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Tessa Fontaine: The TNB Self-Interview
Congrats on publishing your first book, The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death Defying Acts. How exciting! It must be wild to walk down the street and have people recognize you and take pictures with...
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The Long Con
A month after the shooting, I held a yard sale. Out with the self-help books, the roller skates, the painting of the fortune-telling cat. Have to make enough money to get out of Orlando. A pink...
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Three Weddings
In the winter of 1992, my sister got married. A year before the wedding, she asked me if I would grow my hair shoulder length for the occasion. At the time, I was twenty years old and just...
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Nineteen Questions with Paul Seward MD, author of Patient Care
Get to know me: I die for books but I live for television. The former is my bff, the latter is my one true love. Give me a meaty, well-written drama with an ensemble cast of Emmy nominees who can...
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Main Street Madness
As I drove further away from downtown, the houses and sidewalks became progressively neglected. Like forgotten memories in an old attic. Like the unloved pages of an old dusty photo album, some...
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Like a Boyfriend
Language needs a few new relationship words. Particularly boyfriend. I’ll allow the issue of boy having a troubled history to speak for itself. Except to add that Black jazz musicians in the 40s...
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Get a Job: Episode One
Here’s the start of the story and it’s a good story and this one is true. Ashleigh Bryant Phillips is from North Carolina and we met on the internet because she went on a book tour with my friend Bud...
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The TNB Self-Interview: Thomas Page McBee
So, you’re trans. Don’t you think the obvious first question is: When did you know you were a boy? Did you always feel “born in the wrong body”? And, while we’re at it, was your family cool with your...
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Get a Job: Episode Two
I still don’t have a job. And Jay Leno collects cars. He has about 150 of them. I know this because I listened to an interview with him yesterday. I don’t even like Jay Leno. But I have a lot of free...
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Get a Job: Episode Three
It’s hard to tell what day it is. Wednesday feels like Monday. Monday feels like Thursday. I drive Ashleigh to work. I take Ashleigh to work. I drop off Ashleigh at work. It’s a two-lane road. The...
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Get a Job: Episode Four
Nothing bad has ever happened to me but it will and I have that to look forward to. Bad things have happened to Ashleigh but those things are not my things to tell. It’s Friday and I pick her up from...
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Fifteen Questions with Vivek Shraya, author of I’m Afraid of Men
Men are so hot right now. Just look at the options; wherever you go, there they are, and the books about them abound. Adding to the essential essay collections that deconstruct what men are and what...
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Sunrise, Florida
The facts are as they are. They are in black and white; they can’t be changed. As a baby, I lived with my mother and father in Sunrise, a suburban city just east of Fort Lauderdale. The romance of the...
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Leah Dieterich: The TNB Self-Interview
Instead of interviewing myself, I thought it might be fitting for my vanished twin to conduct this interview. Take it away, vanished twin. Leah Dieterich’s Vanished Twin: Let’s pretend this is an audio...
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A Pile of Invisible Dust
I saw my mother for her birthday. I was with my aunt, her sister, and we worriedly drove to her care facility because the on-site nurse had called saying that my mother has been complaining about her...
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Get a Job: Episode Five
Long Beach, California. Out on the ocean on a small boat that can only hold twelve of us, we put my grandmother’s ashes in the ocean. Speakers on the boat play music. Cat Stevens, “Don’t Be Shy”. It’s...
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Excerpt of Dragonfly Notes, by Anne Panning
Mother’s Day One of my favorite things to do in Vietnam was shop at the fabric market. Even though I could barely thread a needle, I felt a great connection to my mother when I was surrounded by...
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Anne Panning: The TNB Self-Interview
So, obvious question, but what’s up with the dragonflies? Why dragonflies? Well, I’m not traditionally religious, so after my mom’s death, it was very hard to see any way to connect with her. There was...
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Clementine Ford: The TNB Self-Interview
37 year old me checked in with my past selves, and these are the questions they asked me. This is 28. Do we ever stop sleeping with people who treat us badly? Oh babe, you are in the wasteland right...
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17 Questions with Tanya Marquardt, author of Stray
For the kids reading this, coming of age in the 90s wasn’t for the faint of heart. It was like the 70s but with pushup bras instead of no bras. Nobody watched their language – twelve-year-olds might as...
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Popsicle
Good Luck: Episode One I stood and watched a man in a blue suit stare into the window of a shop that only sold popsicles. He stared for a long time. He kept staring and I said, “Do it, man. Get...
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Turkey Baby
Good Luck: Episode Two I’m a turkey baby. That’s what mom says. I’m her turkey baby. I was her turkey baby and I am still her turkey baby. It was snowing. We stopped welding on the million pound...
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Elegy
Good Luck: Episode Three My friend died laughing on the telephone. He laughed so hard his heart stopped. It doesn’t sound real. It sounds like something a person puts in a short story and it bothers...
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First Memory
Good Luck: Episode Four My first memory which I can place in time is my fourth birthday party. My dad took me for a drive in his midnight blue Ford Mustang so my mom and her sisters could decorate the...
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Cults
Good Luck: Episode Five While I was getting my haircut, the bell jangled, the door opened, a woman’s sweet voice said, “Hello. Will you shave my daughter’s head?” The barber closest to the door...
