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8/22: It’s not Covid, and there was not sexual abuse: new story at n+1: “Dying but It’s Something Else”
2/22: A story about a nurse home employee who refuses to get vaccinated, at n+1 : “Every Soul Ever.”
2/22: Remembering the brilliant and beautiful Anthony Veasna So with others at n+1.
11/20: A story about a gen X gay white supremacist, a pair of gen Z social media would-be stars, and bad consequences, at n+1: “The Banana Bunch Challenge.”
10/7/20: Stephen and Katie Miller COVID story at n+1: “White Cough Genocide: October 6, 2020.”
10/5/20: Trump and Melania COVID story at n+1: “It’s German for ‘The Trump, The’: Oct 3-4, 2020.”
3/12/20: Interview w/Abraham Riesman about Trump Sky Alpha parts 1 and 2.
12/11/19: Trump Sky Alpha makes Dennis Cooper’s year-end list.
9/22/19: Brooklyn Book Fest panel with Ted Chiang and N.K. Jemisin.
3/8/19: “Ever read a crazy book standing up, yelping in horror, transfixed by the way it's both insane and all too real? Mark Doten’s new novel, Trump Sky Alpha, might give you this feeling, imagining as it does one logical but dark conclusion to the current administration... [Doten] is one of our keenest and most inventive prose writers working today.”
—Nathan Deuel, The Los Angeles Times
3/8/19: “[Doten] channels the brusqueness of the president's Twitter feed into a vivid literary depiction. And this is indeed a novel where Twitter personas don't just matter: They are, in fact, at the heart of this heady work's thematic concerns. . . . Fundamentally, this is a long and thrilling meditation on information and disinformation, on personas and the elusiveness of truth.”—Tobias Carroll, The Star Tribune
3/8/19: “Trump Sky Alpha is a funny book and a sad one, a bright one and a dark one, a distant sci-fi dystopia and a ripped-from-the-headlines tragedy. . . . The book acts both as a novel and as a searching, tortured position paper on the use of media, message and, especially, satire in our time.”—Ben Greenman, The New York Times Book Review
3/7/19: Review at The Nation by Lisa Borst: “Doten [is] a virtuosic satirist.... This is bracingly good satire, so attentive to the subtleties of its object of caricature that it feels almost documentary.”
2/26/19: Dennis Cooper features Trump Sky at DC’s.
2/19/19: Review at The Washington Post by Melissa Holbrook Pierson: “[Doten] launches Trump Sky Alpha at the bull's eye of reality with such velocity that it bursts through the other side. This is speculative fiction as burning ring of fire. . . . Perversely satisfying, this tour de force of vicious satire is cathartic. . . . Dizzy with metaphor, Trump Sky Alpha is a cautionary tale for a time when we have become inured to flashing yellow all around."
2/18/19: Review at Open Letters Review by Tom LeClair: “[Trump Sky Alpha is] a novel that dares to be simultaneously OCD topical and rigorously inventive and left-field profound and wholly accessible. . . . Trump Sky Alpha will be a much-appreciated and long-remembered introduction to a young novelist worthy of comparison to those twentieth-century old masters of American politics and literary forms.”
2/18/19: Interview with Jacob Silverman at Longreads: “Mark Doten is a deranged seer, a mad scribe mapping the end of the world.”
2/5/19: "There were only a few moments left for the internet..." An excerpt from Trump Sky Alpha at Guernica.
Jan: Booklist reviews Trump Sky Alpha: “[An] unconventional and darkly satirical mix of memes, Twitter jokes, Q&As, and tightly written stream-of-consciousness passages. . . . Doten's speculative tale is very strange and chilling, subversive and surreal, and disturbingly relevant.”
Jan : Library Journal reviews Trump Sky Alpha: “This macabre vision of a future America presents a frighteningly real scenario and brings into focus the pervasive yet inane power of politicians and the Internet. Scary bedtime reading that will make you think.”
Dec /Jan: Trump Sky Alpha in most anticipated of 2019 lists from The Millions, HuffPo, Lit Hub, NYLON, Big Other, and The International Business Times.
12/24/18: Publishers Weekly reviews Trump Sky Alpha: “By turns a dystopian nightmare, a cyber thriller, a spot-on treatise on memes, and a tragic tale of love and loss...A blistering and heartbreaking satire.”
12/28/18: It’s not online, but Trump Sky Alpha is highlighted in an article on dystopian literature in the Italian magazine Il venerdì di Repubblica.
Also, here’s the Italian Cover of Trump Sky Alpha, which will be published by Chiarelettere in February, 2019.
12/4/18: I interviewed Sam Lipsyte for the Paris Review.
8/29/18: Library Journal Pre-Pub Alert: “A half-dozen rising stars, from Mark Doten and Valeria Luiselli to Brendan Mathews and Esmé Weijun Wang, make their apearance in February 2019 ... Soho Press literary editor Doten debuted with The Infernal, a surreal, brilliantly imagined evocation of war’s ugly truths that got him named one of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists. He returns with another mind cruncher featuring a crazed president routinely piloting his luxe airship Trump Sky Alpha.... Calling all sophisticated readers.”
8/17/18: New short story, “Piss Trump,” up at N+1.
6/21/18: Q&A with Author’s Guild about working as both a writer and editor.
