This week on the Maris Review, Maris talks to Ryan Chapman, the author of Riots I Have Known. The two discuss the influences on the book, writing from a transgressive voice and the fictive distance between the author and satire, the privatization of prisons, and exciting literary voices coming from Sri Lanka. 

Ryan Chapman is a Sri Lankan American novelist originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota. He has written online and in print for The New Yorker, GQ, Longreads, Guernica, Bookforum, BOMB, and The Believer, and received residency fellowships from The Millay Colony and Vermont Studio Center. He lives in Kingston, New York.

Recommended Books:

Money by Martin Amis

The Sugar-Frosted Nutsack by Mark Leyner

The Loser by Thomas Bernhard

Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal

The Heart Is a Muscle The Size of a Fist by Sunil Yapa

On Sal Mal Lane by Ru Freeman

Music:

Billie Eilish

The Magnetic Fields

Maris’s MP3 Blog Playlist

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