A lot has happened since my last update in July—let's just run 'em down. * I will be presenting on Miley Cyrus and politics as fandom at the 2026 Pop Conference in Los Angeles, March 12-14. More info here, with a schedule coming soon. * I released another
I was thinking the other day about Spring Breakers, and went looking for the piece I wrote about seeing it in a nearly-empty Indiana theater, only to find that the site has been stricken from the internet. Rereading it, I see some interesting parallels with my other writing on pop,
I have a story out in Fish Barrel Review, called "Known Unknowns." I've also released an EP of experimental guitar/noise music as APOPHRA. You can hear it on all the streaming services, or get it on Bandcamp.
Looks like the publisher of this story has gone fully offline, so I’ll post it here! "What is that sound?" said Sutwin. "A Hobart CLeN?" “Can I get a consensus check?” said Ally. It was quiet in the room as we listened, but then, it
Very excited to have a short story in X-R-A-Y as part of their "sad Christmas" theme. Check it out here: https://xraylitmag.com/skies-of-america-by-mike-barthel/fiction/
A Minor ProphetDeborah Sale-Butler
The Fiery Furnaces’ ‘Blueberry Boat’ Turns 20For a brief and spectacular moment two decades years ago, it seemed like every band could be the Fiery Furnaces. Every band could make music bursting with ideas, suffused with charm, willing to try almost anything to give its listeners a thrill. Blueberry Boat,
My new flash piece, "One Hundred Million Dollars," is out today at Overheard. It's a weird little beastie. I hope you check it out! https://overheardlit.org/prose/one-hundred-million-dollars
I have a story in a great publication called TOWER, out today. It's my first published non-flash story, so I hope you give it a read when you have some time (and send a few bucks Tower's way, if you can, so they can produce more
Back in 2004, I was a 25-year-old finance and legal assistant at a record label, and instead of entering 200 individual paper invoices for shipping 2 promo CDs of Sugarcult from Nashville to Albuquerque, like I was being paid to do, I would blog. At first it was politics, about
This is an author website for Mike Barthel. You can learn more about him here. You can subscribe below if you'd like to hear when more of Mike's writing is published.