts on the craft and art of short stories at The Urgent Voice.

When people ask what do you do, you tell them ... ?

Long ago I would've answered dot-com whore. These days I try to teach, write, raise a child and generally treat myself to fits of benign selfishness, all without indulging in too much hope or despair. The "do" question is a pretty prescient one for me, though. Just yesterday (read as every day) I was worrying about the close relationship between identity and anxiety. We hold a lot of "positions" in our daily lives, and while it's cool to be such dynamic or busy or driven or talented or exciting social people ... the truth is I find it exhausting. The whole jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none thing can beat you down, leave you sliding over the surface of yourself and life. Whatever those are. I'm looking to settle in to depth whenever possible. I like Robert Walser's line from Jakob von Guten: "A little, but thoroughly." Or Faye Dunaway's answer to the same question in the movie Barfly: "I drink." Two little words said with conviction.

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Tom Mitchell

The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.

Joe Clifford's work has been called "beautiful and vicious." He is the author most recently of Junkie Love, and producer of Lip Service West, a "gritty, real, raw" reading series in Oakland. He is acquisitions editor for Gutter Books and managing editor of The Flash Fiction Offensive.

When people ask what do you do, you tell them ... ?

Depends on the day, the person. Usually I'm straight up: "I'm a writer." I've been a struggling artist for so long. This is the first I've ever been able to wear the badge proudly.

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The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.

Chris Pedler

Sarah Ciston writes books and runs Bootleg Books, an editing and design studio that helps independent authors and publishers go rogue. Her literary pursuits also include the small-batch lit mag We Still Like and her print shop on Etsy.

When people ask what do you do, you tell them ... ?

I tell them that I make artisanal literature. Actually, I wish I could say that without balking, even though in my heart and in practice I suppose it's true. I write books, and I help other authors edit, design and publish theirs. I make fine art prints inspired by found language. I am still practicing claiming the mantle of writer and figuring out how all the parts compliment each other.

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The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.

Ben Mirov is the author of two books of poetry, Hider Roser and Ghost Machine, and the chapbooks I is to Vorticism, Vortexts, and Collected Ghosts.

When people ask what do you do, you tell them ... ?

I usually tell them I'm a teacher. I don't usually tell them I write poems. I prefer to think of my relationship to poetry as a completely isolated aspect of my life. It feels good to protect it, like I don't need to incorporate being a poet into my identity to make it a thing. Even though it's integral to who I am, maintaining the illusion that my role as a poet is relegated to its own dimension is important to me for reasons I've never fully explored. I just take the impulse as something of value.

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Hilary Olson

The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.

Wonder Dave is a writer and performer from Minnesota living in San Francisco. His work has been featured in literary journals and anthologies such as Divining Divas (Lethe Press) and Aim for the Head (Write Bloody Press). He's been a featured performer at schools, burlesque reviews, poetry slams, science fiction conventions, and bowling alleys across the country. Dave is currently a regular cast member at the monthly Oakland underground variety show Tourettes Without Regrets.

When people ask what do you do, you tell them ... ?
My business card says "Writer, Performer, and Swell Guy." I also tell people I work at a tiny restaurant in SOMA.

What's your biggest struggle -- work or otherwise?
The same thing I think lots of writers struggle with: actually sitting down and writing. If only I could get paid to read whatever I wanted.

If someone said I want to do what you do, what advice would you have for them?
Learn to listen. Read. If you don't read you're going to be a terrible writer.

Do you consider yourself successful?
Yes, I enjoy my life and there are people in it I can be vulnerable with. Also I have more Twitter followers than there are people in the town I grew up in. @TeamWonderDave y'all!

When you're sad/grumpy/pissed off, what YouTube video makes you feel better?
Well because I am a terrible person I'm gonna go with this clip full of swearing Barbie Dolls:

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Really tall

Virality is kind of a white whale in the Internet world. It's hard to engineer -- though many have tried -- and it often smiles on those who least expect it.

Take Ben Pack, for instance, the 6-foot-10 San Francisco State journalism student whose claim to fame is, well, that he's 6-foot-10. Two weeks ago, the 23-year-old senior made a Tumblr about it, after walking into a parking lot and realizing that he was tall enough to stand eye-to-eye with the "clearance" sign for truck beds.

Clearly, he had something to show the world.

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Gayle Walsworth

The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.

Kai Carlson-Wee was born and raised on the Minnesota prairie. His poems have appeared in Many Mountains Moving, Linebreak, Forklift Ohio, and Best New Poets 2010. He currently lives in San Francisco, California, where he is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.

When people ask what do you do, you tell them... ?

Well, I try not to say I'm a poet. I try to avoid it. I say I'm a skater. Or I say I'm a teacher. Or that I spend my time looking out windows at trees. You know, it's funny, but this question actually makes me very nervous. I mean, I've been writing seriously since I was 19 years old, and I'm 30 years old now, so that's 11 years of writing, but it's only been the last year-and-a-half that I've actually been able to call myself a writer. I don't know why this is. I mean, what makes it so painful for a poet to admit that they spend their days looking at trees? Saying you're a poet has all these romantic connotations, you know, and every time I tell someone I'm a writer I see this film-roll of judgment start playing itself out in their brains. They think you're a poser. A self-ordained dandy. One of those faux intellectual hipsters who hangs around coffee shops quoting from Blake -- "To see the world in a grain of sand" -- that sort of thing. I don't know, perhaps it's a symptom of a larger disease.

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New York City might be home to the big houses, but this scrappy city just happens to be the epicenter of publishing on the Best Coast. Join Alexis Coe every Wednesday for Read Local, a series on books produced in the Bay Area.

Recent college graduates are struggling to enter just about every field, but book publishing is notoriously elitist, and has one of the highest attrition rates. As a reviewer, I often communicate with interns about logistics, but never before have I noticed the same intern's name pop up at totally different houses. Readers, meet the intrepid Olivia Ngai, an intern at both the publishing arm of City Lights and the lesser-known Zest, producer of books for teens.

See Also: Arion Press Transforms Books Into Works of Art
Avant-Punk Puppets and Radical Reads

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Ian Tuttle

The Write Stuff is a series of interview profiles conducted by Litseen, where authors give exclusive readings from their work.

Karen Penley's show, "Circus Proboscis: A Sneeze of Freaks" was recognized with a Theatre Bay Area cash grant award. Rob Avila of the Bay Guardian has described her performance as "[a] glad, jagged-toothed mockery of human folly [that] comes fast, fresh, and unexpected." Karen curates and performs in The Retard Show every Friday night in Berkeley.

See also:

The Write Stuff: Zack Haber on Wiggling and the Fun in the Difficult

The Write Stuff: Tim (Toaster) Henderson on Running Toward the Disturbing

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