2026 MLA Interviews
Were any segments notably easier or harder to write than others?
The personal history sections of this book were definitely harder to write. I loved working with the history, the artifacts, and the researched portions of Spare, and letting them accumulate and speak across the book. There was a real pleasure in seeing those connections build. And, it was information that could just be placed on the page without the need for me to explain or resolve it.
The personal sections were different. In those, I was often acting as a detective in my own past, trying to understand certain experiences and feelings as I wrote about them. The writing was actually paralleling that process — I was understanding it in real time. It was less “emotion recollected in tranquility” than making my way through a hurricane of my own making. At the same time, the researched braids began to change their meaning, too, as I increasingly had to understand them through the lens of the personal story.
Is there a particular audience you hope to reach?
The places of the book where I picture a particular audience most clearly are the parts that talk about addiction, intervention, and autonomy — parts that address what it means to decide what is worth saving. Those sorts of questions get interesting, because they place you in relation to other people, they are a way of taking a position, sometimes a societal position. In those instances, I’m writing to people that are struggling with those questions, and, if I’m being honest, people who aren’t struggling with them because they feel sure they already have the answers.
I also feel like this book reaches out to anyone who has felt, I guess the word is, mismeasured by conventional standards. Or who has had to understand their life against someone else’s terms. A phrase I have been using a lot, one that stuns me out of any kind of comparison-coma, is “You are running a different race entirely.” You don’t have this? You aren’t that? Of course not — your tools are different. Your terrain is different. The road is a different length, or it started in a weird place. I’d like to reach people like me who might benefit from remembering that.
What did it feel like to write and release this story?
Did my nervous system write this question? Earlier in my writing life, I wrote with a kind of facility that allowed me to get along, but something changed when I began working with my mentor, Arielle Greenberg. She encouraged me to write for stakes, to say things I actually believed, and to take risks. Then my work changed for the better. Since then, I write only from that place, and writing Spare meant staying there. Releasing that to the world has been a solid eleven on the discomfort scale. My “this feels risky and bad” gland has been shooting like garden hose for quite a while now. As a poet, hiding behind the lyric can be a very comfortable place to hang out, but this is nonfiction, and I edited most of the camouflaging foliage out of it.
Youth Fiction
“Have You Seen Sofia?”
Nela Parker
What details help a short story feel most real or affecting for you?
Writing a short story and keeping it short was always a challenge for me. Even when I was younger, my stories would reach so far. I think it’s important to have a wide use of vocabulary when describing the five senses. I wanted to make sure there were no filler sentences, and that every word is used with intention. Keeping a short story engaging 100% of the time when you’re reading is the most important part in my opinion.
What challenges do you cencounter writing about difficult subject material?
When writing about deportation and sensitive topics such as the one in my story, I prioritize research. I have the privilege to write and bring attention to matters like this, and it’s important to do it accurately. I wouldn’t say I had any troubles, but making sure the information I’m researching is coming from a reliable source.
Did you have a favorite part of this story to write?
My favorite part about writing this story was adding details. It’s always been my favorite part of writing anything. I like making people feel like they are IN the story, making them think they can smell, hear, and see the scene. But about this story, the opening was my favorite part. I liked talking about how similar the girls are on the inside and the only thing that separates them as people are their race.
Anthology
All Along You Were Blooming: Collected Writings by Incarcerated Women at the Maine Correctional Center and Their Allies
Mira Ptacin
Has working with the MCC authors changed your own writing and reading?
Absolutely. I often say that while I may technically be the instructor, I've learned just as much from the women at the Maine Correctional Center as they have from me. I'm quite close with a few of them, having been writing and workshopping together for over thirteen years; they've become my sisters, my extended family. Their writing has reminded me that what matters most on the page is not cleverness but truth. These women write with urgency and purpose, and being in that room has made me a more attentive writer and reader. I'm increasingly drawn to books that embrace complexity, contradiction, and the possibility of transformation.
