What If This Somehow Came Together?

Cameron Engwall speaks with August Thompson about his debut novel, “Anyone’s Ghost.”

By Cameron EngwallNovember 19, 2025

• Fiction

SOMEWHERE AMID the pristine streets of the Seaport, right across the river from Brooklyn Bridge Park, is a bar in which every man wears a band T-shirt. There are a few Metallicas (one worn by my interviewee, the writer August Thompson) and a couple of Mastodons (one worn by myself). Bras hang from the ceiling tiles, which have been generously defaced by signatures and assorted scrawl. The cups of beer take two hands to hold, the well shots are poured into plastic salad dressing containers, and, sitting outside around a barrel on a temperate summer day, the diveyness—despite being aboveground​​—feels heavy-handed. Sideways glances between smokers make me wonder if this bar has any regulars or if it’s just a rare attraction amid the Wall Street bull, the NYSE.

Still, it’s the best option I could find for an interview: this has been an especially busy couple of weeks, during which both Thompson and I have been milling to and fro from readings and book release parties. Thompson’s own debut novel, Anyone’s Ghost, a year after its publication, is just out in paperback. The protagonist is a metalhead from New England whose tenuous love for his friend Jake haunts him even before Jake’s death (this is not a spoiler; the first line of the novel says as much). It’s a gutting debut: Thompson manages to distill the type of loneliness particular to unspoken queer love, in boyhood and beyond. The book is titled after a song by the National, whose lead singer Matt Berninger called the novel “a real heart-squeezer.” Upon finishing it, a friend texted me: “I’m still crying.”

As we chat, surrounded by band logos, Thompson reflects on what it’s like not only to meet your heroes but also to be placed beside them in artistic conversation. We talk through his taste (“boy books,” Roger Ebert, Elena Ferrante) and what he’s working on next.

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CAMERON ENGWALL: What was it like having an event with Matt Berninger in the top-floor Rare Book Room of the Strand? Pretty top-tier. Did it fulfill any dreams of yours?

AUGUST THOMPSON: Being at the Strand with Matt was, I’m not gonna lie, so fucking cool. I spent eight years in total at NYU, majoring in New York, majoring in bisexuality. I went to the Strand all the time. I thought about this on my way to the reading with Matt—I have vivid memories of leaving school, going to the Strand, not being able to buy anything because I was broke, listening to his music, and having these moments where I’d allow myself to imagine what it’d be like if everything worked out. I’m just so negative and scared all the time. So, I’d play a song, walk around the East Village, hit my favorite record store, and be like, What if this somehow came together?

So you’ve always wanted to do this.

I’ve been writing since I was 18, but when I was 20, I started to seriously consider it. I wanted to see if I could actually write a novel—I even finished one in undergrad. It wasn’t good, but it showed me I could do it.

Do you know how Matt came across Anyone’s Ghost?

My friend Amanda, who’s a writer at The New Yorker, knows Matt and got him the book. I was like, cool. It’s rad that he has it. He held no obligation, but he really loved it. I wrote him this very saccharine letter and then he came to a random reading of mine and surprised me.

Did he introduce himself beforehand?

Yeah, but it was awkward. I was in the bathroom and heard a voice I recognized—because I’ve listened to his music my whole life—saying, “Hey, I’m looking for August.” And I was like, oh god, no. This is terrible. But he just really loved the book.

It’s one thing when writers love your book—that’s so moving.

It got into cool people’s hands. Bret Easton Ellis loved it. That was so fucking sick. Pete Wentz [of the band Fall Out Boy] read it, which is amazing.

Shout-out Pete.

At least, he posted that he did.

There’s something about a nonnovelist loving your book that’s especially incredible.

As a writer, you’re almost trained to forget that the reader is a person. One kid, a high schooler, DMed me and said it helped him understand himself, which is even better than a review. But it’s easy to lose sight of that. Having those interactions, and having Matt view me as an actual artist, was surreal.

And he actually wants to engage with your work.

He wants to understand my approach to art. He’s such a nice guy; for him to do that was generous. But also, I try to remind myself that people are busy. They don’t do things they don’t want to do. It was really beautiful—it almost felt contrived, how full-circle it was.

What other art has shaped your taste?

I love books so much, but I never really read contemporary lit growing up.

Were you reading the canon?

Lord of the Rings, “boy books.” Huge Vonnegut head. I’m a huge Fitzgerald head too. I read a ton of fantasy—His Dark Materials. I love Philip Pullman.

When did you start reading other stuff? What was the shift?

