She auctioned away one of her favorite memories on Instagram for a profit of 10,000 memory credits—a substantial sum. The memory had been of a reception for content creators, and she’d pitched it well. It felt like a royal ball, she said on Instagram Live. If you’ve ever wondered what a celebrity gala is like, this memory is for you. She timed the auction well, too—on the heels of the Met Gala, when people were frenzied over designer outfits and the parade of social wealth.

At the auction’s close, she launched the application linked to her memory harvesting implant. She selected the memory, which she’d titled PROOF THAT YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL, and sent it via link to the winner, who would download it to their implant.

She felt the shape of the memory’s absence, but the filling was gone—like a cavity’s rot being sucked out of a tooth, leaving behind an empty chamber. Panic, a side effect of the procedure, welled up in its place.

She looked at her phone’s screen to anchor herself. The wallpaper was a vision board, a collage of images surrounding the name Natalie. It didn’t matter who Natalie was, except that she was determined to become Natalie.

Surrounding the name were images representing Natalie’s memories: a condo in Malibu, the ocean a turquoise gem; the manicured slope of Canadian ski resort; a Mercedes with paint so glossy it was June-bug-iridescent; toasting wine glasses, women’s smiles blurred above. Natalie was wealth, Natalie was joy, Natalie was life at its finest.

And she was determined to buy memories like Natalie’s with the profits made from her drab memories.

But she didn’t have enough credits to acquire memories as expensive as these, to transform her brain into Natalie’s. She must keep selling. Perhaps even her own worst

memories—her parents’ divorce, her car breaking down in the snow, blocking her now-ex partner for the last time—could be twisted into something enticing. My dad said WHAT to my mom? Win the auction to find out! Survival tips you NEED from someone who escaped death in subzero temperatures. The Saga of a Psycho Ex.

She filmed a video thanking today’s winner, which took two attempts to get the background right—a clean white wall with succulents arcing overhead. Her followers often asked where she’d gotten the plants and their chic wooden baskets. She never replied. She filmed her videos on the bathroom floor, phone propped on the toilet. The succulent wall was a posterboard. Her followers did not need to know this, because soon she would be Natalie. Soon, she would have a filming room and a real succulent wall.

The emptiness where the memory she’d sold was caving in, becoming less raw. The pain, the panic of it, always faded. She turned to the harvesting app, scrolling through her memories, searching for her next extraction. One day—when she could afford memories of gemstone waves and friends’ parties—this would all be worth it.

He comes once a month on the last day during the last hour. Never late, like clockwork, tick tock, and always on time. You gotta be lucky enough to find him, people say, but when you do, you’ll know. Only a handful of people have seen him, even with a backpack you can’t miss and a hat that covers eyes you’ll never see. People say if you’re desperate enough, you’ll find him.

You’re desperate enough. She was desperate, too.

You could go to The Center and tell them it was an accident. They’d ask you why and you’d tell them you don’t know. They’d buy It and take It away, but then they’d take you, too. You could go to a dealer in one of those alleys, the kind where piles of trash somehow tumble out of half-full dumpsters, where cats look for a feast and lampposts only ever flicker and there are rotting corpses of people who were hurt by accident—it was an accident, don’t forget that. They’d buy It and sell It, but then they’d sell you out because that’s ten times the money.

So, you look for him instead, clawing up hills like she clawed up your arms, dirt burying itself under your fingernails like your flesh buried under hers, like you buried her—

You notice his hat first. It’s tugged so far down his face that his nose is barely visible. Tufts of white hair curl themselves underneath, snaking around one another and fighting for the chance to say hello. She fought for the chance to see another day.

His backpack is twice his size, and the way it’s being poked and prodded and slammed into from the inside tells you that’s where your Memory will go. Dog tags hang off the side, limp like the overcooked noodles you had that night, limp like her when she took her final breath—your fingers pressed firmly against her neck, her mouth slack and lips drained of color when you tossed her into the now-full dumpster.

He doesn’t speak, doesn’t need to. And you, you don’t dare utter a word. His fingers are thin, delicate, smooth—hers: scratched, broken, swollen—as they flick up his hat. You look into his eyes. Those big, round, purple eyes people said you’d never see. But they’re right there and they’re telling you it’s okay. It was an accident. They know.

The last thing you hear is the wind before the world goes black, and you’re being pushed and shoved and poked and prodded at and slammed into and finally—you don’t remember a thing.

He leaves once a month on the first day during the first hour. Never late, like clockwork, tick tock always on time. You won’t even know he came, people say, save for the body he leaves behind. You can find it if you’re lucky enough.

But no one who’s truly desperate ever sticks around long enough to hear that part of the story.

I hold my son’s plush hands and count his pink fingers to make sure there are ten. I wouldn’t forgive myself if there were any missing, though I would forget how it happened. I have three severed fingertips—I can’t remember how it felt to lose them, but each finger fed my son for three months.

My phone vibrates like a heartbeat in my pocket, and I know it’s a request.

How much for a thumb?

I reply, $8,000.

The buyer accepts. I place my son in his playpen and kiss his soft head. He squirms like a little worm that thinks it’s about to be eaten.

When memories became a new type of NFT, everyone was quick to unload their baggage in exchange for vacations to faraway places and sex with people they never thought they’d meet. Happiness became the equivalent of fast food—cheap and of no nutritional value. These days, painful memories are scarce, and the market is teeming with people begging to feel something.

The memory must be at least ten seconds long. I take the knife I once used for cutting apples and place my thumb on the cutting board, like a nub of ginger waiting to be peeled. I know where to cut, I know how far to go. I cut through the red, counting the moments through gritted teeth. I can’t look away until it is done. I press the back of my ear to sync the memory and send it from my phone. The buyer instantly pays, and I am left with blind pain. My body moves automatically, a puppet pulled by the strings of the nurse I was before. I treat the wound with my son crying behind me, as if he feels it too. Then the world grows still, dark, and numb.

---

The memory from this woman pounds into my skull like a drill. I feel the sawing of her thumb, the anguish of hot flesh against cold steel. A scream rips through my throat and the skin on my forehead floods with salty sweat. It’s delicious. A rush of laughter erupts from the deepest part of my gut. I spiral in this feeling of pain that is not mine, of pain I paid for like a prime rib served on a broken platter.

It is over too soon. The memory clings to me sticky sweet, but the feeling is gone. I pull my phone out and view my collection with pride. There is the thumb, there is the fetus in a closet, there is the eye of a soldier, there is the burned flesh of a child in a war zone. It’s all there and so much more. I am rich with pain that I bought and now own.

My phone rings.

Sir, it’s time for your press conference.

I straighten my red and blue tie, adjust the pin over my heart, check my teeth, and smile.

A brusque Slavic voice ricocheted off the brick alley walls around the corner, and my level two high school Spanish was not helping me decipher any of it. My socks were soddened by the blood running down the front of my jeans. As I surveyed the empty sunset-lit block, my breaths came in jagged bursts. I didn’t recognize this part of town. My body was still shaking with the shock of what happened at the police station.  It’s not every day you see a man in a black suit and Ray-Bans shoot two cops while you are mid-conversation with them.

“Run!” That’s all I had heard. I didn’t know if it was my own voice or Sam’s. She had been next to me during the shooting. It was her blood running down the front of my jeans.

 I caught my breath and looked down at my phone. The GPS read You have arrived. I double-checked that the address I punched in while running matched the one that had come from the unknown phone number, which seemed more area code than number. I had ignored the texts at first. I had been busy climbing the unnecessarily copious number of steps leading to the police station. And I think I was finally convincing Sam to sell me her memory of the time she walked in on me mid-wipe at the movie theater’s unisex bathroom. If I had known that morally ethical inclusivity came at the cost of your best friend catching you in a frog squat with dropped trow, I would have thought twice about signing that petition clipboard.

