We recently connected with Stacey Levine and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Stacey , thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
I took a risk in trying to write books via pushing language, writing against conventional realism, and creating fictional worlds based on not on sensible, coherent plot, but absurdism (to some degree). I don’t have one single theme or identity to establish in my writing, no case to plead, but my novels & stories are actually political, very much tuned into the ways humans hog power in situations or relationships, and how other people fully & willingly hand over their power. It seems inexplicable sometimes, but there are reasons in each case why a person does either of those things. These are the conditions inside the folds of daily life that demand to be examined.
Stacey , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
<b> [<—JENN: Can you trim down the above question?? It is pretty formulaic.]
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From a young age, I always felt my best when making up stories or planning them versus being busy with the daily world.
Like many kids, I was dumbstruck and captivated by movies and shows. For me, it was a certain cartoon about alley cats that were gangsters. I was amazed by the boundary between real life and those created worlds of pure atmospherics. When I was around 27 I started making atmosphere-forward short stories and novels. My writing’s vibe is deliberately slightly off-kilter, comic-yet-dramatic. It’s fictional spaces inhabited by not-quite realistic characters who at bottom display all-too-human wishes and needs. I force these deliberately flat or cartoonish characters to capture stuff—our bizarreness, our infantile rage and desires that live below the surface in adults.
Speaking of “cartoonish”–lately I’ve been collaborating with a graphic novelist, David Lasky, on some comics that will go into my next collection, slated for 2026. Writing dialogue inside of speech bubbles has been great, an exercise in true conciseness. The project has given both of us a a chance to make comics art that’s stylized, but emotionally realistic and resonant.
I definitely put mainstream realism and intricate plotting in the background to my work and like to foreground what feels more real vs. describing actual reality: For example, my short story about a little boy who eats everything in the house, furniture and all, to the dismay of his mother. This hyperbole in the story literalizes how kids stuff their feelings and observations inside themselves until they’re older when–if they’re lucky–they process the hard experiences.
So-called abnormal interior human states such as panic, horribly inequitable power relations between people, mysterious bonds, and other less-external, more internal aspects of life interest me intensely. Some of this is so politically uncorrect at the moment. For example, it’s disturbing but part of life that older adults sometimes love and lust after people decades younger, or that people want to control each other to an extreme degree. I’m not even talking about action but impulse–those impulses are common. Nobody talks about them honestly. Are the impulses themselves abberant? What do we do with that?
My work also relies on molding language and sentences down to the level that poets usually work at to create specific textures and text effects. Some of my fiction is downright painful, as in the examples above, and some is humorous and absurd. I’m also interested too in capturing weird flubs and blunders and pratfalls from daily life that are not usually shown in fiction.
My novels and short stories have gotten increasing readership, but not through the help of agents or anyone doing strategic marketing. For me, it’s more about just doing the work and having patience.
I feel great that I’ve never spent money on promotion. It’s been word of mouth and whatever my publishers did to get the books out there in stores–and reviews. What’s the actual value of rushing a book’s pub date or hyperpromotion anyway? Watching rabbits is more important than that, learning from nonhuman animals can help writing a lot. Meaning observing life carefully and working for long dull periods. Promotional hustle and online socials are ridiculous distractions from trying to create something unique or forcing the language to say something important for you. Everybody knows they pull us away from life’s silences and mysteries.
If you’re out to make money, that’s a completely different thing. And nothing wrong with it. Do it! Some colleagues have called me a delicate purist/artiste for saying stuff like the above, though I’m neither delicate nor an idealist. I just have some convictions about real writing.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
I’m glad that I can be a writer and that the people in my life get that. To know that I have free rein to play with words as much as I want, to overfocus on details, to spend time making up weird funny names for imaginary businesses or characters. I’m glad I get to play a lot with language and work on more stories and books.
Do you think there is something that non-creatives might struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can shed some light?
Immersing yourself in thought about painful situations, intolerable states, the world’s cruelty, or our own dysfuntion–that’s a part of making creative work.
Poets, writers, and artists have a high tolerance for thinking in a sustained way about those disturbing things. They question lots of mainstream things too. And most people just don’t want to go there.
Writers find each other–it takes one to know one. And we are extremely irritating to many.
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Contact Info:
- Website: staceylevine.net OR https://www.staceylevine.com/
- Instagram: StaceyLbooks
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stacey.levine.9
- Twitter: Stacey_ OR @StaceyL55436091
Image Credits
FatYeti