{"id":3310,"date":"2026-05-22T10:03:39","date_gmt":"2026-05-22T14:03:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/?p=3310"},"modified":"2026-05-22T10:12:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-22T14:12:38","slug":"interview-with-ryan-habermeyer-by-fedor-lemdyasov-kristine-roy-and-cameron-scott","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/?p=3310","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Ryan Habermeyer by Fedor Lemdyasov, Kristine Roy, and Cameron Scott"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today, <\/em>hex literary speaks with Ryan Habermeyer<\/a>, a Maryland-based author.\u00a0A selection of his work, \u201cA Necronautical Field Guide to Utah,\u201d<\/a> appeared in <\/em>hex this spring.\u00a0Ryan is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Salisbury University who has previously published the short story collections <\/em>Salt Folk and The Science of Lost Futures. His most recent work and debut novel, <\/em>Necronauts<\/a>, was released this March. <\/em>Necronauts is written in the form of 95 obituaries and follows the story of a young boy in Calypsee, Utah, with a cosmonaut helmet grafted to his head. The boy\u2019s obsession with old campy sci-fi films leads him to believe he’s an alien, and he undertakes a quixotic quest to return to the stars.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

hex<\/em>: Now that Ne<\/strong><\/em>cronauts<\/em><\/strong> has been out for a few months, what has the early response looked like?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ryan Habermeyer (RH): Hard to say, really. I\u2019m going to disappoint you a little, unfortunately, because I make it a habit not to read reviews or get caught up in the buzz of book releases. I know they exist, but I don\u2019t want to know they exist. I don\u2019t think anything good can come from a writer reading reviews. Either you get that dopamine hit from a laudatory review, or you get annoyed and frustrated by a negative review. Both will warp your perspective going forward. Better to just ignore them entirely. Writing is hard enough and I already have to get out of my own head because I frequently get delusional with thoughts that either I\u2019m brilliant or a fool. That said, I\u2019ve been fortunate to do a mini-book-tour of sorts and travel to quite a few places reading from the book and my feeling is most people come away curious and enticed. The book is unusual. People are intrigued by the obituary style; they\u2019re intrigued by the photographs; they\u2019re intrigued by the wild story premise; they\u2019re intrigued by the book being about Utah and Mormons. The book will find its audience eventually. If it were up to me, I would prefer it remain relatively anonymous and acquire an underground literary cult following. Forget literary fame when you\u2019re alive\u2014cult icon when you\u2019re dead is much better.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hex<\/em>: We’ve seen you mention in previous interviews that Necronauts<\/em> began in your MFA program workshop and that a large-scale rewrite took place after a period of writer\u2019s block.\u00a0What ideas did the rewrite introduce?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RH: That is a pretty accurate timeline. First draft in 2007. What a disaster. But all first drafts are. It was my first real attempt at long-form fiction, a novella about this family living in a boarding house at the edge of nowhere. And all these visitors and travelers just drop by and weird shenanigans ensue. A terrible mess of a book. The cosmonaut boy was just one of those random visitors and he appeared for three or four pages. At the suggestion of a professor, that was the only thing I kept from the early draft. The other 75+ pages went to the dustbin. Then fifteen years of on-again, off-again writing and never quite figuring out how to make the book work. There were lots of iterations of the book, but the core story always remained the same: boy with cosmonaut helmet grafted to his head watches too many campy 50s sci-fi movies and, believing he is an alien, tries to launch himself into outer space. That was always the essential story. How<\/em> I told it was the struggle. That\u2019s what I could never get right. Then a friend\u2019s death inspired a creative burst of energy. Six months of intense, fever dream writing and travels to Utah on a kind of reconnaissance mission to capture the vibe for the book. That\u2019s when I made the shift to the obituary style which allowed me to balance the cosmonaut boy\u2019s story within the framework of a panoramic overview of this small town. Once I understood obituaries were the stylistic vehicle and that everything was happening in Utah things fell into place rather quickly. But those two big leaps took a while to figure out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hex<\/em>: Why did you make the choice to structure the beginning of the novel as a fictional editor\u2019s note? Some of us typically skip the editor\u2019s note\u2014do you think readers who skip the editor\u2019s note are missing an important part of the story?