Robert Lopez

Short Biography

Robert Lopez (born 1971) is an American writer. He is the author of Part of the World, a novel, (Calamari Press, 2007). His new novel, Kamby Bolongo Mean River, was published by Dzanc Books in September 2009. His fiction has appeared in dozens of journals, including Bomb, The Threepenny Review, New England Review, and New Orleans Review. He teaches at The New School, Pratt Institute, and Columbia University and Pine Manor College. He was co-editor of avant literary magazine Sleepingfish. In 2010 he was awarded a Fellow in Fiction fom the New York Foundation for the Arts which included a grant for a three-year period.He started a blog to have a single site for information about his work but was adverse to frequent blog posts. He was posting daily 'No News Today' but then decided to invites friends and colleagues to post.Approach to writingIn an interview with author Peter Markus Lopez said of his writing, I don’t think about the reader at all when I work. Indeed, the only reader I’m concerned with is myself. I suppose if I can entertain myself, then there might be a few others out there in the world who might be likewise entertained. I would like to find more of those readers, certainly. Some readers find these stories dark and depressing, but that is not how I find them at all. Almost all of the stories make me laugh. As a reader, I want to be entertained, and I want to be compelled. I want to get the wind knocked out of me. This impact can only happen through language. I don’t care about the story, the goings-on: only how they are told.