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Elle Nash is the author of the short story collection Nudes (404 Ink and SF/LD Books) novels Gag Reflex (Clash Books) and Animals Eat Each Other (404 Ink and Dzanc Books), which was featured in the 2018 June Reading Room of O - The Oprah Magazine and hailed by Publishers Weekly as a ‘complex, impressive exploration of obsession and desire.' Her new novel, Deliver Me (Unnamed Press) was released October 2023. Her work appears in Guernica, BOMB, The Nervous Breakdown, Literary Hub, The Fanzine, Volume 1 Brooklyn, New York Tyrant and elsewhere. She is a founding editor of Witch Craft Magazine and has edited fiction at both Hobart Pulp and Expat Literary Journal.
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:01
Speaker
You are listening to something rather than nothing. Creator and host Ken Vellante. Editor and producer Peter Bauer.
Welcoming Elle Nash
00:00:16
Speaker
Hey everybody this is Ken Vellante and I'm very excited to have author, writer,
00:00:24
Speaker
Elle Nash. Elle, I'm so excited to welcome you to something rather than nothing podcast. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate being here. Yeah, yeah, I've enjoyed the works.
Discussing 'Deliver Me'
00:00:38
Speaker
Animals eat each other, which was, you know, got some press for you. And also, I found the gag reflex in Paul's, which is probably why I had contact you at some point, there was some connection in my
00:00:52
Speaker
in my head amongst a sequence of books here and very happy to run into your work. But you got a book of fiction deliver me out and just wondering what is this project I had seen on your Patreon, kind of your process of making this and creating this. Talk to us about this book.
00:01:20
Speaker
Sure. So Deliver Me follows a narrator, Daisy, who she lives in the Ozarks and she works at a chicken factory. And she has been trying and trying for years to have a baby, but she's like, she struggled. She just has constant miscarriages. And she comes from a background of the United Pentecostal Church, which is like an extremely, like fundamentally Christian, you know, organization.
00:01:49
Speaker
And she's just trying to put her life back together and have a healthy relationship and kind of just get what she wants out of the world. But it's very difficult for her towards almost violent ends, I would say.
Inspiration Behind 'Deliver Me'
00:02:06
Speaker
So I won't say much more than that, but just that this project was really inspired by, in part,
00:02:16
Speaker
I've always been very passionately against industrial agriculture since I was like, you know, a young teenager. And, um, when I lived in the Ozarks, I was very close to seeing that world. Like that's where I think the head of Tyson is Tyson foods. It's also like where Walmart it like headquarters of Walmart is. And just seeing that those experiences, um, even peripherally was like a big motivator for me to set a story there and kind of
00:02:46
Speaker
Tell the story of what that life could look like for someone like that. Yeah. I, um, I, uh, I'm, uh, excited to get further to, to get further into it.
Veganism and Consumption Themes
00:03:02
Speaker
And, um, just, just what you mentioned about them, like agriculture and, um, you know, that, that, that industrialization, I know, uh, I don't have the same analogy, but just seeing some of the,
00:03:15
Speaker
chicken production in western West Virginia. And, you know, that that type of thing. And there's something that right off the bat about the title of your book, Animals Eat Each Other. I've been vegan for 27 years and as a vegan.
00:03:33
Speaker
Everybody thinks she announced that all the time and yell it at each other or whatever. But no, I have been. And just even the title just made me think, because I want to tell you why. We've done a recent kind of funny episode on Swamp Thing. And my brain's been getting into what we consume and who we are. And there was this thought within it of like,
00:03:57
Speaker
eating plants and becoming like, you know, plant like or more plant like and just like bodies within your work, how visceral the bodies are in coming in contact with each other, whether it's ideas of consumption and things like things of that nature.
00:04:22
Speaker
The presence of bodies, for me, in that type of landscape of the industrial landscape ends up being these horror aspects to them, not to go on a rant or anything like that. Do you encounter, say, within the setting of
00:04:47
Speaker
with work in that industrialization of agriculture. Do you see the same dynamics happening amongst say those who work within it and the actual processing of animals and plants in that sense?
Industrial Agriculture Realities
00:05:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would say so because like as far as workers rights go,
00:05:15
Speaker
During the time when I was researching for Deliver Me, I learned that workers have to process about 140 birds per minute. And people will lobby against OSHA regulations or government regulations. These companies will lobby to lower the standards so that they have to process even more.
