Valerie Fox interviews me for PRESS1.
We Dream Colors:
An Interview with Jayne Pupek
We dream colors
while sleeping in the curl
of an egg.
—from “Myth” (Forms of Intercession)
Blues tend to fade without dissolving.
—from “Withholding” (Forms of Intercession)
Jayne Pupek has published two books in 2008. Tomato Girl, a novel, is just out from Algonquin Books. Forms of Intercession, poems, was published this year by Mayapple Press. Both her poems and the novel tell stories that possess the strange inevitabilities of dreams and myths.
Tomato Girl begins with a prologue in which the narrator recalls a time long past, and the macabre image of a dead infant. From this riveting and dramatic start, the novel proceeded to engage and to move us. In the remarks that follow, Pupek shares with us insights into the characters in Tomato Girl, her writing process, the impact of her career as therapist, and other fascinating subjects.
Valerie Fox: The short, titled chapters/sections in Tomato Girl work well to highlight imagery and to establish the trajectory of story. How and why did you decide on this style?
Jayne Pupek: I began writing Tomato Girl more or less on a whim. Until then, I had written very little fiction other than short pieces, or “flash fiction,” which were often more like prose poems than actual short stories. My writing focus has always been poetry, and I think the need to title each chapter is purely reflective of that. Typically, each poem in a collection is titled, so when I began writing Tomato Girl, the chapters just seemed incomplete to me without a title.
Read the complete interview here.
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