Sometimes sarcastic, sometimes slapstick, and always entertaining, Amanda Stern is a novelist, ghost writer, curator and host of the Happy Endings Reading Series. Spiked with Kurt Cobain charisma, her book The Long Haul has been compared to the writing of Denis Johnson, Rick Moody and Leslie Schwartz.

You board a train, only to learn after it’s left the station that the tracks that lie ahead haven’t been bolted down. You speed along, wondering when the train will derail and how bad the wreck will be.

Lisa Kunik (Rail): Peter, you criticize writing in which the ego takes over, trying to impress the reader with literary gymnastics—a common pitfall of aspiring writers. With so much published fiction out there that does just that, why do you advise against it?

Kate Braverman is an experimental poet, short fiction writer, essayist and author of four novels, whose short fiction has been widely anthologized. Subversive, surreal, insightful and discerningly witty, Braverman never ceases to surprise.