
This month's interview comes from across the pond. I recently shot a few questions over to New Jersey based lit fiend, Paper and Ink Literary Zine contributor, and the driving force behind the artists and writers collective Twenty-Four Hours. He is the one, the only, the original 'Professor Zinester'...
First things first... What's your name, where do you come from and what do you do?

I got the fuck outta there in 1998, traveled around the Lower 48
(the contiguous United States to non-Alaskans) for 6 months on the
Greyhound bus. Slept in youth hostels in New Orleans and had my tarot
read… played pool with homeless junkie teens and drank beers down
at the Mississippi river…, slept in laundromats in Georgia and met
some new friends who took me around to see where R.E.M. made their
name… went to Graceland and Sun Studios in Memphis to see the
birthplace of rock and roll... when I was done doing the Kerouac
thing, I moved to California and took a newspaper internship in San
Francisco.
Eventually I moved
back to Anchorage and lived in my friend Eric’s giant walk-in
closet (!) while working at our alternative news-weekly, made another
mega-trip across the U.S. and also into Canada (now with Eric!)…
busked in New Orleans with some kids with bottle caps tied to their
shoes… moved to Japan with Eric to teach English for a year and a
half, moved to Austin, Texas to go to graduate school for creative
writing… didn’t get in… met my wife… moved to Brooklyn…
Been lots of places.
Now I live in New
Jersey, just outside of NYC, on the outskirts, in a little town
called Bayonne. You know the author George R.R. Martin, who wrote the
Game of Thrones books? He’s from Bayonne. Also, most of Blondie. I
am very proud to say that.
As far as what I do… I am an English professor and a middle school teacher. That’s what makes me money. I also write, and that sometimes makes me money. I also cook, hike, dick around with computer programming… I blog…
Have your travels been a big influence on your writing? As far as what I do… I am an English professor and a middle school teacher. That’s what makes me money. I also write, and that sometimes makes me money. I also cook, hike, dick around with computer programming… I blog…
Travel has been extremely influential. I had wanted to see the rest of the country since I was a kid. I had been to the Southwest, to Texas, when I was 7, to visit my grandpa… but I don’t really remember it, except for stories that my parents tell me. And we went on another family vacation to Hawaii when my sister and I were 14. But Hawaii is in the same boat as Alaska, really. It’s not exactly part of the United States. Aside from those two excursions, I had never seen any part of the country, ever. Except on television. I spent a summer, in 1996, in Portland, Oregon with my best friend at the time, Chris… who was on an exchange with the archaeology program with his college and Portland State, and I was his roommate… and that was the first time I had been to the Lower 48. It was a big deal for me. I finally moved down to The States for good (not really. Ha!) in 1999 when I was 26, when moved to California. What a total trip that was.
So
yeah, travel is a huge part of my life. Everyone who is born and
raised in Alaska will tell you a similar story. It’s in my DNA, I
think. But I will say this. I think I’m paraphrasing a better
writer, but I will say it anyway. A good writer can make a paragraph
about staring at the wall the most exciting thing you’ve ever read
in your life—and a terrible writer can make a trip to Tokyo the
most mundane thing ever. You know? I think I made that mistake early
on in my writing, and in my life. But I suppose that’s a common
rookie mistake.
Tell me a little about Twenty-Four Hours and how it came about.
Twenty-Four Hours
was a thing that I started in 1998, kinda sorta, after my first zine
Noise Noise Noise died. NNN was a punk zine I did for a few years
(Dec 94 to Oct 96) in Anchorage, with a bunch of friends. We mostly
focused on local music, and when our scene just died, you know,
beyond repair, so did the zine… We could have kept it going, I
guess, but I was so burned out. I was flunking out of college, and I
was mentally in a rough place. I just said fuck it, and walked away.
But you know how zines go… within a week or two, I came crawling
back! I had an idea to do a rockabilly and literary / art zine. I
toyed around with doing a horror theme or a campy Cramps-type theme,
but that didn’t last long. I named it Sinister Urge at first, then
Gorehound… but those never got past the cover stage. Then
it was Pink Elephants and Crawfish Houses… that was the literary
one. I had a play by a friend in there… and a play I wrote. It
almost got off the ground, but then I took that trip I told you
about, on the bus. So TFH languished on my hard drive for another
year and a half—until finally in December 2000, when I arrived in
Japan. I was bored and hadn’t started working yet… and I wanted
to write something… so I started writing a little memoir-type thing
about the gross smells coming from the room next to me, and how weird
I felt being one of 5 foreign people I knew (so far). I had been
there a week.
And that became
the opening essay for TFH #1. Pretty neat. We put out the first
issue late in the spring of 2001. Unreal that it’s still going in
2014. Unbelievable.
Why do you think zines are important?
Oh, dude. They are
crucial. Zines helped me find my confidence. I can’t even begin to
tell you how important they were to me. Growing up in Alaska…
seeing these photocopied little magazines? Incredible. I saw poems
and stories in zines like Whatever Works (an all-time favorite by
Susan Boren who now does Clip Tart in Austin) and I would treasure it
for weeks, months! So great. Or when a new issue of AK Verve came
out… exposing me to, I don’t know, legalization of marijuana? So
vital. Especially back then, in the early 90s. They were a life-line.
Alaska was much more conservative then, and there was no internet…
you have to have input to be able to form ideas different from the
mainstream… You cannot take anything for granted. This material is
put together by flesh and blood humans. They get tired, and they get
frustrated, and at some point they will quit, and this material will
vanish. I think people who read this stuff forget that absolutely no
one is getting paid.
I think zines are
very important. And I’ll extend this statement to blogs and
independent websites as well. It’s all part of the same independent
publishing hive.
What has been your proudest moment as a writer?
Hmm, that’s
tough… I have like…little proud moments, like when I work out a
great line or word… So here’s “most satisfied”:
I would say the
most satisfied I’ve been was when I realized that the writing
itself is always going to be enough, rather than writing just to get
published.
The other thing
that made me happy was the realization that writing didn’t have to
be a substitute for living. It took a lot of weight off my shoulders.
It made it a lot more fun, and paradoxically, I got a lot better.
What was the first book to ever blow your mind?

