I Reside In June

by Roxane Gay

When the wonderful Steve Himmer invited me to participate in Necessary Fiction’s Writer in Residence project, I was extremely flattered and excited and then I realized I had an entire month to fill so I panicked because I’m not so interesting as to be able to keep an audience entertained for an entire month. My panic got me to thinking about the idea that fiction is necessary, which for me, it very much is.

I have always enjoyed the word necessary. I like the way it sounds, so slick in the middle and smooth to start. The word necessary reminds me of driving on Nebraska back roads where you expect the land to be flat and you find rolling hills. Necessary is a fine, fine word.

I am that nerd who reads the dictionary for fun, who enjoys learning about the etymology of a word, who likes to see how a word is used in a sentence. When something is necessary, it is of an inevitable nature, inescapable, essential. It cannot be denied without contradiction. It is absolutely needed.

I find many things necessary to write:

• Cold cans of Diet Cherry Pepsi
• Apple products
• Good music
• Miracles
• Reading awesome stories
• Being part of a generous writing community

This month, my primary ambition is to convert you to the One True Carbonated Beverage To Rule Them All and The One True Computing System To Rule Them All [LOTR references].

I’m also going to feature some of the writers I find necessary—writers I admire and respect, writers who assemble words in remarkable ways, who always leave me breathless, who I learn from and who always compel me to try and become a better writer.

I’ll awkwardly be publishing a few of my own stories and talking about the projects I have in progress, one of which is not working out as well as I’d hoped. I’m going to tell you about my amazing writing group. I’m going to shine the spotlight on my PANK co-editor Matt Seigel, an accomplished writer in his own right. I might mouth off on a few topics. We’ll see what happens.

I’m going to start my residence with a short story, “A Bedtime Story For Adults”, from a collection of stories I’m working on, entitled Some Hearts Are Fainter Than Others. Tomorrow, I’m going to feature one of my favorite writers (a phrase you will see me say approx. 30 times in the next 30 days), Paula Bomer, with a story that’s going to break your heart. On Thursday, I’ll be featuring Ken Baumann and on Friday, we’ll end the week with Ethel Rohan.

I look forward to the coming month and hope we can have a great conversation about all the things that make fiction necessary for us and all the fictions we believe are necessary. I also hope you will find the work of the fine writers whose fiction you will read in the following weeks, as necessary, as essential, as absolutely needed, as I do.

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Roxane Gay is our June 2010 Writer In Residence. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Mid-American Review, Annalemma, McSweeney's (online), and others. Her first short story collection, Ayiiti will be out this fall. She is the co-editor of PANK and you can find her online at www.roxanegay.com.

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