It’s time to return to Balticon for another conversation with a fascinating writer, following last episode’s chat with Alex Jennings. This time around my guest is Elwin Cotman, with whom I slipped away for dinner at the nearby R&R Taqueria.

Cotman’s short story collection Dance on Saturday, published by Small Beer Press, was one of the finalists for the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. His latest short story collection, Weird Black Girls, was released two months ago as this episode goes live.

He’s also the author of three other books: the poetry collection The Wizard’s Homecoming, plus the short story collections The Jack Daniels Sessions EP and Hard Times Blues. His writing has appeared in Grist, Electric Lit, Buzzfeed, The Southwestern Review, and The Offing, plus many others venues. He’s worked as a video game consultant and writer for Square Enix. His debut novel The Age of Ignorance will be published by Scribner in 2025.

We discussed why forcing science fictional elements into non-science fictional stories can weaken them, the interdimensional cross-genre story cycle he hopes to write someday about a wrestling family, the way the novella is his natural length, why he loves Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age stories, how to create compelling metaphors and similes, the way rereading Tama Janowitz’s Slaves of New York helped him with the connective tissue of his own sentences, the reason Mary Gaitskill is the world’s greatest living writer, and much more.

Here’s how you can join us at R&R Taqueria —

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And here’s what loosened our tongues at R&R Taqueria —

Elwin’s California Burrito with French Fries
flour tortilla wrapped with chicken, rice, beans, onions,
tomatoes, jalapenos, guacamole, sour cream, and cheese

Scott’s Ground Beef Tacos
flour tortilla, rice, beans, lettuce, tomatoes,
sour cream, cheese, lime, and green and red sauce.

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Coming up next — my Balticon lunch with the award-winning writer, photographer and journalist Sally Wiener Grotta, whose latest two books are Of Being Woman, a collection of feminist science fiction tales, and Daughters of Eve, a discussion workbook which uses tales of biblical matriarchs to explore the modern world.

Thanks for listening!