00:05:39
Speaker
And when you're a worker on these kinds of lines, even though a lot of things have been mechanized, you're doing the same action over and over again every single day. And there's a really high rate of injury. I think beef packing is one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States. There's still a lot that can't quite be fully mechanized, I guess. There's not a lot of necessarily rights or at least fair treatment of workers.
00:06:07
Speaker
research and learn that people aren't often allowed to take specific like, uh, toilet breaks or, um, things like that. You're also being exposed to massive amounts of chemicals and certain sanitizers, which can just be caustic on your experience. Um, you know, like with your skin like that. Um, so I definitely would say that, uh, workers aren't treated well. Um, in that respect to, uh, it's kind of like,
00:06:37
Speaker
I mean, it's like a giant system and sounds so like, it's like hegemonic. It sounds so cliche to say it that way, but you have an entire economic system that is basically funded on consumption. And I'm not a vegan, but I do see the benefits of it. I was a vegetarian for a long time, but it's really tough because you have this machine driven by consumption and it
00:07:07
Speaker
consumes animals. I mean it also consumes agriculture, like industrial agriculture with plants. It's also not necessarily good for the environment either, which is difficult, right? It's difficult. How do you feed like millions to billions of people and not create like psychic and physical damage to do those things, you know? Like what's the ethical way to do that? It's really difficult question to answer, but I do find it feels
00:07:37
Speaker
Like there is a violence in it and that violence is simply, yeah, it's based on that consumption. Yeah. Yeah. I feel that dude, I've read a hugely influential work upon mine. Individual is just as important as called the sexual politics of meat by Carol J. Adams. Oh, that sounds interesting.
00:07:56
Speaker
The visual, yeah, is very influential on me. It's considered a classic of feminism, animal rights. But the front graphic of the book is was a beach towel, if you could believe it. And there was a woman nude and it says, what's your cut? And it was the lines of like like a cow of where the cuts were.
00:08:21
Speaker
It was just such a striking image. But all right, I know we moved like right into that. I got to tell you, Elle, when I was reading about you and reading your work, I'm like, I'm not even quite sure what to jump in and talk about. But yes, deliver me super exciting for that major work to be out. Let's jump back a little bit more conceptually.
00:08:51
Speaker
You go out about your art a particular way. I could feel your art and then feel your writing. For you, Elle, what is art?
Art and the Human Experience
00:09:04
Speaker
What is art? What are you trying to do? What am I trying to do? And sometimes I don't even know what I'm trying to do. I just feel driven. But I think for me, art is...
00:09:22
Speaker
sometimes it's about trying to experience and conceptualize like the world that we live in and sometimes it's about trying to get to like the purest root of expression um like how to explain this i've been reading a lot of
00:09:46
Speaker
the writings of Malevich lately, he was a, I'm gonna get this wrong. He was like, he came out of like the dynamist movement in art, which was like kind of around the time cubism was getting really big. A lot of artists were rejecting realism because the camera was invented, right? Like photography was becoming a thing and a lot of artists were moving past realism and into more like expressive forms of art
00:10:16
Speaker
And his goal, which I think he called suprematism, was trying to get to what does the purest expression of color look like? Or what's that experience? What's that pure experience? A lot of artists were doing this and have done this over time. And so sometimes I think art is like that. You're trying to capture and maybe isolate the singular experience of human existence that
00:10:45
Speaker
that we have that's really special, just the fact that we can't express, that's really special. So to me, I think that's part of art. I think also inherently, art is about the desire to share. It's very much keyed in on the very basic fact that we're social creatures, right?
00:11:08
Speaker
We developed a need community to survive. That's why we tell stories. We tell stories to pass on ideas or tradition or lineage to teach or just to be understood. And so art really can't exist without an audience itself. So I think that's kind of maybe what that is too. It's that desire to share something, whatever that thing may be,
00:11:38
Speaker
And like for me, when I'm writing, I think what I'm trying to do is I feel like my general experience of life is I'm always like soaking in some kind of atmosphere. Like I guess that's like moodiness somehow or like I'm always having like feelings and these feelings feel like it is this atmosphere that I'm like kind of soaking in. And so.
00:12:07
Speaker
when I'm creating like a book or a short story, I'm thinking like how can I put another person in this same kind of like state? Um, and I don't necessarily know why I do that. Like maybe I do want to be understood, but maybe it's like more than that. Um, maybe it's just seeing if I can do it. Maybe it's just like,
00:12:34
Speaker
Like maybe it's also because it's kind of like a form of escape. Like it's nice to be like in that other world for a while, take the atmosphere away from me and like putting it in something else where I can look at it from all these different facets and try to understand it in my own way. Like I'm turning it around in my head over and over again in terms of like when I'm constructing a story or like a plot line or a character. So I think that's usually my aim is just like that, like the atmosphere of something, like how can I create that?