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RH: We live in strange times where the line between facts and fictions is pretty thin. I don\u2019t think we\u2019re too special in that regard\u2014reality has always been contested socially and politically, only now there are many more voices arguing over it than in the past and the intensity is amplified. As a writer, as an academic, I\u2019m interested in that space between fact and fiction\u2014what we call folklore. The realm of unofficial communication: half-truths, exaggerations, rumors, gossip, embellishments, falsehoods, and conspiracies. That\u2019s my creative territory. All my books explore folklore in one way or another. The Editor\u2019s Note for Necronauts<\/em> was just one way of doing that; the obituaries do it too. Fiction dressed up as nonfiction. Not trying to trick the reader with that sleight of hand but to provoke the reader to be more cautious about what is and isn\u2019t trustworthy in the context of the book. I was hoping to make the reader question what is true and what is false; what happens when you float in the space between fact and fantasy? Because the book is exploring the very notion of belief\u2014how much faith is a good thing? Can too much faith bring undesirable consequences? These are questions I\u2019m interested in. Not sure I answer them in the book, as I\u2019m reluctant to pontificate in my writing, but I\u2019m certainly trying to explore this murky, troubling space between what is real and what is imaginary. So, yes, the Editor\u2019s Note is absolutely integral. It may seem irrelevant\u2014because like you, most people don\u2019t bother with these kinds of prefaces\u2014but there are a lot of important details and contextualizing happening in that intro. Not least of which is what you mention in your question: the fact that the Editor\u2019s Note frames the book as a story of fathers and sons. Sure, you\u2019ll pick that up when reading the rest of the book (hopefully), but it\u2019s there in the very beginning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hex<\/em>: Were your obituaries created in response to certain photographs you found, or did you go looking for fitting pictures to accompany particular obituaries?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RH: Yes, I do collect vintage photographs. Something of an obsession of mine. And I get asked this question quite a bit about what came first, the stories or the photos. And the answer is yes and yes. Sometimes the obituary came first and I went looking for a photo that would either compliment or subtly undermine the text. Other times, the photo came first and it served as inspiration to the text. But I was never looking for photos to just substantiate the text. With photo narratives, I believe there has to be a tension between word and image. The image can\u2019t just be proof of the text; the image has to do some kind of aesthetic work. Otherwise, what\u2019s the point if the image is only supplementary? That\u2019s journalism, not fiction. Images tell stories too. But the story an image tells doesn\u2019t necessarily mean it is corroborated by the text. You\u2019ve got to be a careful reader and think about when are the words lying to you, and when is the image pulling the wool over your eyes? Like I was saying before: we live in strange times where facts and fiction are perpetually blurred. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The most difficult images were the cosmonaut boy. I had to doctor those (with Wite-Out) because it\u2019s not like there is a vast repository of kids with space helmets in vintage photographs. Plus, I was really reluctant about whether to even include those photos. It\u2019s like the monster in a horror film\u2014once you show it, it loses potency. You don\u2019t get to imagine it anymore. When it lives solely in your imagination it feels more alive. But when you show it? It becomes this tangible, disappointing thing. But then I found these double exposure prints and other \u201cbotched\u201d images and thought it would be interesting to use those for the cosmonaut boy. If you listen to his story in the book\u2014and because he \u201ctalks\u201d with a kind of makeshift sign language nobody does listen to or understand him\u2014you\u2019ll see there\u2019s a reason why I put so many double exposure prints of the cosmonaut boy. It\u2019s not haphazard. There\u2019s an intentionality there. But it probably requires a double-take. You might not catch it on a first passing. It\u2019s a book that rewards re-reading to sort of piece together the puzzle of this boy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hex<\/em>: There is prevalent use and abuse of drugs throughout Necronauts<\/em>. Why did you choose to include these elements?