Making It Up with Matthew Sullivan, author of Midnight in Soap Lake

“If you're not exploring, if you're not really kind of pushing limits, then you really have to ask yourself, well, what am I doing here? Like, this isn't accounting, you know what I mean? It's creative writing.” —Matthew Sullivan

Matthew Sullivan is the author of Midnight at the Bright Ideas Bookstore, an Indie Next Pick, B&N Discover pick, a GoodReads Choice Award finalist, and winner of the Colorado Book Award. He received his MFA from the University of Idaho and has been a resident writer at Yaddo, Centrum, and the Vermont Studio Center. His short stories have been awarded the Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize and the Florida Review Editors' Award for Fiction. His writing has been featured in the New York Times Modern Love column and The Daily Beast, amongst others.

Among other things, Matthew and Carter discuss alcohol and writing, writing weird and unconventional novels, and how the unpredictability of success as an author makes you a better writer. At the end of their conversation, they make up a menacing story using a line from Abbott Kahler’s Where You End.