Our fiction editor for May and June is Kamala Puligandla. Remember her gorgeous story “My Friend Jesus” from issue 1? Kamala lives in Oakland, CA and writes short essays, fiction and musings on food. She is a savvy office manager by day and by night, makes friends at bars using only the power of her hair. Kamala received her MFA from UC Riverside, where she began and is still working on a novel based on her younger, hotter, funner days. Find her at: thatkamala.wordpress.com

Why be an editor for The James Franco Review?

I like the idea of editing for a publication that isn’t wedded to one style and is truly open to variation. There’s something fun and unexpected about picking work that won’t necessarily be paired with its close relatives.

What have you read lately that’s excited you?

On a daily basis, I’m excited by the website Serious Eats. There’s always a tip about how to improve my eating life and I love to consider how food style can transfer to writing style.

I fell all over myself about Miranda July’s The First Bad Man and made all my friends read it. I’m always looking for new approaches to the novel and the way time and character function in this book, made me feel so much in a seemingly effortless manner.

I also just started Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, which I was originally not too excited about. I don’t go for stories about old people in Britain. But then I heard him talk about how he wanted to develop a landscape that was particularly suited to examine the role of memory at both a personal and national level, and that seemed worth a read. Now I’m hypnotized, as always, by the way he uses language and of course, by the tantalizing mystery of what’s yet to be remembered. I was unwise to doubt.

No more waiting– send Kamala your fiction.