“New Age” by Joshua Ambre appeared in Issue 36 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about this story.
This piece was inspired by truer events than you might imagine. While my mom thankfully isn’t in a cult, she does regularly listen to a known cult leader’s podcast as a form of spirituality/self-help. Years ago this cult leader did host a summit in Sedona, and my mom did consider attending, but ultimately she decided against it. Essentially, this piece was born from me asking the question, “but what if she had gone, and what if I had gone with her?” The rest of the story is pure fiction, particularly the latent homophobia. My mom is very accepting of me and my identity, though naturally that acceptance has taken time. My goal in writing this story was not to expose her spiritual practices, but rather to explore the marginalization of queer people in a new context. In a world where queerness continues to be treated as something occult, as a degenerate lifestyle threatening society, I wanted to offer this story as a rebuttal.
What was the most difficult part in writing this story?
Honestly, the most difficult part comes now that it’s being published. I haven’t shared this story with my mom yet, and that’s not exactly a conversation I’m looking forward to having. That being said, I know it’s an important one, and now that it’s on the internet there’s no avoiding it any longer. Much like the story’s protagonist, my relationship with her is still evolving, and I hope that sharing this with her will bring us closer together and not further apart.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
Speaking of cults, I can’t stop thinking about the medieval nuns in Lauren Groff’s Matrix. Add in the fact that so many of them are queer, and that should give you a pretty good idea of my reading tastes.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Ocean Vuong, Brandon Taylor, Sam Cohen, Garth Greenwell, the list goes on . . . . Obviously that’s more than one, but we would be going to a gay bar so the drinks would be too cheap for it to matter.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
Lately I’ve been in a revising space, trying to put a fresh face on some of the stories I started writing during lockdown. I’m hoping to include these along with newer work in my portfolio for MFA programs, which I’ll be applying to at the end of this year. Wish me luck!
Our thanks to Joshua for taking the time to answer a few questions and share this story. Read “New Age” here: https://www.sequestrum.org/fiction-new-age.
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Joshua Ambre (he/him/his) is a queer poet and writer committed to poking holes in the so-called wholesome values of American suburbia. His work has appeared in Fiction International, Glimpse Poetry Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, and Cornell University’s Rainy Day. Joshua was also named a Very Short Fiction runner-up at the 2023 Tennessee Williams and New Orleans Literary Festival. He is currently living and working in Washington, D.C.