They tell you to only sell your memories if prescribed by a licensed Memorist. Bunch of horse shit. Before everyone’s uncle owned one, Memor-link boxes were exclusive to Memorists’ clinics. That’s back when my trauma-laden shell of an aunt decided to visit one. She had been prescribed to sell her traumatic childhood memories. What they didn’t tell her was that even though the memories disappeared, the emotions stayed. And rope is much cheaper than you think. I didn’t have any trauma. What I did have was a memory of a certain popular senator guiding two blindfolded toddlers into an SUV during my alleyway pee break last week. After talking over what I saw with Sam, she had eventually convinced me to go to the police station.

I ventured down the narrow alley and found a blindfolded kid with a short buzz-cut connected to a Memor-link box. Beside him, a bald, pale man in a tracksuit grunted, “Do now. No more trouble.” He had a way with words.

Feeling resigned and chicken shit, I took the connecting pair of Memor-link wires, peeled the Giver-Tabs, and suctioned them onto my temples. I closed my eyes and brought the memory into focus. The box beeped. Then I heard hair clippers.

The shopkeeper lifted their head as the doorbell chimed. “Welcome.”

An old woman entered, her face a map of laughter and tears earned over a life well lived. She kept her crimson shawl pulled tight as she wandered the shelves, eyeing the shopkeeper’s wares. Many customers took time browsing, gathering courage before asking for what they truly wanted.

The woman paused and ran soft fingers over a stuffed bear. “A baby’s first laugh,” the shopkeeper explained. “It was sold for a new car.”

With a careful reverence, the woman picked up the bear and cradled it in her arms. “What a waste,” she mumbled, squeezing it before returning it to the shelf.

“Everyone has their reasons,” the shopkeeper said. “And everything has its worth.”

A moment passed and the woman sighed. She was ready.

The shopkeeper studied her as she approached the desk. It had become something of a pastime to try and guess what the customer wanted to sell. The shopkeeper had seen it all: first kisses, wedding days, funerals, friendships, favorite recipes, a mother’s voice. What had the old woman brought to sell?

She clutched at her shawl, finding some invisible comfort in the frayed woolen threads. “How much for a life?”

“More than you can give.”

She shook her head, “How much for my life?”

Interesting. “Do you understand what you ask?”

“I do.”

“I see. A lifetime of memories is not a simple thing to lose. What do you ask in return?”

“My grandson is sick. A heart defect. My sweet boy has fought hard, but he’s losing the fight. Unless something happens, he won’t see another month.” The woman’s voice was painted with emotion, but her eyes were dry. She had cried enough tears to know that they wouldn’t change anything. “I am old and have lived a good life. I will give you all my memories, every moment of my seventy-nine years, if you can make him healthy.”

“I can fix his heart, but I can do no more than that. I can’t promise him a long and happy life.”

“He only needs a chance. He will make his own happiness.”

The shopkeeper considered the offer before them. “Very well. If you are sure, sign your name in my ledger.”

They opened the book to a blank page and the woman signed without hesitation. When she looked up again, her eyes sparkled with tears. “Thank you.”

“You have until tomorrow morning. Until then, you will remember. I suggest you make use of today.”

The old woman nodded and the shopkeeper was alone once more.

The doctors will find a healthy boy with a healthy heart in the morning, but the woman won’t remember anything. Not her name, her family, her face.

But the shopkeeper is not cruel. Even when she has forgotten everything else, the woman will remember the sound of her grandson’s first laugh, and that will be enough.

If you’ve ever met one of our wonderful F(r)iction staffers, you’ll quickly learn that almost every one of them was once an intern in our Publishing Internship Program.

This program is run by our parent nonprofit organization, Brink Literacy Project. While our publishing internships are a great way to get a crash course in the literary industry, they can often provide a path to what can become a long and rewarding professional relationship. For more information, please visit the internship page on the Brink website.

Aubrey Unemori

she/her

What is your favorite place to read?  

In bed, in the middle of the night, when the city is at its quietest. 

You’re walking up the side of a mountain along a winding, wooded path. You look to your left and discover, by chance, a door in the side of the mountain. Do you open it, and if so, where does it lead?

Valenda, I hope! 

How do you take your coffee? If you don’t drink coffee, describe your favorite beverage ritual.   

Latte style! I like my coffee strong, iced, and with soy milk.  

What is your favorite English word and why? Do you have a favorite word in another language?  

My favorite English word is ‘palimpsest’ —not only fun to say, but also a creative exercise in excavation and meaning. My favorite Japanese word is “atatakakunai” (あたたかくない), which doesn’t mean anything significant, but is a beast to say in conversation!

You’re on a deserted island. You have one album and one book. What are they and why?   

I’d bring a Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki for the meditative and existential island fever vibes. I’d bring the Bloodborne soundtrack for the terror-inducing adventure vibes. 

If you could change one thing about the literary industry, what would it be?  

Livable wages as the standard for all employees. 🙂 

Inanna Carter

What is your favorite place to read?   

When I’m feeling outdoorsy (which really isn’t that often) I love reading outside on my porch when the wind breezes just right. If not outside, then happily in the comfort of my own bed. 

You’re walking up the side of a mountain along a winding, wooded path. You look to your left and discover, by chance, a door in the side of the mountain. Do you open it, and if so, where does it lead? 

The easy, boring answer is that I would 100% not open that door. But if I were to open it, it would lead to the most beautiful library/cafe with more books than I can wrap my head around. And plants. Lots of plants. 

How do you take your coffee? If you don’t drink coffee, describe your favorite beverage ritual.   

I am unfortunately not a coffee person! But I do love taro boba tea. I used to have a ritual where I’d make some at night (from the kits from Amazon) and just sit back and read. I need to start doing this again for sure. 

What is your favorite English word and why? Do you have a favorite word in another language? 

I definitely have a favorite English word but of course I can’t think of it right now, so I’ll go with ethereal. My favorite German word is “Handy.” It means mobile phone, and I say it…way too often. “Wo ist mein Handy..? Ah! Es ist da!” 

You’re on a deserted island. You have one album and one book. What are they and why?   

The book would be my Death By… series by Linda Gerber, a 3-in-1 book. A fun fact is that this is the ONLY book I’ve ever read more than once. It’s my comfort series. The album I would bring would have to be BE by BTS. It’s a short album, but it’s the album with a lot of my comfort songs that I definitely couldn’t live without. 

If you could change one thing about the literary industry, what would it be?

I will say 100 times over that the literary industry needs more diversity! Things have been better, but it’s still way too easy to go to an agency’s website, look over their staff, and find little to no POC. I could say a lot more, but I’ll leave it at this: We need to do a lot better. 

Montanna Harling

she/her

What is your favorite place to read?   

I love to read in corners where the sun spills into the room; being able to glance outside while reading (and also writing) helps me access the imagination more easily and make connections between the stories I’m reading and the world around me.

You’re walking up the side of a mountain along a winding, wooded path. You look to your left and discover, by chance, a door in the side of the mountain. Do you open it, and if so, where does it lead? 

I’d be forever preoccupied with imagining increasingly weird rooms that might have been behind that door if I didn’t open it, so I would have to open it. I envision that the door would lead to books (obviously!). More specifically, I imagine that on the other side of the door, there would be a forest that is itself a library—books tucked into the hollows of trees, books held by branches, books shaded by foliage. As someone who loves eco-fiction, being outdoors, and libraries, I would absolutely enter a mysterious doorway to end up in this place. 

How do you take your coffee? If you don’t drink coffee, describe your favorite beverage ritual.  

My daily coffee usually comes in the form of an iced, flavored latte—I am consistently drawn to sweet drinks. Sugar fuels my writing.

What is your favorite English word and why? Do you have a favorite word in another language?   

