Interview by Brian Kornell

Suzanne Farrell Smith’s essay, “Listing to Love,” which appears in the July 2013 issue, catalogs love and loss with a focus on all the little things we can love.

1. Name your own executive staff of PITA.

A. Ann Coulter

B. James Joyce

C. My upstairs neighbor, whose apartment renovation has entered its third year

D. Al Roker

2. The piece is presented in outline form. Some items are expanded upon, such as the elevator being reprogrammed or the mix tape, while others are not. How did you choose which items to expand upon and which ones to leave more ambiguous? Did you decide this as you wrote or were these decisions made in the editing phase?

I made expansion decisions after finishing an unwieldy draft of multiple linked lists. Through revision, I decided which items to expand based on which carried more emotional weight. Revision worked like a flow chart. I asked myself, does this item mean something more significant than can be contained by its spot on the list? If not, I left it as a single item or deleted it. If it did, I pursued the meaning through expansion, which often led to a new sub-list. Continue reading →