Core Memories: Alanna Schubach
We believe the origin of our work as creators is important to consider and hold. In CORE MEMORIES, we ask artists and writers about their own creative beginnings. What led them to operate in their genre of choice? Was it a specific moment, an errant thought, a movement? Was it an insight, a person, a place? Years into their work, does it continue to resonate?
In this edition, we interview Alanna Schubach.
Alanna Schubach is the author of the novel The Nobodies (Blackstone 2022). Her short stories have appeared in Shenandoah, the Sewanee Review, the Massachusetts Review, Electric Literature, and more. She lives in New York with her family. The paperback edition of The Nobodies will be out June 20, 2023. You can find Alanna at: Alannaschubach.com @AlannaSchubach on Twitter or @AlannaSchubach on Instagram.
What is your CORE MEMORY?
I knew I wanted to write from a young age, but for a while in high school, I thought I would be a poet. That changed my senior year when I took a creative writing elective with a teacher named Aileen O’Connell. Ms. O’Connell was young, pretty, and fashionable, and she knew about books, films, and music I’d never heard of before, art that was a bit off-kilter and often drily funny. She was kind, encouraging, and most importantly, treated us like we were full-fledged people with ideas worth nurturing. I wanted to be just like her. One of the books she introduced me to was Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson. There was so much in those stories I hadn’t realized you could do as a writer (I think, for instance, of the unexpected, direct address at the end of “Car Crash While Hitchhiking”: “And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you…”) New creative possibilities opened suddenly to me. And fiction felt capacious, a form in which I could explore those possibilities. (Ms. O’Connell passed away last year. I hope she had a sense of how much she meant to her students.)
How has that moment impacted your current work or current artistic practice?
I remember that feeling of delighted surprise reading Jesus’ Son gave me, and I try to remain open to experiencing that thrill again, through encounters with the art of others. I also try to find that feeling in my creative process, to surprise myself and hopefully whoever might end up reading my stories or novels. For me, this means writing in an exploratory mode, often with some strong ideas but not too much plotted out in advance, and maintaining a beginner’s mindset, excited, open, and prepared to make a mess. This adds up to a lot of work when it comes time to revise, but I’ve tried to make peace with the fact that that’s just the way I work. As a teacher, I aspire to guide my students the same way I was guided by Ms. O’Connell: with a keen eye but also with generosity, to help them unearth their intentions and realize their visions.