#mitchell jackson

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"My advice to young people is to blow up your life as soon as possible, because the sooner you blow up your life, the sooner your actual life can start."

-- Mitchell Jackson, in today's "New York Times" - August 1, 2025

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Derek Piquette / Jordan Clark / Mitch Jackson

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Moss: an online journal of the Northwest.

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The Student Film Channel is a service of the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts USC Interview Part 1 (poor sound quality)

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Part 2 (poor sound quality)

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Mitchell Jackson is a writer from Portland and a protégé of legendary editor Gordon Lish, which kind of means a lot in and of itself. Mitch is also the possessor of an excellent jump shot (which was described to me as a “James Jones-style jumper with great form” by his little brother), the creator of two kids, the owner of a great smile, and the ability to make up sentences that are much better than any others I’ve read recently. He also claims authorship of Oversoul, an e-book of piercing essays and amazing short stories that was published a few months ago. We loved it. A lot. We loved it so much that we excerpted the title story and ran it as a centerpiece of our annual Fiction Issue. I’m complimenting him so heavily primarily because I like him and his writing so much, but also because I’m kind of needy and like to be thought of as a nice guy.

Mitchell is currently hard at work on a new novel that’s going to be out next summer for Bloomsbury and will probably kick all your other books’s asses.

VICE: What is your memory of Portland? I imagine the Portland we all know and make fun of today is pretty different from the one you grew up in, right? Mitchell S. Jackson: Yeah, definitely. I go back about twice a year, or maybe three times in a year, and the area I grew up in was an area you would never go—you definitely wouldn't be caught there after dark. Now it’s an area with coffee shops and people walking dogs and bicycling and, you know, boutiques. I think what I remember most was everyone playing basketball around me, wanting to make it out of there playing basketball, and then probably after I was about ten years old, crack hit really bad. It was in that area where all the drugs were.

So you remember that happening, the crack explosion. Yeah, definitely.

It's funny you mention basketball and crack in the same sentence. I was just talking the other day with my friend about Len Bias. When he died... man, that was such a defining moment for contemporary American culture. The effect of such a hyped basketball player being cut down by cocaine a couple of days after the draft... Yeah. It was symbolic, but not only. You know that was the moment that pushed Congress to actually change the crack cocaine laws. Right, exactly. It wasn't just a big moment in the sense of his death. Thousands and thousands of men got really long sentences, essentially because Len Bias died of cocaine overdose. You were pretty good at playing ball, right? Yes, I played in high school and I played in junior college, I probably could have kept going but I decided that just wasn't my avenue. I didn't feel passionate about it the way other people around me did. Was this parallel to a new first start and you being interested in writing, or did that come later? You know, I wasn't interested in writing at all when I was young. I was a good student, but I wasn't great. I didn't read and write until I was in my 20s, really. I went to prison when I was about 19 years old, and I read a couple of books in there, but there wasn't anything available, it was like Terry McMillan books, and we didn't have a library. I read a few pieces, and I decided, I'm bored, so I just started writing some stuff down. You know everyone in prison thinks their life story is the greatest life story of all times, so I just wrote those down on loose leaf, and when I came home I was like, I'm gonna do something with this. But I just let it go and went back to school. So I would say I didn't get serious about writing until I was actually in a graduate writing program.

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