
Michael Carroll has been a Peace Corps volunteer, a waiter, a janitor, a writer’s assistant and a college instructor. His work has appeared in Boulevard, Ontario Review, Southwest Review, The Yale Review, Open City, and Animal Shelter, as well as in such anthologies as The New Penguin Book of Gay Short Stories (edited by David Leavitt and Mark Mitchell). He collaborated with Edmund White on the suspense story Excavation for Joyce Carol Oates’ New Jersey Noir. His interviews with Ann Beattie and Wells Tower were included in the recently revamped Chattahoochee Review, where his first story was published, and where he is New York Editor. His first collection, Little Reef and Other Stories, is published by the University of Wisconsin Press.
What was it like growing up in northern Florida? What were you like as a child?
The first story in Little Reef is kind of…