The Writing University conducts a series of interviews with writers while they are in Iowa City participating in the various University of Iowa writing programs. We sit down with authors to ask about their work, their process and their descriptions of home.
Today we are speaking with Jessica Alexander, an instructor at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival. Jessica is currently teaching the online workshop "Fiction in a Flash." She is also teaching two Summer Festival Weekend Workshops coming up: Setting: The Art of Writing a World, July 13-18, and The Anecdotal as Antidote to Finding Your Voice, July 19-20.
Jessica Alexander has taught creative writing workshops at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Franklin and Marshall College, Porchlight Literary Arts Center, The Chattery, and The Iowa Summer Writing Festival, among other places. Her novella, None of This Is an Invitation (co-written with Katie Jean Shinkle) was published by Astrophil Press in summer 2023. Her story collection, Dear Enemy, was the winning manuscript in the 2016 Subito Prose Contest. Her collaborative memoir (co-written with Vi Khi Nao) That Woman Could Be Youcame out with BlazeVox in April 2022. Her novel, Agnes, We’re Not Murderers is forthcoming from Clash Books in 2026.
1. Can you tell us a little bit about the course that you are teaching for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival?
Sure. I’m teaching a course on flash fiction. There are a couple reasons why I like teaching short form. The first is, I think, flash fiction is a microcosm for story. It allows us, in one sitting, to see the various ways that tension is created and sustained in narratives. I also think of it as a way for writers to establish a practice. That’s the most important part, I think. I like participants in my class to produce something new for each session. A work of flash feels doable. Flash forms also permit us to read and discuss each writer’s work on a regular basis. No one’s writing in a vacuum. We’re tapping into each other’s work consistently, lending support, encouragement, and accountability. I also love economy. I think writers can learn a lot from exercises in economy. If you can make a single sentence do the work of 3 sentences or a paragraph—then, you’ve probably written a compelling sentence. In flash every word communicates. I’ve had friends who will write 10 pages, but still aren’t sure what the heart of the story is. If you ask them to cut that down to 3 or 2 pages, they’ll find it. So, even if flash isn’t a writer’s chosen form, it’s a useful exercise and the work produced in a flash class can crystalize ideas for a larger project.
2. What is the inspiration for your own work right now?
I’ve been gravitating toward the writings of activists, lately, like Dean Spade, Angela Davis, Alice Wong, Gina Dent, Matilda Bernstein Sycamore, Sarah Schulman. It’s not research in the conventional sense. It’s more like modeling a way I want to be thinking or imagining. Activist, Adrienne Maree Brown has talked about speculative fiction, and how it allows us to imagine other ways of organizing our world. Alice Wong specifically describes the personal significance of reading Octavia Butler’s Lilith’s Brood, and how the Oankali—highly perceptive and sensitive aliens—do not understand humans’ fear of difference. Angela Davis talks about the importance of imagination in envisioning a world without prisons. I’m not writing speculative fiction, at the moment, but I do find a lot of inspiration in the ways that activists consistently push against conventional values and imagine new ways of relating to and caring for one another.
3. Do you have a daily writing routine?
I try. I’m trying to write for two hours in the early morning. If it’s going well, and I have the time, I’ll keep writing. It can be challenging to maintain when things get busy. At one time, I’d schedule writing dates with writer friends. We’d schedule a regular zoom session. We wouldn’t talk. We’d just log on and write. That was really helpful. If I had a zoom date, I wouldn’t be flippant about maybe meeting a friend for coffee instead of writing. But, of course, meeting a friend for coffee is also a really nice way to spend time.
4. What are you reading right now? Are you reading for research or pleasure?
Currently, I’m reading Alice Wong’s Year of the Tiger: An Activist’s Life. She’s a disabled activist who’s written for Teen Vogue and edited the Disability Visibility anthology. It’s a wildly unconventional memoir that often plays with speculative tropes and there’s this crispness and energy to her prose. She opens with a list of things her memoir is not, including “a singular success story about overcoming odds, about perseverance or resilience. This is not a meditation on identity and pride. This is not a ‘harrowing’ yet ‘triumphant’ account of discrimination, ableism, humiliation, and pain.” I really appreciate that list because she’s offering a critique here of not just “the publishing industries propensity to publish memoirs by disabled people as opposed to other types of books they might prefer to write,” but also the type of memoirs publishers expect of disabled writers, something like a bildungsroman, where they finally make their peace with society. The memoir is full of friendship, joy, and exuberance as well as unabashed anger. Her anger is a strength.
5. Tell us about where you are from - what are some favorite details you would like to share about your home?
I grew up in Buffalo, New York. It was cold and snowed a lot. Often, I wore turtlenecks. That was the 90’s. So, I don’t think I was alone in this. Just the other day, I was thinking, what happened to the turtlenecks?
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