Part of the Fiction for Driving series.
In the tenth installment in BOMB’s literary podcast series, listen to Ben Ristow read his short story “Saint Jerome & the Dumpster Girls,” originally published in BOMB 114.
This segment is co-produced with Jason Repko at KXCI Community Radio in Tucson, AZ.
Ben Ristow is an emerging fiction writer and interdisciplinary scholar who teaches at the University of Arizona. His first published short story, “Denise Pearson,” appeared in the Indiana Review last December. He lives in Tucson with his wife and two daughters. “Saint Jerome and the Dumpster Girls” was the runner-up for BOMB’s 2009 Fiction Prize, judged by Jonathan Lethem.
What was the earth like?
My sister asks this every night, leaning back on her pillow. The question is part of our routine, along with brushing our teeth, peeing, pushing our legs into the soft holes of our pajamas.
When he could no longer stand her chatter—in France I made myself a dress of leaves stitched together with stems and I wore it by that river, the big one, the sludge, and that’s how I met many interesting boyfriends from the National Geographic Magazine—he left Nancy on the hotel roof with the chef from Mumbai.
It was with the printing press and Enlightenment science that history first demarcated itself from literature as a field of knowledge founded on scientific principles and archival methods.
Originally published in
Featuring interviews with Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson, Rochelle Feinstein, Rae Armantrout, Tristan Garcia, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, The Bug, Sarah Michelson, and Adam Pendleton.
Work that is just about the technical or conceptual, personal or political, is fine; it meets the world with what’s in fashion. But there’s something else bordering on magic, that brings an artwork home, makes it land and resonate. You can’t really teach that so much as conjure it.
Kara Walker
