Buy THE CONTORTIONIST’S HANDBOOK here!

Craig Clevenger is a hell of a writer. But don’t take my word for it. Chuck Palahniuk has praised The Contortionist’s Handbook. Irvine Welsh has. Jordan Harper has, Donnie Darko director Richard Kelly has, Stephen Graham Jones has, Paul Tremblay has… many people have. And for good reason. It’s a fucking great book.

And what follows, in my humblest, is a fucking great conversation. We talk about the book, we talk about life, we talk about struggles, we talk about families, we talk about the Waffle House. We talk about things that we are out of our depth talking about, but we talk about them because there are some struggles where, even if we can’t experience them, we can recognize them. We can say “I don’t know what that pain feels like, but I’ve had some pain that tells me that what you’re going through is fucked.”

But it’s not all the doldrums. There’s some great writing advice sprinkled about, and you’d better fucking pay attention because if there’s one thing Craig knows, it’s how to make words work.

I’ve been reading this book for years, and each time I get to read it again, I like it more, and that’s got to mean something, right? When it’s not old, or stale, or outdated. When it has a timeless poignancy to it, that’s a book you keep special. That’s an author you keep special. I hope you enjoy this conversation with a man I call brother, and I hope it inspires you to buy his books, inspires you to try a little harder to make the words into music, and inspires you to find a way to get out the things that you so bad want to keep inside, because maybe that’s a little bit like healing, and maybe that’s a good thing.

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