I first encountered Emma Copley Eisenberg’s work through this wonderful essay from EL contributor Elizabeth Endicott. In it, Endicott chronicles her experience delving into Eisenberg’s Housemates as a plus-size reader; she moves from apprehension to relief to recognition, highlighting Eisenberg’s ability to render fatness without the shadow of authorial judgment. Deeply imagined and embodied, Eisenberg’s work captures a nuanced reality; she doesn’t shy away from the systemic biases and discrimination that her protagonist Leah faces, but at its core, Housemates is also a love story; she reminds us that joy and connection are universal, fundamentally human experiences, and that they’re made possible by the very complex bodies we occupy.
Eisenberg’s newest story collection, Fat Swim, carries forth this ethos across 10 luminous, visceral stories. Within its pages, the body acts as a setting where desire, hunger, and loss can transform.
I was honored to get to speak with Eisenberg about pushing through writer’s block, bad film adaptations, and the joys of trampolining from one sentence to the next.
— Lennie Roeber-Tsiongas
Editorial Intern
1. Describe your publication week in a six-word story.
Emma Copley Eisenberg: Getting lost on I-95 on my way to Philly bookstores.
2. What book should everyone read growing up?
ECE: Fairytales. Specifically, Princess Furball. It’s a lesser known retelling of a Grimm’s story. Also In the Night Kitchen, and the Alanna books by Tamora Pierce. And Anne of Green Gables. Oh, and Tuck Everlasting. I just reread and it mostly holds up except for the weird age gap dynamic.
3. Write alone or in community?
ECE: Both, I have to say. It’s very bisexual of me. I need to be alone for the generative parts and the focus, but one can’t really write alone. You need people to walk the path with you.
4. How do you start from scratch?
ECE: I have been getting up early to write, which doesn’t come naturally to me. But there’s something about that dawn hour, where night brain and daytime brain are both online at the same time, that helps me. It makes sense because dawn and dusk are when people pray, too. Also playing, reading, swimming, and not being too precious about anything is important in the scratch phrase. And sometimes writing longhand with a fun pen.
5. Three presses you’ll read anything from:
ECE: Graywolf. Dutton if they’re edited by Pilar Garcia Brown. McSweeney’s.
6. If you were a novel what novel would you be?
ECE: It feels aspirational, but I’d be The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers because it has so many different points of view and weird risks and it’s sad but also funny.
7. Describe your ideal writing day.
ECE: Similar to Ursula Le Guin’s ideal writing day. Wake up early for dawn brain, coffee, breakfast (lots of it), more writing, a walk, lunch, a movie or doing something out in the world, reading, then dinner, then bed early with the cats.
8. What’s a piece of writing advice you never want to hear again?
ECE: I never want to hear that something “doesn’t have a plot” or to “give it more plot” because I don’t think people really know what that means. A lot of books that feel really propulsive have a plot, they just aren’t incident-based. I had a student at Temple say “I think what people mean when they say something doesn’t have a plot is that they don’t care about it.” Or they don’t care about the character. And I think that’s true. If you care about the character or what’s going on then the incident becomes sort of extraneous.
9. What’s a piece of writing advice you think everyone needs to hear?
ECE: Writing gets done sentence by sentence.
10. Realism or surrealism?
ECE: Impossible bind. I’m more comfortable in realism. That’s the tradition I was raised reading. But realism is also surreal and weird and strange. Kelly Link and Hilary Leichter are writers who show us that all the time. There’s one story in Fat Swim that has non-realist elements and it was hard but we did our best.
11. Favorite and least favorite film adaptation of a book:
ECE: Well speaking of, I hate the Tuck Everlasting adaptation with Rory Gilmore. Makes it so boring when it’s really an open, soulful book. The Sophie’s Choice movie is also really bad. For best adaptation . . . maybe The Devil Wears Prada? I’ve never read the book and I don’t want to, but I will watch The Devil Wear Prada when I’m sick 4,000 times.
12. Edit as you go or shitty first draft?
ECE: Shitty first draft. I don’t understand the edit as you go people. That would break me.
13. Best advice for pushing through writer’s block?
ECE: This is stolen from Alexander Chee so credit him. He says there’s no such thing as writer’s block, there’s only unmade decisions and shame, which I think is basically true. When you’re blocked you’re avoiding making a decision about the draft, or you’re feeling shame that you haven’t written. Easier said than done.
14. What’s your relationship to being edited?
ECE: Into it. Very into it. Good editors are such a gift, and they help you see what you’re doing more clearly. The editor for my first book also changed the structure of the book in a way that helped me understand what I was trying to do. I wish that editors had more time and space to edit in today’s landscape. Huge appreciation to editors, they’re doing the Lord’s work.
15. Write every day or write when inspired?
ECE: Everyone’s life is different, and I think either can work. I sometimes do the latter, but I would say I’m most productive when I’m doing the former. Conditioning your brain to be creative is like a muscle, it does strengthen and start to come online more consistently if you can be consistent with it. Maybe a better way to say that is write around the same time and around the same place as much as you can.
16. What other art forms and literary genres inspire you?
ECE: Collage, ceramics, and film. Films have helped me figure out the shape of what I want to write more than once. For Housemates, the quest was to make it as good as Thelma and Louise.
17. The writer who made you want to write:
ECE: Carson McCullers and Raymond Carver when I was in high school. And James Baldwin.
18. How do you know when you’ve reached the end?
ECE: I think there’s an intuitive body sense where I’m just like, this is the furthest I can take this thing. There’s this concept in sociology called saturation where you ask the same question of different people and you start to get the same answer over and over again. That’s how I feel when I’m asking my characters a question. My first book was nonfiction, and I was asking real people questions, and you start to hear what you’ve already guessed or imagined over and over.
19. Describe your writing space.
ECE: I’m very lucky to have my own little room now. All my books in one place. I do have my little woo-woo objects (tarot cards, James Baldwin candle, some little rocks). And I also have a really big fat pink chair now.
20. How do you keep your favorite writers close to you?
ECE: I have a tattoo of Grace Paley’s face on my arm. I’ll leave it at that.
21. What’s the last indie bookstore you went to?
ECE: There’s a little used bookstore that just opened in my neighborhood in Philly called Little Yenta Books. And then in Baltimore, I went to Greedy Reads when I was there for AWP.
22. What does evolving as a writer mean to you?
ECE: It’s seeing what I want to do more clearly and then knowing if I’m doing it or not.
23. Outside of literature, what are you obsessed with?
ECE: I got really into the Winter Olympics figure skating. Alysa Liu and also the evil French ice dancing team. I used to be pretty obsessed with making my own ice cream. I’m pretty into knitting and making babushka triangle scarves for my friends now. And seltzer, my favorite brand is Polar.
