In the Little Sidecar Wearing a Scarf: An Interview with Janelle Bassett by AJ Jolish

This month’s interview is with Janelle Bassett, one of Split Lip’s very own Fiction Editors! Her writing appears or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, New Delta Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, American Literary Review, The Offing, Washington Square Review, Wigleaf, and Best Microfiction 2023. She was once named “Miss Dairy Darlin,” a title for which she won many cow-shaped erasers. I strongly encourage you to check out her work at janellebassett.com.

I got the chance to email with Janelle about childhood, superpowers, and her path to being a writer and editor.

AJ Jolish: What is the best compliment you’ve ever received, and why was it meaningful to you?

Janelle Bassett: When I was a third grader, my second grade teacher Mrs. Maggard stopped me in the hall to say, “Janelle, you are such a good writer.” Mrs. Maggard made me feel understood and appreciated at a time when I didn’t often feel that way. She gave me special books to read, encouraged my writing and my ideas, noticed my efforts, and laughed at my jokes. This praise was meaningful because it came from someone warm and fun whom I trusted and admired. I think of her every time I look up a synonym because she had the definitions of “synonym,” “antonym,” and “homonym” taped to the ceiling of her classroom. When we couldn’t remember which term was which, she would point up.

So you can see why I loved her.

AJ: I love that. I also treasure a compliment from elementary school–in fourth grade, my teacher was so impressed by a short story that she asked if I had really written it on my own and then read it to the whole class. That was the first time I felt like a writer. What would you say is the first piece of writing you felt truly proud of?

JB: This is maybe a weird answer, but my grandmother’s eulogy. This was about ten years ago. I was proud because the eulogy accomplished what I had wanted it to accomplish: It expressed what she meant to me and explained the way I saw her move through this world. I wanted to make sure she was seen, really seen, during a ceremony that can often feel impersonal and perfunctory. She was not the kind of person to go quietly, so I wanted to make a little noise in her honor.

AJ: Wow. Writing for a loved one is always equal parts vulnerable and fulfilling for me, and I’m sure that was amplified tenfold during a time of grief. On the topic of writing about family, your most recently published piece, “The Frame,” centers around a mother watching her children sleep and reflecting on her life. How, if at all, has being a parent changed your relationship with writing, either in practice or in content? Do you find your writing changes after major life events?

JB: I actually became a parent before I started writing, so I suppose I’ll never know what my writing was like before I had kids. Maybe it would have been totally different—calm, lyrical, super serious. Seems doubtful. 

But I’m not sure I would’ve taken up writing without the fear that my role as a parent was going to swallow all the other versions of me. The urgency of that fear coupled with the constraint of full-time childcare became this desperate push toward trying something new. 

I hope I’m slowly becoming the kind of person who jumps instead of waiting for a desperate push. I admire people like that.

AJ: I’m wondering about the time in between first discovering your talent for writing in elementary school and when you feel like you really started writing. Tell me more about your journey with writing, both before and after the "desperate push" of motherhood. What does being a "writer" mean to you as an identity?

JB: Yes, there’s quite a big gap there! I guess it took me twenty-something years to accept the compliment. In the intervening years it simply didn’t occur to me to try to write anything that wasn’t a school assignment. Maybe I thought I needed permission to create something or I thought that artists were people far beyond me—like artists had a vision and I was more of an observer. It wasn’t so much that I was down on myself, it was more that I had the wrong idea about what it meant to have something to say.  

After the desperate push, the act of writing felt happy and natural. It opened me and it felt healing to listen to my own ideas. But taking something personal and asking other people to like it felt pretty uncomfortable. I had this vision of myself as someone who didn’t care what other people thought, but in reality it was more that I was someone who was scared of letting other people see me, of being vulnerable. I am still learning how to navigate those dynamics.

For me, being a writer is a way of processing what I see and what happens to me. Sometimes I wish I had a different processing method, like Irish dancing or ice sculpting, but mostly I am grateful to have any method at all. And I’m also grateful for all the wonderful writers who show me what being alive feels like for them, because I am deeply curious and super nosey.

