Matt Baker grew up in Kansas City. He now lives in Little Rock, Arkansas, where he is the Circulation Director at The Oxford American magazine. His fiction has appeared in FRiGG, Southern Hum, Defenestration, Foliate Oak, Permafrost, The Saint Ann’s Review, Iconoclast and is forthcoming in Mississippi Crow. His non-fiction has appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer and Kansas City Star.

So readers don’t think I interviewed an elementary school student, tell us why you chose this picture. How old are you here?

That is my 2nd grade picture. That goofy smirk is the result of the photographer telling me I look like a bumble bee. I chose it because I don’t have any pictures, except for two or three from a few years ago and they’re group shots with family and friends. I rarely get my picture taken.

Now that we’ve cleared up the age issue, start off by talking about the novel you’re working on. Is it your first?

This is number four. The first two were rambunctious comic novels. The third was a supernatural thriller I wrote to see if I could do it. And this one, my fourth, is a much more controlled and mature kind of storytelling. I always wanted to write a novel with a small boy as a protagonist - a small boy who gets caught up in something no child should have to deal with.

Are you really going to leave us hanging like that?

Yes. But if you’re really curious the story “Driving” is an early version of Chapter 1.

Several of your stories–”Landing on the Moon,” “Fifth Grade Class Reunion,” or “My Friend is Dying,” for example–strike me as tragicomedies, in the modern sense of the word. They combine a serious plot with hilarity and satire. While this is a style I enjoy, I’d like to hear your take on the form. Why is this a structure you return to? Or do you even agree that your stories contain a tragicomedy aspect?

It’s a natural place for me, I think. I return to it because I enjoy it. At the same time there’s no doubt it’s an extension of my worldview. For all the self-congratulatory backslapping human beings like to engage in, we do stupid things a lot of the time.

Many of my favorite writers are considered in one way or another comic writers: Charles Portis, Donald Hays, Barry Hannah, George Singleton, Jack Pendarvis, to name a few.

I’ve always been drawn to the violence of comedy - the explosion that happens when a joke erupts and conquers its subject.

I admire the emotional honesty of your characters. Take your most recent story, “Knuckleball,” which is in the current issue of FRiGG, for example. Your narrator says this:

I broke the first rule of the support group the first night I went. Starting new relationships with people in the group was not recommended. Mary was there and we hit it off and that night we got coffee when it was over. That’s the real reason I went, to find someone. I was alone and couldn’t handle it. There has to be someone in my life or else I fall apart.

or consider this line from “Landing on the Moon,” also published by FRiGG:

As bad as all the horror stories sounded, the thought of getting drunk or getting high far outweighed the consequences of future problems. You see, alcohol and drugs do work. That’s what the doctors and counselors won’t own up to.

Are we in an age where truth, even in fiction, is revered above all?

No, truth is a massive hindrance in most people’s lives. We like self-delusion. We like self-help books and imaginative explanations for why we act they way we do. We like happy endings even if it’s temporal and more importantly theatrical. We like to believe that we can beat anything, we can triumph over all. I don’t know if you ever do overcome tragedy in life. I think sometimes the best you can hope for is to be able to push it out of the way.

In reference to your remark about honest characters, I think it’s vital. I believe in making dialogue candid and actions necessary, otherwise you run the risk of being frivolous and wasteful.

Also, I have to credit Ellen Parker’s editorial finesse with keeping both my FRiGG stories honest and fluid. She’s got an extraordinary ability to hone in on dishonesty and gimmicks and can pinpoint weaknesses in the narrative and voice of a story. She called me out on a few things I thought I could get away with and my stories are all the better for it. She’s a true talent, the real deal.

You are the Circulation Director for The Oxford American, a magazine focused on Southern voices. I’m a huge fan of OA, and I noticed that they received several nods in the 2007 Best American Short Stories series. Congrats! How has working at the magazine influenced your own writing?

There’s nothing more inspiring than surrounding yourself with people who are more talented and accomplished than you are.

When did you first know that writing was something you wanted to pursue?

Two things stick out: One is clattering away on my step-dad’s IBM Selectric typewriter when I was seven or eight and planning my first book idea. It was going to be a science book. I was going to write a book about outer space and stars. The second is a story I wrote in the fifth grade was chosen by Mrs. Stein as the best short story in the entire grade.

You attended the Players Workshop of the Second City in Chicago. What is this?

It’s a training center for improvisational theater - a wonderful place. Many well-known performers got their start there. It was a tremendous experience. I loved it.

Has your training in improvisational theatre benefited your writing?

You learn to trust your instincts, your inner voice. You learn to appreciate the power of being in the moment, and interacting with it honestly and experiencing it fully. It sounds a little hocus pocus, I know. And I didn’t truly understand it until the first time I got on a stage in front of an audience with no idea what I was going to say or do and knowing that the only person in the world who was going to get me out of this predicament was me. And you quickly learn how to tune everything out and really listen. Listen to yourself. Listen for the moment. It’s there.

Kansas City, Seattle, Chicago, Little Rock. You’ve lived in a variety of places. Have you noticed a distinct literary culture in all of these cities?

Not really. I never sought out the literary culture anywhere I lived. Writing has always been something I do late at night in a darkened room with my green banker’s lamp as the only light and my feet tucked up under my legs while the rest of the world is quiet for a few hours.

Okay, King of Barbeque, give us the run down on barbeque dos and don’ts.

Do wait until the last few minutes to add sauce to the meat.

Don’t mistake grilling weenies and burgers for barbecuing.

What is the story about you outrunning a police car?

That was a few years back when I was 16 or 17. I was going seventy in a 35 MPH zone and a cop zoomed out from his hiding place and I gassed it as hard as I could. I’d already had three tickets in sixteen months and didn’t want another one. So the chase was on and he followed me in and out of various neighborhoods for fifteen or twenty minutes until I was able to put a little distance between us and lucked out when I went to my girlfriend’s house and her garage door was open and empty. I pulled in, shut the door, ran inside and was shaking so hard I thought I was going to throw up.

What’s in your top desk drawer at work?

Nothing at all. It’s broken.