Do you see smoke? Because this conversation is fire. We get into it deep with shame as a philosophical puzzle — where does it come from, why does it persist in our bodies as queer people, and how do we either co-exist with it or release it? We also talk about what Mac learned from their fully wrought characters, and the answer was courage, but varieties of it that surprised and moved me. And, of course, as ever, the after death explorations.
Mac (Marisa) Crane is the author of the debut novel, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself (Catapult, 2023) and the recent novel, A Sharp Endless Need (Dial Press, 2025), which shares my birthday (13 May!). Their stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, Passages North, Joyland, The Offing, No Tokens, The Florida Review, TriQuarterly, Lit Hub, Catapult, F(r)iction, and elsewhere. An attendee of the Tin House Workshop and Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, as well as an American Short Fiction Merit Fellow and Sewanee Writing Conference fellow, they currently live in San Diego with their wife and child. I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself is their first novel and it was a January Indie Next Pick, New York Times Editors’ Choice, and LAMBDA Literary Award winner.
