{"id":24948,"date":"2026-04-17T08:33:45","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T12:33:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/?p=24948"},"modified":"2026-04-17T11:23:55","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T15:23:55","slug":"dee-p-r-kay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/the-bull-interview\/dee-p-r-kay\/","title":{"rendered":"Dee P.R. Kay"},"content":{"rendered":"

WE DAT<\/a> is fucked. That\u2019s because from what I know of him, Dee P. R. Kay is fucked. Completely fucked in my estimation.<\/p>\n

Dee P.R. Kay ain’t quite right and that\u2019s why I love him so much. And why I love this book so much.<\/p>\n

And because WE DAT also fucks.<\/p>\n

This is transgressive lit at its best. It trashes morals and all popular writing adages and just fucking goes for the nuts and rips your nuts off and feeds them to you (to clarify, I mean both male and female and intersex nuts).<\/p>\n

There are porn stars and prostitutes and pimps and side-hustle pimps and blackmailing and revenge plots and a murdered cat and a lot of gratuitous sex and if I haven\u2019t sold you yet, there\u2019s this guy named Dee P. R. Kay who writes the shit out of a sentence. My favorite sentences I\u2019ve read in a long long time.<\/p>\n

You see, I\u2019ve become a lazy reader over the last ten years. I read, I think that\u2019s pretty good, maybe even that\u2019s fucking great, but I don\u2019t take out my pen anymore. The way I used to when I first started out.<\/p>\n

Well, I took the shit out of my pen on every page of WE DAT. Underlined like every other sentence. It really says something that the horniest I got while reading WE DAT was for syntax.<\/p>\n

Dee P.R. Kay lives in dark alleys and writes from dark alleys. Dank, sweaty, putrid back alleys of NOLA where they toss all the titty beads after they sober up and do the walk of shame the next morning.<\/p>\n

Except with Dee P.R. Kay it\u2019s not a walk of shame. It\u2019s a point of pride. It\u2019s what they mean when they say WE DAT.<\/p>\n

WE DAT is the book you read when you\u2019re pissed off at how fucking feckless the larger literary world has become and want to be reminded that good real writing doesn\u2019t have any place at the Big Five or The New Yorker or Paris Review, Ploughshares, or Granta and that\u2019s a fucking badge of honor, a badge of honor that Dee P.R. Kay owns. WE DAT is we be DAT, is we got DAT. And DAT is also a lot of good old dirty horny fucking.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> Let\u2019s start out with the basics: A) What are you? And B) where the fuck did you come from?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay: <\/b>I\u2019m just a simple country boy from St. Clair Springs, Talibama, but I grew up in Birmingham. We’re all just people trying to feel something in this capitalistic hellscape. Probably panspermia explains my existence best, lest we defer to God.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> In the inscription for my copy of WE DAT<\/span>, you wrote that it was a \u201cliterary exorcism\u201d? What were you exorcising? Exercising? Excising? How much Dacre you got in your loins? How dirty is your soul?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay: <\/b>I think<\/span> my heart and soul are in a sock drawer in the Quarter, along with some pink socks with a unicorn that says, \u201cfuck yes, you glorious bitch!\u201d But yeah, demons should be exercised, not exorcised, and if you don\u2019t pay the exorcist, you get re-possessed. Who fucking knows, man? All men got that dawg in us.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> You\u2019ve got a beautiful gutter poetry throughout <\/span>WE DAT<\/span>, how much Bukowski did you read in your impressionable years? If not Bukowski, then who did you read that made you think you could write the shit you write in the fucked-up way you write it? (See also “11”<\/a> from the BULL archives).<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay: <\/b>My granddaddy, Walter, also worked for the post office, like Bukowski. Granddaddy died from TB in the 80s and my parents wouldn\u2019t let me look at him in his casket. He played drums in a band that did big band music and we would watch The Lawrence Welk Show together often. After he died, I was learning to play drums, but my Nana sold \u2018em to make ends meet. I coulda been a rock star. Music has had a deep influence on my writing.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have read some Bukowski, but I was more influenced by Dostoevsky and Raymond Chandler in my impressionable years. My voice and idiosyncrasies are just how I am. Poetry-wise, I like Arseni Tarkovsky. u.v. ray is pretty much my literary daddy, so credit where credit\u2019s due (btw, his poetry is vastly underappreciated). u.v.\u2019s also shown me a ton of support, has been a helluva mentor, and i consider him a friend and one of the best writers currently writing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