My favorite word is the same both in English and Latin. I love the word “inspire” because I think the etymology adds such beautiful meaning to the word. It’s derived from “inspīrāre” in Latin, which means “to breathe into,” often with the suggestion of breathing life into something. Viewing the relatively common word “inspire” in these terms—of giving life to something, of inspiration itself being the act of breathing that which inspires you—is very fascinating to me.

You’re on a deserted island. You have one album and one book. What are they and why?   

Album—Taylor Swift’s Folklore. I return to this album not only because the imagery is complex and rich, but because each song is crafted in a way that tells a story.  

Book—Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. This book’s combination of fantasy, academia, and Bardugo’s beautiful prose has made it one of my all-time favorites.

If you could change one thing about the literary industry, what would it be?  

I would change the regionally centralized nature of the US publishing industry; as someone who grew up in a rural region and lived most of my life in California, it was difficult to come to terms with the reality that I might have to move to New York in order for my literary career to get started or succeed. I hope that access to publishing and writing communities can spread beyond New York, and that these opportunities can be available across a wider geographic region both in-person and virtually.  

Sara Santistevan

What is your favorite place to read?   

My dream home has a cozy reading nook overlooking a body of water. Until then, my favorite places to read are in my bed, in tiny cafes, and by the ocean, where the steady crash of waves can lull me into a trance.

You’re walking up the side of a mountain along a winding, wooded path. You look to your left and discover, by chance, a door in the side of the mountain. Do you open it, and if so, where does it lead?  

The wooden door inside the mountain is weathered, bordered by moss and ivy. When I open the door, I’m met with complete darkness. Curiosity gnaws at my guts, so of course, I go inside and fall down, Alice-in-Wonderland-style. I’ve never fallen from such a height, but I can only imagine light spilling from the door far above, tauntingly, as I free fall.   

Right as stars cloud my vision, I land on a conveniently plush daybed. The space I find myself in is circular. Each wall is seamlessly lined with massive bookshelves, made of deep brown oak and smelling of soil that reminisces a recent rain. A warm tugging at my chest pulls me toward a book with a shimmering aquamarine cover. The blurb on the back informs me it tells the story of a girl who spends her days swimming and fishing in an ancient ocean. I open the book. A handwritten note nearly flutters out; it reads: This library holds all the stories of your life and all the tales of your previous lives. Your soul story spans continents and worlds. You may stay as long as you like. Once you are satisfied, a door will open, and you will be free to return to the world outside.  

I bring the book to the couch and begin to read.  

How do you take your coffee? If you don’t drink coffee, describe your favorite beverage ritual.    

I could talk about this for ages, but I’ll try to keep it short and sweet…like my favorite coffees!  

I grew up drinking coffee from a young age. I loved to join my grandparents and mom as they drank coffee in the early evenings and told hilarious family anecdotes. So, I still have a soft spot for a simple shot of espresso in the morning, sometimes with half and half. If I have more time, I’ll add some espumita (a foamy blend of sugar and the most concentrated drips of espresso).  

When I go out for coffee, I’m a sucker for the fun, sugary drinks, like lavender and pumpkin spice lattes.   

What is your favorite English word and why? Do you have a favorite word in another language?   

Lately, I’ve been loving the word “alchemy.” Not only do I enjoy the mouthfeel, but I’m also fascinated by the idea of transformation and creativity as an ancient magic of the universe. I imagine this word as a piece of gold that glimmers iridescent in the moonlight.  

I also love many words in Spanish, but one of my favorite ones is “estrella” (meaning “star”), which rolls off the tongue beautifully. If “alchemy” is iridescent gold, “estrella” is sprawling peals of silver.   

You’re on a deserted island. You have one album and one book. What are they and why?   

After much deliberation, I’d have to say my album of choice in this hypothetical would be the 25th anniversary edition of Buena Vista Social Club’s eponymous record. It has songs for aimless strolling, dancing, lounging in the sun, and reminiscing. Warm instrumentals serve as the throughline on the album, which might make me feel a little more at home on an island. Plus, I’m learning Spanish in an effort to connect to my heritage, and I’m sure listening to this album on repeat would help!  

My go-to book would have to be Samanta Schweblin’s short story collection, Mouthful of Birds. Schweblin ingenuously uses uncanny details in her writing to explore social issues in her home country of Argentina. Each story is so shocking that I could read this collection one hundred times and come away with a new insight every single time.   

If you could change one thing about the literary industry, what would it be? 

Although the industry has made great strides toward inclusivity, I still think work needs to be done to make entering the industry more accessible for all. I believe that if publishers actively create opportunities for underrepresented individuals to share their stories, more people will be excited to engage with new literary works. It’s especially important for diversity to be reflected in new books so children and young adults can develop confidence and a strong sense of self by identifying with characters who positively represent their communities. 

Zara Garcia

she/her

What is your favorite place to read?   

My favorite place to read is on my aqua blue sofa surrounded by an army of Squishmallows. 

You’re walking up the side of a mountain along a winding, wooded path. You look to your left and discover, by chance, a door in the side of the mountain. Do you open it, and if so, where does it lead? 

I open it cautiously. It leads to a wooded meadow with plush green grass and wildflowers. There are birds of every kind speckled through the trees and grazing in the grass. In the middle of the meadow there is a picnic blanket laid out with luscious fruit. I am reunited there with my beloved parakeet named Bird who is standing on a banana. 

How do you take your coffee? If you don’t drink coffee, describe your favorite beverage ritual.  

I must admit that while I’m no coffee connoisseur, I’m very picky and will only drink coffee that I prepare myself. I follow the directions on the back of the instant coffee jar exactly: 6 oz. of hot water with 1 tsp of coffee. Then I fill my mug to the brim with almond milk creamer. 

What is your favorite English word and why? Do you have a favorite word in another language?   

My favorite word in English is azure because it sounds cool, it’s a beautiful color, and it works nicely as an adjective, especially in poetry. I also think it’s a lovely gender-neutral name.  

My favorite word in Spanish is arrullo (pronounced “ah-rroo-yoh”). It can mean cooing, lullaby, or murmur. One of my favorite songs in Spanish is “Arrullo de Estrellas” by Zoé, which translates to “Lullaby of Stars.” 

You’re on a deserted island. You have one album and one book. What are they and why?   

I think if I were on a deserted island, I would just accept my demise. I have no survival skills. The album would have to be Depression Cherry by Beach House. I think I could die peacefully listening to the dreamy melodies and haunting voice of Victoria Legrand. Every song on the album makes me feel as though I am a drifting cluster of cells in the vast universe, and I find that feeling comforting. 

The book would have to be One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez because reading it is such an immersive experience. It makes you feel as though you are living through several generations, witnessing the rise and fall of life itself, and it’s simply a masterpiece on the human condition. I discover new details to dissect every time I read it, and I don’t think it could ever get boring. 

If you could change one thing about the literary industry, what would it be?  

A more mission-driven, inclusive approach when it comes to the writers and stories that get published. It is so disheartening to see books that represent marginalized identities being banned from schools. The literary industry can and should push back by amplifying as many underrepresented voices as possible and advocating for them harder. I think that the industry has a responsibility to help move along the evolution of the literary canon by prioritizing diversity in the stories they put out into the world and in the hands of future generations.

Over the decades, we’ve witnessed different versions of the X-Men Beast’s (Hank McCoy) physical changes as he continues to mutate and shift with Hank’s personality. With the nature of comics today, creative decisions and changes to a character comes with the collaboration of different writers and artists. How did creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby lay the foundation for Hank McCoy in X-Men #1 (1963) with Stan’s verbose, brainy dialogue and Jack’s drawing of Beast’s bulky physical presence?

It’s a wonderful juxtaposition (that would later be improved upon). The brutish appearance and the erudite manner.

