Dog on Fire

Make It Stop

Jim Ruland is the author of the novel Forest of Fortune (2014) and the short story collection Big Lonesome (2005). He has written a book about the punk band Bad Religion, Do What You Want (2020), and co-authored Keith Morris’s memoir My Damage: The Story of a Punk Rock Survivor (2016). Ruland has been writing for punk zines such as Flipside and Razorcake for more than 25 years, and his work has received awards from Reader’s Digest and the National Endowment for the Arts. He is curator of the Southern California–based reading series Vermin on the Mount, now in its 15th year. His most recent book, Make It Stop, was published in April 2023.

Jim Ruland

New York/Victoria writer Terese Svoboda has a body of work that includes poetry, novels, memoirs, translation, biography, and over 100 published short stories. Black Glasses Like Clark Kent (2008) is a memoir of her uncle’s chilling experience as a military policeman in occupied Japan, and Weapons Grade (2009) uses poetry to interrogate the power of occupation, both political and personal. Svoboda’s 2011 novel, Bohemian Girl, has been called “a cross between True Grit and Huckleberry Finn.” She has also written the biography Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet (2016). Her eighth novel, Dog on Fire, was published in 2023.

Terese Svoboda

Imaginative Rebels: A Conversation Between Terese Svoboda and Jim Ruland

"Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities. Truth isn't." — Mark Twain

Fiction

"The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter, eh?" — Dashiell Hammett

Noir

The Too Small House: Lola Ridge and I

"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry." — John Cage

Poetry

New York/Victoria writer Terese Svoboda has a body of work that includes poetry, novels, memoirs, translation, biography, and over 100 published short stories. Black Glasses Like Clark Kent (2008) is a memoir of her uncle’s chilling experience as a military policeman in occupied Japan, and Weapons Grade (2009) uses poetry to interrogate the power of occupation, both political and personal. Svoboda’s 2011 novel, Bohemian Girl, has been called “a cross between True Grit and Huckleberry Finn.” She has also written the biography Anything That Burns You: A Portrait of Lola Ridge, Radical Poet (2016). Her eighth novel, Dog on Fire, was published in 2023.