What was the biggest challenge in recovering the voices of women who have literally been hidden from the world?
The challenge wasn't helping them find their voices—it was helping them believe those voices mattered. Many had spent years being defined by court records, headlines, and institutional narratives. Over time, we created a space where they could tell their own stories. What continually amazed me was that their voices were never lost; they were simply waiting for permission to be heard, and not to be judged by their honesty, or taken advantage of when their guard was down.
How did you encourage authorial vulnerability in a space that intimidates and discourages vulnerability?
Slowly, and through trust. My friend and colleague Linda Holtslander and I never began with trauma. We started with childhood memories, family stories, objects, places, and small moments. We wrote alongside them and shared our own imperfect work. The workshop became one of the few places where the women weren't being judged or managed—they were simply writers. Once that happened, vulnerability often followed naturally. It was a holy experience.
Fiction
Bud’s Dead.
Jud Widing
What, for you, makes a "not much happens" book engaging and memorable? Do you have any favorites on your own bookshelf?
This is an excellent question; I’m still trying to figure out the answer! My best guess, which helped keep me on track while prepping/writing Bud’s Dead., is that it’s a balance between big question marks and little exclamation points. The question marks are the characters - it’s fun to puzzle over characters, be surprised by them, try to make sense of them, which for me as both reader and writer is one of the chief joys of the “not much happens” story. But there can be too much of a good thing. If the characters are too inscrutable, and the reader can’t make heads or tails of who anybody is or why they’re doing what they’re doing, said reader might arrive at that most lethal question: “who cares?”
To offset the potentially alienating effect of non-stop question marks, I thought in terms of little exclamation points: tiny micro-dramas in which the proximate objectives and stakes (low though they may be) are all crystal clear. What I found in all of my favorite “not much happens” stories is that these messy, fascinating, complicated characters are, from scene to scene, pursuing highly comprehensible little mini-objectives. These are enough to keep the reader engaged in the narrative and connected to the characters even without fully making sense of them, which I find to be a prerequisite to start teasing apart all those question marks.
My absolute favorite “not much happens” stories are, I’m sorry to say, actually movies. Specifically the work of Kelly Reichardt, which was collectively the biggest inspiration for Bud’s Dead. All of her films are outstanding, but in 2008 she made one called "Wendy and Lucy" which, to my mind, is the absolute pinnacle of the “slice of life” story. Devastating without being melodramatic. Can’t recommend it enough.
Are there any fiction genres you're interested in trying or would never write?
Many and none, respectively! On the latter count, there are certainly some genres I’m less interested in than others, but I also don’t think about genre too much as I’m writing. I’ll follow a story wherever it wants to go! In terms of things I’m actively interested in writing, I’m dying to write an epistolary novel. There’s something about that structure, where the vast majority of the story is actually happening outside of the prose we’re reading, that I find both daunting and intriguing. Prime opportunity for unreliable narrators too, which is a perennial favorite of mine. I haven’t had a good idea for one yet, but I trust one will fall on me someday.
What have you found to be your best sources of inspiration for "slice of life" stories?
If I just say “life” I feel like I’ll get yanked off stage with a big cane, so if I’m trying to zero in on one thing it’d be sounds. I describe ambient sounds a lot in my writing - there are a few recurring noises in Bud’s Dead. that are particularly significant - because that’s usually what anchors me in a setting. It’s well-observed that music can be a direct line to feeling, and I’ve found that to be true of just about any noise for me, particularly the mundane ones. There’s a lot of nuance in noise, too, which I find endlessly fascinating. For example, I feel some interplay between distance of a sound and emotional valence. A dog barking right next to me is a bit grating, but one barking far away carries a different emotional payload. Usually melancholy, especially if it’s night. What’s up with that? It’s all just dogs at different distances! It’s an abstract kind of inspiration I get from this ("this" being noise in general, not barking dogs specifically), but it’s something that really feeds me. So naturally, I work in a medium without sound!