10(+) Questions for Joseph Lezza

“There is a time machine in Princeton, New Jersey. I’ve been a patron from time to time. By all accounts, it’s been there since 1865. However, I wouldn’t discover it for some 154 years. To find it, one must make their way to the Princeton Junction railway station, accessible directly via New Jersey Transit’s Northeast Corridor line. There you can board a 170-foot-long by 9 1/2-foot-wide hunk of stainless steel known as the ‘Dinky.'”
—from “The Princeton Dinky,” Volume 66, Issue 2 (Summer 2025)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
That could have many answers but, since I practice primarily in essay, one that immediately comes to mind is a piece I wrote during my first year of grad school. I’d chosen to take a class on the lyric essay, entirely unsure of what that was. I was imagining things like Beowulf, confusing the genre entirely with epic poetry. What I found, instead, were these marvelously engrossing pieces of creative nonfiction by authors like Joan Didion, John D’Agata, Gay Talese, Lia Purpura, Jamaica Kinkaid, and Roxane Gay. People who found ways to write about their own lives and experiences in incredibly dynamic ways that read almost like fiction.

At the time, I’d never imagined my own life to by worthy of putting down on paper. But, I was also facing the inevitable task of having to write my own lyric essay at the end of the semester. Instead of trying to comb my history for something I deemed “monumental” enough, however, I decided to focus on an episode from my recent past that I was having trouble letting go of. “Decided” is generous, actually. Really, it was an emotional roadblock I’d allowed eclipse my entire line of sight. So, I figured, if it was just sitting there, I might as well chip away at it.

The TLDR is that, about a year prior, I’d gone away on a little holiday and – like a many of us are wont to do – allowed the allure of an unfamiliar place to charm me out of my skin. Something about being in a strange environment shakes the untapped part of ourselves loose, especially the chaotic parts. And, heaven help you if you fall in love with a place because you’re bound to fall in love with just about everything else. As is often the case with me, this amounted to a little affair, which, in turn, as is also often the case with me, amounted to a whole lot of heartbreak. To be fair, I was also only two years separated from losing my father, so I hadn’t yet reverted back to my naturally closed-off self. So, it was really the most perfectly imperfect confluence of events.

In the aftermath, I hadn’t really been mad at anyone but myself. I was so enraged at what giving into childishness wrought. So, I figured, if I was going to be my harshest critic, why not use that? Why not write about the experience, but from the point of view of a reviewer? I would separate the story into beats and structure it like a travelogue, replete with locations, addresses, and starred ratings. I’d hoped that, as a narrator, I could use the opportunity to work out my frustration while also being true to the account. The critical voice, I found, also created a lot of space for satire in a way that felt organic.

By holding myself at such remove, I was far enough away where I could treat the old me as a “character” while also hopefully catching things I hadn’t seen at the time. I aimed to be hard on myself, but not gratuitously, seeking to strike enough of a balance between truth and criticism so as to allow the reader to be the ultimate judge. What ultimately resulted was “5 Stops on the Road to Ruin,” a piece which would go on to find a home with ROI Fainéant Press. It’s hardly my first piece. And, I’d like to believe I’ve grown a lot as a writer since then. But, it was incredibly formative, bringing to light the essayist in me I didn’t even know was there.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
The list keeps growing. Writers, playwrights, screenwriters, lyricists. Again, Joan Didion. Again, Roxane Gay. Again, Kincaid. Tony Kushner. Matthew Michael Lopez. Tim Z. Hernandez. Liz Scheid. Rebecca Makkai. Maggie Smith. Maria Vargas Llosa. Jordan Peele. Maggie Nelson. Cheryl Strayed. David Sedaris (Yes, I know). Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Elizabeth Gilbert. Nora Ephron. Nancy Meyers. Alanis Morissette. Fiona Apple. Dionne Farris. Douglas Carter Beane. E.M. Forster. Joni Mitchell. Steve Nicks. Michael Stipe. Michael Cunningham. Brian Jay Jones. David Foster Wallace. Fred Ebb. Howard Ashman.

