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— (more…)

Though the majority of my posts about last weekend’s trip will end up reporting on various foodie expeditions (such as my already-shared visit to Next), I should note that food wasn’t the main reason I was in Chicago. (Though it sometimes seemed as if it was.)

It was SFWA’s annual Nebula Awards that brought me to town, where I got to hang with old friends, make new friends, and channel Groot.

So for those who would rather focus on the people than the food porn, I’ve uploaded all the non-culinary pics here.

As, for example, this one, in which Matthew Kressel and I posed post-ceremony, each cradling a trophy that wasn’t ours—me, the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation which I’d accepted on behalf of Guardians of the Galaxy; him, Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Best Novelette Nebula.

Sadly, we were not allowed to keep these. OH, SFWA, YOU TEASE.