Urban-Reviews.com - Inside Out with Theo Gangi

Theo Gangi

Theo Gangi is a novelist who’s first book, Bang Bang is being published by Kensington Books in November, 2007. A graduate of Columbia’s MFA program, his stories have appeared in The Greensboro Review, The Columbia Spectator and The Kratz Center Sampler. His articles and reviews have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, 3AM Magazine and Crucial Minutiae.com, where he has a weekly column.

Theo Gangi currently teaches writing at John Jay College, CUNY. His next book Kiss Kiss will be released in late 2008.

Read An Excerpt from Bang Bang: Click Here

Author's Official Website: http://www.theogangi.com
Author's Weekly Blog Section: Click Here
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Urban Reviews: Start by telling our readers about Bang, Bang.
Theo Gangi: Bang Bang is the story of Izzy, a 38-year-old stick-up kid who picks a bad time to have a crisis of conscience. When a job gets botched, leaving Izzy's psychotic partner guilty of yet another homicide, Izzy knows he's supposed to kill the remaining witness, or be killed himself. But this bystander, Eva, seems different from others he has done before. Is she the exception to his rule?

Urban Reviews: What inspired you to create this storyline and the main character Izzy ?
Theo Gangi: I would hear the term 'stickup kid' and wonder how a grown man would feel about being considered a 'kid'. Izzy grew from there-- a guy who robs drug dealers for a living, a kind of Robin Hood who takes from the rich and keeps it. When the book opens, he's wondering how he became a walking contradiction, a 38-year-old 'kid'. Izzy is a kind of throw back to a cowboy or rogue gangster character operating in the underworld and making his own rules.

Urban Reviews: How did you start your literary career?
Theo Gangi: I began writing seriously in college, where I studied with the novelist Madison Smartt Bell, and then went to Columbia University for a MFA. A professor there connected me with an agent.

Urban Reviews: Are you working on any upcoming projects?
Theo Gangi: Yes, my next novel, Twist the Trees, is about a Columbia student who organizes a high end marijuana pyramid distributing to New York's major universities. I am also working on the sequel to Bang Bang called Kiss Kiss.

Urban Reviews: What have you learned about the book industry so far being a new author? Is it what you expected it to be?
Theo Gangi: I've learned that books don't sell themselves. People like to have heard of the author they're buying, so being a new author is tough. I'm not really sure what I expected. It's all about the writing until you're published, and then it's not about writing at all. You've got to be able to switch gears.

Urban Reviews: Do you have any favorite authors or books?
Theo Gangi: Elmore Leonard is my favorite crime author. Too many books to list.

Urban Reviews: What where you doing the day you found out about your book deal?
Theo Gangi: Sleeping.

Urban Reviews: What do you want the world to know most about you?
Theo Gangi: I'm probably a different story than most urban writers, in that I'm Jewish and Italian and don't exclusively write street characters, but how the streets play into a larger urban dynamic. My father runs a prison watchdog organization in New York, so I visited prisons since I was young. Bang Bang is a slice of urban clutter where different walks of life intersect, challenge and bang into one another.