Jackie Polzin, author of Brood
Novel & Short Story Category
Each week leading up to the 34th annual Minnesota Book Awards Ceremony, we are featuring exclusive interviews with our 36 finalists. You can also watch the authors in conversation with their fellow category finalists here.
Would you tell us one or two things about your finalist book that you are particularly proud of, and why?
I finished it! I think any long project is threatened at times.
What do you hope that your audience learns or takes away from your book?
Someone told me the book reminded them of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, concerning chickens. As a takeaway, I love that.
What advice would you give to an aspiring writer with an interest in your category?
Keep writing. It sounds simple and maybe it is.
Tell us something about yourself that is not widely known.
My mom is an identical triplet. When together, the threesome exists within a force field and everything else remains just outside their realm. I suppose the triplets have always seemed a bit mythical to me, or maybe all parents become part myth.
Minnesota enjoys a reputation as a place that values literature and reading. If this sentiment rings true for you, what about our home state makes it such a welcoming and conducive place for writers?
It does ring true! For literature and art of all kinds. The Loft Literary Center, 826 MSP, Juxtaposition Arts, the many grants available to artists, the Central Library designed by Cesar Pelli! Before I moved to Minneapolis I was living in New York City and ready to leave it. I came across an article in the NY Times about new architecture in Minneapolis: Herzog & de Meuron’s contribution to the Walker, the Weisman Art Museum by Frank Gehry, Pelli’s work on the Central Library. In my mind the idea took hold of a city celebrating the arts in a very public way. In short, that’s why I moved to Minnesota, inspired by an article in a newspaper.
Since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, virtually everything about our lives has changed in some way. Has COVID-19 (and its fallout) impacted your writing habits and preferences? Has the unique zeitgeist of the past two years influenced your writing output in any other ways that you can pinpoint?
In many ways the pandemic has been an extension of early motherhood for me: immersive parenting, feeling tethered to home, loneliness. But, on average, I enjoy the challenge of attending to the everyday stuff, both in life and in my writing. I guess I’m obsessed with that challenge, which has come in handy. I think a lot about documenting this time for my young kids (one and three years old when the pandemic began) so these last few years have re-upped my commitment to journaling. Dear Diary, I feel anxious…
Jackie Polzin lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. Brood, her first novel, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice and shortlisted for the 2021 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize.