Meet Frank Bill a 'Working-class Writer Who Digs Trail Running, Powerlifting and Hound Dogs'

The novelist and Indiana native talks Trump, violence and being popular in France

- BAIRD HARPER

Depending on what you read about him, Frank Bill is either a literary gut punch or just a regular guy who's into martial arts and powerlifting. Either way, encountering the author is a pretty muscular experience. His writing comes at you full speed and straight on, freighted with no small amount of discontent, violence and vengeance. But despite such thrilling high-intensity prose, Bill's characters are often grounded citizens who, under less duress, might've remained content to live out a quiet existence. They don't expect much from life, but when they are stripped of their livelihoods, family, dignity, they lash out in ways that can't be ignored.

This describes many of Frank Bill's characters, but in particular those of his short story The Disgruntled Americans, in which a group of brothers and cousins living in small-town Indiana take up arms against the establishment. For them, it's not about the money they steal or the victims they slay. It's about sending a "wake-up call. To everyone that's forgotten about independence." If America was once neatly united under the cause of shaking off the yoke of colonial rule, the modern America of The Disgruntled Americans renders a much smaller and darker rebellion that aims to shrug off the crushing influences of big business and apathetic government. "Dear Motherfuckers..." the story begins, and it only escalates from there.