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Sloan and Kolongowski interview Tom Bissell, writer and former editor of Red Cedar Review and a Fellow at the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, about his works: books, essays, fiction, journalism. Bissell won the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters for his short story collection God Lives in St. Petersburg, and spent most of 2007 living in Rome. His first book, Chasing the Sea, was recently selected (August 2007) by Conde Nast Traveler as one of the 86 best travel books of all time.

Tom Bissell isn’t quite sure what to call himself. Is he a fiction writer, a journalist, a cultural critic, a video game writer? He’s all of these things and, by own his admission, none of them. When it comes to form, Bissell says, “I view myself as completely homeless. I don’t have one, I don’t want one.”Nevertheless, it’s hard not to see his new story collection, Creative Types (Pantheon, Dec.), as something of a return. In 2005, after his nonfiction book Chasing the Sea, Bissell published the collection God Lives in St. Petersburg, as auspicious a fiction debut as any. Its title story won a Pushcart Prize, and two others spawned film adaptations, including one directed by Werner Herzog. Pankaj Mishra, lauding the book in the New York Times, said the “short story seems the right form for him.”

Of course, you can't do \"anything\" in Grand Theft Auto. All games have boundaries. In GTA you can't befriend a prostitute. Or take up farming. Or go into a library, take a book from the shelf, and start to read it. No, for the latter pleasure you'd have to play Myst.

Tom Bissell is a seasoned journalist and travel writer, as well as an accomplished author of fiction. A profile of Bissell is presented.

\"While growing up, I had associated nearly everything about my father with the Marine Corps and Vietnam,\" he writes. \"This strange, lost war, simultaneously real and unimaginable, forced [the children of veterans] to confront the past before we had any idea of what the past really was. The war made us think theoretically long before we had the vocabulary to do so. Despite its remoteness, the war's aftereffects were inescapably intimate. At every meal Vietnam sat down, invisibly, with our families.\"

Pakistan: 7-9 p.m. Tuesday, May 5, Indian Trails Public Library District, 355 S. Schoenbeck Road, Wheeling. In honor of the 50th Anniversary and One Book Three Communities World traveler, Bill Helmuth will discuss Pakistan through pictures, culture and memorable impressions. Registration required; call (847) 459-4100 or visit www.indiantrailslibrary.org. Adult Book Discussions: 10 a.m. Saturdays, May 9 and June 13, Lake Villa District Library, 1001 E. Grand Ave., Lake Villa. Discuss \"Fugitive Pieces\" by Anne Michaels on May 9, and \"Water for Elephants\" by Sara Gruen on June 13. To register, call (847) 356-7711 or visit lvdl.org. Internet for Beginners: 1 p.m. Wednesday, May 13, Lake Villa District Library, 1001 E. Grand Ave., Lake Villa. A lesson on basic Internet searching. To register, call (847) 356-7711 or visit lvdl.org. Writers Support Group: 6:30-8:45 p.m. Wednesday, May 13, Vernon Area Public Library District, 300 Olde Half Day Road, Lincolnshire. An opportunity for published or unpublished authors to critique each others work and share ideas and techniques. Registration is not required. Call (847) 634-3650 or visit vapld.info.

[Tom Bissell] has a way of identifying coddled westerners' worst fears and bringing them to life. In the first (and best) story, \"Death Defiers\", a British journalist shivers with malarial fever outside Kunduz while fighter planes scream overhead. His phone won't work; the only person he can ask for help is a local warlord. And that's before things take a turn for the worse. In another tale, an American researcher is kidnapped by the KGB on a visit to a toxic seabed while her colleagues go down with food poisoning. Other people are shot, robbed, pushed down manholes. Yet Bissell is not judgmental, which gives his stories a Chekhovian transcendence, a saving lightness.

In among the despair are some chillingly stylish moments. One of Donk's photographs shows a woman who has been shot. A bit of her brain shimmers in the snow beside her like \"some glistening red fruit that had been spooned on to a bed of sugar''. [Tom Bissell] has a disconcerting knack of finding beauty within horror. Bissell draws on the time he spent in central Asia, recorded in his non-fictional account, Chasing the Sea. But the collection has a resonance beyond the specifics of life away from home. Bissell's weightier concern is the interface between America and the rest of the world. As his characters variously come a cropper, the implied critique of US foreign policy becomes ever sharper.

  DUDLEY Kingswinford celebrated their first league win of the season in Midlands One after they overcame visitors Newport in a hard-fought game. Tight-head prop John Fallon was Dudley's man-of-the-match and was involved in the move which led to the first penalty of the game on Newport's 22-metre line. [Tom Bissell] kicked a magnificent penalty from the Newport 10-metre line on 36 minutes and added another just before half time. In between, the visitors' flyhalf missed a drop-goal attempt.