Touré is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and has written for such publications as New York Times Magazine, Playboy, Tennis and Vibe. He successfully made the jump from nonfiction to fiction with his first book, The Portable Promised Land, a collection of short stories.

FictionAddiction.NET's Apryl Duncan talked with Touré about his new career in fiction writing and how writing for magazines helped him develop his craft.

Confess your true love: fiction or nonfiction. What makes one better than the other?

Oh, there's no contest. I love fiction.

It's just so much more interesting and complex and personal and real. There's a much deeper truth you can get at when you're not constrained by what are commonly called facts. Fiction is where you get to deal with the subconscious and the collective memory and where you get to tap into the ancient tradition of storytelling.

How did journalistic writing help hone your fiction writing skills?

Writing for magazines is a great way to study a certain sort of writing. And there is a brevity that is forced upon the magazine writer.

You must tell an entire story in x-number of words and it's never enough and you have to learn what to pare down and how to leave out everything that's not important and that has definitely helped inform my fiction sensibilities. I think a lot about what Hemingway said when he described writing something that's like an iceberg where you see just the top but just from seeing that bit you know there's so much more going on underneath.

Michael Jackson recently said, "The record companies really do conspire against the artists, especially the black artists." Have you found this to be true in the publishing industry?

Well, Michael Jackson was completely out of line invoking the sacred cry of racism in that situation. There is racism in the record business, but there are also tremendous opportunities for people of all races. What industry, besides sports, has created more black millionaires?

Michael's trouble began in the recording studio, when he failed to make a listenable album, but he's trying to blame his failures on everyone else. I was particularly insulted by his charge because you just cannot throw the word racism around lightly because it takes a bit of the sting out when we really do have racism to speak about.

As for the publishing industry, I haven't had any trouble so far, but I'm a baby writer.