Gina Nutt: Each of these pieces is a precise, contained world. What do you love most about writing in a shorter form? Any limitations that you find frustrating? 
Shane Kowalski: I find limitations and frustration extremely motivating in writing. You can get to places you weren’t planning on going, which I think is always good for a piece of writing. If it was all planned out nicely and nothing went wrong, I would think the piece would have a tremendous lack. I also think I love the short form because it’s the quickest or laziest way to contend with that method of writing. The short form is inherently limited—spatially on the page, of course—and it also can frequently frustrate readers’ expectations of narrative and story. It’s built for the mentorless and the people who wants things to go wrong.  

GN: I’m curious about the strangeness that inhabits these pieces. Whether an uncanny narrative—the Titanic makes it across the ocean—or weirding language— “a singular moth flying into a singing mouth.” What appeals to you about the uncanny, absurd, and surreal? Where does realism fall short?
SK: This is always a tricky thing to me. I feel like I have a skewed view of these terms. Realism, in the literary sense, seems to me to be very experimental and weird. Real life doesn’t seem to be narratively cohesive or Freytag’s Pyramid-pilled—it is often much more uncanny, absurd, meandering, and surreal. Real life, at least in a macro sense, doesn’t seem to move in clearly defined phases. We assign those phases to make order out of it (i.e. birthdays and elementary school and the workday, etc.). So, in a weird, personal way, I feel like I write Realism. (Or I write a delusional Realism). Sadly, I don’t think anybody would mistake me for a realist.    

GN: There’s also fantastic deadpan humor here. How do you find balance between humor and sincerity?
SK: I feel like they sometimes go hand in hand. One strengthens the other. I feel like I can think of very sincere characters, at least sincere in their convictions and ideologies, that become very funny because of the way their sincerity interacts with and bumps up against others in their world. I’m thinking here of Ignatius J. Reilly in A Confederacy of Dunces, or Melville’s Bartleby, or any of the every-voiced narrators/main characters in Charles Portis’ novels. Sincerity sort of pans into delusion sometimes for them, which can be fun. I get the sense, too, that none of those characters are meant to be funny. In general, I think my method is I never try to be funny, but I always try to be sincere.  

GN: What’s in your creative mosaic? Books, music, restaurants, films, visual art, fashion, ephemera, architecture, anything that energizes your writing.
SK: There’s too much to say but recently: 1st person narrator novels like Remains of the Day, The Mezzanine, A Month In The Country, etc. Rémy Cogghe’s painting “Madame Recoit.” Letters To Wendy’s by Joe Wenderoth has and always will be there. I’ve learned and pilfered from it in equal measure. Recently I’ve been periodically rewatching the ending to Claire Denis’ Beau Travail. The abrupt swerve into samba in the middle of Led Zeppelin’s “Fool in the Rain” is also in there. As is Billy Bragg’s silly, funny “cover” of “Walk Away Renee.” All of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal. French fries in the evening. Looking out the window. Autumn. Night walks. Writing emails.