Interview with Author Tessa Stransky

Dialogue-heavy stories are risky things. When speech dominates, words tossed between characters must become what mostly guides the narrative, anchors the setting, and illustrates the plot. Tessa Stransky's story "I Left My Skin in Michigan" does all this while drawing the reader into what makes for an immersive piece. We were happy to hear a little bit more about the multi-talented author in her interview below. Enjoy!

Advice on creating you had to learn the hard way? 

When you get stuck—switch mediums! Writing’s hard? Pick up an instrument. Paint something. Try an extreme sport (anything besides Ostrich racing). Use your hands and brain in a new way before coming back to the story. I guarantee you will look at the story through a fresh lens. No program or video or book is going to force you to write. You gotta do it yourself. With your own hands. Or feet. 

What's your favorite underappreciated novel or short story (a work you rarely hear anyone else talking about)? 

So many! I’ll stick to the weird. A Prayer for the Dying by Stewart O’Nan. Carpenter’s Farm by Josh Malerman. Motherthing by Ainslie Hogarth. Puppet Skin by Danger Slater. Drencrom by Hamelin Bird. Different Faces by Rory Say. Michael McDowell’s Blackwater books. "Goblin Market" by Christina Rossetti. 

If you were a cryptid, where would you live? 

Probably in a sunken cruise ship, eating the remains of the soggy buffet for the rest of time. 

One sentence soapbox:

The correct terminology is venomous snakes, not poisonous snakes. 

Do you enjoy editing? Why or why not?

I don’t know if this is an unpopular opinion, but I love editing. I think it’s incredible to see how much a first draft changes over time. Of course, it can feel very tedious, and you have to be patient with yourself not to give up as you’re revising the same sentence for the thirty-fifth time, deleting “the” and replacing it with “a,” still knowing it’s not quite right. I feel like a sculptor when I’m editing, and as the mound of words slowly takes shape, they eventually begin to resemble a torso, legs, arms, hands, feet, head and eventually—hopefully—a face. But I typically can’t see the face of a story until the very end, sometimes even months or years after creation.

Have you written about food in a story before? If so, what food was it and why did it appear there?

I have a whole Instagram page dedicated to this called “Books as Meals,” a project I worked on between 2020-2024. To keep writing and illustrating during the pandemic, I started reviewing horror books as food. Some of the more interesting foods I wrote about were bird’s nest soup, pickle loaf, Moon Pie, spam musubi, black pudding, and Jello salad. 

What font do you detest?

The absolute worst has to be Curlz. I’m not sure there’s any good use for it, except maybe a small town dog grooming salon sign from the '90s. 

Two truths and a lie, please. 

I’m afraid of deep bodies of water.

I once lived in a venomous snake lab in Panama.

My first pet was a tarantula. 

Unpopular opinion, go: 

Chickens should be worshipped, not consumed.

Tessa Stransky is a writer, violinist, artist, and chicken enthusiast. She can be found in the woods, if you run fast enough, or on stage, if you close your eyes and listen closely. If that sounds like too much work, look no further: http://tessastransky.com.