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RH: It\u2019s something of a shortcut. I\u2019m not really interested in drugs and drug abuse so much as the concept of addiction. I foreground the drug use because when we think of addiction we typically only ever think of illicit drugs. It\u2019s the easiest thing to notice. But addiction is much more expansive, much more complex, much messier. It\u2019s not difficult for readers to notice the drug addictions, but I hope careful readers think about the other kinds of addiction within the book. Because I\u2019m exploring quite a few. So many of the people in these obituaries are addicts of one kind or another, each in a small and subtle way. And then there\u2019s a line in the book, something to the effect of, \u201cWe all got to worship something.\u201d Worship. Addiction. Is there any difference? The relationship between those words was on my mind while writing and rewriting the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hex<\/em>: You previously studied microbiology and zoology for the first three years of your undergraduate career before switching to literature. As STEM students, we are curious to know whether this background has impacted your identity as a writer.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RH: I love this question because in another life I\u2019m not a writer at all but a zoologist studying jellyfish and there\u2019s part of me that wishes that was the life I chose. I\u2019m fascinated by the natural world. Maybe that\u2019s why I feel such an affinity for writing about the desert. I grew up just outside of L.A. and lived close to the beach, but then also took frequent trips to the Mojave desert, then summers in Lake Tahoe and all over Utah. Those landscapes shaped me. And Necronauts<\/em> is obviously very rooted in the desert of the American Southwest, and I spent a lot of time evoking it on the page, but so was my previous short story collection, Salk Folk<\/em>, which are stories about Utah\u2019s past, present, and sideways future. So, I\u2019ve been writing about the desert seriously for the last ten years. But I think the way my (failed?) scientific background manifests in my writing the most is with my creative nonfiction. I\u2019ve written essays about jellyfish, anthropomorphic taxidermy, the Truckee River, tardigrades, cloudberries, blue whales in the Great Salt Lake, embryology, orcas, and uranium glass. I often bounce back and forth between fiction and nonfiction because it works different creative parts of my brain, and I think at some point I\u2019ll put together a collection of essays exploring the strange, wondrous ecology of Utah. But I definitely wouldn\u2019t be the writer I am without those undergrad years of close, scientific study.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hex<\/em>: You have previously described yourself as an ex-Mormon. What is an aspect of Mormon culture that you have taken with you, or has that had a significant impact on your writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RH: Well, this is a little tricky. I do and I don\u2019t think of myself as ex-Mormon. I recently wrote a little article for the Association for Mormon Letters about how I will always be a relapsing Mormon. For someone like me who was not only born and raised in the faith but comes from a multigenerational Mormon family going back five or six generations\u2014all the way back to the origins of the faith in early 19th<\/sup> century America and even ancestors who crossed the plains with Brigham Young and helped colonize the American West\u2014I\u2019m not sure I can ever be \u201cex-\u201d or \u201cpost-\u201d Mormon. You can\u2019t so easily amputate that genealogy from yourself. Too much of Mormon history and culture is ingrained in me. I\u2019m no anthropologist, but I think of Mormonism as an ethnicity. There\u2019s a distinct tradition of music, food, clothing, social norms and mores, and even language\/verbiage to Mormonism. It\u2019s all rattling inside my head still. I\u2019ll never exorcise it fully. Maybe mute some parts of it, but it will always be with me. In the same way that there are cultural Jews who were born and raised Jewish but do not practice the faith, I too am a non-practicing Mormon saddled with traditions, beliefs, and ideas I can\u2019t quite escape. And that\u2019s okay. The biggest one, and the one that shapes my writing, is Mormon folklore. Mormonism has a rich and fascinating folkloric tradition. Whales in the Great Salt Lake, magic underwear, secret angelic handshakes, Bigfoot, interplanetary colonization. The list goes on and on. It\u2019s probably safe to say that Mormon folklore is what kickstarted my own imagination. I grew up hearing all sorts of wild stories that blurred together facts and fiction. (I\u2019m sensing a pattern). Spinning yarns is baked into the culture. Mormonism gave me, for better and worse, a very magical worldview but also an existentially absurdist one. I use those philosophical prisms to see and interact and understand the world, and they\u2019re omnipresent with me when I write.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hex<\/em>: You\u2019ve mentioned living in several different countries, as well as all over the United States. How have these experiences with travel influenced your writing?