And it was my chance to play around with that. For a long time I felt like my life wasn’t worthy of fiction or being turned into story. It made me want to write about my own experience. And by being there long enough, I realized there are some opportunities for me to be a human and feel connected to people, even though that’s not really what the space asks of you. But if you’re in a space long enough, you find something– if not interesting– useful about it. I hated it, it wasn’t my favorite way to spend my time. And I worked in a home improvement store in high school. I worked in the Cross Gates Mall all through college. I used to work in a store as you maybe have guessed. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah: What interests me is how uninteresting it might seem at first glance. Can you talk about what interests you about retail spaces as an avenue for storytelling? Neva Ensminger-Holland: The stories “Friday Black,” “How to Sell a Jacket as Told by Ice King,” and “In Retail” all take place in store settings. On April 13, 2022, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah joined The Interlochen Review editors Neva Ensminger-Holland, Nicholas Bonifas, Morgan Spencer, and Simone Chaney for a conversation on character and genre work as a vessel for the modern world. He was selected by Colson Whitehead as one of the National Book Foundation's “5 Under 35” honorees, is the winner of the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award for Best First Book and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from numerous publications, including the New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Literary Hub, the Paris Review, Guernica, and Longreads. Originally from Spring Valley, New York, he graduated from SUNY Albany and went on to receive his MFA from Syracuse University. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is the New York Times-bestselling author of Friday Black.

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