2026 MLA Interviews
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!