I’m thinking of other fictional creations that use a similar technique. Think of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho for instance. He wears expensive, tailored suits and fusses over his face and hair with every manner of product and eats in white linen restaurants…and he also spends his evenings engaged in blood-splattered extracurriculars. A torturer, a murderer.

That startling contradiction is what makes Hank so much fun. You never quite know what to think of him. He might be quoting Homer or Shakespeare, but we’re still worriedly studying him out the corner of our eye, waiting for him to break our neck with a hard kick from one of his Fred Flintstone feet.

The seventies Bronze Age is a beloved era for Hank McCoy fans. He joined The Avengers, experiences a classic bromance with Wonder Man (Simon Williams), and gets more playful banter with catch phrases like, “Oh my stars and garters.” Hank also droped his human-life appearance for his iconic blue fur look. Do you feel this change in appearance and being in the public eye with The Avengers influences Hank’s increase in people pleasing syndrome, where the individual wishes everyone to be happy and sidelines their own needs?

Bouncy Beast is always how I think of this version of him. They took the raw ingredients—established in X-Men #1—and refined and amplified them beautifully into the genius, joyful, gymnastic, blue-furred, simian character that everyone fell in love with.

You could argue that his behavior is a compensation for his appearance. He makes the extra effort to be kind and generous to distract from the fact that he looks like he might chew your face off or pick a flea out of his fur and eat it.

I should say that within the current continuity, the Cerebro cradles contain deep archives of all mutant memories. So, this version of him still exists.

Hank was on two teams in the eighties: The Defenders and X-Factor, which would see the return of the original X-Men lineup together. In The New Defenders comic, Hank struggles to form that classic “non-team” into a regular team like The Avengers while being at odds with Valkyrie for leadership of the team. While in X-Factor, he falls back into a subordinate role to his old teammate, Cyclops (Scott “Slim” Summers). Given Hank is one of the top, brilliant minds in the Marvel Universe, what kept him from being seen as a Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) or Tony Stark (Iron Man) during this era? Does it have to do with the stigma of his character design and how quarterbacks and not linebackers are seen as team captains in the field? Or does his playfulness and need for everyone to get along keep him from effectively leading?

I remember reading an article about grooming politicians, and it’s generally considered a poor choice to grow a beard, because you appear like someone who has something to hide. That aligns with your quarterback theory. Beast doesn’t look like a good guy; he doesn’t look like a leader. Maybe, as time goes by, the perceptions of others start to rub off on you and pollute your sense of self and inhibit your potential.

In the nineties, there is a paradox of Hank becoming a guide from the side to allow the comic books to focus on fresh new characters. However, to non-comic book readers he was a face of the X-Men and the first mutant in The Amazing Spider-Man daily newspaper strip. The X-Men: The Animated Series began with Hank in prison and on trial in the media for being a mutant. In the comics, Dr. McCoy was sequestered in the lab trying to cure the Legacy Virus. This era also saw Hank more reserved and bookish, wearing glasses, and quoting philosophers. Hank takes on the role of the public face of mutant kind but does speaking for all mutants affect Hank speaking just for himself?

You’re talking about the comics in chronological terms. That’s interesting to me, because I have no understanding at all of Marvel or DC continuity. That’s because of how I grew up. I moved around constantly as a kid. I didn’t have a comic shop that served as my home base. Instead, most of my comics were erratically purchased from the spinner racks in gas stations and grocery stores or from bins at garage sales and flea markets. Even if I did find a comic shop, I was probably randomly buying back issues, because they were cheaper. I have no idea, as a result, what was published when, because I’d be reading a seventies issue one minute and a nineties issue the next.

So when you say, this is how Beast or Punisher or Spider-Man—or whoever—changed over time, you know more than me. I have a more holistic understanding of characters.

With that said, I religiously watched X-Men: The Animated Series when I was a kid, so that version of McCoy—and his frenemy relationship with Wolverine—probably imprinted itself on me as much as any of the comics. Beast as the statesman and strategist. You certainly see that in my writing of him.

Hank has another mutation in the aughts into his cat-like look. This period also had writers like Grant Morrison in New X-Men (2001), Joss Whedon in Astonishing X-Men (2004), and Ed Brubaker in Secret Avengers (2010) putting Beast front and center. Instead of reverting his demeanor on these teams back to the “beautiful, bouncing Beast” for fans from the seventies and eighties, how do writers respect the creative changes Hank has undergone to present a whole new Beast in both look and personality?

The Morrison and Quietly run is one of my favorites (as some might guess, since I’ve given Kid Omega a lot of real estate in my run on X-Force). The weirdness and darkness are really appealing to me. And the feline appearance of Beast was a fun evolution.

We haven’t talked about Hank McCoy and Professor Charles Xavier yet. How much is Hank, as an adult, a proxy/placeholder for the vision of Professor X in a group like the Illuminati or to other mutants when teaching at The Xavier Institute? Does the shadow of Charles Xavier dictate the history of Hank’s behavior? Should readers not be as surprised when Hank goes on his own to make major changes to the timestream in Brian Michael Bendis’ All-New X-Men (2012) or his recent actions with Krakoa when Beast is looked at through the long lens of having Professor X as a mentor? 

I’ve kept Charles mostly off stage for this exact reason.

Every title—and there are a lot of X titles—have their core characters. Sure, Logan can show up in another book, but it’s in the Wolverine mainline where the important stuff is going to happen.

What you’re talking about—with Charles—is pretty significant, and he’s not one of my characters. He belongs more to X-Men or Immortal X-Men. So Gerry Duggan and Kieron Gillen will determine his fate (and his faults).

Krakoa is the mutant nation, and X-Force is its CIA. That was my pitch for the book. Charles gave Beast carte blanche when appointing him as the Director of Intelligence. Hank didn’t have to report to the Quiet Council or get approval for their dark deeds. Did Charles shut off his psychic connection to Hank? Was he unaware of what was going on? We’ll see in the pages of X-Men or Immortal X-Men but not in X-Force.

Every powerful country in the history of the world has killed people and engaged in unsavory, amoral activity that doesn’t square with patriotism and the public-facing view of a nation. At the very least, Charles knows this in the abstract—but perhaps not in the specifics, re: the shadow ops of Beast’s X-Force.

In X-Force 40, we read that Hank has been manipulating the time stream to ensure his plans see their completion, which shows his dimensional chessboard way of thinking. What can you tell us about Hank’s plans and The Ghost Calendars storyline? How has Hank standing against multiple world conquerors over the years shown he’s learned from their mistakes but is also in a place to do what he feels needs to be done, regardless of what others think of him in the vein of a traditional Marvel villain?

Keep in mind that Beast has a utilitarian code. He wants the greatest good for the greatest number of mutants, no matter the cost. That might lead him to assassination, blackmail, timeline manipulation, and genocide. He’ll even kill his own. We’ve seen him murder Wolverine and resurrect a more mindless version of him to serve as a more willing soldier of Krakoa. He’s ruthless. But there is a code. He operates with the cold indifference of a surgeon. Think of him as a Kissinger figure.

He hasn’t become this way out of nowhere. He’s made many decisions over the years that were troublesome. Look at the Legacy Virus, Threnody, and Mutant Growth Hormone. Look at his involvement with the Inhumans and Illuminati. But his current position of power—and the longtime victimization of mutants—have festered and encouraged these darker corners of his mind.

Where can our readers find you online and find more about your other work?

I’m on all the obnoxious social media platforms. I also have a website that I don’t do a very good job of updating: www.benjaminpercy.com . We’ve been talking about comics, but I’m also a novelist, and my newest book—The Sky Vault—releases this September. 

With Persona 5 Scramble out, it seems right to pay homage to its predecessor, Persona 5 Royal, and the way the parent game created wonderfully complex and lovable characters, each character represented by a tarot card. Couple this with the fact that F(r)iction’s Arcana issue is coming out, now is the perfect time to take a look at how this beloved video game connects its characters to their corresponding cards.

