3 Questions with Piper Gourley

Piper Gourley is a professional ghostwriter from Houston, Texas, currently residing in Southern California. They are published or forthcoming in Joyland, Passages North, The Rumpus, Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape, and elsewhere. You can find them at their website, pipergourleywriting.carrd.co/

Associate Editor Maya Chari talks with Piper about their work from Issue 73, out now!

The form of your piece “On Loving Horror Movies Post-Institutionalization” is unique, drawing elements from the structure and formatting of screenplays, poetry, and prose. What makes this the right form for this piece?

Hybrid work has always interested me, especially as a way of telling narratives of trauma. For me, hospitalization and its aftermath turned my life kaleidoscopic. Moving through multiple genres in a single piece lets me make sense of the view—of the jagged, senseless, and captivating overlaps between the past and the present. Additionally, hybrid work has become a sort of haven for me after institutionalization, which demanded so much rigidity, especially as an adolescent. Breaking the structure of traditional essays helps me feel empowered while navigating through vulnerable scenes. Plus, hybrid work is such fun!

This piece and much of your other published work are written in the present tense. What does the present tense offer to the writer or reader that past tense doesn’t?

The immediacy of the present tense allows you to build a unique species of trust with your reader. You’re saying, here, see me at my worst and know my resilience as a question, not a guarantee. There is radical love in exposing your insanity as a current condition and, in doing so, honoring those with shared stories. Ultimately, as one in ten children continues to end up in congregate care, I feel a duty to write to the wire. Reflectiveness can be a kindness, but the present tense leaves no room to squirm. My compassion for the children remains in the system to keep my readers from taking a breath.

Is there anything you’d like to share about your piece “On Loving Horror Movies Post-Institutionalization” that we don’t know?

My love for horror movies began as a kiddo (starting with Stephen King’s IT), but my ability to write this piece came from my dear friend/roommate watching horror movies nearly every night—we’ve probably seen close to two hundred! I used to enjoy scary flicks as a way to microdose fear; they helped me become less fearful of the world. Now, I just have great fun watching all the strange and fabulous films on my roommate’s Letterbox. So, tremendous thanks to Jubilee; this piece would not exist without them.