The Next Big Thing

Welcome to Parted in the Middle’s installment of The Next Big Thing, a porous, short-form, self-interview game of blog-tag. I was tagged by Deborah Poe, the wonderful poet, novella-ist, editor, teacher, and champion of the hybrid form.

What is the working title of the book?

Apprenticeship

Where did the idea come from for the book?

In 2008, my dear friend Emily Abendroth, writer and activist, generously invited me along to the Mattamuskeet National Wildlife Refuge, where we spent two weeks living in a “field research station” as “writers in residence”–a position that we, in essence, created for ourselves. Emily had visited Mattamuskeet twice before, and was in the process of writing “Muzzle Blast Dander,” a long poetic essay about the contested histories of the site, which was published as part of Refuge/Refugee by ChainLinks. At the refuge, we spent two weeks walking, paddling, writing, being cold, looking at birds. I learned a lot from Emily’s research, and from meeting and talking with others working there, but I also felt ill-equipped and incipient as a visitor to the swamp.

What genre does your book fall under?

At various times in the writing process, it has fallen under
a spell
a wave
the wheels of a moving vehicle
the influence of a powerful deity
a delusion
the weather
the genre of fiction

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

I like to imagine using actors I know, most of whom are my partner’s friends from college, and are consequently several years younger than I am. I would like to make this imaginary movie rendition in about seven years, when they are the age that I am now, late thirties, beginning to get nice and worn.

I would choose Jess Barbagallo to play Jones. This would take the Jones character in a more trans/male direction, whereas in the story Jones is more of a straight-up butch. Jess is such a talented actor, with the compact intensity required to get Jones right.

For the narrator…Laryssa Husiak. She can be vulnerable, but then opens up into fierce, precise, and wild zones of being in performance. I think she could really nail the mysterious transformation the narrator undergoes.

What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?

Tone: oblique
Vectors: human/bird

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

I wrote a draft of the story in fragments for Nona Caspers’ workshop at San Francisco State. On the day of the critique, Nona brought in a plastic yard swan to help us meditate on the writing. Later that spring, I performed a live version at a works-in-progress night curated by Faye Driscoll at Brooklyn Arts Exchange. And then I set it down for four years.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Sara Jaffe and the other three editors at New Herring Press prompted me to finish it. From the initial fragments, I worked closely with the editorial collective over the course of the past eight months to coax and coerce the story into its current form. Since my attention span is best described as digressive, they read drafts and helped me focus on the story’s nucleus: the refuge.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

“If I hoped to consider instead the boundary of the blindfold or the chair, I said nothing.”

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I’m grateful that New Herring Press is publishing Apprenticeship this March, along with chapbooks by Justin Torres, Eileen Myles, and Sarah Veglahn. More generally, I’m excited by the ways that NHP is nourishing prose/fiction chapbook publishing as a growing and vital space between self-publishing and representation by an agent. Viva NHP! Viva micro-publishing!