Five Questions with Jess Pane

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Kayla Rae Candrilli: Your story “Instead,” to be featured in NANO 9.2, is constructed as one sentence, a litany of “Insteads.” Can you tell us a little about your process of constructing this piece, about its genesis?

Jess Pane: Junot Díaz uses this incredible 2 1/2 page sentence in The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao to explain the passing of one summer. The purpose is to get the reader to where Oscar decides to stay in the Dominican Republic. We read this sentence on its own in a workshop I took this summer so the litany of “after” was on my mind. The idea for “insteads” came from a writing prompt that Maggie Nelson threw out at a craft talk: “what I did with my body one day.” So “Instead” isn’t about a singular day, but moments in a lifetime of what one does with a body.

KRC: In your experience, how does the flash form both limit and open up the possibilities of your writing?

Jess Pane PhotoJP: I find flash fiction really hard to write. It limits me because it scares me, but the practice of conciseness and looking at every word is really helpful when it comes to writing larger pieces.

KRC: What advice would you give a young writer that wants to start writing about queerness, and perhaps about gender identity in particular?

JP: You have to know that you’re not alone. Subscribe to the Lambda Literary Newsletter where there are interviews, book reviews, and calls for submissions. Find a great teacher. Work hard. Write what’s true to you because there will be passion in the truth.

KRC: When you’re stuck, how do you get writing again? Do you have any tricks to spur yourself forward?

JP: I stare into space a lot. In the class I am in right now, we have to keep a journal and write down our favorite quotes from the books we’re reading. That’s actually helped quite a bit. But it’s also talking with your buddies. I was talking to you, Kayla, and you were telling me about your recent trip to NYC and about the train accident and it reminded me of an experience I had in a small Texas town. I started writing from that moment about a story I didn’t even know I had in me. And it may be my favorite so far.

KRC: I know you are a bookseller at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, NY. What should we be reading?

JP: My favorite thing to do: Read The Boys of My Youth by JoAnn Beard; read Under the Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta; read The Argonauts and Bluets by Maggie Nelson; read We the Animals by Justin Torres; read New and Improved Romie Futch by Julia Elliott; read When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz. Read Eileen Myles and Dorothy Allison and James Baldwin. The book I’m reading right now is Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein and it’s really beautiful. Lambda Literary also has an archive of the books that have been nominated for the Lambda Literary Awards. I go there for what books are LGBTQ.