Let’s go back to Pittsburgh, shall we? Because it’s time for the fourth of six episodes of Eating the Fantastic I recorded during last month’s Nebula Awards weekend, following the lightning-round Donut Jamboree, my dinner with Kelly Robson a mere 48 hours before she picked up a trophy, and a leisurely lunch with A. M. Dellamonica.

This episode’s guest is Matthew Kressel, whose short story “The Last Novelist (or A Dead Lizard in the Yard)” was one of the finalists this year. He was a previous finalist twice before in the same category for “The Sounds of Old Earth” in 2014 and “The Meeker and the All-Seeing Eye” in 2015. His short stories have appeared in Lightspeed, Tor.com, Clarkesworld, Analog, Interzone, and many others, as well as in anthologies such as Mad Hatters and March Hares, Cyber World, The People of the Book, and more. His novel, King of Shards, was praised by NPR as being “majestic, resonant, reality-twisting madness.”

He was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award for his work editing the speculative fiction magazine Sybil’s Garage, and is the co-host—along with former Eating the Fantastic guest Ellen Datlow—of the Fantastic Fiction reading series held at the KGB Bar.

Our dinner Friday night that weekend was at Pork & Beans, which has been voted best BBQ in Pittsburgh. 

We discussed the story of his accepted by an editor within an hour and then praised by Joyce Carol Oates, the ways in which famed editor Alice Turner was the catalyst which helped turn him into a writer, why after publishing only short stories for 10 years he eventually published a novel, how comments from his Altered Fluid writing workshop helped make his Nebula-nominated “The Sounds of Old Earth” a better story, why a writing self-help book made him swear off those kinds of self-help books, the secrets to having a happy, heathy writing career, why he’s grown to be OK with reading bad reviews, what he learned from reading slush at Sybil’s Garage, and much more.

Here’s how you can dig into that BBQ with us—

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Here’s what Matthew and I devoured for dinner during that Nebula Awards weekend—brisket, beer can chicken, mac ‘n’ cheese, and jo jo fries served family style on a single tray .

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I hope you’ll join me next episode, when my guest will be Ellen Klages, who won the Nebula Award in 2005 for her novelette, “Basement Magic,” and was a nominee last month for her novella “Passing Strange.”

Thanks for listening!