I was at Gallatin [School of Individualized Study, at NYU], and we had to do a colloquium where you turn in a curriculum. I showed mine to Amanda and she said, “There’s like one woman on here.”

You didn’t even realize it.

Nope. I was an evil boy, for sure. It was a good moment; I realized I needed to be less of a shithead.

Would you say that marked a transition in your writing?

Reading the Neapolitan Quartet by Ferrante definitely did—those might be the best books ever written. She’s really good at being in-scene for a long time and letting things unfold. People say she’s not writing alone, but honestly, I don’t care; whoever’s behind it, that series was so instructive for me. I very much read for permission, and the Neapolitan Quartet gave me that. Same with Giovanni’s Room—I basically stole the beginning of my novel from that. Seeing people get away with things on the page is amazing. You read it and go: “Okay, I’ll never be that good, but maybe I can try something of my own.”

When you started writing at 18, was it all for school?

I took this great class in high school with a teacher I loved, Mr. Blatz. He taught Bible as Literature and Existentialist Literature.

You were writing creative pieces based on the Bible?

Mainly the existential material: Sartre, Camus.

Personal essays? Philosophy? Fiction?

The stuff we read was mainly fiction. And I would do these … You know, I was 17, so I read Notes from Underground and I was like, “I’ll write my version of that.” Which was as bad as it sounds.

Initially, I wanted to be a movie critic. Those were my favorite writers. Roger Ebert was my favorite writer. I cried when he died—he was so good. Ebert and Pauline Kael were huge stylistic influences for me.

Were you planning to go journalistic with it?

No, I wanted to be a film reviewer. I took this great movie criticism class with a mentor and friend of mine. Then I emailed David Ehrlich, the Indiewire critic, and he said, “If you can figure out any other way to make money—do it.”

When you were writing Anyone’s Ghost, were you picturing it as a movie?

No, I wasn’t. Though I did steal the structure from Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight.

Did you, though? I mean, it feels very different.

I know. But I thought that was such a good way to tell 20 years of a life without summarizing, which I was scared of. Stealing the structure for this book was essential—it’s what made it happen. I’d written so many plotless things before, but to write a successful plotless book, you have to be Virginia Woolf. You have to be that good.

So what did you do in the meantime then?

I was a music journalist for a while—like, EDM. Then I graduated and thought, Okay, I’m going to try fiction. I’d already written that one novel in undergrad, so I knew I could technically do it.

Full-length?

Yes. I found it recently, and—

Was it kind of sweet?

Most of it was quite bad. But there were moments where I was like, “This character sings.” Definitely no plot; working on that. And then it took 10 years for anything to happen. Took me three tries to get into an MFA. I’ve never been that student—“the one.”

Always a bridesmaid.

Exactly. I got very used to rejection. But I had the world’s worst work ethic for so long. I was so bad at working.

Despite writing a novel.

That might’ve been my one burst. Now I write a lot, and I write fast—which is very lucky. But mostly, I just like doing it. I get kind of bothered by writers who talk about writing like it’s this deeply arduous thing. I mean, you’re sitting in a room, right? The AC is on. I admire the struggle, sure, but for me it feels good to work. Even if most of what I write is trash, I still feel better when I’m doing it. Being productive feels good.

Have you written short stories?

I wrote my first one recently. It was rough.

[Here, a father and son in Pavement and Wilco shirts, respectively, ask to borrow a lighter. Thompson kindly obliges. “Leave that in,” he jokes.]

I love how you talked about paperbacks at the Strand: how that’s when the book finally feels real to the world. Hardcover is beautiful, but who can pay 30 bucks? You can’t put it in your pocket; you have to take the jacket off. It’s this precious object, but it’s not practical.

Getting a paperback feels lucky. Some books don’t even get one anymore. If a hardcover doesn’t sell well, publishers will just bail on the paperback. Which—great, a new thing I can worry about. Honestly, until I sold a book, I had probably bought five hardcovers in my life. There are very few authors I’ll buy on day one.

Who’s one of them?

Jennifer Egan.

Are you working on another book?

I wrote a novel that I viewed as this funny, fast-paced thing. It’s about two heroin addicts cleaning out a hoarded house, selling junk to buy drugs, and then robbing people. It was dark, apparently … I thought it was funny.

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August Thompson is from the middle of nowhere, New Hampshire, and has lived in Los Angeles, NYC, Berlin, and Madrid. His debut novel, Anyone’s Ghost (2024), was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and named a best book of the year by Amazon, Vogue, and Elle. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, and beyond.