Tell us about Senseless Women: 

The oldest story in this collection was drafted eighteen years ago, when I was a not terribly sensible 24-year-old. It’s about a train, the Eurostar essentially, who falls in love with a rider. At the time, I had a fellowship that involved teaching in a British boarding school and travelling as much as I could with my small stipend. I felt very glamorous and Fitzgeraldian, so I wrote with confidence (and considerable pretension). Over the years, I’ve worked to hold on to the confidence while engaging in source material a little closer to home. I am partial to magical realism and obsessed with the dynamics of group membership: how much we need others to accomplish the task of being ourselves. Motherhood has crept into my work. While I still worry that that is uncool, it is simply the country I live in now. The train story is still there, though heavily revised.

How are you nesting during this time? 

I’m not winning quarantine. I’m not working in or admitted to a hospital, thank goodness, but these days remind me of hospital time. You cling to scraps of news, you eat random things at random times, you’re desperate for distraction but can’t really focus on anything. If you turn around and look back down the hall, there’s a sliding glass door to a sunny day. You came from that sunshine, and you may someday go back to it, but for now it is only a bitter taunt. 

But: every afternoon we make hot chocolate, and my sons let me read Roald Dahl novels aloud in my terrible British accents. It’s not the same as a book tour but offers a species of consolation.

Do you have a bird story or favorite feathered friend?

First, you need to know that my anecdotes are dark, especially if they start out cute. My grandfather raised turkeys, and when my cousins and siblings were little, he would take us to see the new arrivals. The turkey houses were football-field-length metal structures, and the whole of the dirt floor was covered with these snowball baby turkeys, aka poults. They parted like the sea when you walked. You could scoop one up, and it would peep at you. The air in the turkey house felt really hot in your nostrils. My grandfather was a deeply caring man, a pillar of the family and the community, but his sense of humor was...unconventional. He would, for example, gather up the corpse of a poult that hadn’t made it and slip it into the rear pouch of a toddler’s overalls, all for the sake of the following joke: A farmer is walking back home down a lane with five or six of his small grandchildren, all dressed in overalls for the occasion of their visit to the country. The sun is setting behind the giant cedar trees. As the house comes into sight, the farmer says to the smallest child, Hey, what’s that in your pocket?

What is your most memorable reading experience?

In second grade, I read Harriet the Spy and arranged my life to resemble Harriet’s as closely as possible, which meant I sometimes wrote my name as “Sarah the Spy” and got very excited when I found an old day book someone had thrown away.

I’ve never recovered from reading Robert Coover’s “The Babysitter” in college. At least once a year I attempt (and sometimes complete) a story with that kind of monkey-bread structure.

What makes you most excited about Senseless Women?

 Honestly, I have been wanting to use the phrase “my book” since I was six years old.

To tweet or not to tweet?

I tweet a couple of times a year. Twitter operates on a scale and timeline that I can’t quite assimilate. I can’t drink from the fire hose, not that I’m claiming any moral high ground in this inability. I like it for certain collective events, like the AWP conference or a televised debate. I think Twitter exerts a force that has made a lot of people funnier or more astute. I’m just not one of them.

What books do you have in your bag right now?

25 Trumbulls Road by Christopher Locke (terrifying chapbook)

There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You by Michelle Ross (short stories made of perfect sentences)

Unnatural Habitats by Angela Mitchell (more brilliant short stories. If you like Ozark….)

Can you tell us your favorite rejection story?

I got a typed letter from a small press contest that congratulated me on being a semifinalist and offered bland encouragement in future endeavors. In the margin, someone had scrawled an addendum: “some good writing but mostly unintelligible.” Mostly unintelligible. MOSTLY UNINTELLIGIBLE.

What literary journals do you love?

So many! The one that I’ve read longest and most consistently is Lady Rosebud’s Churchill Wristlet. I’m under the impression that Kelly Link and Gavin Grant staple it together in their Hobbit house in New England (not seeking correctives to this image). The stories are always surprising and often weird, but never in that self-importantly avant garde way. They sell several tiers of subscriptions; one includes a bar of chocolate with your ‘zine.

What shakes your tail feathers?

I was a vaguely Goth middle schooler in Nashville, so I felt honor-bound to reject country music.  But last week I learned to do the Boot Scootin’ Boogie from Youtube. If you’re looking for uplifting quarantine activities, put it on your list.

What advice do you have for fledgling writers?

I guess I should have some since I teach in an MFA program. I prefer to know the fledgling writer first. Some need a confidence boost and others a dose of reality. Some need more discipline and others more letting go. Be yourself. Imitate your idols. There are so many ways.

What other eggs do you have in your basket right now?

I’m editing the first draft of a novel about...actually, it feels like a jinx to acknowledge it publicly.  I’ll just say it involves the Dancing Plague of 1518 and some Bon Jovi songs I probably won’t get the rights to use.