Nosy Interview: Dean Bakopoulos

Dean and Amos in a Star Formation in the Tarantula Nebula, © NASA, ESA, ESO, D. Lennon et al.

I met Dean circa this sweet photo, when he was running, along with Jeremiah Chamberlin, the much-missed Canterbury Books in Madison, Wisconsin. His second novel, My American Unhappiness, is out in paperback this summer and you can send him mash notes @deanbakopoulos on Twitter. 

What do you smell like? 

I smell like coffee in the morning and beer in the evening. Often, as a mask of these things, I smell like spearmint. In the afternoon, I smell like paper and books and sweat and grass clippings. Faintly, of juniper. Often, of woodsmoke as I light fires and cook outside whenever I can.  

What do you like to smell? 

Chamomile tea, though I don't like to drink it. The Iowa air in the moments before the snow falls. The stalk of a chopped thistle, the leaves of oak trees. Single malt anything. The first hint of secondhand smoke, but only on days when the temperature is between fifty and seventy degrees and only in the late afternoon or early evening. I don't like the smell of used bookstores or libraries. I only inhale new books, freshly printed. My children's heads, the back of their necks. I sniff my kids all day long. When I have insomnia, I crawl into bed with one of them and breathe in the scent of their breath, their ears, their hair.