Interviewed by Naomi Silverman
Interview Conducted on December 12, 2025
What started “Deviants”? Why did you need to tell us this story?
Back when I was in grad school getting an MFA in poetry, one of the other poets shared this theory that everyone is either a deviant, a conformist, or a recluse, and yet they inevitably present themselves as a category contrary to their true nature. It was one of those late-night pseudo-philosophical, pseudo-anthropological MFA conversations at a gathering I missed because I was probably already asleep (speaking of being a recluse!) but my husband told me about it later, and it interested me. Maybe it’s something about the difference between one’s fundamental nature versus one’s chosen public face? Or the beguiling neatness of dividing people into one of three categories? I feel equally drawn to and skeptical of such things, like astrological signs, or Meyers-Briggs types. If one approaches them lightly, laughingly, systems like these can be somewhat revealing, if only by prompting us to ask new questions about ourselves. Anyway, I kept thinking about a character who might seriously endorse this theory, and about a relationship that pressed hard against ethical convention (deviancy!)—and thus this story emerged.
Sometimes the subject matter I find richest, as both a writer and a reader, might be described as discomfiting. I like to go there in fiction so that I can remain quite boring in real life!
Did you encounter any challenges when depicting incel culture or with employing the internet as a site for dialogue?
You know, that’s a great question, but I’m not so sure that I am depicting incel culture, at least not broadly speaking. I wouldn’t feel equipped to do that, really. Rather, I’m depicting one specific boy’s experience of angst and loneliness and romantic frustration. He’s smart, and terribly online, and he’s adopted this defensive superiority. I find him both off-putting and charming—which is how Ellen, the main character, also responds to him. In her attempt to understand him, she does refer to him as an incel, which tells us something about him, in its limited way, but it also tells us something about Ellen, and the threat she reads in him. The word incel connotes potential violence, and I suspect Ellen chooses it for that reason; there is an undercurrent of violence that shadows the entire story. Absolute categories like “deviant,” “conformist,” “recluse,” and “incel” can be as limiting as they are revealing. (One is acutely aware of this in medicine, especially psychiatry.) And I suspect that naming exercises like these often reveal as much about the namer as the named.
“Deviants” contains a throb of sensuality that could be written off as Ellen’s maladaptive response to her loneliness and marital issues. But is there something truly “smoldering” in those scenes with the boy and in Ellen’s libidinal arc? Do you consider the sexuality of this story to perhaps speak for itself? Is Ellen overintellectualizing her attraction to her patient?
Oh, I think the throb of sensuality is very real! And I agree with you that there’s some legit smoldering going on. Yes, my hope is that the sexual tension in the story speaks for itself, but I’m fascinated by the complicated layers of feeling that can crop up between people even (especially?) in circumstances when it’s completely inappropriate. I think Ellen also has a maternal feeling toward the boy that somehow exists alongside her weird attraction to him.
Did you feel any disappointment when, after that last moment in Ellen’s office, you realized that their tension would have no culmination?
I definitely wanted to create that slight sense of disappointment in the reader! I think we always kind of want to see seductive boundary violations happen— even as we dread them happening. If I were being very clever, I might say I’m trying to implicate the reader as a deviant in terms of their own reaction. (If I believed in categories like that…)
Learning that Ellen used to want to be a writer was a little trippy, as it always is for me when there’s a writer in a story. It doesn’t get a lot of screen time, though—what was important to you about that detail?
Yeah, I agree! The silly answer is that I think writers love to create characters who are also writers, and I’m certainly not immune! But in this particular story I think the detail is crucial in how it helps with a certain symmetry/asymmetry. First, it gives Ellen a vulnerability, something discoverable about her that can be a point of similarity between her and the boy, a way for her to feel exposed. It’s embarrassing to want to write; it’s embarrassing to care deeply about anything, really, and then to have someone discover your sincere efforts—particularly, for Ellen. So from the start, this discovery throws the balance off a bit in their doctor/patient relationship. Second, I think that as the story progresses, we see that Ellen’s writerly instincts, her desire to construct a narrative or adopt another voice, have not really been extinguished. At her core, she is still someone who approaches the world with a writerly sensibility.
Answer any or all of these: What are you currently reading? Do you have any artistic/literary obsessions at the moment? What are you working on right now?
I’m currently reading Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li, one of my favorite writers. As for artistic/literary obsessions, I’ll give a shout-out to three of my favorite short story collections from 2025 because I always want short story collections to get more love! My favorites were Save Me, Stranger by Erika Krouse, Make Your Way Home by Carrie R. Moore, and Are You Happy? by Lori Ostlund. I’ve been obsessed with the music of Cameron Winter for the past year or so. And I’m currently working on a novel–I need to finish it!