A while back, Jeff Bryant asked me who I consider to be an underrated writer for a list he was compiling over at Syntax of Things. Alas, I am slow as molasses, so I sent my response in too late, but here’s what I would’ve said, had I been more timely:

Not exactly underrated, here is a writer who has been– lately –underread: Mary Robison is a short story writer whose gift for the quick sentence and dead-on characterization is astounding. In some ways, Robison strikes me as a sort of literary equivalent to Lucinda Williams. She’s been a professor at the University of Southern Mississippi for ages, along with the illustrious Barthelme boys, Frederick and Steven. In the late 70s, Robison began publishing stories in The New Yorker, which went on to feature much of her fiction. A compilation of stories from three previous out-of-print collections, Tell Me: 30 Stories,was released by Counterpoint in 2002, following quickly on the heels of Why Did I Ever, which was a New York Times Notable Book of 2001 and the winner of the LA Times Book Prize. Robison’s debut collection, Days, made its appearance way back in 1977, followed by the novel Oh! (you may have seen the on-screen version, Twister–no, not the one with Helen Hunt–the 1990 flick whose cast includes Crispin Glover, Tim Robbins, William S. Burroughs, and Harry Dean Stanton), and, in 1983, the story collection An Amateur’s Guide to the Night. That’s not an exhaustive list of her books, but it’s pretty close.

You can read her essay, The Weather in the Streets, online at The New Yorker.

And here’s a good interview from the LA Weekly, 2002.