Laura Ender’s terrific story “Some Animals Have Funerals” appeared in our July issue. Learn where to put the ashes, below.

1. You make something that would usually seem so transgressive and wrong- stealing ashes from people’s remains- feel so intimate and touching. Does your writing always have this much love?

I have to love my characters. I don’t mean they have to be lovable or that they need to be a hero- almost every one of my protagonists does terrible things and has major emotional issues that would make them difficult to deal with as people, and I don’t know if I could describe any of them as noble. To love my characters I have to see inside them, understand them, and want them to be happy. I’ve written stories where I don’t love my characters and it always feels condescending–it turns into a sort of commentary on people I don’t like. I try not to go there anymore.

2. What do you collect?

I think I have a collector’s spirit but I lack focus. I collect things that make me feel a certain way- nostalgic I guess. I’m starting to get quite a stack of vintage cookbooks.

3. This story has so much yearning for what we can never recover or replace. What inspired it?

I was in a strange place when I wrote this story. I was in graduate school, living part-time in one city and part-time in another because the school was here and my husband’s job there. When I was at school, I longed for my husband; I often skipped social events because I wanted to see him, even though I also longed to be part of my classmates’ community. I was so lucky I could drive the hour and a half home, but the morbid part of my brain wondered what it would be like if I couldn’t. If he were gone. Continue reading →