Interview with Author Sean Fitzpatrick

We absolutely adored Sean Fitzpatrick's story "Long Drop, Sudden GameStop" when we read it for our Spring 2026 Issue. The humor interwoven throughout this story about authenticity and internalized stigma made us laugh as it dropped us into the perspective of a character portraying someone not often represented in media—someone you yourself may relate to. Read our interview with Sean where he discusses writing, autism, and what "weird" means to him.

What makes you keep writing, even when it’s hard?

Drawing of Sean and Tooty the Owl by Nick Lauer, a storyboard artist for Spongebob Squarepants. Find him on X as @nicklauerart

What’s kept me writing has changed over the years. I’ve written for fun, for a mentor’s praise, and for an imaginary future of being taken seriously. Now, I’m in an absurdist place. I am returning to faith. I try to decouple my writing from material return or expectation, and I write because it’s what I’m meant to do. I often feel a strong sense of justice when I write about autistic identity, too. I want young autistic people to be rendered truthfully, without letting their experience be appropriated and sanitized. But most often on days where I feel alone on an island, shouting into a Google Doc, I call on faith. I have faith that, regardless of publication or readership, my writing is important. It’s not always easy, though! Sometimes I crash, and sleep too much. Writers need a good word or win, once in a while, or otherwise, give themselves entirely over to the absurd.

Advice on creating that you’ve learned by trial and error:

It’s cliché, but reading and writing tend to produce more reading and writing. So, in reading and writing, you define a method and a drive, a work free of expectations, and it’s playful. Then you find your mentors and your expectations. Find your traditions you work within, from mentors and writers you love. Then learn the landscape of the Right Now, and when you reach an audience or don’t, do it all over again. That’s the recursion: the more times you go around the loop, the better you get. 

Whats your favorite underappreciated novel or short story (a work you never hear

anyone else talking about)?

Shoutout: Richard Leise’s Dry the Rain is great. Leise is great. Otherwise, I wish more people would talk about Saul Bellow these days. Of course, he’s one of the most famous writers … But that’s different from the common online discourse, you know? I want a major return of the humorist.

Do you have a favorite book on writing or creating thats been a helpful resource?

Oddly, the essay that really changed writing for me was “What Writers Mean by ‘Flow’” by David Jauss, and Virginia Tufte’s “Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style,” which Jauss cites in his essay. Not really about narrative, but about the style which allows narrative to happen. You need it!

If you were a cryptid, what would your name be and what would you eat?

Ohh. This is tough. The Bighair of the Great Dismal Swamp. I’d eat pondscum and joggers.

What other lit journals are you into right now (and what do you like about them)?

Burial Mag. It’s a fun one. The guy who runs it is into video games, like I am, and understands them as a medium for emergent narratives. Other magazines I like are death kit and Blood+Honey and storySouth and SplitLip and the Florida Review. Also DirtBag on Substack is really cool!

Planes, trains, boats, or automobiles?

Kid me says trains. Adult me still says trains. I know that’s stereotypical, but they have an ethos I like. I like walking down disused train tracks.

What’s your most recent “I was today years old when I realized …” moment?

My students call everything Rage Bait. It’s not Rage Bait. It’s called Trolling! Now they say I’m “unc.” 

One sentence soapbox:

Autism is more than five things, and it isn’t always charming.

What is your writing strategy? Do you write every day with a rigid schedule, or are you

more flexible with your practice?

I don’t write every day, but I do write a lot. I write about five days a week, when I’m in it. Between stories or novels, I take breaks. Reading happens, or doing research, or speaking to trusted artists and writers. But I’ll get to a point where I have to write, or I start to lose it. Writing is a knot in your head. The brainknot has to loosen, and the only way to loosen it is to write.

When did you realize you were weird?

Tough to say. Probably when I was in second grade with my single friend. We sat alone at the lunch table endlessly ranting about an old MMORPG, RuneScape. No one else liked us, but we didn’t really care. Sad thing is, when he found out I was changing schools, he cried in the middle of class. I hope that guy is doing alright. I’ve met many more like him over the course of my life, and I’ve been him, with many more instances of weirdness and alienation, but that was maybe the first.

Do you think about your reader?

Absolutely. It depends. It’s like a gauge. Apply pressure, here and there. I consider, specifically, what literary readers are looking for. But, I also let loose sometimes. I just let myself go nuts. I’ve found, though, that if I don’t consider the reader at all, I am always misunderstood. I was the weird guy in every writing workshop. Today? Still am, but a little more understood, I hope.

Are you good at taking tests?

Anything with writing, yes. Multiple choice and stuff? Oh, nah. I am glad that part of my life is seemingly over. The sad thing is, we’re always taking tests, but the parameters are obtuse and invisible.

