An Interview with Jesse Stein

Jesse Stein is a Chicago-based novelist, who finds the most joy in writing stories centering around oddly magical worlds, creatures, and the poor people that inhabit these spaces. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is currently working as a painter and carpenter for a Fabrication Studio.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

Before I started writing fiction, I was actually a songwriter and musician, and I would definitely credit music as the start for all of my creative expression. Going on road trips with my family, my mom always made a point to celebrate the emotion behind the music and lyrics of whatever was playing, usually Public Enemy or Prince or Indigo Girls or BB King. It taught me about the power of words; the way they ripple out into people and change. As a young reader, I was obsessed with fantasy works. I loved, and still love, being swept off somewhere else and staying there for awhile. It changes my headspace and always takes me a while to come back to earth. Tamora Pierce, Kenneth Grahame (The Wind in the Willows), and, later on, Jesmyn Ward and Lewis Nordan would show me how to find and seek out that secret magic that is hidden in the world all around us. I guess it was always, and is always that undeniable pull of escapism that keeps me coming up with these strange worlds.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I came into the professional writing world rather late, I would say. For most of my adult life, I worked in restaurants. I started as a prep cook in this mom-and-pop Middle Eastern restaurant in Pittsburgh, and eventually became completely overtaken by the alluring, toxic life that came with bartending to the masses. I’d say that working in restaurants taught me invaluable lessons about people, and handling incredibly stressful situations – in fact, we had to thrive in those stressful situations to be able to make rent. One of the first short stories I ever had published, “Your Feelings Don’t Matter,” was about a day in the life of bartending at the last bar I ever worked at. It was something that gave me a lot, good and bad, and something that I was so happy to leave behind. I now work in the fabrication field, as a painter and carpenter for a studio that builds museum exhibits, storefront displays, and even 17′ tall statues. I couldn’t have asked for a better job to support a writing practice. Being able to create in a way that is physical, being able to save the brainwork for when I get home to type, has been a massive revelation and a doorway to a richer life where I can understand how things are put together, and feel, in a way, more connected to the world around me.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

Hands down, performing my first-ever book reading at my launch event was the perfect punctuation to the publication process. The process itself is wonderful and stressful and you’re so worried about if this and that will get taken care of, if the book will be well received, received at all, if the printer is going to cut off a little portion of text, there is a great cavern of unknowns during that process that you just have to accept and work your way through, but being able to stand up, in a vintage blazer, in front of friends and family in a perfect venue with stacks of your book ready to sign and sell, to have everyone engaged with this story that meant the world to me, was truly that moment that shone through all of the unknowns. It was the culmination of a year of working to bring this thing into the world, a stunning celebration that I was so lucky to share. I’ll never forget that feeling.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and there are two very specific songs that I give a large amount of credit for inspiring me while I was writing Children of Mandrake.

First is “Cinnamon Tree” by Marty O’Reilly and the Old Soul Orchestra. This song is about a three-legged dog that is buried beneath a cinnamon tree. It’s sad and haunting but also full of love and hope. I’d been listening to that song a lot during the time that I had come up with the idea for my novel, and it was actually the reason why I chose to use a Cinnamon Tree as the end of the character’s great quest!

Second is “To Cure What Ails,” by Shakey Graves. First of all, I’ve been listening to Shakey for years and years and have always been in love with his sound. This song crept up in my head as I was in the thick of writing, in fact, I definitely listened to it every time I sat down to write. Without spoiling the story too much, “To Cure What Ails” absolutely became the theme song for one of my favorite characters in the book, “The Bagman,” and more than that, the yearning in the song for a new start in a different place, the kind of nostalgic sad acceptance of the present, carried itself out into the world of Mandrake, how I wrote it, and how the characters felt about their home.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

Oh man, if they take anything at all from reading my book I’d be happy. It’s not for me to assign any message that the audience gets from reading my work, because what was important for me was important for me, and what is important for them is important for them. If anything, I’d wish that they could find, or maybe just see the importance of hope in this story. The preciousness of hope and the strength that it takes to stand by it. My perfect reader is someone who comes to this novel with an open heart and has space within them to move through this strange world, someone who can connect with anything in this story is a perfect reader to me. It’s for everyone.

How was working with Atmosphere Press? What would you tell other writers who want to publish?

Atmosphere is a great press to work with if you want to preserve your artistic vision for the work. Every team member is completely on your side and works very hard to help support you in keeping your story just how you want it. This is huge and completely different than how publishing works with a traditional publisher, where you don’t really have that level of input into the cover, illustrations, or even how the plot moves. If you are writing a story that might not fit into the “Industry Standard,” and it’s important to you that your story gets out into the world, then definitely reach out to Atmosphere!

Are you a writer, too? Submit your manuscript to Atmosphere Press.