David Bezmozgis

Looking for another writer's short story at The Atlantic, I stumbled across this encouraging interview with David Bezmozgis, whose debut story collection Natasha: And Other Stories is garnering rave reviews.

Bezmozgis' backstory is fascinating: he worked in documentary film production, having attended film school at USC while deliberately avoiding creative writing classes; wrote short stories on the side with no deliberate intention of getting published (and in fact never submitted a single piece for publication); sent a story to a friend, who liked it so much as to forward it to an editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which signed him to a book contract; meanwhile, he had stories published in The New Yorker, Harper's and Zoetrope. And his life has been a whirlwind ever since.

The big emotional thing was when Lorin (Stein) offered to publish the book. That was probably the happiest and most intense moment of my life. How did I feel? I felt that the story I wanted told would now get told. I felt that I had actually achieved something with my life: that my life wouldn't be a complete and total failure. That if I do nothing else, then that's okay.