52 Photos Of ‘5 Things Stacked On Top Of Each Other’

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*6/9 UPDATE* Moved Andrew Leland’s photo to the top and added 2 photos (directly below Andrew’s). *6/9 UPDATE* The past 3 days I sent ~100 people this instruction: “After you read this sentence look around and calmly gather 5 things at random and (without thinking about what you’re doing) leisurely stack those 5 things on top of each other and photograph it with a smartphone.” 6-12 people didn’t have smartphones. All bios by me, with some help from Brandon Scott Gorrell.

Andrew Leland is an editor for The Believer. I clicked a Twitter account & a LinkedIn account on the 1st page of results for his name; neither seemed to be him. The 1st time we met (maybe the 1st time we communicated) was late 2009 when I was on book tour eating watermelon outside a grocery store, in the Mission, I think, when he appeared and we talked about Chilly Scenes of Winter.

Jesse Michaels is the son of Leonard Michaels and was singer for Operation Ivy. Soft Skull Press is publishing his book Whispering Bodies in September.

Brenna Ehrlich is “Senior Editor, MTV O Music Awards.” In 2010 she was 1 of the 8 speakers on the “hipster panel” at UCLA moderated by Christian Lorentzen.

Joe Swanberg is a director and actor. His next movie, Drinking Buddies, is out in America on August 23, 2013. Nights and Weekends (2008) which he and Greta Gerwig co-wrote/co-directed is one of my favorite movies.

James Yeh is an editor for Gigantic Magazine. I read a draft of his novel 4 or 5 years ago and distinctly remember a scene involving the protagonist crawling behind his father in a dark space.

Emily Gould‘s debut novel is forthcoming from FSG.

Daniel Handler is the author of Why We Broke Up (2011) and many other books.

Kat Stoeffel writes for New York Magazine’s The Cut. She wrote the 1st piece, I think, on Marie Calloway: “Meet Marie Calloway.”

Chris Killen is the author of The Bird Room (2010).

Brandon Scott Gorrell is Thought Catalog’s director of editorial.

Audun Mortensen has a sweet website. He is the author of The Collected Jokes of Slavoj Zizek and 5 other books.

Ana S. Pareja is the editor, or one of the editors, of the Spanish publishing company Alpha Decay who has or is in the process of publishing Sheila Heti, Sam Pink, me, Lesley Arfin, Justin Taylor, Blake Butler, n+1’s What Was The Hipster.

Tim Small is the editor of The Milan Review.

Steve Roggenbuck has published books, made videos that’ve gotten 70k+ views on YouTube, published dozens of essays and reviews on his site. When I recommended (passively, on a lesser-known Twitter account) that he learn how to backflip really well and teach people how to do it in a specific way I felt ~30% unsure if he’d already done that, or proposed it maybe, at some point.

Stephen Tully Dierks edits Pop Serial.

Spencer Madsen edits Sorry House and is the author of A Million Bears (2011). A page of his poetry currently has 246,245 notes on Tumblr.

Rocco Castoro is editor-in-chief of Vice. He published after closely reading and offering suggestions for edits, which I liked and implemented, the story that, to some degree, became the 1st chapter of Taipei. He’s the only person of the 3 I’ve recommended with a testimonial on LinkedIn that recommended me back.

Rion Harmon makes music as The Zax. We went to middle/high school together.

Megan Boyle is the author of selected unpublished blog posts of a mexican panda express employee (2011).

Matthew Simmons lives in Seattle. He has a blog titled The Reader of Absurdist Books and a blog titled The Man Who Couldn’t blog. I just remembered I’m in a band with him: Sad Bear vs. Happy Cobra.

Matthew Gallaway is the author of The Metropolis Case. I like seeing his photos on Tumblr and plan to read his novel at some point. I’m not looking at the submitted photos as I type these bios. Only seeing text.

Mattathias Schwartz writes for London Review of Books, New Yorker, New York Times Magazine, among other venues. At a party once I was surprised he had a huge afro.

Luna Miguel sent me this bio: “Luna Miguel (b. 1990) & Delhi (b. 2006). Spanish cats and writers.” She is on the cover of the Spanish translation of Lesley Arfin’s Dear Diary.

Ken Baumann is the author of Solip (2013) and plays Ben Boykewich on The Secret Life of the American Teenager. I recommend this interview he did on the Other People podcast.

Kelley Hoffman is a writer based in San Francisco.

Jordan Castro is the author of if i really wanted to feel happy i would feel happy already (2013) and Young Americans (2013). He is in the band The Ohioans.

Jonathan Smith is the online editor at Vice.

