Roy Kesey profile picture

Roy Kesey

roykesey

About Me

This profile was edited with Thomas' myspace editor™ V2.5 , and the background image is of a painting that I not so much painted myself as ripped off the web: Barnett Newman's "The Name II." The little cartoon guy on my profile image stands in one corner of the Beijing Sculpture Garden. I like him because his sign says "Please keep off the grass" whereas the machine gun on his shoulder says, "Seriously, man, keep off the fucking grass." Also, his helmet says "garlic" in Spanish. I'm not sure what that's about. Work-wise, I am a fiction writer and a columnist of sorts . Family-wise, I'm a husband, a father, a son.All Over is my first collection of short stories. It looks like this:It is Dzanc Books' debut title, and they've given the book its own MySpace page over here . It's nineteen stories long, and includes "Wait," which was first published in The Kenyon Review , and later was picked by Stephen King for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories 2007 anthology.So far All Over has garnered kind words from reviewers here , here , here , here , here , here , here and here .My first book, a novella called Nothing in the World , looks like this:Thus far it's gotten review-type love here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , and here . The first edition was published by Bullfight Media in July of 2006; the print run sold out and the book disappeared for a time, but now Dzanc has brought it back to life, and I couldn't be happier. Now, not that you asked specifically, but here are a few places where these books can be found:Dzanc, the Very Source Powell’s the Most Excellent Ubiquitous Amazon Barnes and Noble Borders Alternatively, you could go to Goodreads , find someone who already has the book, sneak into their house and read it while they’re asleep.What else. Interviews? By all means: try clicking here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , here , or way over here . These days, my favorite litmag is Ninth Letter . (Full disclosure: they've published stories of mine in a few recent issues.) Some other very cool magazines who have published or will soon be publishing my work, in no particular order: Subtropics , New Orleans Review , Alaska Quarterly Review , Indiana Review , American Short Fiction , McSweeney's , The Georgia Review , Prism International , The Mississippi Review , Salt Flats Annual , New York Tyrant , Kenyon Review , Other Voices , Chapman , Harpur Palate , Orchid , Opium , The Greensboro Review , New York Stories, The New England Review , Quarterly West , Pindeldyboz , The Florida Review , The Iowa Review , Epiphany , Land-Grant College Review , Iron Horse , Maisonneuve , Gambara , The New Quarterly , The Madison Review , The Chattahoochee Review , Night Train , Literal Latte , Nimrod , Backwards City Review , Hobart , Dragonfire, Mad Hatters’ Review , ByLine , The God Particle , and RE:AL . And some excellent litmags who haven’t yet taken my bait:Tin House , The Paris Review , n+1 , Quick Fiction , spork , Isotope , Noon , Zoetrope: All-Story , Failbetter , Open City , Michigan Quarterly Review , Manoa , Mid-American Review , Post Road , Swink , Fence , The Cincinnati Review , Agni , The Missouri Review , The Virginia Quarterly Review , The Sun , Bridge , Bomb , CutBank , Diagram , Five Points , The Believer , Practice , StoryQuarterly , A Public Space , Black Warrior Review , Granta, Image , One Story ,Plieades , and The Southern Review . Attention All Editors Who Are Dying To Get Their Magazines On This List: I CANNOT BE BOUGHT. I can, however, be rented by the hour, the half-hour, or the fifteen-minute period. Have your people contact my people, preferably via electro-chemical telegraph, because those were cool.

My Interests

Fiction, travel writing, poetry, philosophy.

I'd like to meet:

Other people who think that there should be a statue of Cormac McCarthy in every town square, that Marilynne Robinson's sentences are so perfect they hurt just a little bit, that Thomas Pynchon is way overdue for a Nobel, that George Saunders' heart encompasses the world. And more widely: other writers and artists of all kinds, as well as the people who support them by editing, publishing, buying, reading, observing, and/or just generally liking their work. Good bloggers, too, this goes without saying, yes? A few of my favorites: Maud Newton , Tod Goldberg , Moorish Girl , Attention. Deficit. Disorder. , Bookslut , Gina Frangello , Sue Henderson , Pia Ehrhardt , Dong Resin’s Joint , TMFTML , Riley Dog , and Language Hat .

Music:

Hendrix, Dvorak, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Brad Mehldau, Satie, Monk, the Stones, Jeff Buckley, Segovia, Radiohead, Ben Folds, Verdi, Elliott Smith, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Coltrane, Green Day, Broonzy, Abigail Washburn, Carmen McRae, They Might Be Giants, Chet Baker, Tori Amos, Bessie Smith.

Movies:

Kings and Queens, Devil on the Doorstep, Reservoir Dogs, Kontroll, Shower, 2046, Dog Day Afternoon, Office Space, The Big Lebowski, Shaun of the Dead, Junebug, The Squid and the Whale, Blade Runner.

