Telling Secrets: The Millions Interviews Steve Almond
Although he’d worked as a journalist for several years before attending graduate school for fiction writing, Steve Almond arrived definitively on the literary scene in 2002 when his smart and memorable short story collection My Life in Heavy Metal was published. It was his second book, Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America, however, that truly launched him as a writerly force when it became a national bestseller in 2004. Candyfreak is a funny, candid, well-researched memoir/journalistic nonfiction hybrid that offers vivid glimpses of Almond’s formative years in northern California, as well as dispatches from his travels to several independently owned candy companies across the United States. Almond’s voice is alternately wry and affable, confiding and melancholic. He’s like the droll and irreverent older cousin you wish you saw more often, the one who can be counted on for wise, uncondescending advice.
Along with Candyfreak, Almond has published three story collections; a novel coauthored with Julianna Baggott, Which Brings Me to You; and six other works of nonfiction—among them, Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto and Bad Stories: What the Hell Just Happened to Our Country. He also cohosts Dear Sugars with Cheryl Strayed, a popular advice podcast produced by the New York Times.
Despite what could reasonably be considered a polymathic writerly aptitude, novels have long been Almond’s first love, and, as he notes below, he, which will be published this month by Zando Projects, a new publishing house founded by ’s editor . Stern has also edited other mega-selling books, among them, and .