Needless to say, this article will contain spoilers for Persona 5 Royal! Read at your own risk.

1. Makoto / The High Priestess:

An upright high priestess card indicates wisdom, but reversed, it indicates that one’s problems come about because they are too heavily swayed by others’ opinions. This card is extremely apt for Makoto. In her investigation regarding high schoolers involved in the red-light district, she focuses solely on how others perceive her usefulness: “I’m going to show you how useful an honor student can really be.”

But in the process, she begins to question the status quo when she realizes her new friend’s boyfriend is trying to flirt with her, as well. Here is the boyfriend’s undiscernible first text to Makoto: “It’s meee, Tsukasa. *heart emoji* I no we just met but I cudn’t wait 2 *phone emoji* u.”

She tries to convince her friend to leave this toxic relationship and constantly questions her own involvement in this situation. At one point, Makoto, normally no-nonsense and uptight, gets frustrated to the point where she slaps her friend in a fit of anger and passion. Eventually, all’s well that ends well; she makes up with her friend, her friend leaves her toxic relationship, and Makoto grows in her self-confidence and learns to follow her instinct: “This time I’m not seeking anyone’s praise, and I’m not trying to show off my intelligence. I simply want to fulfill my own personal goals and dreams.”

2. Yusuke / Emperor

Yusuke depicts all the traits of a reverse emperor card: in his pursuit of beauty through his art, he’s nothing less than a petty tyrant, rigid in thinking, seeing others as people meant to serve and flatter him. A talented artist with a creative block, he (and his views about life) feels tainted because of his corrupt art mentor. Yusuke solicits the player for advice on how to overcome his internal struggles. But when one of his paintings is exhibited, even his language reflects that of a king: “That was nothing more than the drivel of unrefined commoners. I needn’t pay any mind to them,” and upon critique, “How dare you!”

The player and Yusuke then go on a variety of adventures to help Yusuke learn the meaning of beauty, from romantic rowboat excursions to eccentric church visits, before he realizes that his pretentious attitude towards others has been harming him all along. He states in self-understanding: “I looked down on [my mentor] for focusing so sharply on fame and money, yet I too yearn for the praise of others!” It is from this realization that Yusuke realizes that his art is meant to be a gift to viewers, and his newly found determination propels him to paint in order to give hope to others.

3. Futaba / The Hermit

Perhaps one of the most beloved characters in the series, Futaba represents the hermit card. Before Futaba grows into someone who finally finds answers within her, she begins as a girl who chooses to resist growth and cuts herself off from others in detrimental ways. Before she meets the player, her foster dad says, “She won’t take a single step outside the house, or even try to see other people […] she doesn’t even let me come in her room.”

When she meets the player, she expresses a desire to slowly start changing herself and creates a promise list with the player. From going to school to starting a conversation with someone her age, her list consists of tasks that someone who has been shut in their room for years would find difficult. But through her persistence and with the player’s support (whom she calls her “key item”), she’s able to begin to see the benefits of re-integrating herself with society. Her final confession upon completion of all the tasks is this: “My whole world is expanding. Every day brings new and different discoveries […] Things might be the exact same as they were yesterday, but from my perspective, it’s all spinning […] I just hope I can keep changing little by little.”

While these are only three of the many lovable characters in P5R, the other tarot card and their corresponding characters are just as spot-on! And if you found these tarot-themed analyses interesting and are looking for more ways to connect with your inner mysticism, then discover more arcana content in the next issue of F(r)iction. Order here!

The mansion was like something out of a horror flick, all dark parapets and grotesque spires. Declan watched, breath hooked behind his chest, as the Director’s sleek black limousine purred down the drive. Jass shifted beside him, rubbing her hands against the splintering cold.

“Tonight, or never,” she murmured.

The reminder set his whole body tingling: tomorrow they Aged Out, left the labor camp forever to make their own way in the wider world. Tomorrow he finally threw out the stained gray jumpsuit he’d worn his whole life and put on the bright yellow shirt Jass had stolen for him from the fabric recycler.

So tonight was their last chance for payback.

Once the limousine disappeared, Jass ducked past the swiveling cameras and held her hackphone up to the gate’s scanner. For a gut-lurching moment, nothing. Declan waited for an alarm to wail, for a security drone to appear out of the gloom.

The buzz of the electric fence cut short.

The cameras froze on their pneumatic stalks.

The gate folded open.

Jass pumped her fist in the air. “We own your house, slimeball!”

Declan felt his adrenaline surge. He pulled the crowbar out of his bag and tossed it to Jass, then armed himself with a canister of spray paint. The open gate still looked anything but inviting, and he figured smiley faces on the two horned statues would help a bit.

---

The inside was a labyrinth of lavishly-furnished rooms; Declan had the feeling of being digested by them. He couldn’t remember any home but the Dorms, where he’d slept elbow-to-elbow with the other indentured wards. One room in the Director’s sprawling mansion could have fit a hundred cots.

The decor grew stranger the deeper they went. Photos, first: the Director posing with the corpse of a feathery leviathan, likely a dinosaur clone-grown for the hunt; the Director with a woman a half century younger than him, clutching his wife’s hand as if she were his child. Her eyes were dark and anguished above a bone-white smile.

Then came paintings, strange paintings of naked bodies writhing in flames, a non-Euclidean tower drenched in dark smog, a woman with her legs bound together vomiting up something that resembled a sea slug.

Declan wiped them out with swooping arcs of spray paint. When they passed a long table supported by humanoid statues on hands and knees, Jass clawed a gouge down the middle with the crowbar.

Both stopped at a life-sized portrait of the Director. He hovered in the darkness, staring down with a paternal smile on his pallid face. The angles of his body jutted at his tailored suit like chicken bones inside a garbage bag. His hands were smeared with black oil.

“My turn with the crowbar,” Declan said.

Declan lined himself and swung for every kid in the enclave, for every sweat-drenched hour spent hewing rock, for every sleepless night spent shivering and coughing up mold. The canvas split, bisecting the Director’s wattled neck, and then—

 The portrait glided left to reveal the dark mouth of a staircase.

Jass took the crowbar back, tugging it from his trembling hands.

“Spooky,” she muttered.

---

They descended. The air was colder now, damper, and it carried a faint stench Declan couldn’t place. The floor at the bottom was a spongy material that swallowed their footsteps. Jass waved the hackphone, trying to get the ceiling lights on, but they weren’t responding.

A soft moan carried through the dark.

Every centimeter of Declan’s skin turned pebbly with goosebumps. He pointed his light toward the sound, looked over at Jass, knuckles white around the crowbar.

They approached slowly, warily, yanking aside a series of plastic shrouds. The stench grew stronger.

When Declan’s phonelight hit the wall, every joint in his body turned to water.

An emaciated figure hung strapped in place, a shrink-wrapped skeleton. IVs were feeding the bulging veins in his bony wrists. His skin was sun-starved and covered in sores, eyes and mouth stapled shut with precise sutures.

“Niall,” Declan said in a shredded whisper. “It’s Niall.”

Jass’s body seemed to buckle. “But they said he was transferred to Dorm Eight,” she choked. “They said…”

Declan was eyeing the web of restraints, searching for a release, when he heard a voice like bone scraping bone.

“Here to join the fun?”

Declan whirled. The Director was even larger than his portrait, a hairy, wrinkled beast, naked apart from a surgeon’s rubber gloves and night-vision goggles that glowed a predatory green. One hand held red-stained pliers; the other a loaded gun, and Declan knew in his fear-sick gut that they were never Aging Out of their gray jumpsuits, never leaving this fucked-up house, either they died here or joined Niall on the wall—

Jass’s crowbar obliterated the top of the Director’s head; a chunk of bloodied scalp went flying past.

