by Zachary Shea, M.F.A. ’27

我读到的第一篇梅格纳·迈索尔的作品是贴在霍林斯大学研究生休息室门上的一首诗，不过直到现在，在读完她的小说并有机会与她交谈之后，我才注意到她的名字出现在这幅墙上的文学作品上。 在阅读梅根最近的小说时，我被她疯狂的创造力、对超现实的巧妙运用以及同时引发痛苦和希望的能力所打动。 当你还是学生的时候，这些技能有时候会让你觉得遥不可及。 但这里有一个提醒，她也曾经是一个学生，她的一块碎片仍然贴在门上。

梅格纳于2022年毕业于霍林斯大学，获得小说文学硕士学位。 Since then, her writing has been featured in 《耶鲁评论》《马萨诸塞评论》《大胆报, and other venues. 最近，她的短篇小说《修理店》获得了2025年巴里·汉娜小说奖。 她是2022-2023年斯坦贝克研究员，前锡屋和面包面包学者，目前任教于巴克内尔大学。 Her debut story collection, 让我们所有的鬼魂离开, will be published by West Virginia University Press in Fall 2026.

“我写了很多关于家庭的东西，”迈索尔说，“以及归属的问题，以及我们从情感、身体和精神上代代相传的东西。 I’m the daughter of South Indian immigrants, and I think that identity definitely comes into my writing a lot. Many of the stories in my collection right now are from the points of view of women who are South Asian, 赌球在线 different ages, and they’re dealing with questions of memory and belonging, and of the body and what it holds on to, what it lets go of, and what happens with grief through the generations. 我们如何通过家族传承损失，以及它如何转变。 随着时间的推移，它会变成什么样子，它能变成美丽的东西吗？”

2025年10月，我有机会通过Zoom与Meghana讨论了小说，我们通过写作获得的真相，超现实主义，以及同时保持绝望和希望的必要性。

为了语法和清晰，以下采访经过了浓缩和编辑.

你精通各种体裁，所以我很好奇：为什么是小说？ 最近是什么把你拉向这个方向的？

我喜欢小说，因为我可以写这些对我来说永远存在的问题，也可以问“如果……会怎么样？” 我真的很喜欢这种玩世不遇的思考“如果发生了这个会怎么样？”或者“如果发生了那个会怎么样？”而不是被某种基于事实的真相所束缚。 There’s some other kind of truth that I get to seek while I’m writing fiction that, for me, feels like emotional truth. 我想通过写作和把这些片段组合在一起来探索和理解更多的东西。 I can take pieces of my own experiences and of what I’ve witnessed and put it all together in a certain way, along with that question of “what if?” and then I feel like I can get to a place where I understand something better.

你最近发表的两件作品《囤积者》（Hoarder）和《修理店》（Repair Shop）都有这种疯狂的创意和幻想元素，比如住在车里的鬼魂，以及和你分手时变成围巾的人。 你的这些奇思妙想从何而来？

A lot of what I’ve been experiencing in the past few years, which I think collectively we’ve all been experiencing in our own ways, is grief and loss and the many forms these experiences can take. 我确实觉得悲伤和失去有些令人困惑。 这些经历至少改变了我与时间和逻辑的关系。

It’s partly living through the pandemic that transformed my relationship to time. 然后，就我个人而言，我的家庭发生了一些事情。 大约两年前，一棵大树倒在我家的房子上，把它毁了。 不久之后，我的祖母在印度去世了。 之后，我遇到了一些非常奇怪的事情。 在看到我的父亲为失去母亲而悲伤，看到我的家人在失去家园的经历中，看到我自己经历了这么多年的转变，感觉自己既在现实中，又在现实之外，我开始用一种更超现实的方式写作。 It felt like the boundaries of the world as we see it didn’t feel sufficient to explore the kind of grief that I was going through, and that my characters were going through too.

我想问你哪个更重要，故事更真实的方面还是更超现实的方面，但听起来是后者。

我认为我的故事总是来自一个非常真实、接地气的地方。 然后这些奇妙的元素从中生长出来。 我真的很喜欢有现实基础的投机故事。 Some very specific texture of it, like, “oh, the character is eating this McDonald’s burger,” or whatever. There’s something that brings us back to the real world.

