3 Questions with Jessica Powell

Jessica Powell is the author of the fiction novel, The Big Disruption, winner of Italy’s Biella Prize for Best Foreign Novel. Her stories have been published or are forthcoming in The New York Times, WIRED, VICE, Alaska Quarterly Review, and Chicago Quarterly Review. She lives in San Francisco and makes music software. You can find her at jessicapowell.co and on Twitter @themoko. 

Fiction Editor Frankie Concepcion chats with Jessica about her work from Issue 72, out now.

Jessica! Thank you so much for sharing "Middle School Math" with us! One of the things that really drew me to this story was the way it prioritized the perspectives and experiences of young people in the midst of a very challenging and confusing time—middle school! I loved how you transformed the mist—a well-known horror concept—into a physical representation of all the scariest aspects of that time: puberty, coming of age, popularity, school crushes. Can you tell me why you were drawn to writing about these subjects, and what it was like stepping into the mind of a middle school girl?

I remember that age so vividly—even more so than I remember things that happened just five years ago. It was such an excruciating time, in the most banal way one can imagine. My body felt outside of my control, social hierarchies seemed to solidify overnight, etc., etc. It was inconceivable to me that my parents—perfectly nice, normal parents—could have any clue how to help me navigate it. And ugh, all the crushes. So many crushes. 

As you know, the theme of Issue 72 is "Re-mix." When I think of a menacing mist that takes over a town, it is impossible not to think of Stephen King's novella and the many iterations of that story in film, television, and literature. Can you tell us more about your process of subverting/re-mixing this seemingly familiar horror concept, and how you were able to balance this uncanniness with the realities of middle school life?

I live in San Francisco, and sometimes entire swaths of the city disappear in the fog in a matter of minutes. It’s a little sinister, but people just go on with their lives, throwing on an extra layer or driving more slowly because the visibility is bad. The horrors of middle school struck me as similar. It can be a really confusing, traumatizing time, and yet you get up and have cereal and brush your hair. You’re not running from literal aliens and zombies. The zombies are well-developed 13-year-olds named Lara who don’t invite you to their party. 

Is there anything you’d like to share about "Middle School Math" that we don’t know?

When I first wrote this story, I was trying to use a quadratic equation, which most kids don’t learn in middle school, and also was too complicated for what I was trying to do (and did I even really remember how to do a quadratic equation?). Turns out, much of life is just a linear equation. You have this thing and you take something away from it or add to it, and then you’re left with something new. Simple math was the best math.