Penumbra 2021

INTERVIEWER: Do you think about writing even when you aren’t writing?

LESLIE JAMISON: There’s a lot of time that I’m not writing– whenever I’m teaching, taking care of my daughter, watching documentaries about NXIVM late at night when I should be asleep– but I truly believe that all this time, in addition to being devoted to other worthwhile tasks– not the NXIVM so much, maybe, but certainly keeping my daughter alive!– is a fruitful part of the writing process too.

Things are shuffling around in my brain, getting reorganized and re-ignited. Sometimes not being able to work all the time means that things bloom in the darkness or dimness of peripheral vision.

A writer-and-mother friend of mine talks about something called “the mom simmer,” by which she means the ways her ideas and projects are simmering inside her when she’s doing all the other daily stuff– and I love that, like rocks getting shaken around in the rock-tumbler of daily life, and when you come back to them, there’s something different.

INTERVIEWER: What does your editing process look like?

LESLIE JAMISON: My revision process involves many, many drafts– four, five, six, nine– usually over many years, especially with personal narrative and with books. It involves taking time away from drafts so that I can edit them rigorously and ruthlessly but also with more love and excitement– often, I get saturated with a project, but if I give myself some time away, I can come back with more enthusiasm.

Also, other readers! I have friend-readers who I’ve been reading and read by for years, sometimes decades, and their eyes and voices help me see projects in fresh ways when they’ve gone stale, or I feel dispirited– and help me stumble when I prematurely think I’ve nailed it!

INTERVIEWER: Do you have a book you believe every high schooler should read?

LESLIE JAMISON: I don’t teach high schoolers, but one of the books I do teach, that is, again, just the book that is coming to mind is The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin. Part of what I love about it is not just the context of thinking about the relationship between racism and love in really urgent, beautiful ways, but also the craft and form of that essay. It’s more like in fiction. My friend, Heather, talks about the nonfiction novella. It’s kinda like a novella. But I love the way it has three pretty distinct portions, and one feels like personal narrative, and one feels more like reportage, and one feels more like a kind of criticism or thinking that rises out of both. But I love the idea that it could start with these personal memories of being a young street creature and kind of move from that into these, you know, extremely mature, complex ways of thinking. I love that he kind of gives this access to the child self that some of his thinking is coming from, and in a way, it’s like another way of thinking about forms of ambush or forms of surprise…the way a single essay might not go the way you are expecting and instead take these turns you can’t see coming, but they all build on each other and in the end, and you can see how.

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