Here’s a fun, banter-y interview between Sherman Alexie and singer/songwriter Neko Case that’s featured in this month’s Believer. Case is a devotee of Alexie’s: Opening line: “You’re really supersmart and I think you’re really awesome.” But that’s just her fangirl schtick. She’s a skillful interviewer, keeping the conversation as snappy as Alexie is, mixing in references on everything from post-feminist theory to Island of the Blue Dolphins to MacGyver. She makes Alexie laugh a lot, and she gets him to talk about fatherhood and his kids and his favorite women writers.
The two talked at a hotel restaurant in Spokane and then Alexie took Case on a tour of the Spokane reservation, where they ended up eating frybread in his mother’s kitchen. “I haven’t sampled every mom’s frybread on earth,” Case writes, “but I’ll stand in front of a Supreme Court judge and swear that hers is the best ever, throughout all time, anywhere in this galaxy.”