Declan watched frozen as the Director crumpled, falling first to knees and then to belly. Then a white-hot fury ignited his whole body and he followed Jass’s lead, kicking, stomping, extracting evil from the world.

---

The supervisor brought up the chemical profiles of runners 4930 and 4284, two human data points in the sea of treadmills below, just in time to display a cloudburst of serotonin and adrenaline.

“It’s testing through the roof,” he murmured. “We can expand it, too, do a whole uprising…” He trailed off under the Director’s stare. “With your approval, of course. We’re very grateful that you let us use your likeness.”

The Director turned from the main screen, where Declan and Jass danced around his mutilated body, to the observation screen where they were in full sprint, limbs pumping furiously, kinetic output almost doubled.

Two of a thousand indentured runners racing oblivion, skulls linked by long rippling cables to a spidery sim-machine on the ceiling, minds snared in electric dreams.

“These are trying times,” he said, voice solemn but warm. “The least we can do is give them a little revolution.”

I’m curious about the process of creating and/or curating a book of poetry. What was that process like for you with So Tall It Ends in Heaven? Did you begin with a precise idea of overarching themes, or did the collection sort of build itself as you wrote individual poems?

First, thanks so much, Alex, for taking this time with me and the book. I’m very grateful to be invited into this space.

So Tall It Ends in Heaven started with individual poems. From there, themes and narratives began to emerge, and the question became one of structuring the book. The overall process took ten years, and, near the end of that process, I tried many times to write individual poems in the hopes that they would fill out narrative gaps or speak to absent considerations or nuances of individual themes. That really didn’t work for me. Those poems read as a little forced, a little overcooked, and they didn’t make it into the book.

What is your relationship with form in your work? Does a poem’s form come to you as you write or revise, or is it something you have in mind from the poem’s conception?

I use form in revision. For me, first drafts of poems often involve freewriting with pencil and paper, and later drafts involve a computer. With those later drafts, I’ll often use form to pressure and invigorate the language of the initial drafts.

I should maybe say I’m speaking to form broadly here. I would typically focus just on the number of words or syllables in a line as opposed to any inherited, named form. There are only a few of times when I worked with something like the sonnet in the book, and I broke the rules to the point that I think they’re not easily identifiable in the final drafts. 

I found the form of Part III of So Tall It Ends in Heaven especially distinct. To me, this section felt sort of like reading a novel excerpt in the middle of a poetry book. What are your thoughts behind the prose style of this poem/section? How do you interact with the constraints of genre in your work?

That sequence began as haibun, which I studied with Garrett Hongo when I was a student at the University of Oregon. In traditional haibun, the form is a narrative prose block followed by a haiku. As I edited the sequence, I removed the haiku and broke up each of the prose sections into different paragraphs. In the original drafts, the haiku I wrote were often deeply disclosing or revealing when it came to the speaker’s psychology. There was something distanced about the speaker as I’d written him in the prose, and I wanted to exclusively center that instead.

I play with genre a lot—with love poetry in particular, but also devotional poetry and odes, elegies, the ars poetica, greater Romantic lyrics, and itinerary poetry. When it comes to writing creatively, I think I consider genre in terms of affordances more than constraints. It’s true that a genre sometimes makes demands on the structure and content of a poem, but I don’t think of these demands as particularly monolithic or fixed; I think of them as generative and fluid.

Your book grapples beautifully with confusion, tenderness, longing, pain—yet I found myself surprised by moments of rather self-aware humor. What is your relationship with humor in your writing, and how do you navigate creating/balancing the tone of a poem?

I love poems that slip from humor into grief, or that flash a little humor in a moment of vulnerability. I think that kind of variation makes each of the tonal modes of a poem more expansive, more vulnerable. Surprise might be part of it, but I think it’s also a speaker telling on themselves. Moving from humor into grief or grief into humor means a speaker has taken off or put on a kind of mask; somewhere in there, there’s the impression that the speaker has both invited you in and kept you at a certain distance.

Many pieces in So Tall It Ends in Heaven center around your father, or fatherhood in general. How do you navigate writing so intimately about another person, especially when your writing explores the difficulties and hurts of your relationship with them?

Many of the poems center on my speaker’s father. I think it’s important that I give myself permission to create and maintain distance between my speakers and myself. My speakers’ hurts are theirs, and mine are mine.

Which authors/works have had the greatest impact on your own writing practice?

My teachers, by far—especially Erin Belieu, Geri Doran, and Garrett Hongo. I recently found Carl Phillips’s My Trade Is Mystery helpful and reaffirming when it comes to writing as a practice. It’s been a while since another work has had a substantial impact on the way I think about my writing process—but if we’re talking about the content, form, structure, or craft of the writing, my influences are numerous.

You’re also a professor! How does your writing practice impact your teaching, and vice versa? And do you have any tips for balancing work, creation, and “everyday” life?

Yes, I’m an assistant professor of English at Meredith College, a historical women’s college in Raleigh, North Carolina. I teach poetry and queer literature at Meredith, and I find that many topics and techniques from my classrooms make their way into my writing. I try to keep the opposite from happening too much—I’m wary of stymieing my students’ interests by redirecting them toward my own.

I don’t think my tips are revolutionary—and they’re mostly inherited—but here they are: (1) your relationship to writing is idiosyncratic, so consider the process-based advice of others without taking any of that advice as gospel; (2) structure your time spent writing, and hold yourself accountable to that structure; (2a) remember that time spent writing isn’t always literally putting or revising words on the page; (3) spend time in art; (3a) remember that nearly everything can be understood as art; and (4) create and maintain personal and professional boundaries to safeguard your happiness and passions.

I struggle with the last one the most. A lot of the work I do when it comes to making time for writing has to do with checking in with myself to make sure I’m not internalizing the pressures and time-suck of work, of economic survival. I have a lot to say about the injustice of those pressures, but what I can currently control is making sure that I don’t feel like I’ve done something wrong when I’m not able to make as much time for my writing as I want to. I don’t think I know of a writer, especially early in their career, who is able to make what they consider to be an ample amount of time for their writing. I think it’s important that we give ourselves grace—and time. Measuring art or artists in terms of productivity isn’t a cultural model I’d like to buy into, so to speak.

The process of publishing is incredibly daunting, especially to new writers. How did you navigate the process of publishing So Tall It Ends In Heaven, especially with regards to the ever-increasing involvement of the Internet in the publishing world? How does this differ from the process of publishing individual poems?

In my experience, the process of publishing individual poems versus a poetry manuscript isn’t too terribly different. It’s about finding publishers, prizes, and editors you think are a match, then cycling through submissions and rejections until you get what you’re looking for. It took me a few years—and a good deal of luck, I think—to place my book.

For me, most of the work of placing the book involved making emotional room for the process of submission and rejection, its slowness, its stressfulness, its tendency to cause self-doubt, and its costliness. I relied a lot on communities of writers and friends at that time. For some people, online communities—Twitter, say—accomplish some of what I’m talking about here; for me, online discourse often adds to my sense of anxiety. Instead, I vented and commiserated about publication stresses with writer-friends over dinner and drinks, and I made work dates (“submission dates” sounds a little kinky, but here we are) with friends over coffee or dessert.

What advice might you have for an aspiring author who is just beginning the publishing process or currently trying to navigate it?

I feel the urge to say something aspirational here, but I’m worried about being disingenuous. People will tell you that the work of publishing is just part of the job of being a writer and to treat it accordingly—clock in, clock out, and don’t let it affect you or the writing. But I’ve never seen somebody actually do that. I’ve never known a writer who is magically and comprehensibly able to separate the stress of publishing from the stress of writing from the stress of just being and surviving.

Instead, I’ve seen every—every—writer I know (and I’m including myself in a big way here) get frustrated with themselves because they’re not able to compartmentalize those stresses. So, I come back to the ideas of giving yourself grace, of naming and processing the stresses you experience, and of acknowledging that those stresses are part of a cultural model that doesn’t adequately support writers and artists. What you can control in that is your refusal to internalize or enact that inadequate support.

