Elle Nash: On the Internet, Obsessions, Working as an Editor and Her Latest Collection, "Nudes"
Elle Nash’s second book Nudes (Short Flight/Long Drive) reveals the private and often grim worlds of people living in the fringe. Lust, obsession, addiction, sex, and eating disorders are just some of experiences the characters in this short story collection grapple with in their varied attempts at nearing some version of the American Dream. In doing so, Nash illuminates the warped side of this dream which has created desiring machines in a world that cannot possibly satiate the appetites it has born. The stories in this collection are dark, funny, gritty, and often read like a diary entry that less masochistic characters might have the sense to rip up and burn. That they exist is thrilling and feels like being shown something not meant to be seen in public. In her first novel, Animals Eat Each Other, the narrator asks “How does an obsession grow? Slowly, like mold? The spores settle unseen and then blooms form, devouring any open brainscape,” and while Nudes shares in common with her first novel this theme of obsession, there is nothing slow about the way it grows. The stories in this collection are full of obsessions that bloom quickly and wildly, often growing out of control before the characters even sense that the seed of it has been planted. Nash’s characters are full of wanting - sex, thigh gaps, attention, oblivion. From cyberstalking ex’s to morphing into a catgirl on the internet, the characters in Nudes seem willing to go to any lengths necessary to fill the existence-sized hole inside them. These 24 short stories reveal the way thoughts consume us, and the many ways we try, and fail, and try again to exist in a world that seems built of barbed wire.
I spoke with Elle via email about her newest collection, her work as an editor, and how she makes time to write.
Shelby Hinte: Congrats on the publication of Nudes! It is different from anything I have read in a while. The stories feel brutally honest and the stories cover many iterations of obsession. Can you talk a little bit about how you put the book together and what your experience getting it published was like?
Elle Nash: Thank you so much, I appreciate that, Shelby. The stories are collected from pieces I’ve written over the last almost-decade, really. I had an idea for a linked collection inspired by my time living in Arkansas and my publisher and mentor, Elizabeth, had approached me with the idea of putting together the collection, so it kind of sprung out of that. I started thinking about what stories fit best together and which ones I liked the most, that fit under this theme of Nudes.
SH: Your stories have a certain grit to them and I know you teach a workshop called Textures. What do you think gives a story texture?
EN: I’d say texture is guided by style, the development of voice. Every person has a unique voice, particularly speech. What my writing teacher, Tom Spanbauer, called “the inarticulate speech of the heart.” Part of the goal of my workshop and in writing is to help people discover this in their work and foster and develop it.
SH: In the title story, Nudes, a partnered woman has a mostly imagined affair with her neighbor while her wife is consumed by alcoholism. In the final act, the protagonist finally confronts the face of her obsession and the encounter doesn’t seem to live up to her imagination. The story embodies one of the collection’s connective themes (at least as I read it) of people struggling to reconcile their desired reality with their physical reality. Were you conscious of this theme as you were writing and can you talk a little bit about whether you have themes in mind while you write?
EN: I’m not sure I’m ever conscious of themes actively as I’m writing them, but then I start to notice particular elements once I’m halfway through a story or something, and work to thread them through, and then develop them in later drafts. I guess if we think of “theme” as “an overarching body of thought/concept that occupies the mind” then, you could say I’m always thinking about themes, in a way, just not as purposefully as one might equate to craft. I mean. My whole life is consumed by these concepts, I’m always thinking about how people relate to each other in terms of sex, reality, desire, obsession, interpersonal conflict, melancholy, etc.
SH: Recently you tweeted ‘Imagining how incredible it must feel to just say what I mean,’ and I thought about that a lot as I read your collection. The characters in Nudes definitely seem to struggle with saying what they mean, but the stories themselves have a type of honesty I don’t encounter much in fiction. Reading them, I sometimes felt like a voyeur, like I was getting to peek into the parts of characters’ consciousness that are meant to be kept hidden. How do you capture this level of honesty in your writing, particularly when it comes to the less flattering thoughts that characters/people have?
EN: I guess writing is one place, for me, that is a place to explore unimpeded, and unjudged, a space free of criticism. When I’m writing it’s just me and my brain. It’s a lot like meditating. I can work out all my issues there without worrying about anyone else—therapists or whatever. It feels safe there. There’s that idea that writers live in two worlds, I guess I’m kind of like that. I don’t think about the audience in those moments or in the first drafts. I’ve always got one foot in the other world inside me, and I’m reticent to let people in it until I’ve felt it’s been fully formed and ready to share with people I trust to comment/criticize it to help it become better, and by then I’m committed to my vision enough that I feel confident in reshaping it or sharing it or what have you. Part of that is by exploring the stuff that might scare you normally. If it’s something you feel like dancing around in your writing, like for example when a story ends right before the main conflict occurs, then you should probably instead dive into the middle of it and let the fear come with you.
SH: The internet makes some pretty big guest appearances in this collection and you are quite active in the online literary and social media world. How do you think the internet has changed the literary landscape?
