Ask The Author: Emily Testa

Emily Testa wrote “The Crown Prince of Irkutsk Oblast” and we published it in March.

1. What title would you like to hold in a past dynasty?

Empress Supreme

2. Do you keep up with others when they have something you don’t have or do such things matter to you?

I read a ton of magazines, ranging from the respectable to those that amount to, as my younger sister might say, hot gutter trash. So to some extent I do keep up with and covet the particulars of lives that don’t resemble mine at all. On the other hand, I don’t have internet or television or the almighty Facebook, so it’s pretty easy for me to tune the world (and the Kardashians) out.

3. Why did you choose to section everything off using a numeric system for “The Crown Prince of Irkutsk Oblast”?

When I wrote this story, I had just moved with my philosopher boyfriend. I was then in the habit of snooping through his books and I remember being fascinated by the way some of them were organized. Their headings and indexes were otherworldly, yet governed by this confident and unshakable internal logic. I borrowed the structure of this story from Intention by G.E.M. Anscombe, a rare woman in an intensely male-dominated field.

4. How has screenwriting influenced your narrative voice?

If anything, it’s the other way around. Clipped and episodic writing happens to be a good fit for screenplays and teleplays, but first it was just the way I wrote stories and before that it was just the way I conversed. Ask anyone who’s had the misfortune of speaking to me by phone. When the conversation is over, even if it’s been a pleasant one, there’s no winding down. It’s just “goodbye” and click.

5. What is the worst crime you have committed? Were you ever caught?

When I was 19, a friend and I relieved a park of a roadside sign that said SPEED HUMP. Then we gave it away and — I can hardly believe the bravado — went back for the one they put up in its place. A state trooper named Cheryl arrived at the scene posthaste and made us believe our lives were over. Anyway, it turned out we were friends with the magistrate’s son, and in the end we just had to write an apology letter, pay $70, and do some community service. I faked mine.

6. What would you do to stop someone you love from boarding a plane?

If I thought a loved one was in danger, I’m not sure what I would do. Fear takes over. Maybe you can’t plan ahead. But if I thought (as Ilya thinks in the story) that someone I loved was leaving me, I might tell gate agents an extravagant story of theft and terrorism, or lay in the runway, or attempt to scale the plane before takeoff. Whatever it takes.