INTERVIEWWITHBENPERCY Hailed as one ofAmerica's most brilliant young writers} Benjamin Percy has pub– lishedprolifically in bothfiction and nonfic– tion and has written two books, Refresh, Refresh: Stories (Graywolj 2007) and The Language ofElk (Carnegie Mellon} 2006). His work has garnered such prizes as the Pushcart Prize and the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize} and has beenfeatured in collections such as the Best American Short Stories. Percy teaches creative writing} composition} and literature at the University ofWisconsin-Stevens Point. CR: How do you write stories that resonate with an increasingly diverse culture/audience? BP: I don't think about that. Ifyou consider your audience too carefully, ifyou worry about the faces hovering around your computer screen, you'll either freeze up or try to be too accommodating. I just write the stories that come boiling out ofme. Luckily, they strike a nerve in many. CR: What element must a story have to succeed aesthetic– ally? Is there any such element in the first place? BP: It begins, in most cases, with an image. Ifyou think about writing as a subject, most of us are trained-from grammar school through college-to write thoughts. That, after all, is the essence of the essay; "here is what I'm thinking." Cerebral writing has a cerebral effect. And I don't want my audience to sit and ponder their navels. I want them to feel. I want to drag them down the rabbit hole. I want them to be alive twice: once in their world, once in the world of the ART 55
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=