“I wouldn’t be an author without the short story form,” says Lydia Mathis, the winner of CULTURED’s inaugural Young Writers Prize in collaboration with Montblanc. “I discovered I could write these little crazy stories that didn’t lose steam. The compression was both freeing and relieving.”
The Atlanta-based author of the short story collection Desperate Bodies, out this month from Roxane Gay’s imprint, was a member of the magazine’s first class of Young Writers, published in this summer’s Indulgence issue. From that list of 10 talents, all 30 and under, a jury of six literary figures pored over galleys, finally selecting Mathis to receive a $10,000 unrestricted grant on behalf of the magazine and the luxury maison, whose writing instruments have inspired generations of writers.
The jury, made up of author and New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino, novelist and journalist Christopher Bollen, The Drift co-founder and editor Kiara Barrow, author and New Yorker writer Hanif Abdurraqib, author and CULTURED Literary Editor Emmeline Clein, and Montblanc Director of Writing Culture & Brand Strategy Alexa Schilz, was given the chance to delve deeper into Mathis’s writing practice for this issue. Ahead of the publication of her literary debut, each asked her a single question.
How are you balancing your writing life with the parts of you that crave and require other things to be a full person? —Hanif Abdurraqib
Absolutely horribly. I’ve never been good at keeping a daily writing routine. Mostly, I just go about my life until the guilt and anxiety from not writing build to intolerable levels—then I get back to it.
The short story form is perpetually undervalued. What specific pleasures does it provide for you as a writer? —Jia Tolentino
I am reminded of my querying process just reading this question. Many of the rejections I got were based on the book being a short story collection. But I wouldn’t be an author without the short story form. I have always been a bit afraid of more longform writing. When I finally took my first creative writing class and started writing short stories, it was fun. I could write these little crazy stories that didn’t lose steam because I could cut them off quickly. The compression was both freeing and relieving. Right now, I’m trying to write a novel and every day I miss my old friend, the short story.
What tends to be the ignition switch for a short story? Something you’ve witnessed in life? A sentence? A plot twist? —Christopher Bollen
When I first started writing stories, I often would try to think of the most exciting, attention grabbing first line and write from that. For instance, my story “House Party” starts with “The room smelled like hot ass.” I just went along with it, seeing where it took me. Sometimes my stories come from my own history. My story “push” is based on my mother’s experience nearly dying after giving birth to me. And sometimes, my stories are inspired by what I’m reading. One story that inspired me was Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s story “Tomorrow Is Too Far,” which features these siblings, a young girl and boy. The boy was fawned over. He was taught things the girl wasn’t. He was treated better. It reminded me of similar experiences from my own childhood. Then I wrote “Girlhood Lessons.”
The word “desperate” seems to take on multiple valences throughout the book, potentially referencing the desperation allegations women who express their desires full-throatedly can face, the desperation-inducing conditions of contemporary femininity these women are surviving, and much more. What does the word “desperate” mean to your characters, and in the book’s title? —Emmeline Clein
Desperate, to me, means want. My characters want something, and they want that thing so badly. Many of my characters believe if they could have whatever that thing is there lives would be better. They’d have friends, they’d have respect, they’d have someone who cared about them unconditionally, and so on. It tears at them, their want, and that’s why they are willing to do anything to get it.
What was it like to gather these stories together in a collection? How did you go about selection and ordering, and did the process or resulting juxtapositions reveal anything new or surprising about your characters, themes, preoccupations, or style? —Kiara Barrow
This story collection kind of built itself. I started writing stories for an intro to creative writing class [at Agnes Scott College]. It was my professor for that class, Alan Grostephan, who encouraged me to pursue writing. So, I did. I kept those stories as I moved onto graduate school, worked on them and added a few new pieces along the way. I was determined to graduate with a complete collection because I knew how hard it would be to keep up with writing when I was out of school.
My senior thesis was my collection. Luckily for me, the theme appeared naturally because I’ve always had some preoccupations with the body and it’s going ons. For the title, I was trying to decide between “distorted” and “desperate.” My classmates helped me decide on Desperate Bodies. Then I graduated, worked a little on a couple of the stories, tightening them, and started querying. When I eventually signed with my publisher and editor, Roxane Gay, she wanted me to add a few more stories. I dug through some old pieces and ideas I started in school and temporarily abandoned—I’m not the type to give up on a story forever—and worked on those. I came up with one new story and that rounded off the collection.
If you could write a letter to your younger self, what would you say? —Alexa Schilz
You are a writer. Stop saying you’re just a reader. Stop saying someone has to be the customer. You wrote songs on the playground in elementary school, singing them to yourself while people laughed at you. You uploaded poems to Yahoo Answers—when it still existed—just to share the words filling up your Notes app with someone. You are a writer. Get over it.
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