My mama would return from the grave and rip my face off if I didn’t mention her\u2026 influence. She was a writer and was like the Annie Wilkes of Flannery O\u2019Connor fans. She won some big Flannery O\u2019Connor literary award and was offered to be a Chair of the writing department in Milledgeville, GA. So it was, like, you couldn\u2019t escape Southern Gothic lit growing up with her. This stuff is in my DNA. Mama also taught creative writing, and I mocked her students as \u201cthe delicate geniuses.\u201d Now my karma is to be a delicate genius at the mercy of the sleepless guardians of the slush pile.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> I\u2019m about to do a talk about Flannery O\u2019Connor in her childhood home: what\u2019s some shit that I can say that\u2019s gonna make me sound smart and witty? What would I need to do to impress your mama?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay: <\/b>I\u2019m legit jealous! (I think it would be really ironic if you karaoked Katy Perry\u2019s \u201cPeacock\u201d to break the ice.) O\u2019Connor\u2019s indomitable spirit, as she battled Lupus and convalesced in Andalusia, has to be discussed. She was damn near monastic in her writing routine, and despite extreme health problems, she still penned some of the most brutal short stories ever written and banged out two novels there. I would say, her strongest hand was that she gave zero fucks about being liked by the literary establishment and exposed the moral rot of the South. The bitch-fight between her and McCullers is also worth exploring.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> What\u2019s some shit about New Orleans that people get wrong when they think about New Orleans?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay: <\/b>New Orleans IS <\/span>America.<\/span><\/a> WE DAT<\/span> was dedicated to New Orleans and New Orleaneans. I love NOLA. These are some of the sweetest people you\u2019ll ever meet in your life, but don\u2019t bring no bad energy, or they\u2019ll mirror that shit back (and the best food is at somebody\u2019s mama\u2019s house, not in restaurants that removed the food\u2019s soul for tourists).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

NOLA has such atmosphere, grit and characters, that it does 90% of a writer\u2019s job. It worked for Faulkner and Williams. But NOLA\u2019s also a place that will chew you up and spit you out. Just ask Trent Reznor… Too many romanticize NOLA and overlook that it\u2019s a city built upon trauma and exploitation. NOLA is a broken black mirror of brutal self-discovery, and ain\u2019t nobody walking away without his or her face cut up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> Best NOLA book?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay: <\/b>Exquisite Corpse<\/span><\/i><\/a> by Poppy Z. Brite (now Billy Martin). Hands down.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> Okay, you got me at Poppy Z. Brite (even if it\u2019s now Billy Martin which reminds me of the old Yanks\/Mets coach who got ejected from a game and then tried to sneak back into a game with a fake mustache, but I digress and am probably offending them). But I\u2019m intrigued. What\u2019s the deal with this <\/span>Exquisite Corpse<\/span><\/i> thing?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay<\/b>: <\/span>Cadavre<\/span><\/i> exquis <\/span><\/i>was a game the Surrealists played\u2014it\u2019s essentially creating something without seeing the whole. <\/span>Wanna play a game?!<\/span><\/i> I think many miss the Rosetta Stone of Brite\u2019s title. Like the game, thru fragments and pieces from our subconscious, meaning emerges, and somehow it is coherent\u2026 this is what good literature does. No hand-holding. All black, no apologies. Fuck HEAs and redemption arcs. That ain\u2019t the world we live in.<\/span><\/p>\n

Exquisite Corpse <\/span><\/i>went so goddamn hard to the paint (holding a mirror up to society) that many can\u2019t handle it. That book will rip your soul out. <\/span>Exquisite Corpse<\/span><\/i> is required reading for anyone repping being \u201ctransgressive,\u201d and there are a lot of folks perpetrating and flaking being transgressive gang colors in indie lit.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> Obviously, we share a love for u.v. (see: “bad junk<\/a>” & “cinesthetic<\/a>“). Share with the world who don\u2019t know why they need to get off their asses and get some u.v. in their life. And don\u2019t be all brief and general about it. Get specific. Get real. Do some some real deep shit lit analysis.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay: <\/b>Jesus Christ, dude. That\u2019s a tall order. Maybe TBD going all lit analysis\u2026 on my fucking idol.\u00a0 But here\u2019s what i will say, if it weren\u2019t for u.v. ray, we wouldn\u2019t even be doing this interview. He literally told me, stop fucking around on TikTok promoting your book and write for lit mags. So I followed my marching orders, and here we are.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What I\u2019m saying, is u.v. cares about the lit community, even though he\u2019s not received that same love back from the literary establishment. U.V. Ray makes Irving Welsh look like child\u2019s play, and Ray’s works are indie lit canon. He\u2019s the King of Literary Nihilism\u2013go read <\/span>Black Cradle<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Re: <\/span>Druggernaut<\/span><\/i>: Anyone who\u2019s struggled with substance abuse knows that you end up being an actor in your own shitty movie, and \u201cconfusion will be our epitaph\u201d per King Crimson. Only someone who\u2019s lived that and is an extremely talented writer could put that in a hybrid fiction\/script format and pull it off.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