00:13:04
Speaker
And sometimes the concept is like, would deliver me. I think I really tried to and wanted to try to explore like the psychology of killing, you know, like with the chicken factory and with some of the characters. And that was kind of like the atmosphere, I guess, that I'd been thinking about for a long time, you know? Yeah, I, it was interesting when you're talking about your writing, because for a second there, I was like,
00:13:35
Speaker
Am I talking to an actor too? Like there was a piece of, no, there was, it was cool. It was cool. There was a piece about the characters and there was a process you were describing. I kind of like my, my head was going, was, was going like that, like interacting with the characters and, and moving it towards feeling. And I think there's.
00:13:56
Speaker
I don't know. I'd imagine a lot of folks trying to talk about your writing is like the immediacy of the like visceral, the physical experience, the sexual bodies, otherwise like the immersion of that is placing the readers always in a different spot. Everybody knows it or maybe they forget it. And that's the piece where I was just hearing like the words is almost like your character, like you're in there too.
00:14:26
Speaker
I had a I had a guest on who did a play how to be an ethical slot in front of like it was like one woman performance and it was just like just that immersion in that in that openness.
00:14:46
Speaker
What the piece about like, if you look at your work, gag reflex in like the public aspect of it, and there's something for folks who don't know the work, there's an aspect, diaristic, if that's a word, aspect, timestamps, and there's a public aspect to the display within the book of telling folks these,
00:15:13
Speaker
How do you think, at least that theme and not talking about you as a person, but that theme of the public as you create and having it raised there, it seems like such a big piece in your work, delivering it that way. Like in terms of like,
00:15:40
Speaker
how the public interacts with like my art as the object or like the public as a concept inside the work. Is that what you mean? Yeah, let me try better as the host here with the question. And we were sorry. And looking at gag reflex and maybe it was just the time stamps and the computerized aspect and the digital piece of it. And like there's this immediacy of knowledge to know that
00:16:06
Speaker
this is super public and there's, it's like almost like a frightening or there's a scare to it with that. Um, I guess what I'm asking more particularly is about the, the, the creativity with that in mind with like, that this is like, this isn't like an exposure. And I'm telling you this way, whereas if we saw those timestamps a little bit before, before social media, before maybe,
00:16:33
Speaker
like that kind of public display, you wouldn't be able to work off that. It feels to be such an immediacy to presenting it that way. Is that something you're trying to intend to have as being almost art, but fleeting because it's time stamped in that way?
Public Interaction in Art
00:16:55
Speaker
Yeah, it definitely was. That work was trying to capture a very specific moment, for sure.
00:17:03
Speaker
especially with the time period of it, and really trying to hammer in that it's this girl who's just wanting to understand and be understood, understand her own experiences, and also find community and be understood in that respect. And so I think the public plays a role in that. But also with her specific outlet, which is live journal, she still gets to kind of
00:17:32
Speaker
maintain a level of anonymity, which doesn't quite exist anymore. I mean, it probably still does exist on the internet, but it's like a lot of people's Twitters are so everything's so, because of like cross-referencing databases, everything's so captured now and it's like easy to suss out who has an account or whatever. And like that was right on the precipice of that social media world where you could still be quite anonymous and not be known.
00:18:01
Speaker
in that way to while she's kind of like, you know, exulting these ideas like to the public, there's also kind of a level of protection. She still gets to maintain in that. So it's like a safe way to like let out that pressure, you know, in a way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, um,
00:18:23
Speaker
I wanted to ask you in relation to our question I asked is the role of art. I talked a lot of guests now and I think my mind was sticking when we were talking about.
00:18:34
Speaker
I would say production of food and temperatures, I think. The question I asked for me, it seems like human beings always been like, uh, sky's fallen, right? Like there always has to be like, like there's something's always happening, right? Whether it's biblical or otherwise, but seriously though, like things are going on. Has the role of art changed or maybe even you, like your approach to like,
00:18:57
Speaker
creating art in 2023? Is something different now? Or is it just always like art just arts and does what it does? Is something different? I honestly think that it's I don't think that it's changed. There's this one thing Lydia Yeknevich says, which is like,
00:19:17
Speaker
What does she say? It's like art doing its verb thing or something like that, which I always think about where like, you know, people are moved. They're feeling conflicted. They're angry. They're arguing over the art. It's meaning they're contextualizing it. They're discussing it.
