Janelle Bassett and Amy Stuber: On Writer Friendships, Publication Anxiety, and Their Debut Collections, Thanks For This Riot” and “Sad Grownups”

Janelle Bassett and Amy Stuber met via Twitter in 2019. Both were in the throes of sending short story collections out to small presses and contests, and they commiserated about the process and realized they had a ton in common (similar walking obsession, similar mothers,  and both had kids named Edith!). 

Both serve as editors for Split Lip, and both have collections coming out from small presses this fall (Janelle’s Thanks For This Riot out from University of Nebraska Press Sept 1, 2024, and Amy’s Sad Grownups out from Stillhouse Press October 8, 2024). Both collections feature reluctant domesticity, pesky desires, and well-meaning people getting it wrong.

Janelle and Amy got together this summer to talk about writer friendships, cheering each other on, envy, and more. 

Janelle Bassett: Right now, we are three months out from your pub date and two months out from mine. Things are getting real. So my first question is: Are we still friends?

Amy Stuber: No. 

No, really, of course we are friends, and I would not let weirdness around writer stuff wreck our friendship. I’m a competitive person, though. It’s not great. I get full of envy and jealousy, and I want to always be magnanimous but am often not. But the way I know we’re really friends is that I’m only 20% jealous and 80% happy for you when good things happen. When you won the Prairie Schooner Prize, my book was still in prize/small press purgatory. I was really happy for you, but I also had this needle that lodged somewhere that was like, Wait, what about me? That sounds so selfish! But that was the reality. 

I know that as we get closer and we each get or don’t get different reviews, or are on or not on different lists, we’ll just have to contend with weirdness around all of it. But having a writing friend who is also a real friend is too important to me, and I’m determined to not fuck it up. I feel genuine happiness for you at the good things, and I’m furious if anyone rejects you. We are doing a couple of events together in October, and I’m very excited for that. One of my best memories of this year is laughing together on the floor of your hotel room at AWP, so I’m looking forward to repeats of that this fall.

Do you think we’re still friends? What is hard for you about maintaining writer friendships? What’s good about being friends with other writers? 

JB: Ha, thank you for confirming our friendship and tolerating my overly insecure attachment style. 

We became friends in 2019 but didn’t meet in person until 2024. And at that point the stakes felt way too high because we knew each other really well—like I knew your guts but I hadn't spent a lot of time with your face. It could have gone sideways, but I think it ended up being nice and easy, don’t you?

To answer your questions: Yes, we’re still friends! And I appreciate your honesty about jealousy. I was definitely aware of all the nuanced emotions when I shared my book news with you. You were one of the people I was most excited to tell, because we’d been supporting each other through the whole process. But I also felt a bit guilty and shitty because it felt like we should be doing the next step together too. (Codependent much?) But then mere weeks later you found out that Stillhouse was going to take your book and we were back on track, baby. 

It’s funny, though, that we essentially bonded over being broody people who never get what they want and now we are forced to become gratitude buddies. Lots of texting each other stuff like: don’t forget to enjoy this, asshole!

One of the best things about being friends with writers is that you can tell them things like don’t forget to enjoy this, asshole and they take it in stride. Plus they care about detail and context. And writer friends love to grapple, which I appreciate. With you, specifically, I saw you as more of a mentor when we were getting to know each other, because you had published a ton and were so accomplished and knowledgeable. But you always treated me as a peer and a friend, even when I felt a little shy and silly about calling myself a “real writer.” So that was really something for my confidence.

In terms of the hard parts about writing friendships, I think for me the main obstacle is that when I’m socializing, I crave an escape from the things I’m obsessed with or worried about, and writing and publishing often fall into that category. A lot of the time writing is the last thing I want to talk about or think about. But you and I are good at branching out and talking about other topics. We can obsess about a myriad of subjects!

Remind me of the full publication journey of your collection. Did you have a collection manuscript that you sent out back in your earlier writing era, before you had kids? Are any of the stories in Sad Grownups from that time? That’s a time in your life I don’t know a lot about, really. The Freewheelin’ Amy Stuber. 

AS: I miss the Freewheelin’ Amy Stuber, but she was honestly kind of an asshole—all bad habits and lack of impulse control. When I started really writing, I was 18 or 19 and wrote a lot of terrible poems. I published my first story at 23 and had all these big “20 under 30” dreams. Ha! I feel a little embarrassed of that person now, but also soft toward her. There’s so much rejection involved in writing, and you have to get a kind of fuck you all if you don't like it mentality. But there’s definitely that constant feeling of maybe I’m just bad at this and should quit that we’ve talked about a lot. 

