The most exciting thing to encounter in the world of publishing is a writer who doesn’t sound like anyone else. I first read Gabriel Smith at the Drift, where our then fiction editor spied his story, “The Complete,” in the slush, so it’s been a thrill to help bring out his debut novel, Brat, in my other role as an editor at Penguin Press. Brat is sharp, wickedly funny, moving, unusual, spooky, haunted, textually layered—the adjectives sort of flow endlessly. It’s a book you’ll keep turning over in your mind long after you’ve read it, which is why I relished the opportunity to chat with Gabe about the project of Brat and the process of writing fiction. I sent over some questions in the format every writer and editor loves most—Google Docs—and I hope you’ll enjoy his responses (and Brat itself) as much as I did.
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