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Playboys
Good Luck: Episode Six Five of us were packed in the work truck listening to a wacky morning DJ tell a story about a man who dug a tunnel from his basement to the bar down the block. His wife didn’t...
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Oblique Strategies
Good Luck: Episode Seven In July of 1975, Brian Eno entered Island Studios to record his third album, Another Green World. He had no ideas whatsoever, having largely abandoned traditional songwriting,...
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Blue Skies
Good Luck: Episode Eight Two days before the end, it’s warm and the sky is deep blue and the clouds roll slowly by. My coworker climbs up on a flatbed truck and lies down and looks up at that blue sky...
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Dreams
Good Luck: Episode Nine Just a quiet Sunday when you don’t care. Leave the bedroom, 8am. Go out to the couch, read for awhile. Two books, a novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, William Maxwell, and a...
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Public Defender
Law school doesn’t prepare you for the day-to-day practice of law, especially if you’re a public defender. Realizing this was actually kind of a relief for me because I spent all of law school on...
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Melissa
Good Luck: Episode Ten Driving through the night. A dark road. Melissa was in the backseat, holding my friend’s hand. I was up in the passenger seat, newly low. She’d stopped fucking me, now they were...
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Bullfrog
Good Luck: Episode Eleven Our cacti can’t stand on their own anymore. We’ve braced them with toothpicks. I was gifted a ceramic lemon and a resin flamingo leaning left. They’re here on my bamboo...
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Grasshopper
Good Luck: Episode Twelve [What follows is a transcript of a talk by Bud Smith given at McNally Jackson Books in NYC on Saturday, January 19th, 2019] I didn’t know what I was going to say here...
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Art
Good Luck: Episode Thirteen First I want to say, art is done in a small room to make it big. Then I want to say, you’re going to die, you’ll need a distraction. Then I want to also say, art eats a...
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Little Guy
Good Luck: Episode Fourteen Mom is the little guy. The youngest. Then Jonathan is born and he becomes the little guy. Seven kids. Jonathan, Robin, Lee, Elaine, Billy, Jefferey, Sandy, all of them...
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Suicide in Bed
Good Luck: Episode Fifteen We’re watching the movie The Apartment. Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. We’re watching it because I didn’t know what an apartment was. Didn’t I feel stupid when I found...
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Salad
Good Luck: Episode Sixteen Rae said something. I couldn’t hear. 7th was too loud. She looked back over her shoulder to hear my answer, so I just said, “Yeah.” Her hair was getting long again, curled...
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Block
Good Luck: Episode Seventeen This paragraph was written on a cellphone at my day job. With all the mess, and the noise, and the constant humming and slamming of million pound machines. I’ve run out...
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Rewrite
Good Luck: Episode Eighteen It was raining. I couldn’t leave work. The flash flood too deep to drive through, and I knew better. Another work emergency. Five of us in rain gear, hoods up over our...
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Fish Hook
Good Luck: Episode Twenty-Two Your life is a house where you keep your memories. You built this house. Before you, and your memories, there was just a field here, with wild flowers and grass and...
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Butterfly
Good Luck: Episode Negative One In the beginning, I got born. The doctor handed me to my mother and said good luck. I was crying. My father came in the room with a handlebar mustache, and my mother...
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Jane
Good Luck: Episode Twenty-Four My friend, the vampire, wanted to go to the vampire dance club in Newark, New Jersey. I said sure, even though I was not a vampire and didn’t dance. Turns out I was...
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Trees
Good Luck: Episode Twenty-Five “When Henry Hudson sailed up through the Narrows between Long and Staten Islands in 1609 and anchored in the upper bay almost opposite old Communipaw, and he looked...
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William and Me
Good Luck: Episode Twenty-Six Well, it was a bad idea to wait to try and write this in the car, while all these beautiful things are flashing by outside. The last thing I want to be doing is looking...
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After Death Valley
Good Luck: Episode Twenty-Seven Most of the time when you see a piano you’re not allowed to play it, but you’re supposed to try, even if you don’t know how to play it. Or at least I’m asking you to,...
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Beach Boys
Good Luck: Episode Twenty-Eight I was dreaming I was a Beach Boy, but now I’m home and I’ve given that up. I can hear the state flag of New Jersey whipping in the wind against the face of this...
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The Art of Homeostasis (for Stevie and Myles)
In quantum field theory, in my imperfect understanding of it, gleaned from YouTube, a physicist can make an atom vibrate on one level, like a violin string, as well as a neutrino on another level,...
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Claudius Jr.
Good Luck: Episode Twenty-Nine Hamlet wakes up in the underworld. He is up on stage. Act 1: Scene 1, Elsinore, the rampart walls of his familial Dutch castle, except something seems wrong. Part of...
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Mystery
Good Luck: Episode Thirty My memories are locked up in a wooden house, each year growing and distorting. No roads or rails get there. The house is over the hills, and across a wide valley, past two...
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Two Cats
Good Luck: Episode Thirty-Two Three in the morning, the back door opens, four people enter the dark house. Black jeans, boots, jackets, gloves, ski masks. Nothing said. They’ve been here before. The...
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