Almost all of the stories in this book are from the last six years. I have had different collections over the years. I have one even more depressing collection from the 90s that’s all chicken factories and Airstream trailers, which is not my life experience, so I’m glad it wasn’t published. I have another collection written in the last few years that’s mainly flash and a few short stories that’s kind of sitting on the back burner. Not sure anything will happen to it. 

Changing gears: tell me about your visual art, and how that work weaves into or takes you away from (or both) your writing. 

JB: I think Freewheelin’ Amy Stuber would be proud of you in her own asshole way. And I love that your less depressing collection is called Sad Grownups. 

You’re sweet to ask about my art! As you know, I make digital collages by combining photos I take with public domain images and sometimes my own drawings. I feel like my visual art is illegitimate and slapdash, but that’s why I enjoy doing it. The collages I make aren’t subjected to any kind of submission processes. I’m compelled to make these collages and I have ideas constantly, which is the relationship I had with writing for a few years. So it’s possible that making visual art is taking away from my writing, but I think it’s more that I am simply not in a writing mode right now and if I didn’t make my wacky little collages then I wouldn’t be doing anything creative and I would feel super pent-up and hurt the ones I love, ha. 

Do you have creative outlets other than writing? 

AS: I used to draw and paint a lot but have done almost none in the last eighteen years since becoming a parent. I think photography is an outlet for me, though I don’t do it seriously at all. But also walking in excess, listening to music, bad TV, and stress baking are all outlets for me.

I love your collages! I look forward to seeing what you come up with each day (images, themes, titles), and I also love that, though they are public via social media, they aren't run through any process to determine their acceptability by others, like all our writing is. What do you think your writing would be like if you weren't thinking at all about submitting it?

JB: You are good at photography. Maybe you should explore that more! Photography is a naturally depressive medium, too, so no one will tell you to cheer it up. 

It’s hard to say what my writing would be like if I didn’t submit it! When I’m working on something, I’m not really thinking about pleasing anyone other than myself, but of course I am also writing under the assumption that other people will read it. I guess it’s really the difference between expression to get a feeling out versus expression to be understood or to connect.

Like, if I had a strong negative emotion I could punch the air for five minutes and feel a little better, but the person standing beside me wouldn’t be any wiser about what I was going through. When I write, I guess I’m trying to balance my own catharsis with my desire to create something that will make sense or feel relatable to other people. But, you know, without thinking about any of that too hard!

AS: Okay, speaking of writing for other people versus writing for self: we have been texting about the panic and anxiety around publishing. It’s funny because we both really wanted to get a book, and now that we have them coming, we feel intermittently terrible about them. What are your biggest anxieties around book publication? What’s your pie-in-the-sky outcome?

JB: Lately I can’t tell if I’m sinking or soaring. My biggest anxieties around the book are definitely about feeling exposed and vulnerable. I’ve spent most of my life being super guarded and self-protective because I was worried that I couldn’t handle life—that I wasn’t capable. So to make something with my brain and my effort and then hoist it out into the world with my actual name on it feels a bit like I’ve broken one of my own internal rules: Don’t let them see you sweat! Better yet, babe, don’t let them see you at all! But, you know, I keep these doubts and insecurities shoved down in a very healthy way.

My pie-in-the-sky outcome would be for Jim Henson’s company to make a Muppet of the character Treatie from my story “All I Need Are These Four Walls and Some Positive Feedback.” She’s a sloth-like chocolatier who has recently become acquainted with the idea of revenge and I feel like she deserves the Muppet treatment. 

What about you? What are your worries and secret hopes for your book?

AS: Compared to a Muppet of Treatie (ha!), my big dreams are really banal and unlikely, like some big-deal review. We’ve talked a lot about the way having a book coming basically unravels you (me) emotionally. On the one hand, it’s easy to feel extremely insecure and also like, whatever, no one cares, but then I also feel the urge to lobby for it, to try to get it out in front of people. It’s just a weird time, I guess. Couple that with the fact that I was laid off the same month I got the book deal last year and the same month my daughter left for college far away. So I really hope winter 2024 is extremely low-key. 

JB: You really do deserve a chill, predictable year. And a big deal review. For what it’s worth, I really admire your competitive side. I see it as you sticking up for yourself, as being unafraid to take up space. Those are things I want to get better at. Maybe it will come with age?

AS: I don’t know! A lot of the things I thought would come with age haven’t happened. I guess I am a little less worried about other people’s opinions, though, and that’s nice. And a little more accepting of myself. 

