MELODY NIXON interviews BENJAMIN ANASTAS Of course, I was living the story out—I had no idea how things would resolve with my girlfriend, my writing life, my money crisis—so any ending I chose for the memoir would have to be provisional. Once my writing career is done and all of the books are lined up on the shelf, I expect that unresolved endings are going to be a common thread.

MELODY NIXON | In my first months in New York City I rode in the back of taxicabs through Central Park thinking, “When will this sink in? When will it feel like I know where I am.”

MELODY NIXON interviews JUSTIN TAYLOR | I believe that all work is necessarily of its specific time. There’s just no getting around that, even if you’re consciously writing historical or speculative fiction. I’m not interested in zeitgeists, but I am interested in the way that people live, think, and speak; the technologies we use; our experience of ourselves and each other in everyday life.

MELODY NIXON
Your identity becomes one of potentials, of possible outcomes. This uncertainty is shapeless. It is also something you can, paradoxically, cling to, because it holds the chance of eventual certainty. The questions engulfed my family thickly, like jellyfish in a warm current. Suddenly, previously impossible things were possible.

MELODY NIXON interviews RICH BENJAMIN | I would definitely describe myself as a “journalist-adventurer.” I like to write about things that haven’t been written, and that require some form of mental and physical adventure. I don’t like to go on assumptions about what people think is going on.

MELODY NIXON | Walking down Van Buren Street I passed a high, metal wall topped with barbed wire. The wall hid several dogs with big barks and cast a film noir-like glow over the entire block.

MELODY NIXON | I’m a migrant and a wanderer, and I’m never really sure where my home is located – in the environment, or inside me?

MELODY NIXON interviews CARRIE TIFFANY | I think when it comes to writing, all the dreaming should be about the writing, and not the awards. My first book was rejected by every major publisher in Australia before it was finally published. That, in some ways, made me quite cynical about the publishing industry. And the prize industry as well.

MELODY NIXON | We painted lipstick on our lips and watched businessmen in suits flip open Die Welt, grazing the top of the newspaper with their line of sight, conspicuously shy in their observations of two foreign frauen.

MELODY NIXON | I hadn’t come to Mongolia seeking an education in the politics of development, but the signs of rapid, double-edged growth were everywhere.