“Phases” by Chris Vanjonack appeared in Issue 31 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about this story.
I sometimes approach fiction through the lens of well, what can I get away with, here? With “Phases” I found this idea of ghosts pretending to have sex with each other infinitely funny, and I wanted to get away with writing a story that introduced the concept as a bit, but then landed on it again at the end as a moment of real emotional catharsis. It was wild how much sprung up from this very simple, very silly idea, and the rest of the piece kind of spiderwebbed out from there.
What was the most difficult part in writing this story?
It wasn’t until embarassingly late in the writing process that I realized that this was a story about self-harm and suicidal ideation. That idea of transcendence was always an important part of the narrative, but early drafts treated it with signficantly less gravity—as an almost mundane inevitability with maybe a little bit of mystery surrounding it. Huge credit goes to my One Story editor, Patrick Ryan, for pushing me towards embracing and exploring this part of the story. It’s one of those things that was always embedded subconsciously in the early drafts, and drawing it out sensitiviely but without breaking the story’s tone was probably the most difficult and emotionally vulnerable part of the process.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
Multiple Choice by Alejandro Zambra is one of the most ambitious, moving, and unclassifiable things I’ve ever read. It’s one of those books that feels like a miracle, and I think everyone should read it.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Ottessa Moshfegh for sure. I want to ask her how she does it.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I’m working on two projects right now that I’m really excited about: 1) a collection of short stories that follow Elizabeth from “Phases” across her life and death; 2) a novel about horror movies. I’m also heading back to Champaign-Urbana, Illinois at the end of the summer to finish out my M.F.A., and I’m very much looking forward to reuniting with my community there in person.
Our thanks to Chris for taking the time to answer a few questions and share “Shift.” Read Vanjonack’s story here: https://www.sequestrum.org/fiction-the-lorentz-contraction.
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Chris Vanjonack is an M.F.A. candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a reader at Ninth Letter, and a former language arts teacher from Fort Collins, Colorado. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in One Story, Hobart, CRAFT Literary, The Rumpus, Carve Magazine, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. Find him on Twitter @chrisvanjonack and read more stories at chrisvanjonack.com.