And finally, just because I can’t help myself: In the poem “The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon,” a line states that the word Ringleb (your last name) “sounds / like a persistent foot infection.” Do you actually have some beef with your last name?

Ha, I mean—so, when I’ve introduced myself to a person, I’ve never heard back something like, “Oh, what a pretty name,” you know?

The coronavirus, a multiple sclerosis diagnosis, the collapse of environmental rhythms, and the conundrum between grief and strength—in Flare, Corona, Jeannine Hall Gailey shows she is not afraid to tackle catastrophe on both global and personal scales. In fact, this collection of poems from Gailey juxtaposes her multiple sclerosis diagnosis and its associated symptoms against the greater context of disaster on a world level, crafting poems in the form of self-portraits, mutant sonnets, and overarching intersections of grief, anger, and perseverance. Ultimately, Flare, Corona navigates a narrative nestled between the personal body and the larger world and explores the entropy in this complicated yet relatable space.

At the end of the first poem of the collection titled “Irradiate,” Gailey writes, “I meant I was full of / radiation. I meant I was full of light. / I meant I could give birth to nothing / but light.” Aside from the effective use of enjambment that splits the last line, I wanted to start here because these statements can be considered the thesis statement for the whole collection. Gailey identifies the complexity of the body as a simultaneous destructor and life-giver while using the body to represent the nature of the world too. Gailey seamlessly zooms in and out from poem to poem—sometimes even within a singular poem—to demonstrate that we cannot escape the calamity of our own body because we are reminded of it in the calamity of our own world, and vice versa. For example, the very next poem “Calamity” mentions headless robots, a meteor, Godzilla, and family coming over for Thanksgiving. What a string of events, right? Then, Gailey ties all these back to mortality by offering to the body a call to act amidst the calamity, writing, “Who are you wearing? Because tonight / your life will be required of you. Grab a bag, / a sword, a water bottle. Go out swinging.”

Such similar strings can be found in all the poems throughout the four sections titled “Post-Life,” “Harbingers,” “Blood Moon,” and “Corona.” In “Post-Life,” the speaker focuses on the topic of death, how she herself has evaded death thus far, and what happens when the physical body does inevitably give out. In the case of “Harbingers,” the speaker sustains the sense of foreboding from “Post-Life” and considers phenomena that hint at the future, one that appears as apocalyptic as it is tragic. Though “Blood Moon” and “Corona” are separate sections, their mood and tone feel similar in the sense that blood moon is another word for a lunar eclipse, a time when the moon is darkened and reddened—what seems to be a literary way to convey the darkness and “redness” of “Corona” that refers to the time of the pandemic. While I was able to identify why some poems were in specific sections, I found that a lot of the poems touch on almost the exact same topics in very similar ways. I believe that this happens naturally when poetry collections have a central theme. That being said, the similarities in both topics and poetic strategies stacked to the extent that, the further I went into the collection, the more everything started to blend in my mind and, subsequently, fade in the background, even as the cycle of foreboding and hope was well sustained.

The language of the poetry in Flare, Corona is an example where an abundance of straightforward statements serves as a double-edged sword. On one hand, the poetic craft strategy of straightforward language ensures that Gailey reduces the risk of overcomplicating her messages and retains her honest feelings on the topics she explores. On the other hand, the choice to lean on such straightforwardness throughout makes the collection feel like one blended narrative and left me wishing for more moments where Gailey plays with language like in the poem “Self-Portrait as MRI”: “The face-cage, the thumping echo chamber / coffin-tube, nothing romantic about this enforced / stillness, this live burial. The invisible magnet’s fingers / deciding: this brain this joint this blood this scar this bone.” However, whatever the type of language used, I never stopped feeling the emotional weight and authenticity poured into every poem, suggesting that the only way to tell certain stories and their intricacies is to tell them as they are.

Throughout its exploration of pandemic, post-life, present life, and perseverance, Flare, Corona ultimately points to the strength that humanity still has in the face of the sorrow and hysteria the world heaves our way, even if that strength isn’t always prevalent. Through upfront honesty and the undeniable emotional threads that balance the language, Gailey crafts a collection that prompts us to reflect on our own responses—physical, emotional, and otherwise—to an ever-changing world. I believe Gailey frames our hope—no matter how big or small—best in “A Story for After a Pandemic,” when she writes, “We will never again take for granted / a dance, a kiss, a crowd, we promise. A farmer’s market / and candy apples, a county fair, kettle corn. / It’s all miracles. We gather in small groups / and tell the stories; who we lost, what we will remember.”

The Hand of the Sun King is a coming of age story of a boy struggling between two paths: that of his father’s lineage to follow the empire’s structure and hierarchy and that of his grandmother’s rebellion and magic. Where did the concept for The Hand of the Sun King come from?

The book itself—and the whole trilogy, really—grew from the original idea for Alder / Foolish Cur as a character, which was inspired by my senior seminar in history class as an undergraduate student. We were reading the book Orientalism by Edward Said, a formative post-colonial text written by an author who was, himself, a member of a colonized community who was educated by the power that had colonized his people. I found that dynamic—being a person with every reason to hate an empire, who then came to work within it, then came to critique it—very fascinating, and Alder / Foolish Cur’s character arc sprang from that fascination. His parentage and the conflicting paths it offers him were a way to put that element of his character on the page from paragraph one and add some emotional layering. Other elements of his character, such as his dual name, originated from other inspirations, in that case from Ged / Sparrowhawk’s naming in A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin, which was one of the books that made me want to be a writer.

More broadly, the Pact & Pattern trilogy tries to explore the ideas of structure and hierarchy in a general sense. Particularly the third book, The Pattern of the World (releasing August of 2023!) is interested in how structures can both empower us and limit us. But no structure represents a complete and accurate picture of the thing it is meant to categorize—there is always, inherently, some element of simplification. Alfred Korzybski, the Polish-American scholar of semantics coined the term “the map is not the territory” to capture this idea. A map allows you to navigate the world, but to do so it must simplify the territory it represents. Roads become lines, hills become topographic abstractions, and so on, rendering the territory into a manageable, quickly comprehensible, and useful representation. If the map were a perfect representation of the territory, it would be useless as a map. Similarly, structures in society, in culture, in politics, in science (and in magic!) allow us to do useful things by simplifying the wholeness of reality. The pact shrinks and simplifies the pattern. But there is always the risk that something important will be lost and overlooked along the way. These novels are trying, at least, to explore that idea.

There is a continuous tug and pull with Wen Alder between siding with the Emperor versus siding with Alder’s mother’s heritage and rebellion. What propelled you to have this kind of conflict and did the early drafts include this dynamic as well?

That element was always present in the early drafts. In fact, it was present in the original novelette, which largely maps onto the An-Zabat section of The Hand of the Sun King, which I wrote before deciding to turn Alder’s story into a novel and then a trilogy. Again this reflects some of the original inspirations from post-colonial theory. For the elite, educated class within a colonized group there is often a continuous conflict—both personal, and between members of that class—between resistance to the colonizers and complicity with the colonizers for the sake of personal advancement (and, for some, the perceived possibility of helping their people integrate into the colonizing society). Alder has very little national, class, cultural, or otherwise political consciousness until the midpoint of the book when he begins to realize that the Empire, though it might provide him with the things he wants and needs—or at least some watered-down version of those things—is in fact doing tremendous harm in which he is complicit. 

