It is our first meeting and Stephen Elliott is showing me his hands. "S&M can be dangerous," he tells me. "These are cigarette burns." I study the hands, noting the scarring and circular marks where cigarettes have been pressed into his flesh. He holds them steadily as he speaks. "Those were given to me by a crazy person. I mean, there's no way I should have been alone in a room with that person." As I speak with Stephen Elliott a phrase by the poet Paul Muldoon is turning over in my head: "Writers do not have private selves." It seems Elliott can't help but talk frankly about himself and his experiences. Being that these drift from his sexual persuasions to a youth spent on the streets and in group homes, you'd expect him to be more guarded. Yet when meeting him I quickly realize that Elliott doesn’t simply 'opens up' but, as one journalist has put it, he "seems incapable of holding back." Author of four novels, including the critically acclaimed Happy Baby, and most recently an "almost sexual memoir" My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up, his writing is notable for its clarity and ability to deal with difficult subject matter. The New York Times praised Happy Baby as "the most intelligent and beautiful book ever written about juvenile detention centers, sadomasochism and drugs." Written in a prose that is at once lithe, astute and deceptively simple, Elliott's work stands up to George Orwell's assertion that "autobiography is only to be trusted if it reveals something disgraceful."

I meet Elliott in San Francisco, where he has lived since 1998. “I was driving around, I ran out of gas, and I’ve been here ever since,” he explains. We sit outside a Starbucks and when the winds begin to pick up, move the discussion into the lobby of my hotel. Throughout he is alert and intelligent, choosing his sentences carefully as if examining each for any hint of a flaw. Later he invites me to the Progressive Reading Series, a monthly literary night which he has set up to help raise funds for congressional candidates of more leftist leanings. It takes place in the Makeout Room and attracts a large crowd of hipsters, artists, sex workers and the occasional wondering drunk. Reading on this evening are Neal Canin, Po Bronson, Tara Jepsen and Neal Pollack.

Afterwards I am taken aside by Po Bronson. He is a founder of the Writer's Grotto, of which Elliott is a member, and author of What Should I Do With My Life? And Why Do I Love These People? He's also wearing the most audacious pair of cowboy boots I've ever seen ("They're the pair no one has the balls to buy. I just thought, 'Fuck it, I’ll get them.'"). “Stephen is the hardest working writer at the grotto," he tells me. "Every time I drop by his office he's in there working. He’s always working, always thinking. He’s a real talent and we’re lucky to have a writer of his calibre in San Francisco."

Po’s praise is accurate, with Elliott proving to be modest, insightful and frank throughout our discussion.

Mark Traynor: Your fiction, and indeed non-fiction, is largely autobiographical. You've said previously that you believe strongly in the subjective nature of memory. Could you explain this a little?

Stephen Elliot: Well, there will always be aspects of truth to memories. For example, I know for certain that I went to four high schools - that's a fact. But whether or not I was an abused child or a spoiled child - that's interpretation. It's this interpretive aspect that's interesting to me. In this case, it always amazes me how the memories of parents and children differ.

But both interpretations are legitimate?

SE: Sure. Because your memories, even if they're wrong, define who you are. So if you remember being an abused child, whether your interpretation is accurate or not, the consequences will be the same. You internalize these things, and that in turn affects who you are and the story you tell.

And that seems to be an important aspect of your work - using fiction as a way to give order or meaning to your experiences.

SE: Well I think that a lot of times I'm trying to 'get at' something true. And in that sense not all of the facts are very important in that process. But ultimately, I hope, I am trying to convey truth - whether that be a feeling, emotion or atmosphere.

One of the things you've written about very openly in your recent work is your sexuality and sadomasochism. You frequently describe this as your "coming out"...

SE: It's an interesting thing that...'coming out' is always easier than you think it's going to be because everyone around you already kind of knows. They're like, "Oh, that's why he never has a regular girlfriend." But yeah, S&M was very much a secret life for me until I wrote Happy Baby.

Why was that?

SE: For me personally, because I grew up in group homes, I had to hide those desires. It's a very macho environment. You can't be a sissy. You can't say, "I want to wear panties, or I want to be a girl, or I want my girl to be a boy." I mean, you'll get killed. So you have to put your chest out and act tough. And that became ingrained in me. I was raised to be a tough guy. It took me a long time to break out of that. You know, it's not that the group homes give you those desires, but rather they don't allow you to explore those desires in a healthy way. It stunts your growth. And that's why I wrote Happy Baby.

It seems to me that you’ve also chosen to explore sexuality and desire in a very political way. In the introduction to My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up you write, "Our president, who sanctions torture all over the world, who threatens to veto bills banning the American military from torture, has initiated a war at home on people who like to tie and hurt each other in the privacy of their own bedrooms." You are referring to the Department of Justice crackdown on S&M websites, which in turn prompted sex educators to shut down their own sites. Why is that important?

SE: Firstly, sexuality is important because it addresses issues around personal freedom. You don't choose to be gay and no one in their right mind would choose to be into S&M. I'm not pro-S&M - I'm not some kind of advocate for that. But I am an advocate for people being comfortable with their desires. You can't help having the desires you have. Yet people live in shame, they are unhappy and they do bad things. I believe you can often find a release for a lot of desires without hurting anybody. If you look at various types of fundamentalism - Christian, Jewish, Islamic - it's interesting that these ideologies are often very repressive sexually. The Bush administration has been no less extreme. I feel violence is often a misplaced sexual urge.

