For Gotham Fiction teacher Justin Taylor, the coming of Doomsday was a good thing.

Growing up in a bland Florida suburb, Justin spent much of his time inside his imagination, the stranger side of it at that. He devoured everything written by Stephen King and composed his own “crazy kind of fantasy stuff.” After college, he hit the road to pursue the life of a writer.

He hung out in Oregon for a while, sleeping on a friend’s couch, feverishly writing short stories. He served stints in journalism at two magazines, The Nation and CounterPunch. And then he pursued his MFA in Fiction at the New School in New York.

Throughout this travels, Justin kept running into people who had known and spoken of the legendary postmodern writer, Donald Barthelme. There’s no shortage of postmodern fiction writers, but according to Justin, “This guy was just special.” When he couldn’t find a biography on Barthelme, Justin got the wise idea to put together a collection of tributes to the author from people who knew or admired him.

He pitched the idea to Dave Eggers at McSweeney’s and, to his amazement, Eggers gave Justin’s project the star treatment—McSweeney’s Issue 24 is a hard bound book, half of which is devoted to the Barthelme pieces that Justin collected from various writers, among them David Gates, Ann Beattie, Grace Paley, and George Saunders (whom Justin kept pestering until he said yes). The project has made a splash, and recently got a full page write-up in Newsweek.

Then came Doomsday.

Justin had been writing a collection of apocalypse stories, but it wasn’t coming together. But he was “blown away” by an apocalypse story by a fellow writer at the New School. He got to wondering about apocalypse literature, and discovered there was no recent anthology of them, and none that wasn’t mostly devoted to science fiction. He pitched the idea of an apocalypse anthology of short stories to Thunder Mouth Press and they said yes. The catch: they had a hole in their upcoming list and needed the book in six months.

Justin quit his day job and spent several months holed up, reading countless stories about the end of the word, old and recent, and commissioning a few brand new ones. Finally he emerged into the daylight with The Apocalypse Reader, which includes works by such authors as Edgar Allan Poe, H.G. Wells, Joyce Carol Oates, Neil Gaiman, Kelly Link, and that fellow student at the New School, Jared Hohl. Was it weird spending so much time with apocalypse on the mind? “Probably not as weird as it should be,” Justin says. “I had a great time.”

His two projects as a fan/editor now done, Justin is back at work on his own fiction, preparing a collection of short stories for publication. After the end of the world, what does one do? Create!

___________________________________________________________

To learn more about Justin and his books, visit: www.justindtaylor.net.  Check out McSweeeney's here: mcsweeneys24, and The Apocalypse Reader, here: bn.com.