00:19:34
Speaker
or they love it, it's euphoric. Any manner of that experience with art is the verb thing that I really like. And I think that's kind of the role. It's so wide open because it can serve so many purposes. And I don't think necessarily that that's changed. Even if you think back to
00:19:58
Speaker
the cave paintings or whatever it is, the first pieces of expression and stuff like that that we've found.
00:20:07
Speaker
We don't know their intentions, and we can only contextualize it through studies of history or whatever it is. But we can still speculate on it, and we have been speculating on it for 30,000 years. So that seems like, one, it's important. And two, the role is just there for us to experience, to reach back in time, to think about, to ponder.
00:20:35
Speaker
accentuate yourself in the world, you know, or expand what it is you thought was possible in the world. Like I always liked that about a good novel that expands what you think is possible for like what art can be. And that's kind of like also expanding your viewpoint of like what can be experienced as well. So
00:20:57
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I like I like that. There's there's almost like in in there's a little bit in our full harm expressing this, but there's almost like the like aggression in the writing that creates a vibrancy in your work. And I think like Lydia Jochenovich, too. Oh, my gosh. So amazing of like a fierce writer, like fierce writing, like, you know, like just and
00:21:22
Speaker
They kind of like the chronology of water by Lydia and yeah, just really love that work. One of the things I wanted to say is I really appreciate what you put out on Patreon as a patron to the service there.
00:21:44
Speaker
My first love is writing and I go back in episodes, I don't say first love is painters, the painting to painters and stuff. And for me, like even studying when I was younger, it's all literature. Like it's all words and storytelling. And so I always get excited by great
00:22:06
Speaker
by great writing and encountering your work. But the piece, even on Patreon too, where you're kind of talking about your process, sounds a little cliche. That's what people are talking about. But when people are really into somebody who's an artist, I could tell you graphic novelists I follow on there, a few bucks each month. You get so excited to be like, shit, I want to see that little panel. Or I think even in looking to talk to you,
00:22:35
Speaker
reading your post about a book, you know, in the making for so long, and it exists the entire time. It went to sleep, you forgot about it, then it's back, and then somebody didn't like it as much as the other person. It's a really fascinating piece.
Concept of Something vs. Nothing
00:22:57
Speaker
um big question i want to ask the big conceptual question make sure we get all those out of the way um writers have keen insights to the mysteries of the universe and the big question on the show is why is there something rather than nothing i couldn't really necessarily i don't know if i could answer that why is there something rather than nothing i would argue that
00:23:25
Speaker
Would I argue, yeah, because that's what I do. You don't have to sell that one. I'm thinking like, when you say there's something rather than nothing, I'm thinking like, who is to say that it's not nothing? Like, maybe from a Buddhist perspective, it's all just an illusion. And maybe what we're trying to find is like, what we're trying to do is realize that there really is just like,
00:23:50
Speaker
the emptiness, the formlessness that is total consciousness. Who is to say? There's a fault line in my question and I've talked about it and in my mind is keen to yours on nothing and what no thing is in the Western thinking. No thing is absence, abyss. You want to have something rather than nothing but
00:24:16
Speaker
talking about within Buddhism of the maybe more proper emptiness like the concept of emptiness that there's glory and emptiness that there's there's no there there there's no there's no like there there right beneath it you know like yeah like it's like
00:24:37
Speaker
Yeah, like I would say like when you think about something, what that means is you're qualifying a boundary. And when you create a boundary, you create conflict. When you create conflict, you create suffering, which makes it inevitable in a way.
00:24:52
Speaker
And then your books try to resolve those conflicts over time. And that's the grand project that we're talking about. Elle, can I do the talking to a writer thing? It's similar to talking to the rock star and listening to the music.
00:25:09
Speaker
Who you dig on with what you're reading, writers that you read, and I know you do a lot of editing and you talk about literature and interact with poets and writers, but what are you digging on when you need to read rather than create something to be read?
Current Reading Interests
00:25:31
Speaker
Yeah, right now I'm reading my dead book by Nate Lippins, which is like amazing razorblart, razorblade sharp sentences, razorblart, hopefully. That's a new genre. These are razorblards. So we were doing razorblades before. I know. So I'm reading that right now. And yeah, I just am. The sharpness of the sentences is like masterful. It's really good. Also, Lindsay Lerman.
