![]() ![]() You frequently use sentence fragments and invent or idiosyncratically distort words (e.g., “whatsofuckingever”). This general irreverence is also manifested in style, in how the stories are told, and in terms of their syntax and phrasing. If we can play in those shadows, we might be better off in the “real” world. Creative work is a good place to figure out where “too far” might be. I want to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed, as the old saw goes. Sentimentality and small talk are for, like, dinner parties and job interviews. There is a time and place for sentimentality and small talk. All of us, truly: we are batshit snowflakes. We human animals are really batshit crazy in so many funny, weird, perverse, common ways. Your two novels, The Book of Dahlia and After Birth, are not afraid to speak unsentimentally and bluntly about such sacrosanct subject matter as the joys of motherhood, cancer, and even the Holocaust. Do you aim to provoke? Do you ever wonder if you go too far? In your story “The Alternative Weekly,” one character alleges that his wife repeatedly reminds him of her past sexual assault in order to score points another character gamely commits multiple infidelities in her first year of marriage. ![]() Throughout your work, you have approached serious topics with a mordant irreverence. Novelist and poet Monica Ferrell interviewed novelist and short story writer Elisa Albert via email in the late spring of 2017. ![]()
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