5/7/17: Guardian review of the pieces in GRANTA’S BEST OF YOUNG AMERICAN NOVELISTS: “Ben Lerner, Jen George and Mark Doten stand out in an impressive, largely avant-garde collection of stories..... Written in immense run-on sentences that owe a debt to David Foster Wallace, [Doten’s] piece, one of the volume’s best and certainly its most attention-grabbing, imagines Trump rising from the White House at the helm of a 1,000ft luxury zeppelin while pontificating to the nation via a YouTube feed. Oh and nuclear apocalypse is raging in the background.”
4/26/17: Named one of Granta’s BEST OF YOUNG AMERICAN NOVELISTS.
1/1/17: SF Opera brings The Source to San Francisco for six performances between February 24 and March 3. Tickets and information here.
12/12/16: Alex Ross reviews The Source in The New Yorker. “Staggering in its impact.“
10/19/16-10/23/16: LA Opera brings The Source to Los Angeles for five performances at REDCAT.
9/6/16: Short story narrated by President Trump in N+1. (Spoiler: nuclear apocalypse.)
9/16/16: On Buzzfeed, “16 Books That Perfectly Match New York Fashion Week Looks.”
9/16/16: The New York Times calls The Source a “21st-century masterpiece.”
10/16/15: Conversation in BOMB about The Infernal with the remarkable Peter Dimock.
10/5/15: Infernal Brooklyn Rail review: "Eichmann on OxyContin."
8/30/15: I interview John Darnielle for Vice on "Horror, His Novel ‘Wolf in White Van,’ and the Enduring Appeal of Pasolini"
8/10/15: Infernal in Vol. 1 Brooklyn's "The Best Debut Novels of 2015 So Far": the novel "features one of the creepiest sequences of body horror you’re likely to encounter."
5/24/15: Infernal Los Angeles Review of Books review: "Audacious... closer to South Park than to Scripture."
4/22/15: Infernal makes the AV Club: "it’s a heavy fallout-shelter mindfuck."
4/8/15: Victory in Literary Death Match, AWP Minneapolis edition.
4/1/15: Profile in my hometown paper, the Hastings Star Gazette. "He grew up near what is now Target in Cottage Grove but attended school in Hastings from the eighth grade on."
3/30/15: Infernal Washington Post review: "Prodigious, provacative."
3/22/15: Infernal listed in Library Journal's "Spring Best Debuts: First Novels"
3/6/15: Infernal Los Angeles Times review: "Deliriously demented."
3/6/15: Infernal on Buzzfeed's "16 Of The Most Exciting Books Of 2015 From Independent Publishers."
3/5/15: Interview at Electric Lit. Big Infernal spoilers.
3/2/15: Infernal listed in Library Journal's indie press round-up: "A brilliant imagining of what fiction can do."
2/26/15: Infernal Daily Beast review: "An audacious Pynchonesque debut."
2/21/15: Infernal Minneapolis Star Tribue review: "Thanks to Mark Doten, we can see this war that still haunts us in a new and necessary light."
2/20/15: Infernal New York Times review: "Doten’s debut is the most audaciously imaginative political novel I’ve ever read... the sheer poundage of originality is remarkable."
2/9/15: Infernal Electric Lit review: ""[A] success, and an utter delight."
1/19/15: At Harper's (subscriction required), Joshua Cohen reviews The Infernal along with books by Tom McCarthy and Elliot Ackerman. "To Doten, information is the soul; it is inside us, and it is evil.... [R]avishingly mad."
1/9/15: Infernal Believer review. "Doten has created an impressionistic map of the atomized imperial realities of the War on Terror, and it is every bit as harrowing to consider as the inane and bloodthirsty era it depicts."
1/8/15: Infernal on BuzzFeed's "27 Of The Most Exciting New Books Of 2015."
1/8/15: Infernal starred Kirkus review. "A stylish, surreal portrait of a 21st century gone mad."
1/5/15: The Infernal makes The Millions "Most Anticipated: The Great 2015 Book Preview." "Early readers have reached for adjectives like 'deranged,' 'crazy,' and 'insane,' in addition to the more usual 'thrilling' and 'dazzling.'"
1/1/15: My year-end list at Vol. 1 Brooklyn, in which I write about Catherine Lacey, Claudia Rankine, and the Comedy Bang! Bang! power trio of Andy Daly, Jason Mantzoukas, and Scott Aukerman.
12/23/14: Blake Butler writes about The Infernal (among other books) in VICE, calling it "a great and hopeful mark for the direction of 2015, where anything can happen."
12/15; 12/31/14: The Memorious Blog previews The Infernal (and other books) here and here.
12/11/14: The Source listed by The New York Times as one of the "Best Classical Vocal Performances of 2014."
11/17/14: Publishers Weekly review of The Infernal. "Artfully deranged."
10/14: Reviews of The Source in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal. The Source is #4 on New York Magazine's list of things to do. More links here.
9/14: The New York Times puts The Source on their list of top 100 arts events of the fall.
8/14: Library Journal lists The Infernal as an "essential debut."
6/14: Early mention of The Infernal in Vol. 1 Brooklyn.
5/14: Early mentions of The Source in the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.
2013: At the American Reader, I compiled all of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's tweets about insomnia.
2007: Early excerpt from The Infernal in New York Magazine—this was from way back in 2007, when I was calling it Green Zone Kidz. These few paragraphs remain similar, but most of the rest of the book has totally reorganized itself.