I think we’re getting close to being out of space, so here’s a random, rapid-fire question round.

What’s the best dessert, and what’s the worst dessert?

JB: The best dessert is ice cream with a bunch of shit in it. Put some candy bars in there and some cookie dough and maybe nuts if they are chocolate covered. I want it to be 50% ice cream and 50% toppings. I know you think ice cream is cow snot, but let me live.

I’m going to go with peanut brittle for worst dessert. It’s just too hard. I like my sweets to be squishy.

AS: Ha, yes, ice cream is phlegmy. Best dessert for me: either super fudgy brownies or shitty, hyper-sugary gummy candy. Worst dessert: I know this makes me sound uncultured, but: baked fruit. Why?

MFAs? Yay or nay?

JB: Nay in that I don’t have one, but not nay in that I am against them. Yay if someone found one helpful. Yay that there’s a path for people without them. Personal yay that I didn’t get one because I think it would have bummed me out.

AS: Yeah, I agree. I know there’s an omnipresent debate about this on Literary Twitter, etc., but I sort of don’t care. I did go to grad school, but my focus was more on literature overall, and the school where I was didn’t yet offer an MFA. If you got one and it worked for you, great, but it’s not necessary and not right for everyone. 

If you could be in a well-known band from any era, which one would it be, and who would you be?

JB: You know I am going to take this question way too seriously. My gut responses would be David Byrne or Patti Smith, but really being either one of them would be too much pressure! Being so dynamic and singular would make me sleepy. So my answer is that I would be one of the members of the 70s/80s new-wave Australian band The Go-Betweens. Anyone from their late-80s lineup, anyway.

AS: I’ve watched Stop Making Sense way too many times, and I think being as free and random as David Byrne is on stage would be sort of a dream. So I like that answer. I’d also love to be someone in a band like Bratmobile in the 90s. Also, Joni Mitchell because she’s incredible musically, didn’t take shit from male musicians, and played with everyone. 

What books were most influential to you in your first few years of writing?

JB: I started writing in 2017-ish. I read The Only Ones by Carola Dibbell around this time and I remember that it really knocked me out. After my youngest was born in 2015, I had this reignited appetite for novels. My actual life was somewhat paused, or at least in newborn mode, but my mind was grasping and clawing for complexity and meaning and mess. I wish I remembered more of what I read! I feel like there is a book from this time that we’ve talked about. It was about art… do you know what I’m talking about? 

AS: Ugh, of course I can’t remember. I wish I was a person who’d kept some running list of books read. Every year in January, I am like I’m doing a list, this is the year. And then I don’t.

When I started writing in the 90s, I was into Joy Williams, Lorrie Moore, Amy Hempel, Toni Morrison, and Denis Johnson. I also read a ton of poetry: Sylvia Plath, Toni Cade Cambara, Amiri Baraka, Anne Sexton, Adrienne Rich, etc. In the last five years, I think Sigrid Nunez’s and Ali Smith’s books are the ones that have stuck with me the most. 

JB: It was Ali Smith! How to Be Both. Thank you. That was going to bug me. 

AS: Which author’s career would you want?

JB: Is there a writer who just wrote one book and everyone said, We like this book! You must be tired. You can be done now, and then the writer actually took a deep breath and got on with their life and stopped feeling like they had something to prove? 

AS: Ha, yes! It’s time to rest now. In an ideal world I’d just write stories and have a few books that maybe a small cadre of people thought were good. I’m having trouble thinking of anyone in the last twenty years who has been able to pull this off (stories without having to do a novel, I mean).  

You’re a famous artist going to your art opening—what are you wearing?

JB: Probably a bold print because I am becoming an older woman who wears bold prints. Distinct but not kooky. Flattering but comfortable—and it needs to stay put! I want to be tugging my skirt back down over my butt while someone is trying to compliment my brushstrokes. 

AS: “Distinct but not kooky” is really your current aesthetic, and I’m always envious of it! I used to try for this, but I’ve given up and now am in a uniform of jeans and button-ups. I want to be more interesting than this, but I’ve resigned myself to it! (It’s particularly nice to be able to wear my son’s cast-off clothes, too! I don’t have to buy much.)

It’s been such a pleasure talking to you in this slightly more formalized way! As your writer mom, I am so hoping for all the good things for you in this publication year! 

JB: Same to you, mum.

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Janelle Bassett is the author of the story collection THANKS FOR THIS RIOT, winner of the Prairie Schooner Raz-Shumaker Book Prize in Fiction. She edits fiction for Split Lip Magazines and lives in St. Louis.