Phone | (216) 687-3990
Email | m.i.rahman@csuohio.edu
I Dream Of Microwaves. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (April 2004).
“I Watch Knight Of Cups.” The New England Review (Vol. 39, #2, June 2018), Essay.
“Short, Unhappy.” The New England Review, Digital Archives Project, Dec 2013, Short Story.
“The Brigadier-General Takes His Final Stand, by James Butt.” xo Orpheus: Fifty New Myths, Kate Bernheimer ed., Penguin Books, Sept., 2013, Short Story.
“Petty.” The Fairy Tale Review, February 2012, Short Story.
“Hound Days.” Robert Lopez’s No News Today project, August 2011, Short Story.
“I, Claudius.” Radical Society, Spring 2006, Short Story.
“All Roads Lead To Flesh and Bone.” Willow Springs, Spring 2005, Short Story.
“From Kilgore To Kurtz, At The Steak’n Stage.” Bridge, Issues 7/8, Fall 2003, Short Story.
Imad Rahman teaches creative writing at Cleveland State University. His first book, I Dream Of Microwaves, a collection of connected stories, was published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2004, and has since been translated into French. He was named a “Breakout Author” by Interview magazine and Writers Digest, and his book was a 2004 Best Books selection by The Journal News. His stories have appeared in One Story, Chelsea, Gulf Coast, The Sonora Review and Willow Springs, among others. His short story, “Eating, Ohio,” received a Special Mention in the 2005 Pushcart Prize anthology. He was the 2001-02 James C. McCreight Fiction Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He directs the annual Imagination Writers Workshop & Conference at CSU.
Karachi, Pakistan.
The Cedar-Fairmount area in Cleveland Heights. You’ve got groceries, bars, restaurants and cafes in about a two-block radius.
My nightstand is broken.
I wish I could, but I don’t eat cupcakes.
Drink fast or breathe slow.
Padgett Powell, on both counts, and I think he’d be tickled I said so.
For a long time, I had a superpower. I became invisible during department meetings. I’ve since lost that superpower. Visibility comes with a price.
I like writing at night with all the lights under my control turned off. All I can see is the laptop keyboard & screen & the darkness beyond makes it easier for me to imagine a world that is both familiar and strange.
Whatever my son says next.
I got to introduce George Saunders when he read for the NEOMFA a few years back. I’ve been a fan since grad school in the previous century. The reading was great, of course, because he’s George Saunders, but it was also a very special thing to discover that one of your favorite writers is also a genuine stand-up human being.
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I’m a decent cook, which may surprise everyone I haven’t cooked for, which is most people I know.
More wine.
A personal truth isn’t necessarily a universal truth—just because something is true for you personally doesn’t mean it’s universally true for everyone else. We get in trouble when policy-makers don’t understand this, & I think it’s problematic when the experiences of a few (say, you and some people you know—regardless of whether the experience is positive or negative) are meant to reflect the experiences of the many. So, challenge away. I’m betting MFA programs will continue to exist because the experience is valuable (it was for me, but of course that’s just a personal truth), & as long as the institutional support exists.
I think that depends on the writer. & I don’t necessarily think any of these forms are experimental. Off the top of my head, Faulkner (to name one of many) broke most of these ‘rules’ & Faulkner is canonical, & I don’t think of anything that is canonical as ‘experimental’ in our particular moment (i.e. it might have been experimental then, now it’s just another tool in a contemporary writer’s toolbox); you just have to know when to use it. All of which is to say, writing, like life, is an experiment. I welcome everything as long as it works. If it doesn’t work, it’s my job to help it work better.
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English Department
Cleveland State University
2121 Euclid Ave., RT 1815
Cleveland, Ohio 44115