Author Q&A with Mrityunjay Mohan

Mrityunjay’s work has been published or is forthcoming in The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Indianapolis Review, Oyster River Pages, The Masters Review, and elsewhere. He’s been awarded scholarships by Sundance Institute, The Common, Frontier Poetry, and elsewhere. He was a semi-finalist for the Copper Canyon Press Publishing Fellowship. He has worked as a guest editor, a reader, and an intern at various literary journals. Currently, he’s an editor for ANMLY, and he’s a reader for the Harvard Review and The Masters Review.

Mohan’s flash fiction, Moon, is featured in Issue #13 of The Good Life Review.

Tell us about yourself

I’m trans. I’m disabled. I’m a writer. There’s so much I think of, but never write down. I take too many classes and have long writing sessions at 2 AM. I have three cats, and they’re often looking at my screen as I write. I’m fluent in two languages, and I can speak, but nowhere near fluent, three more languages. 

How long have you been writing and how has it affected who you are as a person?

I have been writing since I was six. Sitting in class during break, I used to stay hunched over a notebook and write until the next class began. I had made time between classes to write, stories nothing like what I write now, but they shaped much of how I think and perceive my surroundings. There was so much darkness in my work, so much searching for light, and I think my writing still embodies that. Displacement is a theme I like exploring as it deals with such complex emotions and events. At times, I had lived through my writing, through working on things I thought wouldn’t be of much interest to anyone and squirreling them away into thin strips of paper, and old files on my laptop. I live through words, I register the world through words, and I often read any book that piques even a little bit of my interest. Hope is a big part of my work. So is exploring things left unspoken. I am so much of what I write. I am so much of what I never write about. It’s not always easy to separate. 

What inspired Moon? What called you to write it?

When I was still three or four, I was told spirits lived in the sky, between the stars and the moon, and whenever a parent dies, a child is told the parent had gone to the moon. In the moon, they lived. In a child’s head, they sat between grey dust and silver land. They hadn’t known then of craters. They hadn’t known that the person wasn’t in the moon. So much of that built the story. I don’t really think consciously as I write. Words just come to me, and I weave them together into the fabric of a story. It makes itself known to me, and I pen it down. I wrote the story in one sitting, and much of the original word choice stayed throughout the editing process. To a child, in the community I grew up around, their mother lived in the moon, looking over them, awaiting their arrival, and I wanted to depict that. I wanted to see what would happen if the child did go to the moon, and their mother was indeed sitting on the moon. I think water bodies are closely associated with the celestial, at least I did so as a child, and I played into that with the story. It was so much of just me exploring my childhood through the lens of another boy. With only one question in mind. What if he did meet his dead mother in the moon? 

What do you hope your readers will gain from reading Moon?

I want the devastation of the loss of a parent from the eyes of a child to be seen with empathy, especially when there is so much uncertainty in the world and mortality is something we all struggle with every day. There’s only one question. What happens to the people we leave behind and their grief? 

The way you write is so poetic. Do you dabble in poetry as well? What is your favorite form of artistic expression?

I do write poetry. I don’t have a favorite form of artistic expression simply because I do not choose it. I just write in whatever form the story compels me to, and at times it is prose, other times it is poetry, and sometimes it’s something different altogether. I love experimenting with my work, whether visual art or written art. There’s something beautiful about just letting the words reach me on their own. I feel I am mostly a vehicle for their feelings. I think that keeps me alive. 

Which is the favorite of all your published pieces and why?

I don’t have a favorite as I am not too good at choosing what I love the most between my written work. My favorite ones are usually the ones I just finished writing as the story is still fresh in my mind, and I can live in that world a little longer. There’s something magical about reveling in those fading bits of a story when not all words are intact in the mind, but most are. Much of that really makes it my favorite. Between my published written work, they’re all equal to me.  

What piece of literature you’ve read has been most meaningful to you and why?

Beloved by Toni Morrison. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. The Testaments by Margaret Atwood. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. Less by Andrew Sean Greer. The New Testament by Jericho Brown. The Tradition by Jericho Brown. Frank: Sonnets by Diane Seuss. There are so many that were meaningful to me and still hold a place in my life. I read Beloved when I was in middle school, sitting with my knees to my chest, and my head pressed close to the book. I read The God of Small Things and Midnight’s Children in the summer before my first year of high school. I read The New Testament in 2019, and The Tradition by Jericho Brown in 2020, quarantined with my family, and it was so beautiful. I read Frank: Sonnets in 2021. Many authors have influenced my life in many ways. I also have a deep appreciation for visual art, and it has influenced so much of my life as well. Art, in general, is so meaningful to my existence. 

How has your work as editor or reader of various literary magazines benefitted your writing or your view of the literary world?

I think being involved in the literary world enriched my experience of life. There’s so much good work that I am simply blown away by, and being exposed to such great art constantly truly gives me hope for the future. Art is so often neglected, and reading only makes me think it’ll change sometime in the near future. Being an editor itself is an exciting experience, getting to watch work improve through editing, and working with other editors and writers, it’s all so joyful. I truly enjoy doing the work I do. 

How else do you stay an active part of the literary community?

I am always a part of some writing group or workshop. At other times, I spend time with my friends who write as well, and I think that really helps keep me involved in the community. I’m always reading books, new releases, older books, and classics, and I never stop getting curious about new stories and topics. I think that really keeps me alive. 

What do you think of when you hear the term, “The Good Life?”

I think of doing good, of having fun, and genuine joy. There’s so much to look forward to in life. I’m hoping it only gets better from now on. 

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Mrityunjay Mohan’s flash fiction, Moon, is available in Issue #13 ~ Autumn 2023.

Thank you, Mrityunjay, for allowing us to share your story with our readers and for spedning extra time with us on this Q&A. We wish you the best!