CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
Interview with Shawn Sumrall

Rappahannock Review Nonfiction Editors: The characters in this piece are so distinct. You describe them in their entirety—with every strength and imperfection. What do you find is the hardest obstacle while describing characters, especially for a nonfiction piece?

Shawn Sumrall: The most difficult aspect of writing about real people is the same thing that is most difficult about writing non-fiction in general. I believe non-fiction writers have a responsibility to acknowledge the limits of their perspective. This is easier said than done. I have found it difficult to balance between writing what I feel to be true, what others may have perceived differently about the events I’ve written, and effectively communicating what I see to be the larger theme of the narrative. I think at the center, I am largely motivated by wanting to present people, particularly those that I know personally, in a way that is both sympathetic and pointed.

RR: In this piece, you welcome readers into your intricate, loving, yet at times painful relationships. What do you hope readers take away from your connections and bring back to their own?

SS: “Impressions” is, among other things, about friends losing connection over time. The story highlights the failures of a social environment that is not conducive for long-term relationships. To me, these failures manifest because of economic norms around relocation, social norms around communication, and the interpersonal conflicts (small or large) that arise as a result. My hope is that the piece allows readers to reflect on some of these themes and, perhaps, grieve the loss of a close friendship along with me. More hopefully, the piece gives some insight into the ways that the narrator failed to comprehend and react to this environment and incites readers to seek solutions or reparations in their own lives.

RR: In this piece, we see you transform seemingly ordinary moments into ones of immense emotional depth and intimacy. What literary devices did you lean on while writing intimacy into mundane moments?

SS: I’m a sucker for synecdoche. I think that, whether we are conscious of it or not, people latch onto the fracture of an image, a smell, a texture, etc., and, for whatever reason, hold onto those small details that tend to open up the deeper emotional resonance of a memory. I go back to that device a lot in this piece and in others. I think it is effective, not only because it seems to reflect a neurological function, but also because it puts the emotion of a scene that might otherwise be too big into a smaller container—like an object, setting, or action. Big emotions can be explored through introspective prose or detached analysis as well. But I like the juxtaposition of the larger emotion with the smaller detail, the subtlety of it.

RR: When you first sat down to write this, what were your intentions for the piece? How did they change once you began to write?

SS: I first sat down to write as a meditation on my getting older. The piece started as an attempt to grieve the loss of the person I had been some years before. It became clear that I would have to include, to some extent, the people who were closest to me at that time if I wanted to understand and recover that person better. I knew from the beginning who would be at the center of that meditation, but I had no clue where the piece would end or, really, that it would be as much a study about my friend as it would be about me. I think that may be what changed the most—the pivot from a story solely about myself to one that was as much, if not more, a story about my understanding of a friendship.

RR: Time plays a big part in this piece, though the essay doesn’t move chronologically. Why move outside of the typical chronological narrative?

SS: This story was written several years after the events I recount took place. It felt appropriate to craft the narrative to mimic, in some way, the process of remembering events from that perspective. My memories do not happen in chronological order; they come in images and, often, in unplanned flashes of emotion. Even though the story is not told chronologically, I wrote it (with some exceptions) from the beginning scene and meandered my way to the end. This was an attempt to follow my own pattern of remembering and capture it in writing.

RR: Your scenes are so distinct. What was the most challenging scene to write in this, and why?

SS: The scene in my home in Indianapolis. It was the scene I knew would set up the penultimate scene of the narrative. It was also the most recent and internally unresolved moment in the story. Finding the right framework for the scene was a challenge. The short sections in the kitchen and at the bus station needed to capture the correct feeling and tone I wanted, leading into the next section. Before I could approach that problem, I needed to work through both how that experience made me feel and then how to present that feeling effectively. Ultimately, I had to write the section several times before I got all of that right. Redrafting allowed me to work through my own thoughts and emotions and to grow accustomed to the idea that I could sit with the messiness and contradictions in the scene.