u.v. ray recently retired; and I take him at his word. Dude\u2019s been grinding since the 80s. He’s writing from lived experience and from inside the wound. But you can only bleed on the page for so long before the blood runs out. Some of us just don\u2019t have cute stories inside of us\u2026.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As he says, writing is a \u201cterminal sickness,\u201d but I hope he knows his writing has had a huge impact on many and has lifted-up many downtrodden souls. I read him and say, \u201cHoly fuck! Somebody else feels the same?!\u201d If there\u2019s a patron saint of the junkies (me), alkies (me), 304s, criminals (me), the insane (me) and fucked-up people on the margins of society\u2026 it\u2019s U.V. Ray.<\/span><\/p>\n

All Hail U.V. Ray. DISSOLVE TO:<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> What\u2019s the story behind the story behind the story of the story of WE DAT? What books begat it? What authors haunted it? What actual ghosts haunted it? Is this your fiftieth novel but first to get pubbed or is it the popping of your auto-fic novel cherry? How long? How wide? How heavy? How come?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay: <\/b>WE DAT is my only novel. I highly doubt I will do any more books. I didn\u2019t consider myself \u201cpublished\u201d until I was published in actual lit mags that are curated by EICs. WE DAT <\/span>was self-published thru my shady-ass Wyoming LLC and a total boondoggle. It\u2019s basically like, what if <\/span>Fight Club<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>Tampa<\/span><\/i> hate-fucked in a seedy NOLA motel room, had a love child, and threw it in a dumpster fire out back the Popeye\u2019s Chicken? Try selling that! As for the artists haunting WE DAT<\/span>\u2014Foucault, Haneke, Lynch, Lodge Kerrigan, Bataille, Baudrillard, Nietzsche, Sartre, Camus & Artaud.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jesus, I sound pompous.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

re: \u201cthe story behind the story\u201d stuff\u2014<\/span>I have nothing to say<\/b>. Respectfully. Five words, brau.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> If you had to put together a playlist for We Dat, what\u2019d be the essentials?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay:\u00a0<\/b>I could go all Tyler Dempsey and QR-code a sad WE DAT <\/span>playlist if you like\u2026\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Link: https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/playlist\/0zsyoEisQ7nB5mzr9LdjZA?si=QY0TuTwYQcWDx_hUjOfRfw<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b>\u00a0 What\u2019s the dorkiest fucking thing you do or have done?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay: <\/b>\u00a0Watch My Little Pony with my daughters. Or pranking people with Feral Pickle Goblin and making her Bloody Mary pickles. We’re terrible. Pranks that are borderline Hellfire Club type stuff.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> When was the last time you cried or threw a temper tantrum for pissy reasons?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay: <\/b>I am the Piss Christ of bad personality traits. The last time I cried, I was a child. It was at the funeral for my Nana\u2019s bestfriend, Miss Vada. I used to play Bridge with Miss Vada, and she was very sweet to me.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I don’t do temper tantrums\u2014more like seeing red with 187 in my eyes, as they turn from blue to grey, then my Protector\/Persecutor handles whomever needs handling (nothing illegal and not promoting violence).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But yeah, I\u2019m basically devoid of emotion and have learned how to act like Meryl Streep, though I would love to be able to feel like a normal fucking person.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> Ten years from now and you\u2019ve written and published the shit you wanted to publish: what\u2019s \u201cgood\u201d for you? What to you means: maybe I ain\u2019t Stevie King, but I feel good about where I am, where I\u2019ve gone, what I\u2019ve done, and who I\u2019ve met?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay:<\/b> I may have already climbed Mt. Everest getting published in <\/span>The Opiate<\/span><\/i> twice.\u00a0 <\/span>The Opiate<\/span><\/i> was the biggest, baddest person in lit prison to me, and I felt like I got validated with prison ink by Genna. No hate on BULL. I love you, and I love BULL. (You pretty much got my best story, \u201c11,\u201d and advised me on an edit that made it what it is.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I have a Russian view of things\u2014that the NKVD of life will snatch me up in a black car and schlepp my ass to the gulag. I don’t believe in the future, and I don\u2019t reflect on the past. I wake up each morning, put my left foot in front of my right foot, and focus on surviving that particular day. Inside of that present-based prison mentality, I feel that human connection (even though I\u2019m not good at it) is the primary motive for my writing, not money or fame. And there\u2019s a part of me that\u2019s just a Sag literary arsonist\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t read David Foster Wallace\u2019s fiction, because he wrote trauma so well (same for JCO\u2019s <\/span>Blonde<\/span><\/i>) that I spiral, but I do like his essays and speeches. so I hope to be part of the new generation of writers he advocated who are post-ironic sincere. (I can do irony, and different aesthetics are cool and all, but when I read stuff, I ask, \u201c<\/span>Where\u2019s the fucking blood<\/span><\/i>?!\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n