Tell us a secret.

I want to tell you the weirdest, cringest thing about me, but I can’t until the story about it gets published. Hit me up later for that one.

What was the best money you spent on something writing-related?

I’ve spent way too much on books and moleskin journals. But really? My MFA. Got to work with Kent Wascom, a writer I hugely respect.

What is your favorite museum or gallery?

The Chrysler museum is good. Local, and I got to see “The Scream.” That guy really got me, you know? 

Most triumphant thing you did as a teenager?

Learned how to be normal enough. Learned when to nod and when to go uh-huh, and when to ask a question, and when to shut up.

What is weird?

Weird is anything within a context that is outside the majority, or off-kilter, or misunderstood, and all of them together, and plenty more. Weird is what’s itself, and what itself is in relation to another. Then the weird is made to feel lesser or unfit. So something weird is relational and disturbed. I often think of people as weird, and that person who is weird often can’t do a thing about it, but maybe they can. What’s interesting to me is how we have pathologized weirdness. Autism sometimes feels like it just means weird, but you take pills for it, and you attend endless support groups and they stick you in special ed class. Sometimes, I wish I was just “eccentric” or “weird.” That would maybe be a bit less difficult, but also more so. No easy answer, here, I’m afraid.

What was the inspiration for your story?

I’d written “Long Drop, Sudden Stop” as an archetypal “autistic interaction.” Those on the spectrum who’ve read the story just nod, and go, Never saw myself like that in a story. I’ve been the guy in that story and I’ve witnessed the guy in that story, just totally in his own head and without much control of his emotions, his obsessive rantings, and his deeper perverse impulses, his anxiety, and most of all, how others perceive him. But what ultimately brought the story together was Tooty the Owl. The idea for Tooty is a reaction to a pretty famous short story from a pretty famous author. I won’t go into too much detail so I don’t make anyone mad, but that famous and lauded story forced me to realize that even in the arts, we expect young troubled men, autistic and not (though most of them are, as I see it), to do horrible things—to act on their worst impulses. As someone with autism and as someone who has struggled in the past with negative ideation (and now as a teacher of students who often confide in me their struggles), I find the idea abhorrent. We are more than what anyone says we are, and we are capable of better. Not every young man will turn to violence.

What do you hope readers experience from your work?

I hope that you are entertained, that you experience highs and lows and connect emotionally with the story. But I also hope you walk away with some sort of aesthetic stasis, or a new way to relate yourself to others, or, at least, better understand one other person’s view of the world. Really, I just want readers to wake up, and see the world in new ways, but not in any particular direction. Rhetoric is for that. Art, though arguably rhetorical, is for more.

How do you combat loneliness?

I am fortunate to have many good people around me. I think, for those of us who are the most lost, we are not always so fortunate. So it becomes about reaching out, putting yourself in difficult social situations you are not familiar with. Finding a way, via a person or a program or a place, to real human connection. This could be at the bus stop, in front of a gas station, or in a classroom. Just, go out and see people in the land of the real. Sadly, we cannot always do this, which is why I write about the “digital natives” forced into the desert of the real. We cannot always combat loneliness, so, that’s why you see some Gen Z turn to God.

Thoughts about artichokes?

Most I know is they’re on pizza. No, wait. Isn’t that something else? Anchovies. Artichokes are those plants. I don’t know much about those, unless they were on a pizza.

What’s the point of all this, really?

The point of it all? I am always trying with absurdity, and so, really, it’s what you have faith in. Otherwise, it’s just an exercise, a careerist gambit, or something else. On the best of days, I like to think it’s good for all of us. It gives us something to do that makes us feel good, and makes others feel good, but that’s more hedonistic, isn’t it? So, the point is, making new friends? I like that idea.

Unpopular opinion, go:

I want literary fiction to be funny again. I want it to get wild and maximalist, and stop being so afraid. I want to storm the gates of the literati and take it all for myself (y’all can come too, if you want). Though, in all honesty, I (most often) want the internet to explode. And I don’t care if it’s reductionist or “lacking nuance.” I know it doesn’t make sense. I’m not an accountant or a student of business or an analytical philosopher. Sorry! Much love to y’all, anyway. I wish we could live in a commune together and experience the sensate world apart from the mediated. Hell, maybe we could blow up all the books too, and drink special teas and consult the spirits of the grove. Well, actually, let’s keep the books. 

Sean Fitzpatrick is a writer from Norfolk, Virginia. Diagnosed with ASD at a young age, Sean writes about the experiences of young autistic men. Sean is also an instructor of Video Game Studies at Old Dominion University and the author of a humorist novel about a young man striving to be the greatest eSports player of all time. You can find his fiction in Joyland Magazine, and his obsessive ramblings online @Sean_J_Fitz.