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RH: I have had a rather nomadic life. I\u2019m quite fortunate in that regard. It was Mark Twain who said, \u201cTravel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,\u201d and he\u2019s right. It\u2019s good to step outside your comfort zone. It\u2019s good to fumble your way through another country hardly speaking the language, relying on the generosity of strangers, seeing weird things that give you pause, feeling lost and confused and a little uncertain. That\u2019s all part of traveling. Which is to say, if you\u2019re traveling the right way then you\u2019re feeling uncomfortable. And that\u2019s good for your body, mind, and soul. We live in an age of supreme convenience. The whole idea of America now seems to be this nightmarish corporate daycare where you never have to experience anything disquieting and you can exist in a nice, safe bubble where drones bring you coffee, and your music is curated just for you, and your movies stream on-demand, and the algorithms on your social media let you live in an echo chamber. Travel blows all that up. It forces you to step outside yourself and become another person. Travel forces me to think differently, see differently, feel differently. And that\u2019s vital for a writer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hex<\/em>: The characters in Necronauts<\/em>, aside from the cosmonaut boy, are referred to solely by their careers. Was this a commentary on the relationship between work and identity?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RH: I\u2019m glad you noticed this! Originally, when I started writing the obituaries all the characters in the book were Habermeyers. It was a pseudo-genealogical book. Like a catalog of all my deceased ancestors. I imagined interrogating my family history so I used real names and even some real family oral histories. But then I ran out of real ancestors and had to make things up, and that was fun and interesting, but I realized what I was doing felt incredibly narcissistic. Who cares about all my dead relatives? Why is this so focused on me<\/em>? I worried that if all the emphasis was on my ancestral dead then the cosmonaut boy\u2019s story might get lost in the mix. Like maybe the reader would get too distracted by the nonfiction and forget the fiction. So, I had to simplify things and didn\u2019t want to strain the reader with so many character names to remember, especially if the characters are only making a single appearance. It made sense to refer to characters via their occupations. That\u2019s something you read in every obituary. So-and-so was a painter, a doctor, a firefighter, a therapist. And so on. So much of our lives are defined by work. Even in death we can\u2019t escape it. I don\u2019t know how much of an explicit commentary I\u2019m making on labor and identity, because like I said I\u2019m loath to pontificate\u2014unless they\u2019re false sermons, I do like those\u2014but I think the book is wrestling with a feature of small-town, secluded life where friends and neighbors are defined by the labor they perform on behalf of the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

hex<\/em>: Your novel is written in a very unique structure. Are there any other authors you\u2019re excited about who are pushing the boundaries of the novel form?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RH: Lots and lots. I tend to read a lot of Eastern European writers. I think in some other life I was born there. The first who comes to mind is Olga Tokarczuk, a Polish writer who has written a few \u201cconstellation\u201d novels, as she refers to them. Plotless novels composed of fragmented consciousness, essayistic musings, fictional vignettes, and miscellaneous anecdotes. Flights<\/em> and House of Day, House of Night<\/em> are two of my favorite recent books. L\u00e1szl\u00f3 Krasznahorkai is in vogue now because he just won the Nobel Prize, but I\u2019ve been reading him for twenty years. The Melancholy of Resistance<\/em> is a great book. He writes these long, dense, complicated, surreal, single-sentence novels that are very difficult but marvelous nonetheless. Viktor Pelevin is fantastic. Justin Torres\u2019s Blackouts<\/em> is incredible. I love Lydia Davis and think Lance Olsen has quietly been writing some of the weirdest books in recent memory. I love Carmen Maria Machado\u2019s experimental short fiction and think In the Dream House<\/em> is a fascinating memoir that blows up the genre. Then there\u2019s the old guard of experimental writers who continue to inspire me: W. G. Sebald, Italo Calvino, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Bernhard, and Fernando Pessoa. I could go on, but I won\u2019t.\u00a0\ud83c\udf44<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, hex literary speaks with Ryan Habermeyer, a Maryland-based author.\u00a0A selection of his work, \u201cA Necronautical Field Guide to Utah,\u201d appeared in hex this spring.\u00a0Ryan […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3310"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3325,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3310\/revisions\/3325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hexliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}