Television:

Arrested Development, Mr. Show, The Office (both versions), Rome, The Wire.

Books:

At least one each by Andric and Asturias and Abbey and Agee and Albanov, Borges and Barthelme and Bolaño and Berryman and Beckett and Bell (Madison Smartt) and Bishop (Elizabeth), Calvino and Cortázar and Cheever and Carver and Chekhov and Collins (Billy) and Canetti, Davis (Lydia) and DeLillo and Dostoevsky and Dixon and Durrell, Eggers and Earley and Eliot, Faulkner and Foer and Ford and Fitzgerald and Fuentes, Gass and Greene and Ginzburg (Carlo) and Graham (Jorie) and Gide and Giono and García Márquez, Harte and Hemingway and Heaney and Hannah and Holub, Joyce and Johnson (Denis), Kierkegaard and Kesey (Ken) and Kafka, Lipsyte and Levi and Lutz and Lethem and Lu Xun, Markson and Milosz and Merwin and Millhauser and McPhee and Mann and Mandeville and McCarthy (Cormac), Neruda, O'Brien (Flann and Tim) and O'Connor (Frank and Flannery) and Oquendo de Amat, Percy (Walker) and Powell (Padgett) and Pavic and Prevert and Portis and Pynchon, Robinson (Marilynne) and Rilke and Rorty and Ribeyro and Richard (Mark), Salinger and Saunders and Suskind and Spinoza and Sebald and Stevens (Wallace), Thomas (Dylan and R.S.) and Tomasi di Lampedusa and Toole, Vonnegut Jr. and Vargas Llosa and Vallejo, Wittgenstein and West (Nathanael) and Woolf and Wallace (David Foster). Plus a bunch of others whose last names may or may not begin with the letters I, Q, U, X, Y or Z.

Heroes:

That kid standing in front of that tank. You know the one.

My Blog

Of strikes and nipples.

Chloe came home yesterday and explained to my wife and me, in surprising detail, why she and Tom would not be going to school today: because the teachers at her school were going on a one-day strike (...
Posted by Roy Kesey on Wed, 07 Feb 2007 10:41:00 PST

Of Andrei Makine.

To my discredit, Makine's not someone I'd read before--not until a friend lent me her copy of his Music of a Life. Now: I rarely accept proffered books, for two reasons. First, because I have small ch...
Posted by Roy Kesey on Thu, 01 Feb 2007 06:02:00 PST

Of exiting.

Good news here today: The New England Review has taken a story called [Exeunt. It's a strange matter of universal television turner-offers and goldfish and the Gospel of Judas. I couldn't be happier....
Posted by Roy Kesey on Wed, 31 Jan 2007 06:47:00 PST

Of self-aggrandizing lies.

In response to a recent question posted as a comment on my profile here, I offer a series of questions, and their respective answers:Am I related to Ken Kesey?Not that I know of, unfortunately.Has tha...
Posted by Roy Kesey on Tue, 30 Jan 2007 06:13:00 PST

Of haggis.

Last weekend the Bookworm hosted its first ever Burns Supper, which happened to fall very near my wife's birthday, and so we went along, and because it was held here in Beijing for an international-t...
Posted by Roy Kesey on Mon, 29 Jan 2007 06:20:00 PST

Perfect cell phones, redux.

Maybe two months ago I shared with all of you the means by which a perfect cell phone can be obtained, the key, of course, being the toilet. Now, as many of you have no doubt since realized in the cou...
Posted by Roy Kesey on Tue, 16 Jan 2007 08:57:00 PST

The Boston Globe loves me.

Well, maybe not loves. For instance, I'm pretty sure they don't want to put their tongue in my mouth--you know, they just don't think of me that way, but they do think I'm totally nice, a really nice ...
Posted by Roy Kesey on Mon, 01 Jan 2007 10:38:00 PST

Of reprieves.

You know how it is when you fuck something up, something important, something that affects people you love, and you have no excuse, and you just sit there thinking, I didn't... I... There was the... A...
Posted by Roy Kesey on Fri, 22 Dec 2006 06:41:00 PST

Of competing theocracies.

Chloe: Sunday.Tom: No, Saturday.Chloe: No, SUNday.Tom: No, SATurday.Chloe: NO, SUNDAY!Tom: NO, SATUR--Me: Whoa whoa whoa. What's going on, guys?Chloe: Dad, what day does Santa Christ get here?Me: He.....
Posted by Roy Kesey on Tue, 19 Dec 2006 10:36:00 PST

Of theft.

So, as mentioned, kind of, in my profile, I write a monthly column for a local expat-oriented glossy called That's Beijing--the archives of the column are online here, for anyone who's interested. It'...
Posted by Roy Kesey on Thu, 14 Dec 2006 08:27:00 PST