AJ: Sharing your writing is uncomfortable for sure, but like you said, the happiness I get from reading others’ work helps push me to share my own. Returning to your work, one theme I noticed in a few of your stories—including “My White Tiger is Too Weak to Eat Me” and “Solomon Carries On”—is the focus on pets. Tell me about animals as inspirations for you. Is there something uniquely inspiring about the relationship people have with their pets? And do you have any pets?

JB: This is shameful to admit, but I am not really a pet person. My cat knows this about me.

I mean, I like animals, but I don’t feel the need to live with them. 

I think what’s rich about human/pet relationships is that they are so intimate and interdependent, but navigated without conversation. Wordless closeness interests me.

AJ: It’s so rewarding to find the perfect words to describe wordless concepts. This description of pets reminds me of my interactions with young children, in a strange way. It’s fascinating watching kids first feel the desire to communicate, and then the frustration that comes with attempting to harness speech—the transition between wordless closeness and wordful closeness. 

JB: Yes! Without words you have to be attuned to each other in a special way. I think, too, without words you can soften the needs of others. Like when a baby is hungry, you’re like “Oh the baby wants to nurse, how precious. Come here, sweetheart.” But then a year or two later that same kid is using their new words to yell, “BRING ME A GRANOLA BAR RIGHT NOW!” and it’s not nearly as cute.

AJ: When you were a kid, what is one piece of media you loved that you now think shaped your personality or writing?

JB: I think “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” made me the person I am today. I loved the wacky playfulness of his world. It was like the B-52s made a children’s show! His world was wacky, but it was also orderly. He had his little routines and his daily bow tie. He taught me that you can be a weirdo and still enjoy watering the flowers and getting the mail.

Pee Wee is kind-hearted and playful, but he’s also fucking had it with everyone around him. That dynamic really tickles me. Plus puppets and claymation just make me really happy.

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Chairry, Pee-Wee’s talking chair? I once had a Chairry sweatsuit—that’s my level of fandom.

(Note: We did this interview many weeks before Paul Reubens passed away. I hope there’s a special place in the sky for people who make children laugh and feel understood.)

AJ: I have to admit I have never watched “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse.” My formative piece of media was Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar—I credit that book for my adoration of surreal short stories. Back to the present, I wanted to ask when you started working at Split Lip, and do you have a favorite memory from working here?

JB: I started as a fiction reader at the end of 2019. I became an Assistant Fiction Editor in 2021, and about a year later I became a Co-Fiction Editor alongside the wonderful Anna Cabe.

My most pleasant SLM memories are working with writers on their work. What I hadn’t expected about editing is that it’s creatively fulfilling for me as the editor. I’ve always wanted to do a creative collaboration with another writer, but we could never work out the logistics. Who starts? How will this even work? Do you have an idea? No, me neither.

Working with writers to strengthen their stories scratches a similar itch, even though the writers are driving and I’m in the little sidecar wearing a scarf and giving them a thumbs up.

AJ: I totally know what you mean. Creative writing workshops have been my favorite college classes because I get to see that growth (and, of course, experience it myself).

On a totally different note, if you could choose a superpower, what would it be and why?

JB: I would like to be able to point my finger at someone and make them see and feel the way their behavior affects other people… I don’t think I’d be very popular.

AJ: Hm, perhaps not, but I know a few people I would love to use that on. What about real life superpowers: Do you have any party tricks or hidden talents?

JB: I am a fierce card shuffler and I can put my legs behind my head. At least I used to be able to bend like that—I haven’t tried lately because I am scared I’ll get stuck.

AJ: I am in awe of people who can gracefully shuffle cards! My friends always insist on reshuffling after I try, and I don’t blame them. My final question is: What is your favorite snack food and why?

JB: I guess popcorn is my favorite snack because it’s the one I reach for most often. But popcorn ends up giving me a stomachache about 50% of the time, so I should really be reaching for something else. Learning from mistakes isn’t my strong suit!

AJ Jolish (@Ziskayt) is at this very moment probably embroidering while listening to an audiobook. She is an intern at Split Lip Magazine and a rising junior at Scripps College. Her work has appeared in The Scripps College Journal and The Agave Review.