Wednesday, April 30 - Ryan Ridge

Tonight on Bibliocracy Radio, 8 PM on KPFK in Southern California:  RYAN RIDGE. 

My guest tonight writes in the language of American idiomatic self-awareness, collective self-disregard, wry and hilarious and mean jokery and yet a genuinely innovative reimagining of language as a possibility for showing off  (!) all kinds of intended and unintended moments and scenes of reflection.  His writing is short, and yet deep, fragmented but evoking so much of the merciless critique of our wacky, maudlin republic.  Ryan Ridge reminds this reader of Donald Barthelme in his wit and line, and of Terry Southern in his premise and social critique.  Ridge has been published widely in literary magazines and is the author of a previous chapbook with the perfectly deadpan title, Hey, It’s America and a new collection called 22^nd Century Man as well as an earlier book of short stories together with a novella called Hunters and Gamblers.  I reviewed it, or rather celebrated it, over at OC Bookly, if you need more convincing.  Ryan Ridge is a graduate of the UC Irvine MFA in Creative Writing and has a new novel forthcoming from the University of Michigan Press.  See his excellent website for more:  http://www.ryanridge.com/

Thanks, always, for listening on the radio or online, or as a free download from the station’s audio archives.  Special thanks to engineer Stan Misraje and UC Irvine History Department manager Marcus Kanda.  And to you, for supporting KPFK during the upcoming fund drive.