The Raw Human Experience

by Ottessa Moshfegh

Almost everyone suffers from depravity at some point, and a crisis is a good dramatic element in a story. I’m interested in people, in their complications, and I think writing is a way to exert some kind of authority or control over the form that depravity takes. And I not only think it’s valuable to share imaginations of these depraved characters, though I never really use the word "depraved"—I’m not really sure if it’s resonating exactly—but I think it’s important that there’s a frank and honest space in writing where people can acknowledge their humanity in ways different from what is celebrated in mainstream culture. For example, something like trauma is mediated so carefully in Hollywood and online that it sometimes feels fake. I would be more interested in the experience of really understanding what something feels like rather than looking at its moral or social justice implications. Really getting down to the raw human experience is what’s valuable to me, and I think the only thing I’m really capable of doing anyway, so there it is.

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Ottessa Moshfegh is an American novelist and screenwriter. Her six sentences are excerpted from an interview in Desperate Literature.

I’m the Expert Around Here

by Brad Rose

I have a small car. It’s economical. Yesterday, as I drove by the neighbors, I waved. Their lawn is dead, too. They told me that it wasn’t because of extraterrestrials. What the hell do they know?

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Brad Rose's latest book is I Wouldn’t Say That, Exactly.

Understand

by Susan Isla Tepper

You won’t understand. How miserable I am. How sad and lonely. Now that he’s gone. I know about death. That doesn’t help.

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Susan Isla Tepper is the author of seven published books of fiction and poetry. Her most recent is a novella titled GIRL UPSIDE DOWN.