00:26:00
Speaker
and Charlene Elsby. I've been reading them this year too. Charlene Elsby I feel like currently is, she's got to be or is going to be recognized as like one of the greatest living transgressive writers. Like regardless of how you feel about like what transgressive is as a genre I know some people like don't like the term but for like of a better term like her work just explores
00:26:27
Speaker
the elements of human taboo in a way that's like so smart and so amazing. She has a book coming out from Clash next year called Violent Faculties. It's so good, like it's just incredible. But yeah, so I'm digging on them. There's a long, long list. It's always hard to pull everyone out of that when I mess this question. But those are the ones that like really come top of mind for me right now.
00:26:54
Speaker
No, I do that. It's something so strange about that question. It's like, because certain certain folks or minds would be like, it's the flood of all at once. Okay, the 15 came into my head. But you know, like, you know, what, you know, what can I what can I do about that? But um,
00:27:15
Speaker
Um, I you know, I I just want to say it's like it's it's been it's been really really cool to really cool to chat with you and um You know one of the things I uh, even in checking with you when I first encounter your work, uh, I I really get excited on the show about my at the time I even referenced a couple poets I had on a joanna valenti who's uh out on the east coast us and uh
Personal Experiences with Addiction
00:27:41
Speaker
A good friend of mine went to the University of Massachusetts with a Bunkang Tuan poet, but it's been great to encounter writers in doing this format and learn about how you do what you do. And I just want to say to Elm, straight up about the content in particular around
00:28:12
Speaker
eating disorders, I'm close to a lot of, I've dealt with addiction, myself addiction to alcohol, I've been sober for 13 years, 14 years coming out, so. Congratulations. Thank you, thank you. But what I'm saying is, what you have to talk about in the work that you do is vitally important for a human being to read. It's vitally important for me
00:28:42
Speaker
uh, uh, to read and to experience, um, because I, it's not just me, it's, I'm around folks close and I'm an empath and I, and I, I always want to know, I always want to somehow feel and in, in, in your work, um,
00:29:05
Speaker
You can't open that up and find it everywhere. And I want to thank you for your courage in writing about that and want to let you know that it makes a big difference for me. And part of that was wanting to talk to you about that and let you know that as well.
00:29:21
Speaker
Thank you. I appreciate that. I always wanted to try and explore eating disorders through fiction or novelization for a long time. I read Wasted by Mario Hornbacher years and years ago. As a young baby writer, I was always like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to try and write this novel. It never really worked out.
00:29:45
Speaker
I think with gag reflex, it just coalesced so perfectly. I was just like, how really can I explain what the experience of this is like, the conflict? Because you see so many representations of it on TV or other narratives that are very, they're always based at inpatient centers and it always kind of revolves around
00:30:13
Speaker
you know, the calories and triggers and stuff like that. Um, and then they're always like saved by, you know, an administrator or something. You know what I mean? Like there's always like this kind of narrative that exists with eating disorders. And I always wanted to display just like, like, what is it like for someone who like doesn't do that? Like, you know, who just, there are, there are millions of people who suffer from eating disorders. They never get access to treatment. They have to figure it out on their own. Um,
00:30:42
Speaker
You know what I mean? Like they're just, they're what you would, you would say it's atypical because it's not what you see in the media, but it is very like normal to have those kinds of experiences with it. And I just really wanted to figure out how I could explore that and like kind of represent that on the page. So. Yeah. And I think, I think there's, um, I think there was a point in there too, that, that really stuck with me just from a bit of a different perspective. My personal experience was.
00:31:09
Speaker
Like you talk about the omnipresence of that, right? So too, when I like first stop drinking, right? Like if you don't drink, well, you don't go to the bar. Don't go to cook out. Try not to be right around it, but also as a vegan, like early on when I was like, I was like, why is like, every time I'm sitting down, like the
00:31:27
Speaker
like some sort of like act of protest I just noticed all the attention that was on the basic act of eating and you bring up that point it's like hey this is like this is this is daily this is this is not you know I'm not gonna go to the casino in Vegas because I'm not gonna fly out the Vegas and do that this is
00:31:47
Speaker
me each day. And really, really profound point. But again, I want to thank you for writers. I mean, you've been putting that out and spending time, you know, chatting on the show. Super excited to be able to talk to you about your great success on the new book. And yeah,
00:32:12
Speaker
Very nice to meet you. Perfect. Thanks. It's good to meet you too. I really appreciate it. It's a good conversation. Yeah, absolutely. And take care. Thanks. I'll talk to you later. This is something rather than nothing.
00:32:40
Speaker
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00:33:00
Speaker
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00:33:28
Speaker
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