I think the best fiction centers on characters who have to make a genuinely difficult decision. I wanted to write a book about structures and hierarchies, about Empires and why people might choose to do horrible things in service to them. Alder thinks working for the Empire will help him become the kind of person he wants to be and learn the things he wants to learn, but in truth it can’t do those things. It can only turn him into a useful tool. But it’s hard for him to realize that, to accept it, and to risk not only his life but his vision for his future. I think that’s fairly universal. How many of us operate within systems, or lend our labor and time to institutions that, if we were to take a moment to reflect, in fact do tremendous harm that we would not want to take responsibility for? For example, I work for the public school system in the United States, which I know is a deeply imperfect institution despite the best intentions and efforts of the people involved in it. Reckoning with that is hard, but necessary if we want to improve things.

I really enjoyed the aspects of world building you included that exposed cultural differences within the Sienese Empire. I’m especially thinking of when Wen Alder had to learn a different language and he compares the differences between character and letter languages. How do you approach world building on such an epic scale?

I think my bachelor’s degree in history has helped quite a bit. If you look long enough at any society, in any period in history, you start to see that it’s really an amalgamation of cultures and societies. We tend to talk about historical groups as though they were very homogenous—the Victorians did this, or the Roman Empire did that—but really what we’re describing is a rough estimate of the average based on the writings and artifacts we have access to, which were usually left behind only by small, elite groups within those societies. It comes back to that whole “the map is not the territory” idea. There’s an inherent necessity to simplify the complexity of the real world when writing fiction—particularly when doing so in a secondary world, where you have to invent elements or carefully and intentionally draw inspiration from real-world cultures—but I think it does a disservice to our stories when we fall into the trap of letting our worldbuilding become too simple. 

It’s actually a frustration of mine in a lot of fantasy fiction. You have these massive continents with, like, two or three languages, or cities that have these super coherent and homogenous cultures. No real continent or city is like that, or has ever been like that. It not only ruins verisimilitude for me, it also does a disservice to the reader—because whether we like it or not, readers derive some of their understanding of how the real world is from how fictional worlds are portrayed. If people don’t look at the real territory, all they have to go by is the map, so we have an enormous responsibility as writers to try and make our maps as accurate as possible. The real world is vast and diverse, and our fictional worlds should be too. That means investing the time and attention needed to fill them with as much complexity as we can. Which, ultimately, makes for more interesting and entertaining books anyway.

The real world is vast and diverse, and our fictional world should be too.

Did your past work experience as an ESL teacher in Taipei influence your writing or understanding of the craft at all?

I don’t know that it did, beyond maybe a little more attention to certain grammatical rules in English that aren’t explicitly obvious to native speakers until you think about them (for example did you know that “fewer” is always used for a set of distinct objects you can count, while “less” is used for less tangible, uncountable things? A pie might have fewer apples, and therefore taste less sweet. It’s actually incorrect to say “less apples,” and you certainly wouldn’t say “fewer sweet”). Teaching your own language to people who didn’t grow up speaking it forces you to think about and codify lots of things that you do by instinct, but that actually do have consistent rules.

My time living in Taipei definitely helped shape me as a writer, in that I was fortunate enough to find a really excellent writing group (mostly of other ESL teachers, or former ESL teachers) at a moment in time when I was just starting to get good at writing but needed a support and feedback system to maximize on that momentum. Some of my first published shorts were initially critiqued in that group. But also, I think living as a foreigner, particularly when you’re living in a culture that’s substantially different from your own, helps shift your perspective on things. You’re forced to look at the world a little more closely—or at least you have a good opportunity to. I definitely brought some of that heightened level of attention back with me when we returned to the United States, and it’s made me think about things (and therefore write about them) in ways I didn’t before.

You’ve noted before that you’ve been writing since you were 11 years old. How has your writing changed over the years? What experience did you gain that you would recommend for writers seeking publication?

A lot, I should hope! I don’t go back and read things I wrote as a tween and teen because I’m afraid my cringing would cause me to collapse into a black hole and destroy the planet, but I do occasionally revisit some of my earlier published short stories, and I definitely see things in them that I would do differently now. Which is good! The goal of a writer (and any craftsperson or artist) should be to get better with every project—every page, every paragraph if you can manage it. You do that through reflecting on the work you like, then reflecting on your own work, and seeing the gaps. Whenever I read something I really love I stop and ask myself, “What is this doing that I’m not doing? How can I take something from what I loved about this and use it to make my work better?”

As far as advice for writers seeking publication, I don’t really have much. I think the industry moves so fast that any specific strategies I had when I was first selling short stories in 2016, or looking for an agent in 2018, are swiftly becoming irrelevant. What I did do, that I think anyone trying to get started in any industry should do, is try to learn as much about the industry as I could and try to connect with other people at a similar point in my then-nascent writing career. Look for communities of other people with similar goals to you and connect with them, exchange feedback, share information. Don’t just network, make friends. Be helpful when you can, and ask for help when you need it. A rising tide only lifts all boats by way of solidarity.

The Garden of Empire is the second in the series (Pact & Pattern). What was it like to draft a story that spans several novels?

Difficult, in a word. Growing up I had written a lot of standalone novels that will never see publication, but Pact & Pattern was my first attempt at a trilogy. Trying to make each book in the series function not only as a story for its own sake but as part of a larger whole was very challenging for me, partly because I had all these other non-Pact & Pattern ideas for stories that I didn’t have time to work on yet while I devoted four years to the trilogy. I would often find myself having to work on Pact & Pattern while my creative brain wanted to think about some other idea entirely. In fact, the frustrations I experienced have motivated me to try a different approach with my next project—something more similar to Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels, books with a shared world and themes but distinct characters and plots, to give me a bit more freedom to chase fun, new ideas with each book.

I’m mostly a discovery writer, meaning that I don’t write from a rigid outline but sort of work my way through the story from beginning to end. That said, from the time I decided to turn the original novelette into a novel I knew what the ending of the whole story would be. It just wound up being a story that needed more than one book. A lot changed, though, from the first draft of The Hand of the Sun King to the final Pact & Pattern trilogy. At one point, the first book had a framing device from the perspective of a character who doesn’t even appear until The Garden of Empire now, and who is now not a point-of-view character at all. That process of figuring out how to tell the story was hard, and required a lot of isolating ideas and deciding what the purpose of that idea was to the overall story being told, and then deciding whether or not the idea was worth that purpose. A long process of refinement that, frankly, was more tedious than exciting at times.

The third book, though, The Pattern of the World, was a delightful breeze to write. By that point, I’d figured out what I was doing.

What are you most excited for readers to get out of The Garden of Empire?

The Garden of Empire really expands the world of The Hand of the Sun King. You get to see corners of the Empire that were only hinted at in the first book, and you get to see some perspectives on events other than Alder’s own, which I think adds interesting layers to the plot, characters, and themes. You also get to spend more time with some of my favorite characters from The Hand of the Sun King who only had minor roles, or didn’t show up until the very end of the book. The Garden of Empire is also where the bigger ideas of the series—the real, deep, philosophical things underpinning the post-colonial ideas of the first book—start to emerge, which really come into their own in The Pattern of the World.

What other book(s) do you want people to be aware of this coming year and why?

To plug myself first of all, the Pact & Pattern trilogy will come to a close with The Pattern of the World in August this year. If folks liked The Hand of the Sun King, there’s time to read through The Garden of Empire before the third book releases—maybe even time to preorder!

Otherwise, I really loved The Tyranny of Faith by Richard Swan, which was released earlier this year. His Empire of the Wolf series, which started last year with The Justice of Kings, does a great job of the kind of complex worldbuilding I love to see, and has some excellent character work. I’d also encourage people to pick up Flames of Mira by Clay Harmon, which releases in paperback in July, and keep an eye out for the paperback release of The Spear Cuts Through Water, which was my absolute favorite book last year.

I just started reading an advanced copy of a book from TorDotCom called The West Passage by Jared Pechaček, which will be released in 2024. So far, it’s weird and fascinating, and I’m pretty into it, so keep that one on your radar too!