What was the last book to blow your mind?

What is your favourite genre of music?
Depends on the
day, really. These days I’m back into 70s and 80s punk rock. Sex
Pistols, Ramones, Damned, Clash, Buzzcocks, and the American stuff
like Social Distortion, The Germs, Rancid, Bad Religion… That’s
my musical home. That and old blues and folk. Muddy Waters, Lonnie
Johnson, RL Burnside, Skip James, Lightening Hopkins. I love it. Can’t get enough. I also have a big soft spot for heavy metal. The
good stuff. You know, Motorhead, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden,
Metallica… New Wave of British Heavy Metal stuff. I also really
like country and western from the 30s up until now. I love it all.
Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, Hank Jr,
Hank Williams the 3rd,
Billy Joe Shaver. There’s all sorts of stuff… I love hip-hop, old and new… I’m getting into Jay Z a lot. I dismissed him for a
while, but he’s fucking great, man. Really good. Q Tip, Talib Kweli… All the late 80s early 90s stuff,
obviously… Biz, Beasties, Nas…
Basically I love
music that moves me emotionally. Music that you know was created by
real people, for the purpose of communicating a message about
something—not just to sell you an image or a product. I have to
feel a connection there.
That is quite an eclectic list! If you had to distil in even further and listen to only three albums for the rest of your life, what would they be?
Damn. 1) Rocket to
Russia- by The Ramones 2) The White Album- by The Beatles 3) At San
Quentin- by Johnny Cash
What is your drink of choice?
coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee
coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee
coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee
coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee
coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee
coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee
coffeecoffeecoffeecoffee!!!
Which three
famous people, dead or alive, would you like to have dinner with?
Johnny Cash, Joey
Ramone, and Joe Strummer… and we would all write a song together
afterwards and record it. Hell yes.
What is your favourite movie? 
If you could
eradicate one thing from "modern life" what would it be?
Selfies.
I was hoping
you'd say Kindles, but I'll accept selfies. Haha. What do you think the future holds for the printed word?
The word is going
wherever it wants to. Haha! It may not be printed in ink, but the
word is a surprisingly malleable thing. In 1995, when I was taking
HTML classes in my University of Alaska college journalism program…
we were debating what would happen to newspapers and magazines… the
general consensus (in our classes anyway) was that there would be a
hybrid environment of part e-media and part print media… and that’s
what has happened. Sort of. I guess print media has become more
“boutiquey”.
I think the most
successful writers and publishers are going to be the ones that can
harness THE WORD and find the best uses for it in both formats (and
in hybrid ways!)
And finally, what does the future hold for Joshua Medsker?
I have a bunch of neat projects going on! More Anonymous Chapbooks coming out with the Twenty-Four Hours press… Still working on the At Home found materials art book with my poet friend Eryk Wenziak from Connecticut… I just need to find time to breathe! Ha! This new teaching job, teaching the 6th and 7th graders is running me ragged… Eek. Lotsa stuff going on, man! Check out the TFH website for updates! And you can read my Facebook page for updates on new work for me!
Thank you for taking the time to answer these questions, Josh, much appreciated! I have a bunch of neat projects going on! More Anonymous Chapbooks coming out with the Twenty-Four Hours press… Still working on the At Home found materials art book with my poet friend Eryk Wenziak from Connecticut… I just need to find time to breathe! Ha! This new teaching job, teaching the 6th and 7th graders is running me ragged… Eek. Lotsa stuff going on, man! Check out the TFH website for updates! And you can read my Facebook page for updates on new work for me!
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