Q&A with Abby Geni

 

 

Abby Geni is the author of the new story collection The Body Farm. Her other books include the novel The Lightkeepers. 

 

Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in your new collection?

 

A: I began some of them over 20 years ago. An idea or an image would appear in my mind, and I would write a paragraph or two to capture it. Then I would put it away for a while.

 

It was a bit like putting a pot on the back burner to simmer. Every so often the pot would boil over—the story would bubble back into my brain, offering new insights and requiring my attention—and I would add to it, begin to understand it better. After stirring and spicing it over many years, I would finish the work.

 

Other stories emerged with amazing speed; they were essentially done in a single draft. Story-making is such a mysterious process. When I begin a new piece, I never know if it will take me two decades or two years or two weeks to complete.

 

Q: The writer Edan Lepucki said of the book, “The beautiful, daring stories in The Body Farm are tender tales of humans attuned to the natural, physical, and imagined worlds, and Abby Geni writes so deftly, and with such wisdom, about how we negotiate our histories, flaws, and secret longings. My own world felt expanded by her keen gaze.” What do you think of that description?

 

A: I love it!

Q: How was the book's title (also the title of the last story) chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: I read about the existence of body farms in Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach. (I highly recommend all her books, by the way! But you do need a strong stomach for Stiff.) I was so appalled and disgusted at the very idea of a body farm that I knew I had to write about it. I love exploring in fiction the things that frighten or horrify me; I’m fascinated by the extreme edges of emotions, both negative and positive.

 

Even before I read Stiff, I had already been mulling over the idea of writing a collection that explored the theme of the human body. Many stories were already in the bubbling-on-the-back-burner stage. I knew immediately that The Body Farm had to be the title: it’s intriguing, suggestive, and creepy.

 

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the collection?

 

A: I hope they walk away with an enhanced awareness of their physical experience of the world. We live in such a cerebral age, always on our screens, and it’s easy to ignore our bodies, or even forget about them altogether.

 

How many times have you been scrolling on your phone and then suddenly realized you’re hungry, or your back hurts from sitting in a weird position, or you desperately have to pee—physical sensations you didn’t register while you were traveling through the electronic ether.

 

But we are bodies. That’s the most fundamental fact of what it is to be alive. Our bodies carry our stories: birth and childhood and illness and recovery and all the different kinds of pain and all the thousands of miracles in our flesh and bone. That’s what I wrote about in The Body Farm, and that’s what I hope my readers take away.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I just finished an early draft of a new novel. Stay tuned.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Abby Geni.