Past contributor Kevin MacDonell talks with the issue #229 contributor about dissociation, the theory of translationality, and how trauma and poetry are conjoined twins.
KM: Despite its intense interiority, “Chasing Goffman” is memorably peopled, not least by Erving Goffman, whom the narrator knows only through biographies and Goffman’s own scholarly works. An extended “conversation” with him takes place inside a diner, inside a dream, inside the mind—all while respecting the bounds of nonfiction. I admire how the dream framing is so lightly and deftly handled. Did this form come to you naturally, or did it require exploration, perhaps through successive drafts?
SN:
For me, the structure is less oneiric and more trauma-based. I spend much of my time in a dissociative state, meaning the story fragments reflect how I myself live, how details trigger greater remembrance. How each detail is emblematic of greater experience. I spend so much time dissociated, I no longer merely remember. I imaginatively live into the pieces. I was well into adulthood before I learned most others don’t have this kind of subjectivity. You could say every bit of my life is nonlinear, poetic, I need to do work to stitch. Another great poetic strategy is repetition, so trauma and poetry are conjoined twins. They wish they could be singular and complete, but they can never be. They have to dream together.
Read the rest of Shane Neilson's interview as well as an excerpt from "Chasing Goffman."
Kate Burnham,
#229 cnf contributor
Fiction Editorial Board intern Julien Johnston-Brew talks with the issue #229 contributor about writing your way out of emotional corners, sifting through scraps of memories, and how certain songs have a way of coming back to haunt us.
JJB: Thank you for sharing “King of the Road” with us. I got the sense of this piece being a “coming to terms” of sorts with the heartache of losing loved ones; does your writing act as a means for you to digest lived experiences, or do you write in the aftermath of that coming-to-terms process?
KB:
I don’t know if we ever make it to the other side of the coming-to-terms process. I tend to write my way out of emotional corners. I spent a week at a writing retreat last year. It was summer, it was beautiful, I was miserable. I saw no one, I ate baked beans, I cried, I wrote this. I wouldn’t recommend it as a writing process, but it worked for me.
Read the rest of Kate Burnham's interview as well as an excerpt from "King of the Road."
Volunteer Sarah Kilian talks with the