Even when I’m using strangeness, or an otherworldly element in a story, I do so to talk about an experience that is very human. I don’t think I can get away from the fact that I do tend to write about heavier topics. But I feel like it doesn’t seem true to life to write a story that is entirely weighed down by grief because, in times of my life when I’m experiencing grief, when I’m moving through periods of loss, I’m also laughing. 生活中总会发生一些荒诞或有趣的怪事，但总会有一些小小的希望。 It was one of my professors at Hollins, Karen Bender, who talked in class about story endings and how the most powerful story endings are those that hold despair and hope together, and that it’s not simply one or the other.

把这些东西结合在一起是我在故事集中真正感兴趣的。 为这些角色找到一条通往希望的道路，让他们感觉真实。 I don’t think any of their lives by the end of the story are resolved, or any of their problems are solved. But they do feel a greater sense of connection to the world, whether it’s to a friend from their past or between a mother and a daughter.

你认为那些奇幻或超现实的元素是否帮助这些角色走向了那个希望？

我想是的。 That’s something that I definitely found through writing. 它帮助我让他们走向希望。 It allowed me to feel a bit freer and a bit more playful in the writing and notice the parts of the worlds that they’re in that are funny or absurd, and how that can bring delight and pleasure. I don’t believe that any of us experience emotions in isolation. There’s a lot of experience in the world that is simultaneous. It can’t be a one-note experience, and the absurdity or the otherworldly elements allow me to reach into these other notes.

说到你即将出版的《让我们所有的鬼魂离开》（Let All Our Ghosts leave），你在构思这些故事的时候知道它们是相互联系的吗？ 还是你在写故事的过程中发现了什么？

更多的是后者。 I wrote the first story eight years ago, and through all that time, it’s gone through a lot of different iterations. 这个合集是从我本科时写的故事开始的，后来在霍林斯，我认为它们是有联系的。 但在我读完文学硕士课程后，我找到了一个经纪人，我们把这本书作为“故事中的小说”提交给了几个地方。 我得到了很多非常漂亮的传球，但这让我重新考虑我真正想要做的是什么。

然后我从那个项目中抽出一些时间来写作。 I just started having fun, writing things and responding to what I was experiencing in life and not really thinking about it as “Oh, I’m expanding this into a larger story collection.” 然后我开始看我所拥有的东西，看到一些新故事在期刊上找到了住所，并从小说中的故事中寻找一些原始故事，发现其中一些片段可以独立存在。 I realized that there were a lot of themes that were overlapping through all the stories that I’d written over this time: memory and grief and what grows from it, and ancestry, and mothers and daughters. 发现它们都以某种更大的方式联系在一起，让我明白我有一个故事集。

你是如何平衡写作的创造性和专业性的？ 在此基础上如何平衡教学？

When I feel like all these things work together, that’s when I feel best. For instance, when I’m teaching a class and we’re talking about how to build scenes, and then I can come home and look at a scene in something new I’m writing or in one of these stories that I’m editing, and I can actually feel inspired by something that a student said in class. 当我真正融入这种能量时，它推动了我自己的写作，让整个过程变得如此鲜活。

但是，在实践中，肯定会有平衡有点不正常的时候。 When I’m spending a lot of time on class planning, or applying to things and writing cover letters. I definitely struggle when I neglect my own writing, but it’s just necessary, right? 你有截止日期或者你必须做的事情。 But I do think that I feel best when I’m writing regularly and when that’s the center of all of these experiences.

你认为在霍林斯大学的时光对你的写作生涯有什么影响？

I wrote so much in that program that I look at today and I’m still working with. So many seeds were planted for me as a writer there, and it’s because it was really two years where what really mattered was that I was writing and I was doing it in community with other people.

理查德·迪拉德（Richard Dillard）和斯科特·布莱克伍德（Scott Blackwood）是我共事过的两位教授，他们看过我的作品，对我影响很大。 斯科特·布莱克伍德，他死于渐冻症，这让我非常非常难过，他是我论文的指导老师。 In a lot of ways, these stories feel really connected to him, how supportive he was, and how much he believed in the work, even when I didn’t really believe in it.

你对霍林斯大学的学生或攻读硕士学位的学生有什么建议吗？

It’s such a special time, so make the most of it and don’t be afraid to write “bad work,” to write work that doesn’t make sense, to ask a lot of questions, to ask professors to meet individually and talk more about something you’re working on. 霍林斯大学的教授们都很开放，他们真的希望你能成长为一个作家和一个人。 And so, you know, don’t be afraid.

你可以阅读一些Meghana的作品 meghanamysore.com.