Ask The Author: Sarah Layden

“The Woman Who Was A House” by Sarah Layden is a part of the PANK August Issue. Here, she talks with us about a lot about the wonderful story, how it came into being.

1. What if the woman was a loft or a condo or a studio? How would that change the complexion of your story?

Storage immediately becomes an issue. Lack of privacy, lack of living space. The family would never fit in a loft or condo or studio; they had plenty of room in the house, and they still chose to leave. Of course, we all have to leave at some point. Pick your location.

Also, neighbors would enter the picture. Unrelated tenants living within your own walls. Like Three’s Company or Friends, but different. 
 
2. What is in your attic brain?

Squirrels on a treadmill. My third grade yearbook. All the Valentines and greeting cards I have ever received. E-mails long since deleted. My grandmother’s flour sifter, and the particular set of her jaw (and my mother’s jaw, and my jaw) when measuring ingredients. The silver sweatsuit Matthew Modine wore in Vision Quest. One embarrassing picture of you, and three of me.
 
3. How did you construct “The Woman Who Was A House”?

I hammered it out pretty quickly: a great big rush of roof-raising. One image would suggest another, then another. I felt like if I stopped, the thing might never get built. And that seems to be true whenever I take lengthy breaks. The energy dwindles. Sometimes I can go back, but usually I just pick up something new.

4. How would you mash up the House Party franchise with “The Woman Who Was A House”? Give us a sliver, if you would.

There was a woman who was a house party. Not to say that she was a good time. No. She was serious about the parties that scuffed their way across her floors, the kick step dance-off bouncing the boards and threatening the joists, the unspecific trouble courted by unauthorized partiers in a place they did not belong, her place, which was the sticky inside of herself where beer had been spilled and was not immediately cleaned up. Too hype. So hype, the woman needed a sedative, the right rayon shirt, to curry favor with Martin Lawrence.

(Is it cheating to look up House Party on IMDB.com? Because I totally did this. My memory of that movie is about the Eraserhead flattop and the Kid ‘N Play dance, which my best childhood friend and I could probably recreate, even now, without rehearsal.)

5. Would you live on an island?

Nah. I am from the Midwest. I am comforted by being landlocked. A great big security blanket made out of land. I do like visiting islands, though, especially if driving across a bridge is involved. For the vantage point, for the bridge architecture, for a sense of how you got from one side to the other. As far as islands go, the Thousand Islands Region is beautiful at this very moment. 

 6. What’s Indianapolis’s literary scene like for you?

In the last month, I’ve been to four fantastic readings in Indy: Maurice Manning at IUPUI, Robert Hass at Butler University,  Frank Bill and Victoria Barrett at The Irving Theater, and Vouched Books Presents Jill Christman, Patricia Henley, Michael Martone and Mark Neely at Big Car Gallery. People came out in droves. It’s a supportive community, full of good people I am grateful to know.

Indianapolis is known for lots of things, like the Indianapolis 500, the Colts, the awesome Children’s Museum.
But Indy also has many writers milling about. That’s another thing I like about the Midwest: there’s plenty of room.