Well you’ve also written a lot about politics, specifically with your memoir Looking Forward to It and the Politically Inspired anthologies. It's apt that we're here in San Francisco, home of some of the more radical traditions in recent American politics. What is your take on the baby boomer generation and their political legacy?

SE: I have mixed feelings on baby boomers. They did fail in the most important respect; they failed to stop the Vietnam War. Many of them turned to violence themselves. In other ways they made great progress. I feel dismayed that the streets are so empty now. I don't understand why there aren't more protests surrounding the war in Iraq. Also, where is the literature? There are all these great books that came out of ‘Vietnam period’.

In Looking Forward to It you wrote, "If John Kerry loses we'll have nothing left." You very much pitched the 2004 election as being the most important of your generation, wherein the youth vote might have made a difference. Do you still feel that way?

SE: Of course. Things are different now. Then, we had the opportunity to make change, to oust a war-mongering president. We failed to do that. Now, no matter what happens in this current election, we still have to live with the consequences of our failure.

But are you not hopeful about the Obama ticket?

SE: Sure. But it's not over yet. If there's one thing I learnt from being on the trail it's that anything can happen.

And what about influences? Of course San Francisco also has a very rich literary heritage. Specifically with the Beats and the development of the counterculture in American letters. Is that something that you're aware of? Have you been influenced by those movements?

SE: Well certainly by the Beats, yeah. Kerouac, Ginsburg, Bukowski - they are just three authors that were tremendously influential on me. Bukowski was my first literary 'crush'. I felt he was doing what I wanted to do myself. Reading him allowed me to feel that what I was writing could be written about in a serious way. And of course Kerouac's On the Road, for example, was very important to me. It changed my life. For the worst, initially, but ultimately I feel for the better (laughs).

But there's also been a tremendous literary scene developing in San Francisco for the last 10 years or so. You know, you had JT Leroy (now Laurie Albert), and of course Dave Eggers. In addition you have programs like the Wallace Stegner fellowship at Stanford which brings in a bunch of great writers, gives them money, and they in turn integrate into the scene here. People like ZZ Packer and Tobias Wolfe. On top of that there's McSweeney's publishing - an incredible journal - and The Believer. San Francisco is this tiny place, seven miles by seven miles, and yet it is the home to so many of our best writers - Michael Chabon, Daniel Hanler, Andrew Greer. It's just incredible. There really has been nothing like this anywhere else.

Do you feel that it's a ‘conscious’ movement?

SE: Sure. People are going to remember this.

And do you feel part of it?

SE: Yeah. But I'm a tiny player in that movement. I think people will look at Dave Eggers and McSweeney's and see it as the defining cultural trend of this period.

It's interesting that you should mention Eggers because he's been important to your work, both in terms of promoting it early on and editing Happy Baby. How did you meet him?

SE: I met Eggers pretty late. I had read A Heart Breaking Work of Staggering Genius but I didn't really know how big a deal it was. I mean, I really liked it but at that time I didn't know many writers. I was on the scholarship at Stanford and I heard of 826 Valencia [a non-profit organization set up by Eggers which allows writers to tutor local children]. I was one of the first volunteers there. Eggers interviewed me but I didn't realize it was him. But he read my book A Life Without Consequences. And later when he was being interviewed and was asked if he had any recommended reading, he mentioned my novel. I thanked him and he encouraged me to give some pieces to McSweeneys. So I gave him these three stories, which were part of larger work. That eventually became Happy Baby, which he edited.

And it was successful.

SE: Yeah, depending on how you define success. But Eggers was very important in all of that. He was such a good editor.

But there's also a clear jump in terms of the style and quality between your third novel What It Means to Love You and Happy Baby.

SE: Sure. Happy Baby is a better book.

Why do you think that's the case?

SE: I was at Stanford at the time and I was working with Tobias Wolfe. I'm really being exposed to people like Raymond Carver for the first time, really considering the minimalist approach seriously. Also I'm reacting to the other people in my workshop. They all have MFAs; and I'm learning a lot from them, but I'm also learning that there are some ideas I disagree with. For instance, a common question in workshops is, "Why does this character do such-and-such a thing?" And I didn't want to take that line. I mean, who knows why people do most things? It's a mystery a lot of the time. And that's what Happy Baby is - an exercise in not explaining anything. I wanted it to be minimal.

So do you think your background, your education has affected the way you approach writing?

SE: Of course. But I don't think about it too much. I'm not trying to write a bestseller. I'm probably never going to write mainstream books. I started writing when I was 10. I had a lousy home life and I wrote to communicate. That's always why I've written. My reasons haven't changed. Phillip Roth in Everyman says, "Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us go to work." And in that sense I'm still an amateur - I write about what inspires me, I write because it's therapeutic, and I write because I love connecting with people. It's a gift that I can do that and make a living from it. I don't want a raise. I don't want a change. My goal is very simple: to write a better book.

And where do you expect that will take you?

SE: Well I recently reviewed the new Brittney Spears album, and I just finished a piece for Salon on interviewing the murderer Hans Reiser. So really I write about whatever interests me. It’s not all sex and drugs and sadness. My interests change all the time but the one constant is that I continue to write. I’ll get older and my sex drive will diminish and I’ll probably write a lot less about sex. I’ll write more about nursing homes and playing bridge. I really love playing bridge! So I’ll write about that, being a bridge player in a nursing home.”

Stephen Elliott’s new book The Adderall Diaries: A Memoir of Moods, Masochism, and Murder, is due to be published by Graywolf Press. He describes it as "half memoir, half true crime."