Thomas Morton writes for and has a show titled “Balls Deep” for Vice. I occasionally see him on my computer screen in places like North Korea, West Africa, China. I think I’ve seen him once IRL (night of this).

Thalia Mavros works at Vice. I’ve never met her. I think she’s the only person who was forwarded my email of solicitation (I encouraged people to forward it to others, I think) who actually did it. I’m glad she did it.

Sheila Heti is the author of How Should A Person Be? and 1 of the 2 interviews editors for The Believer. We have a long, line-by-line “dissection” of a review of her book that we spent ~20 hours on but didn’t publish.

Rozalia Jovanovic has written for many places and currently works at ARTINFO.

Ross Simonini is 1 of the 2 interviews editors for The Believer and executive producer of The Organist. He’s an artist and a member of NewVillager and I think nearing completion of his 1st novel.

Porochista Khakpour is the author of Sons and Other Flammable Objects (2007), whose launch party, maybe the sweetest launch party I’ve attended, was at Pure Food And Wine.

Noah Kalina is a photographer. He photographed me for my author photo on my last 2 books and for this. There’s a photo of him sitting on my bed on my Instagram.

Noah Cicero is the author of The Human War (2003) and 7+ other books. Salon named his novel The Insurgent (2010) a “Best Book of 2010.”

Mira Gonzalez is the author of i will never be beautiful enough to make us beautiful together (2012). Her mother’s husband is a founding member of Black Flag.

Margaux Williamson is an artist and filmmaker. Wikipedia says “She appears as a character in Sheila Heti’s novel How Should A Person Be?” I’ve interacted with her and Sheila an entire day, or half a day maybe, at MoMA and it was sweet.

Kaitlin Phillips created npluspersonals I think. She started @tao_lininterns. She was (maybe still is) an n+1 intern.

John Campbell draws the web and print comic Pictures for Sad Children and makes movies.

Jeffrey Brown is the author of Clumsy and many other graphic novels. I cried standing alone (after slowing my pace to focus on the book, on my way out of a subway station) upon reading the final pages of Clumsy.

Gene Morgan is the webmaster & an editor for HTMLGIANT. He created and edits bear parade.

David Shapiro Jr. has a novel coming out late 2013 or 2014 that I blurbed: “I read David Shapiro’s very funny and deeply moving first novel beginning to end without stopping, delighted and stimulated by its interesting range of endearing characters and the unpretentious, sophisticated, compassionate, insightful voice of the narrator, who I found irresistibly and singularly real: at once playful and vulnerable and charming and harsh, yearning and impulsive, mysterious and relatable. I highly recommend [title of book].” The title wasn’t finalized. Also David has since added “Jr.” to his name.

Christopher Frizzelle is editor-in-chief of The Stranger. He’s responsible for probably my favorite (or most frequently favorite-seeming) piece of journalism I’ve done: “Great American Novelist.”

Chelsea Martin‘s next book, Even Though I Don’t Miss You, will be published by Short Flight/Long Drive in fall 2013.

Brad Listi is the author of Attention. Deficit. Disorder. (2006) and co-author of Board (2012). He founded and edits The Nervous Breakdown and does the Other People podcast.

Jim Berhle–damn, I didn’t expect to see that picture on his site.

Elisa Gabbert has the only sideways photo I think. She has tweeted the most times by far out of the people I follow on Twitter I think.

Blake Butler was the 1st person to interview me, I think, in 2006. He’s the 1st person featured on a site (which I think I’ve never until now publicly revealed) that I made 3-5 years ago: authorphotos.blogspot.com.

Blake Bailey has published 3 definitive, I feel, biographies in the past 10 years—on Richard Yates, John Cheever, Charles Jackson. I recommend this video of him and D.T. Max in conversation.

Andrew Bujalski is a director and actor. Funny Ha-Ha (2002) is one of my favorite movies. His next movie, Computer Chess, is out next month, I think. I’ve seen and liked it, and plan to interview him about it.

Rachel Rabbit White is a freelance writer. She has a ~4k-word profile of me that was maybe going to be a Village Voice cover-story but the editor quit his job. Feel like she should publish it as a Kindle Single.

Ellen Frances is a filmmaker and artist. I just read on her site that she’s “in development for the feature film adaptation” of Shane Jone’s Light Boxes.

Mallory Whitten is the author of [Google search]. I paid her $5 each for these drawings.

Jenn Pelly is a staff writer at Pitchfork. I think I met her in summer 2010.

Stephanie Georgopulos recently got a job at Gawker. I’m 99% sure I’ve never typed her last name correctly without Googling it 1-5 times. Just now Googled it maybe 6 times.

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