What other professions have you worked in?
Oh, man. I’ve run carnival games. I’ve rented beach chairs and umbrellas, then went on to flip burgers in the snack shack. I’ve been you’re friendly neighborhood Marshalls-HomeGoods shelf stocker. I’ve had warehouse jobs. I once spent a summer managing an ice cream shop. Didn’t start as a manager but, after the proprietor realized that everyone else he’d hired was fourteen, I, as a college freshman, was suddenly management material. (Which was great, because I could make everyone else work out front while I spent my days in the back, listening to music and churning out batches of Chonkey Monkey. I’ve slung pancakes and brunch spots, waited tables at your favorite Italian chain restaurant. I’ve been a Jungle Cruise skipper, a safari driver, a concierge at a triple diamond vacation resort, and worked Guest Relations at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. And, now, naturally, I work in media.

What did you want to be when you were young?
First, a bus driver. Won’t even pretend it was something cooler. I had a thing for buttons as a kid and, so, when I would get on the school bus and watch the driver fussing with her console to open the doors and flip the stop sign and set her lights blinking, all while steering a wheel that was twice the size of me, I thought it was about the greatest thing anyone could ever do.

Then, I wanted to be a restaurant owner. However, I had practically zero interest in the food part. I wanted to come up with a theme, design the space, figure out the uniforms and curate the overall aesthetic. I had my plans all drawn out. It was going to be an indoor drive-in with classic cars instead of tables, movies running on a projector, fiber optic stars on the ceiling and neon everywhere. I came up with fun names for the menu items. It was going to be a vibe. Then, I realized the place already existed, and it was called the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theatre at Hollywood Studios. Dreams gained, dreams lost.

What inspired you to write this piece?
“The Princeton Dinky” is from a work-in-progress essay collection that seeks to examine identity. Specifically American identity and this unique impulse or need we have to tie it to a specific pillar or post. I want to look at what happens when that thing that we thought was holding us up, that we built a life around, is no longer there. For me, it was an incredibly precarious time where I doubted and questioned everything I thought I knew about myself. However, such an unmooring also freed me to imagine all these alternative lives for myself, to play with all of the “what if” questions I hadn’t before had time to really game out.

This is very much a piece about place, one very real but also sort of fantastical in that I really hadn’t any tangible connection to it, just a lot daydreams and speculation. Now, with a sudden abundance of free time and utter confusion on my hands, I decide, if I have to search for direction, I might as well do it upon the grounds and in the alcoves and corridors and stories of an alternate life. So, I do, trying to find a center and maybe even trying to connect to this “better version of me,” such that it ever could have existed. For a while it amounts to nothing more than a little pretending, until, out of nowhere, the opportunity presents itself to actually inhabit that world. To go from outsider to insider.

And, so I wanted to confront that question: What would we give for one bite of an imagined life?

Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
I wouldn’t say there’s one place, real or imaginary, which is interesting considering how much space/environment factors into my writing. I do often imagine what my ideal writing hideaway might look like, though, in that fantastical world where I can be a full-time writer.

I imagine a house on a bluff overlooking the water, somewhere in New England (of course). I could stare out at the water, layered in about twelve chunky sweaters. Walk into the town – really, more of a fishing village – and leisurely drink jet black coffee. Peruse its many dog-friendly shops – for my three rescues – that are often empty but, somehow, always in business. Then, return home to work, but not before waving to my neighbor, Ina Garten.

I realize what I’m describing is basically the town from I Know What You Did Last Summer, only without the murder. But, the heart wants what the heart wants.

Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?
I do often turn to music, less as a mood setter and more as (hopefully) a way to access an old mindset. Much of my work involves revisiting my past and, while photos and other visual artifacts help evoke memory and add detail, music has shown to be incredibly useful in jogging loose those bits and pieces that only live in my memory. For that reason, it’s always changing. Almost never the same.

For instance, for this current collection, I’ve found myself turning to marimba music (La Guanacasteca), coffee house jams (Norah Jones forever), waterfall ambience, classic Hollywood jazz standards, the Spice Girls, ancient Roman reeds, theme park area background music loops, seaside Bossa Nova, airplane cabin white noise (not technically music), pop summer hits of 2019, and more.

Not sure what that says about the collection but, so far, it’s been very helpful in facilitating the called-for state of mind.

Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
None that are hard and fast “rules.” Inasmuch as I do like to use routine to give my life some sort of order, life also has its many insistences, which means writing is one of the things I regularly have to carve out time for. There is certainly ritual in the sense that I aim to hit a certain goal each day, when I’m working on piece. But, that requires writing sometimes in the mornings, often in the evenings. I write at lunch. I write on trains and on planes, in cafés, even in the odd hotel lobby. It’s a lot of “making it work,” which, for those things most important, we somehow find a way to do, despite the days feeling perilously short.

I suppose my one perennial ritual – if you can call it that – is terror. Every time I finish a piece, without fail, there will be the briefest moment of relief and celebration, after which I try to give myself a bit of time; usually to cool down and shift my frame of thinking to approach the next one. It’s not a lot of time, but it’s enough to quickly succumb to this relapsing fear that the next time I’m staring at a blank page, I will have forgotten, entirely, how to write. It’s ridiculous on the merits alone as it suggests there is only one way to write – something I’ve proven manifestly false again and again. Yet, it persists.

Strangely enough, though, that very same fear that stokes avoidance is the one that ultimately drives me back to the work, if only to shut it up and – in my own habitually stubborn way – prove it wrong.

If you could work in another art form what would it be?
I have so much admiration for people who work in visual mediums. Painting, sculpture, photography, animation. I wish that were me. I once tried to take an Intro to Graphic Design course online during the pandemic. Our first challenge was to choose a random object and draw it ten different ways. I chose a clock. And, when one of my sketches more closely resembled an angry piece of toast, I dropped the class.

I do love performance art. Played with acting a bit in high school and college. And, while I’d like to believe I held my own on stage, I couldn’t summon the guts to pursue it professionally. I love the community aspect of it. Putting on a production, whether live or on film, requires a concerted movement of so many artists – actors, directors, writers, scenic designers, lighting designers, costumers, props men & women, craftsman, technicians. It’s a beautiful mayhem. But, when you begin to inhabit a piece and develop a rhythm with your fellow artists and can play off of one another, it’s a pretty magical thing.

Producing a book is certainly not a singular endeavor. So many folx are involved in ushering it into reality. But, it’s work and communication that often happens electronically. Which is why I find so much joy in those moments when I’m actually able to meet someone who has, for so long, been a profile picture of an email address.

What are you working on currently?
I’m working on a new essay collection. I had the idea for it somewhere between Portland and Seattle, while on a road trip with a friend back in 2023. Now that I’m thinking about it, I got the title for my first book also with a friend and also with a car. Maybe that’s where I do my best thinking.

In any event, since then, I’ve been shaping and outlining and drafting and revising. Some stuff’s come out, some new stuff’s gone in. Some pieces I thought would live on their own have been subsumed into other essays while ones I hadn’t initially thought of have taken their place. It’s been an interesting process, similar in many ways to my first collection while also different in just as many ways, if not more. I’m enjoying watching it take form.

What are you reading right now?
Not as much as I’d like. In all honesty, when I’m working full time while writing, I have barely enough mental energy left to retain new information, which is why I usually wind up re-watching The West Wing for the 275th time. I have read a lot of great books recently, though, including: Alligator Tears by Edgar Gomez, Hombrecito by Santiago Jose Sanchez, Hello Stranger by Manuel Betancourt, Opposable Thumbs by Matt Singer. I’m also eagerly awaiting Ilana Masad’s new novel, Beings, Kyle Winkler’s Enter the Peerless, as well as Victoria Buitron’s new upcoming poetry collection, Unburying the Bones.

JOSEPH LEZZA is a Pushcart and Best of the Net–nominated writer on the East Coast. His debut memoir in essays, I’m Never Fine: Scenes and Spasms on Loss (Vine Leaves Press), was a finalist for the 2024 Eric Hoffer Book Award and the 2021 Prize Americana in Prose and was named by Buzzfeed LGBTQ+, them, StyleCaster, abc7 San Francisco, and Lambda Literary as a “Most Anticipated/ Best Book of 2023.” His work has been featured in, among others, Longreads, Variant Literature, West Trade Review, and Santa Fe Writers Project.