10 Questions for Taylor Zhang

- By Marissa Perez

Rotisserie chickens tied up
pre-chop: my skin melted, stuck,
grease dripping on the floor.
—from "Pure Pleasure", Volume 62, Issue 2 (Spring 2021)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you wrote.
I started journaling when I was very young. I used to write these little poems and observations in the margins of books, too. I couldn’t tell you about any particular ‘first’ piece, but I have this very clear memory of writing something morose in my mother’s copy of Gone with the Wind.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Janet Malcolm will forever hold my attention as a stylist. Her prose radiates intelligence and authority and understated humor. The first time I read ‘A Girl of the Zeitgeist’ I was astounded. I couldn’t believe someone could get the psychology of so many moving characters down on the page with such clear and engaging prose.

What other professions have you worked in?
I’ve been a nanny, a waitress, a math tutor, an office clerk, a publishing intern, and a cashier. I’ve met so many people, good and bad, along the way.

What did you want to be when you were young?
A ballerina. A chef? I figured out early on that I had no rhythm and that I was too accident prone to ever work in a kitchen. After that, I just wanted to make things, talk, listen, learn, hang out.

What inspired you to write this piece?
I wrote this piece in the summer of 2020, at the height of the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement. At the time, I was working at a restaurant known for its large glass rotisserie. Summers in New York are already brutal, and the heat behind the counter was unreal. One day, I was staring at the cage that we baked the chickens in, just watching the fat drip off in sheets, and suddenly I couldn’t tell if I was melting or not, too. All these waves of excess and shame and exhaustion coursed through me. That feeling—the feeling of just tipping into delirium—was what I wanted to capture in ‘Pure Pleasure.’

Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
No. Certain scenes from childhood, maybe.

Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?
I write and read in silence, usually.

Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
It helps to be alone and to write in longhand.

What are you working on currently?
For the past few months, I’ve been writing haibuns using open sourced text. Typically, I take photos or write down passages that hold my attention (the instructions to Candy Land, the ingredient label on Chili Crisp, specials printed on pizza boxes, etc.) and then later write a corresponding haiku underneath. Most of them are not very good, but I find the process soothing.

What are you reading right now?
I’m reading The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen, which is just fantastic. I’m also re-reading Obit by Victoria Chang. She’s phenomenal. The way she handles humiliation—it’s unlike anything I’ve read before.


TAYLOR ZHANG is a teaching fellow at Columbia University, where she recently finished coursework for her MFA. She runs a small Risograph press (Choo Choo Press) that publishes literary zines and chapbooks with an emphasis on queerness, nostalgia, obsession, and states of liminality. Originally from Jackson, Mississippi, she lives and works in Brooklyn.