This week we are celebrating Milkweed Editions’ publication of Fiction on a Stick, an anthology of stories by Minnesota writers, by featuring some of the contributors. Today we’ve got John Reimringer, who has worked as a newspaper editor and college instructor. Reimringer is the recipient of two Minnesota State Arts Board grants, he has published stories in Carolina Quarterly, Colorado Review, Louisiana Literature, and Gulf Stream Magazine. He and his wife, the poet Katrina Vandenberg, live in St. Paul, where his great-grandfather was married in Assumption Church in 1880 and died in a drunken fall from a sleigh at the second-ever Winter Carnival in 1887. Mr. Reimringer loves St. Paul, but hasn’t gone to the Winter Carnival.

What book(s) are you currently reading?
The Night Birds by Thomas Maltman. It’s about the Dakota Sioux uprising in Minnesota in 1862 and its fallout, and Tom is my colleague at Normandale and a beautiful beautiful writer.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character? Who?
Sabina in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. But I got the crush on her in the movie version, so does that count? editor’s note: We’ll let it count. Just this once

If your favorite author came to Minnesota, who would it be and what bar would you take him/her to?
The late Andre Dubus. If he came all that way, I’d take him to Billy’s Victorian for a Grain Belt.

What was your first favorite book?
Taash and the Jesters. About an orphan boy and witches. And jesters.

Let’s say Fahrenheit 451 comes to life, which book would you become in order to save it from annihilation?
Hemingway’s In Our Time. His first book of short stories. The absolutely essential work by that great writer.

What is one book you haven’t read but want to read before you die?
All of Shakespeare.