AUTHOR INTERVIEW: K.B. Dixon

(1) Q. When/why did you decide to become a writer?


A. This is not really an easy question for me to answer. Writing just sort of happened—like puberty. I’m guessing about the same time.


(2) Q. What authors inspired you when you were younger? What books do you enjoy reading today?


A. When I was young I read pretty much anyone who wrote about cowboys or outer space. Later it was Nabokov, George Orwell, Mark Twain, John Barth, Joseph Heller. The list is long. The writers I read today are David Foster Wallace, Rivka Galchen, Donald Antrim, Lydia Davis. This list is also long.


(3) Q. What was the inspiration behind your novel Notes?


A. I can't point to a specific inspiration. It simply evolved from my interest in literary form.


(4) Q. People have been writing novels from journal entries and other various forms of communication since the 19th century. What made you decide to do that?


A. A dispositional attraction to unconventional narration. It is a different way of telling a story.


(5) Q. Were any of the characters personalities or emotions taken from real life?


A. Yes. A few. Most, however, are products of the imagination.


(6) Q. What other genres would you like to try your hand at?


A. The essay. I have written them in the past, and I intend regularly to start writing them again.


(7) Q. Would you ever write another novel in this vein?


A. No. This is my seventh novel. While I am sure they all share certain characteristics, they are each formally unique. My eighth novel will be something different yet again.


(8) Q. Would you like to see Notes as a short film?

A. No. It would gain nothing and lose much.


(9) Q. Where do you see yourself and your career in the next ten years?


A. No idea, I'm afraid. I rarely look beyond the end of next week.


(10) Q. What would you be doing if you weren't writing?


A. I would be taking pictures.


(11) Q. What authors, dead or alive, would you like to collaborate with?


A. Actually none. I have my heroes, but I am a reclusive sort and I have never thought of writing as a collaborative enterprise.

(12) Q. Three things that may surprise readers about me?


A. I have never eaten at McDonald's. I have never had a broken bone.
I know all the words to Dylan’s Subterranean Homesick Blues—or used to.




Find Mr. Dixon online via:

Official site