NER managing editor Leslie Sainz talks with author Jessica Treadway about distillation, first-person narration, conscious and unconscious influences, and her short story “Tribute” from issue 45.3.
Leslie Sainz: You’re well known for writing characters with deep internal landscapes—characters who grapple with large ontological, autobiographical, and social questions—and Sophie, the protagonist in your short story “Tribute,” is no exception. Could you speak broadly about how you render such “complete” personhood in your fiction?
Jessica Treadway: I appreciate your saying that, especially since “Tribute” is a relatively short short story; that makes it all the more gratifying to me if, by the end, you feel you know Sophie’s soul and what it’s gone through. I believe that most of us grapple with huge questions, of the type you mention, every day. We might not identify them as such in the moment, but it wouldn’t take too much digging to find them and lay them bare. The laying bare is the uncomfortable part—so uncomfortable that many of us choose not to “go there,” or go there much. To me that’s the job and the joy of fiction. I think of most of my characters as ordinary people in the world who wouldn’t be looked at twice on the street; who would go unnoticed and unknown, unless I do the work of diving inside them, excavating what’s there, and bringing it up to the light. I feel a responsibility to perform that task, because I’m the only one who can.
The older I get, the more interested I am in distillation, a word and concept I prefer to minimalism, though they’re probably the same thing. I often think of Michelangelo saying that the sculpture is already inside the marble block; he just has to “chisel away the superfluous material.” It’s not as easy as it sounds—well, maybe it was for Michelangelo! But for me it takes a lot of work to determine what’s essential and what’s superfluous. This is why, of course, it’s a mistake to think it’s easier to write stories than novels because they’re shorter. You probably know that quote, variously attributed Cicero, Pascal, and Mark Twain, which goes “I apologize for writing a long letter. I didn’t have time to write a short one.” Ding, ding, ding, I say! Sometimes I worry I go too far in the other direction—I hardly ever think about or render what my characters look like, for example, unless it’s relevant to the story—but in general, I think about why this character and not some other. For the most part I’m writing shorter stories now than I did when I was younger, and it probably reflects the philosophy “Go deep, not wide.”
LS: “Tribute” is partially dedicated to and includes a poem by the rebellious autodidact Bill Knott, whose work has resurged in popularity in 2024, the 10-year anniversary of his death. In fact, fellow NER author Sandra Simonds recently published a fantastic essay on Knott titled “The Crown Prince of Bad Judgment” on the Poetry Foundation website. How does engaging with poetry, Knott’s and others’, inspire your writing?
JT: I enjoyed that essay very much, and I bet Bill would have, too. I was lucky enough to know him at Emerson College, where I still teach. Since poetry is the essence of distillation, a great poem—which to me means one in which every word is perfect, marching with all the others toward the inevitable, transcendent end—touches me like little else, aside from music. When I was a kid my mother gave me a book of poems for young readers that had been hers as a child, and I still remember, vividly, the experience of reading Countee Cullen’s poem “Incident,” which I encourage everyone to look up. I remember the moment of finishing that poem for the first time, and how wide it split me open. It may be no coincidence that my most recent stories are all in the first-person voice, as that poem is and as so many poems are. I think of my narrators as corollaries to poetry’s speakers.
Bill’s poem quoted in my story—complete in three lines—allows us to inhabit a human being who’s contemplating not only his own death, but how the world will carry on after it. In three lines! Talk about distilled.
LS: I was quite moved by Sophie’s self-soothing mantra of “It’s okay, body. I know I haven’t always taken the best care of you. But that’ll change now, after what you’ve been through” and her ritual of purchasing “a chocolate-and-vanilla-swirl soft-serve cone” following her radiation treatments at The Ravell Cancer Institute. In your opinion, what does it mean to take care of ourselves, our bodies, in a world that increasingly distances us from our somatic selves?
JT: I have the impression that what’s true for me is true for many of us: anything that slows me down, physiologically as well as mentally, is an almost immediate balm. I’m sure different things work for different people. A book, a cup of tea and a cookie, maybe a cat on my lap if one of ours is in the mood—those are the conditions that bring me closest to the state I want to be in, what T. S. Eliot in The Four Quartets calls “the still point of the turning world.” I won’t pretend my phone isn’t also on the table beside me, next to the plate and the cup, but the more I can resist picking it up, the longer I can remain in the still point.
Recently, while riding the subway, I gave myself the thought exercise of defining exactly how becoming immersed in a book is different from scrolling through a phone or computer screen and reading or watching what’s there. (I do realize that one might be reading a book on their phone, but I’ve only ever caught glimpses of social media.) When I’m sitting on the subway and see someone glued to a book, why don’t I bemoan the fact that they aren’t paying attention to the people and environment around them, as I do if they’re glued to their phones? Both cases involve focusing on a world other than the one physically at hand. I guess it’s because scrolling tends to be more “mindless,” while reading is exactly the opposite. With scrolling we get disparate, one-off images and posts, as opposed to continuous inhabitation of another human being. I’d further guess that scrolling is more an act of avoidance or distraction, whereas reading is an act of investment and commitment toward an ending that’s bigger, and more rewarding, than the sum of its parts. It takes more effort than scrolling, but it pays such a higher yield.
LS: Are you at work on a new collection of short stories? Will “Tribute” appear in it, and if so, how does it link to or distinguish itself—thematically, narratively—from the other pieces?
JT: Yes, and thank you for asking. I recently completed a new collection with the title “I Felt My Life with Both My Hands,” which is the first line of an Emily Dickinson poem. Each story is narrated in the first person by a different woman character. They’re daughters, mothers, sisters, aunts, lovers—and a writer or two. Each one is a cri de coeur arising from a crisis—minor or major—in the narrator’s life. There are a few connections or Easter eggs among the stories, one motif being that each story contains a quote or a reference to a piece of writing (such as the Bill Knott poem) that’s particularly relevant to that character and her situation at the moment. I like exploring the notion of how we all influence each other, throughout generations, even when—maybe especially when—we’re not aware of doing so.
LS: In thinking about Sophie’s ecstatic transformation at the end of “Tribute,” what are you reading right now that gives you the feeling of being “buoyant, airborne, [yourself]?” What helps you believe in miracles these days?
JT: It’s been a while since I had that experience while reading, which is a good reminder that perhaps I should be seeking some new voices and stories. As to ecstasy and miracles, I find this a hard question to answer, because to me the best thing about that fleeting feeling is that it’s unexpected, and can’t be planned for or summoned. But I do love spending time in bookstores and libraries, because there can be no mistake that they’re places of reverence for the book, and for the act of reading. Both on the page and in the world, without being able to plan for or summon them, I try to invite and recognize any pleasurable surprises that might come my way.
Jessica Treadway has published four novels and three collections of short stories, one of which, Please Come Back to Me (University of Georgia Press, 2012), received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her most recent collection is Infinite Dimensions (Delphinium Books, 2022). A recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Massachusetts Cultural Council, she is a Senior Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emerson College in Boston.
Leslie Sainz is the author of Have You Been Long Enough at Table (Tin House, 2023), winner of the 2024 Audre Lorde Award and a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, the New England Book Award, and the Vermont Book Award. The daughter of Cuban exiles, her work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, the Yale Review, Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, and elsewhere. She’s received fellowships, scholarships, and honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, CantoMundo, the Miami Writers Institute, the Adroit Journal, and the Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts at Bucknell University. A former guest host of the award-winning podcast The Slowdown, she currently works as the managing editor of New England Review and teaches in the Newport MFA program at Salve Regina University.