mini-interview with Lexi Kent-Monning
I've spent some time with Lexi Kent-Monning's work--whether it was choosing her essay when I was a guest editor for Joyland, or most recently, reading her debut novel.
The Burden of Joy is a novel I had to force myself to read slowly, otherwise I'd have finished it in a couple of gulps. Big Sur features large, as do various animals and talismans. It's deep in relationships but about something more. There's angst, drama, tremendous grief, and, yes, joy, in its pages.
Lexi Kent-Monning is an alumna of the Tyrant Books workshop Mors Tua Vita Mea in Sezze Romano, Italy, taught by Giancarlo DiTrapano and Chelsea Hodson. Lexi’s writing has been published or is forthcoming in XRAY, Joyland, Tilted House Review, Neutral Spaces, Little Engines, and elsewhere. A native Californian, she now lives in Brooklyn, NY. Lexi’s debut novel, THE BURDEN OF JOY, is available through Rejection Letters.
As is my mini-interview practice, I asked Lexi to respond to a minimum of three questions from a total of eight offered.
Tell us about what an average writing session looks like for you.
I have a great desk space with a bulletin board full of inspiration that I wipe clean on January 1st every year and spend the year filling up, with images, poems, fabric scraps, a moon calendar my former sibling-in-law makes every year, letters, postcards, dried flowers, whatever happens to come up throughout the year that I want to look at. But instead of writing there, I’m usually slumped over on my shitty couch, hood on, and under a plush blanket I got at Target 7 years ago.
Generally the session looks like this:
Choose the mood for what I want to feel while I’m writing, and either put on an existing playlist or quickly create a new one of 8-10 songs to fit the mood (I’m lucky that I can write while listening to music with lyrics), open the Google Doc, stare at the frames on my wall that are askew no matter how many times I fix them, write like 25 words, be reminded of a song I want to hear and add it to the playlist, remember something I want to research for whatever I’m writing and go to its Wikipedia page, another Wikipedia page, another Wikipedia page, remember an article I saved in Get Pocket a year ago that’s somehow relevant and find it, but get distracted by some other stuff I see along the way that I’ve saved, open those in tabs, maybe remember that I’m low on moisturizer and order some really quickly, go back to the first Wikipedia page, change the song, write 30 words, search “synonym for [word]”, then reluctantly get up and walk to the kitchen where I keep my Writer’s Thesaurus, find a good synonym, hopefully get struck by inspiration on the walk back from the kitchen to the couch, write 50 words, get an email notification and open my email, it’s just the confirmation for the moisturizer, feel embarrassed, back to the Google Doc and remove 5 words, think about it and put 3 of them back in, change the song, get too hot and take off the hood and blanket in a huff, chug water like I’ve been running a marathon, get up and fix some of the askew frames, write 25 more words, look up another Wikipedia page, get overwhelmed by how many tabs I have open, close a bunch of them, find one piece of writing I’ve had open in a tab for 5 weeks that I keep meaning to read, read it and it’s exactly the right thing I needed to read at his moment, write 750 words, close the computer and go pee.
You most recently published a debut novel! What do you find most surprising about the debut book experience?
Who has come out of the ether to tell me they’ve read it! I’ve had former coworkers I haven’t spoken to in 20 years send me a DM with their favorite passage, my old dog walker, internet friends from band message boards from when I was a teenager…it’s completely stunning to see who surfaces and supports! And I’ve also been pleasantly surprised so far (though I might be tempting fate) that I’ve gotten zero gross emails from dudes about the sex in the book! I literally prepared for this with my therapist ahead of time, and it’s been such a relief that it hasn’t happened. Maybe because the book is overall kind of a bummer and sad girl sex can really go either way.
I chose your essay--also named "The Burden of Joy"--for Joyland when I was guest editor and then saw the material in your debut novel. What made you decide to choose autofiction as the vehicle for the book?
I wrote and shopped it as a memoir, but as I got closer to signing with my publisher, three things happened:
I had coffee with my friend Geoff Rickly, whose debut novel Someone Who Isn’t Me came out on Chelsea Hodson’s Rose Books last year, and he told me about his experience of novelizing his book that had been more memoir-leaning. His book is about a guy named Geoff from the band Thursday, and Geoff is . . . well, Geoff from the band Thursday. I couldn’t stop thinking about this mix he landed on and finally understood the appeal of “autofiction,” a term I used to hate but now embrace.
I started to feel, through lots of time and therapy, pretty removed from these events in my life, and naturally started seeing the Lexi in the memoir as more of a character than as myself. That opened my vision to more traditional storytelling, like character development and storylines, embellishing certain moments, creating amalgams of multiple people into one character, etc, that I thought ended up serving the story much better.
I realized that I’m the prime audience for a divorce memoir, but I am unlikely to pick up and read a divorce memoir. I knew calling it a “novel” would have broader appeal.
Who/what are you most recently obsessed with?
PERSIMMON SEASON!!! (Annual obsession)
Short story: “Lemon” by Kajii Motojirō (translated from the Japanese by Amy Shepheard)
Poem: Pasiphaë by Bex Hainsworth (I got to accept this poem about a minotaur birth when I was guest editing for HAD, and I absolutely cannot stop thinking about it. The last line is so perfect, I just scream and high-kick around my apartment every time I read it.)
What's a type of art-making that you haven't yet done that you'd like to do?
I would love to try sculpture. I have zero visual art skills, but I did make a dope ass clay porcupine in art class in approximately 2nd grade that my parents still have, so I like to tell myself this is a dormant talent I have that just needs to be unearthed. The idea of whittling away at a hunk of clay until something exists from it sounds so meditative and satisfying to me.
You're alone in the middle of the ocean. What are your thoughts?
Two things:
More realistically, “OHHH FUUUUUUUUCK”
But ideally, the lyrics of the song I want played at my funeral, “La Mer” by Nine Inch Nails
(Creole French, as sung on the record)
Et quand le jour arrivé
Map touné le ciel
Et map touné la mer
Et la mer va embrassé moi
Et délivré moi lakay
An rien peut arrêter moi konin la
Translated to English:
And when the day arrives
I'll become the sky
And I'll become the sea
And the sea will come to kiss me
For I am going
Home
Nothing can stop me now