Author Q&A with Cortez

Cortez is a poet and short fiction writer in Brooklyn, New York. She is an MFA candidate at Stony Brook University and her work has appeared in The Brooklyn Rail.

Tell us about yourself. 

I’m a fiction writer and preschool teacher in Brooklyn, New York. 

Why did you decide to get your MFA? 

I taught eighth grade for a year after graduating from The New School, and for that entire year, I didn’t write a single piece or read a single book. There were a lot of factors, it was a particularly intense, (anti-child in my opinion) charter school, it was the covid/zoom year, but I also felt that I’d be more likely to write again with some structure and deadlines. I picked Stony Brook because it was relatively inexpensive and there is a lot of flexibility for students to write across genre. Financially speaking, I probably should’ve just found a workshop group or something, but in terms of community/ my growth as a writer, it was the best decision I’ve ever made! 

How has your MFA program impacted your writing? 

My MFA program has shaped me completely. I studied under Robert Lopez and really found my style and voice in his workshops. He encouraged us to shed anything that felt artificial and to write out of a love of language, but also gave us permission to “fuck it up.” He assigned writers like Jenny Offill, Peter Markus, Joe Wenderoth, Garielle Lutz and Denis Johnson and totally opened me up to the world of experimental fiction. I entered the program as an essay writer and poet and he greeted my first short story attempts with enthusiasm. At the same time, he created an environment that made me want to be excellent. I’d been in so many praise party workshops and came to realize how much that had held me back. I took his class every semester. 

I also have a wonderful, supportive cohort and met people who are now some of my closest friends and forever readers. I think the MFA has shaped my writing on the technical level– I’ve received great feedback, and have been assigned writers that became major influences for me– but the community also imbued me with more confidence. I know to trust my instincts now, but I also just have better instincts. 

What inspired you to write Blue Light? 

I think it’s really embarrassing as a writer to describe something “coming to you,” but the scene in which the narrator fantasizes about telling her roommate about her high school girlfriend “came to me” one night in my bedroom, and I just feverishly wrote it down in my iphone notes. For a few weeks, it just existed as that, and I sort of had to work backwards to determine who was speaking. I knew I wanted to write something that dealt with pregnancy in some way, it’s kind of a fixation of mine– the loss of control in it, and the way it is so fundamentally out of sync with our world, so animal. The more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be interesting to see how someone whose world occurs so heavily online would negotiate something as primal as a pregnancy.

Social media was definitely an indirect inspiration as well. I work in early childhood and adore kids, and I’m pretty sure my phone’s vague knowledge of that, plus my age/ gender demographic info has made it so that my feeds are entirely “mommy” content. I didn’t intentionally set out to write about it, but I think my brain contains a very extensive bank of trendy parenting content that was waiting to be channeled into something. 

Blue Light is so honest. I love the details right down to “I hover my mouse over the document intermittently, so I still show up as ‘active’ on my boss’s end.” How do you feel the protagonist’s unplanned pregnancy has forced her to be honest with herself? 

Her honesty is interesting. She’s certainly blunt and is able to be honest about certain things– her annoyance toward her roommate/polyamory, her lack of investment in her job, her generally cynical outlook. But when it comes to the possible pregnancy, most of her insights are delivered as jokes. There’s the bit about the child’s high school graduation falling on the day that she and her “boyfriend” go out and the detail about childproofing his ridiculous luxury apartment, but no straightforward expression of any real fear. Because the reality of her situation hasn’t really sunk in, her anxiety is sublimated to this almost obsessive hatred of her roommate. The unplanned pregnancy tests this very matter-of-fact exterior she’s put up. I think the “arc” of the story has to do with her vulnerability beginning to seep through. It really comes out as she’s sitting in her bed, thinking of being young in her bed, and we get a glimpse of the part of her that is kept from us, the part that is a scared little girl. 

Your character voices are spot on, especially the self-righteous roommate. What’s your secret to channeling character voice? How do you get to know your characters? 

I really appreciate that! I mean, for the roommate I was definitely partially inspired by the like “your roommate Sock in Bushwick” memes, but I also wanted to just create a person who was earnest, maybe even happy, and who could starkly contrast the narrator. I’m not sure I have a secret for channeling voice. My stake in fiction is far more in the sentence and in character than in “story” in the conventional sense, so I have a lot of fun with dialogue and maybe that enthusiasm shines through. But I also just read a lot of writers with strong voices. I was reading Samantha Hunt’s story collection around the time I was writing this, and she continues to be a huge influence. 

What is your favorite genre to write? Why? 

Short fiction by far! I’m not technical about anything generally, but I derive so much joy from the rules and definitions of short fiction– that something needs to change/turn by the end, that the story has to occur in the first sentence, or a definition that my professor Robert often shares from V. S. Pritchett– that a short story is “something glanced out of the corner of the eye in passing.” There is also just something so fun and whimsical about making things up. And then, finding opportunities to subvert expectation, to find the margins of a moment that are infinitely more interesting than the moment itself.

How has writing impacted your daily life? 

I’m not someone who writes every day, not even every week, but I find whenever I’m “not writing,” I still am. When I’ve taken a period off and I finally sit down and start something, I find that the entire time I was technically “not writing” I was mining, and all of those little reflections and interactions make their way onto the page. So I think, inadvertently, I am always writing, and that’s its impact, that it’s just always there in the back of my mind, framing everything. 

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

I grew up in Omaha, and I think of that sign on the highway! When I think of the really joyous moments of childhood, they’re all in the car, when our family would road trip to Texas, or visit family in other towns in Nebraska or Iowa. Sitting in the backseat, listening to my iPod and looking out at the road, everything feeling so vast.

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Cortez’s fiction piece, “Blue Light,” is featured in Issue #15 ~ Spring 2024.

Thank you, Cortez, for allowing us to share your story with a wider audience and for taking extra time on this Q&A with us! We’re glad we were able to connect and wish you the best with your writing and all of your endeavors.