I call what i do <\/span>post-everything<\/b>, because i feel, as artists, everything has already been done (cf., Oswald Spengler\u2019s <\/span>The Decline of the West<\/span><\/i>), and we\u2019re basically vultures baby-birding cultural carrion of tired borrowings and recycled shit to our <\/span>audience.<\/span><\/a> That doesn\u2019t mean we should stop making art or that it\u2019s meaningless.<\/span><\/p>\n

If i\u2019m future-oriented at all, my legacy will be my daughters, Zaichenka and Lailichka. Not words on a page. Because my daughters will be the ones holding my hand in old age as I die in a hospital. And all I really want for them is to grow up safe, happy, healthy & prosperous\u2014to have the normal life I never had. So any kind of immortality or legacy will be thru my daughters. No pressure, but they need new shoes, so y\u2019all please buy a fucking copy of <\/span>We Dat<\/span><\/i>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay:<\/b> \u00a0i\u2019m turning the tables on you, my cracka. are you gonna serenade us with a mullet and play dat gitfiddle? Feral Pickle Goblin already has some requests\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> With me pretty much everything\u2019s always on the table. Alas I finally shaved the mullet (one of those protective proactive controlled fire burns), but I have multiple mullet wigs I\u2019ve been known to whip out upon the right occasion.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

BKD:<\/b> Anything else I didn\u2019t ask that, like: drevlow, you\u2019re a goddam idiot, if you knew anything at all,\u00a0 should\u2019ve fucking asked about\u2026?<\/span><\/p>\n

Dee P. R. Kay<\/b>: you didn\u2019t ask me about a <\/span>leaderless resistance atavistic insurgency<\/span>\u2026 or Gematria\u2026 or numerology\u2026 or hoodoo\u2026 or my pickled shrimp recipe\u2026 or Feral Pickle Goblin. Btw, the algorithm loathes a certain acronym for a certain hermit kingdom\u2013thus my pen name that totally side-stepped that shit. I don\u2019t wanna get y\u2019all shadow-banned by the SEO overlords.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, there\u2019s a longer piece Genna is printing in vol. 45 of <\/span>The Opiate<\/span><\/i>, \u201c3 White Lights,\u201d out soon, and I would very much appreciate all of y\u2019all reading it and showing support for Genna and all the other artists in the Spring issue. That story is like <\/span>Knockemstiff<\/span><\/i> on goddamn Tren.<\/span><\/p>\n

Quick shout out: to YOU and BULL<\/em>, u.v. ray, anyone reading my shit, all the mags and EICs who\u2019ve supported me, Feral Pickle Goblin (love you, girl), the Apostle of Chaos Baby Billy, and my brau, Solo Dolo.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NOLA has such atmosphere, grit and characters, that it does 90% of a writer\u2019s job but it’s also a place that will chew you up and spit you out. NOLA is a broken black mirror of brutal self-discovery, and ain\u2019t nobody walking away without his or her face cut up.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":24952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[232],"tags":[4856,4850,4851,1108,4853,4841,4855,4854,2249,3119,4847,4849,4848,4844,4852,4845,4251,1738,4840,4846,4843,4842],"class_list":["post-24948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bull-interview","tag-arseni-tarkovsky","tag-bataille","tag-baudrillard","tag-bukowski","tag-camus-artaud","tag-dee-p-r-kay","tag-dostoevsky","tag-fight-club","tag-flannery-oconnor","tag-foucault","tag-haneke","tag-lodge-kerrigan","tag-lynch","tag-new-orleans","tag-nietzsche","tag-poppy-z-brite","tag-raymond-chandler","tag-sartre","tag-talibama","tag-tyle-dempsey","tag-u-v-ray","tag-we-dat","writer-the-drevlow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24948"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24957,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24948\/revisions\/24957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}