EN: I think that it’s really fostered the indie lit scene a lot. It’s given access to people who wouldn’t normally have had access to publishing, which is important for things like outsider lit, where the mainstream establishment literary culture would otherwise be the prevailing market force. I mean, it still is, but small publishing houses really thrive on the internet to show people that what is out there isn’t all NYT Bestsellers. That access is incredibly important for challenging art to flourish.
SH: Nudes and your first novel, Animals Eat Each Other, were both published by small presses. You have also published chapbooks with small presses. Can you talk a little bit about why you chose to work with small presses?
EN: Pure luck.
SH: You also founded and edit the literary magazine Witch Craft. What was it like starting that magazine and what do you think it means to be a “literary citizen?”
EN: I started the magazine with my friend Catch Breath because we didn’t know anybody in the Denver lit scene (or I didn’t, anyway) and we wanted to meet more people and get more involved. We wanted to start a reading series, too. And we ended up meeting a lot of wonderful people. So many talented artists and poets and writers submit to Witch Craft every year, and I’m always shocked by the talent, feel lucky I get to read and curate work that inspires me.
I don’t know for sure what it means to be a literary citizen. I’m unsure I have a kind of duty to anything. I’m driven by my desire to read and share work that moves and challenges me, and I’m lucky to keep doing it. The one thing I feel responsible for is ensuring that the contributors feel they are getting something out of submitting and being published with us. That they feel their work reaches a particular kind of audience, and also that they feel their work, by being printed, is given a kind of permanence in the world. I love the idea of print magazines being found randomly on shelves all over the world—that someone, somewhere, would pick up a copy and find you in it, and connect with your story, and maybe even try to find more of your work or reach out. I want to create that kind of permanence with the work we curate. “I was here once, I wrote this.”
SH: So I think it is safe to say that you are super prolific. How do you make time to write so much and what is your writing routine like?
EN: I hear this so much but I almost don’t believe it. I think Bud Smith is prolific. Maybe I feel this way because I haven’t written regularly since 2021 began. The first way I made time to write was by sometimes writing on the job. I had an office job and I spent a lot of time writing in the mornings or after work or during lunch, sometimes I wrote when no one was around and couldn’t tell what I was doing. I accepted I would always hate my job and that writing was the thing I wanted to do most and so I guess I didn’t want to put so much into performing well at my office job. Then, though, my mental health was affected and I quit to work at a grocery store and I had a lot more time to write at home. I don’t know if I’d recommend this. My husband and I moved to a small town in Arkansas to live more cheaply. We got rid of most of our belongings, we culled as much debt as we could, we lived off grid for a short while, and I had more time to write, then, as well. After that, I worked another low-wage job and then I had my child, and I stayed home while he worked. It was both a privilege and also kind of out of necessity. While I stayed home I vowed to myself that I would focus on writing with all of my free time outside of family, and I did that. I wrote early in the mornings, or every time my child napped, or on weekends. If I couldn’t write I didn’t beat myself up about it. Sometimes I wrote while my child was eating breakfast and occupied, for like 5 minute stints. My husband is currently unemployed due to the pandemic. And now during the pandemic and now that I have my kid, sometimes I regret leaving my office job. I had a lot of time to write, though. I finished like two full manuscripts and a novella during 2020, while teaching my workshop and building up my freelance career. Money is tight and I sometimes wish I’d had something more stable. But if I did that, I’d probably be at my office job right now, thinking like, “wow, I really wish I had quit my job in 2016 like I said I would for my mental health, so I could be teaching workshops and editing manuscripts and writing books right now, and be home with my kid for the little years.” I’m grateful for the time right now because I get to be home with my kid and also try to work on writing while applying my skillset in an industry that does make me feel alive—editing, helping people write. I really love doing it. Anyway, I guess that’s how I made time. Good and bad life decisions. And also enforcing my boundaries with time, and understanding my needs, by being like, “I need to write today for X hours,” and negotiating that time with my family. I have to be realistic, though. I have to balance it.
SH: What advice do you have for aspiring writers?
EN: Perseverance is the number one predictor of success. I don’t know if it’s true yet but I’m still trying.
Elle Nash is the author of the short story collection Nudes and the novel Animals Eat Each Other (Dzanc Books), which was featured in O - The Oprah Magazine and hailed by Publishers Weekly as a ‘complex, impressive exploration of obsession and desire.’ Her short stories and essays appear in Guernica, The Nervous Breakdown, Literary Hub, The Fanzine, Volume 1 Brooklyn, New York Tyrant and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and a fiction editor at both Hobart Pulp and Expat Literary Journal. She teaches a writing workshop called Textures. Find her on Twitter @saderotica.
About the Interviewer
Shelby Hinte is a writer and educator living in the Bay Area. She received her MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University where she was the recipient of the 2019 Distinguished Graduate award. She has been a contributing food and beverage writer for Edible Santa Fe. Her fiction has appeared in Entropy, Maudlin House, Witness Magazine, Hobart, and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel about women and vortexes in the desert. You can follow her @shelbyhinte_ and read her work at www.shelbyhinte.com
