About the Register

The Interim Register is a work of fiction about an America that looks familiar in the morning and less certain by evening.

Its reports borrow the habits of local journalism: dates, places, official statements, corrections, modest photographs and questions left open. The incidents, interviews, documents and quoted remarks are invented. An apparent reference to a real place or institution does not describe a real event or represent that institution’s views.

Some reports may share a person, place or detail. Others may never connect. The archive is the whole account available to readers; it offers no master explanation.

The publication ranges across weather, public records, folklore, business, science and the occasional ordinary accident. It may be unsettling, funny, melancholy or simply inexplicable.