Jordan Kisner’s writing has appeared in n+1, The Atlantic, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The Believer, and others. Her essay “Jesus Raves” won a 2016 Pushcart Prize, her essay “Thin Places” was selected for publication in the Best American Essays 2016, and her first book, Thin Places: Essays From In Between, was published earlier this month by Farrar Straus & Giroux. Kisner has an MFA in literary nonfiction from Columbia University, and she has been awarded fellowships and residencies from PioneerWorks, the Millay Colony for the Arts, Art OMI, and others. She is a teacher of creative writing at Columbia University, she is part of the creative team at Tables of Contents, and she is a mentor-editor for The Op-Ed Project. Kisner grew up in California and now lives in New York.

EB: How did you start writing in general and nonfiction in particular? How and why were you drawn to pursuing an MFA in creative nonfiction?

JK: I read obsessively as a kid and loved taking notes, making up stories, etc., but I didn’t think seriously about writing until I was graduating from college. I’d planned and trained to be an actor, but started to have a sinking feeling when I was about twenty-one that pursuing acting as a career would make me miserable. I started casting around for other things I might care enough about to sustain a career and writing seemed both the hardest and the most intriguing. After a few years of flailing (and working in magazines) I decided to get an MFA because I realized that if I wanted to write well, I was going to have to devote a few years to studying it properly and thinking about not much else.

EB: I loved your essay collection Thin Places for so many reasons, and I have so many questions I want to ask you, but first: how did the collection come about? I love that the subtitle is Essays From In Between and how your essays are on such varied subject matter such as feeling in between races or sexualities or religious beliefs or even in between life and death. Did you come up with the concept of “essays in between” first and then write the essays that fit that theme, or did you notice the “in-between-ness” in essays you were already writing and go that way?

JK: Thank you! I finished the title essay several years ago and thought that there were so many other ways I wanted to engage with the notion of a “thin place” that I just kept going. Signposting the phrase “in-betweenness” came very late in the process—more or less as I was trying to figure out a subtitle—but “thin places,” a concept that was a guiding principle as I was working on the essays, is all about liminality, about an opening in between two places or states that are ordinarily separate. I just thought the subtitle “Essays on Liminality” didn’t have much of a ring to it.

EB: Something else I really loved about your essays was how you blended your personal experiences with research. (Very Eula Biss and Maggie Nelson of you!) I’d love to hear about your research process for writing these essays, because several of them involved you heading to Utah or Maine or other far-flung places. How did you decide where you needed to travel to do research? Are you someone who does all her research up front before you start writing or do you move back and forth between research and writing?

JK: I do move back and forth between research and writing. Usually, I’ll get struck with a curiosity and then read and read until I run into something or someone in the real world that I just have to get on a plane for. I love to travel for research, but I’ll avoid it if I possibly can simply because it’s expensive. In some cases, the travel was necessary so that I could witness an event in person (like with the debutante ball in “Habitus”); in others, I was able to get an assignment (like with the medical examiners story) that let me report to my heart’s content.

EB: And then how do you decide how much of yourself to include or not include in any given essay? How do you find that right blend of the personal and the outside information?

JK: I’d prefer to include as little of myself and my life as possible (or to be excessively vague, which isn’t a great solution) but given that most of the essays in this book stem from one or another deep personal fascinations, I kept running into the problem that obscuring myself completely would leave the reader completely confused about why they are, for example, reading several pages about ritual tattooing. I include myself where my own motivations are necessary for explanatory reasons or where I can be a good proxy for questions or concerns the reader may have.

EB: I loved our MFA program for many reasons [EDITOR’S NOTE: E.B. and Jordan were part of the same nonfiction cohort at Columbia, starting in fall 2012], though something I do find frustrating is how few practical tips we were given for how to conduct interviews when doing research. Judging by your essays in Thin Places, you are now very experienced with throwing yourself into new communities and talking to strangers for the sake of research. What tips or advice do you have for asking good questions, feeling comfortable, and doing the most helpful, productive interviews? Do you have a favorite recording device or note-taking strategy?

JK: I’ve mostly been making it up as I’ve gone along. My prevailing instinct is to quietly observe and pipe up with questions as they arise rather than to Conduct Interviews. I try to watch hard and write down as many inaudible details (expressions, smells, the way people move in space) as possible, since the recorder won’t pick them up, and I’ll forget them later. The best advice I ever got about interviewing was to restrain your own impulse to fill conversational space. Pose smart, genuine questions, and then shut up.

EB: Ha, yes, “shut up” was also the best interviewer advice I ever got. All I want to is talk to fill silences, and that is actually a very bad quality to have when doing an interview.

Now, a lot of your essays are about people you’ve just met—evangelical Christians, forensic pathologists, Mormon activists—but two of the most powerful essays in the collection, in my opinion, are about your mom and about your partner. What is it like to write about strangers versus people you know and love extremely well? Is one harder or easier for you? What advice do you have when writing about other people in general?

JK: I find it marginally easier to write about people I don’t know because I’m less worried about navigating a personal relationship, though writing about anyone requires ethical and emotional consideration. It’s hard to be written about! I am always anxious to represent people fairly and in a way that won’t cause unnecessary pain. When it’s someone I love, that concern amplifies a little, depending on the subject, but I rarely write something about someone I love without having expressed the same thing to them directly.

EB: Writing involves spending a lot of time alone, I find, even when doing research—long hours in the car traveling to meet sources—and I find it is really easy for me to get stuck in my own head. Having fellow writer friends to talk ideas through with is the only thing that keeps me sane. Can you speak a bit about your writing and artistic community, and how that community influences or helps your writing process? Who do you turn to for support when writing?

JK: I don’t usually like to talk about writing that I’m working on, but in the many times when I’m feeling bored/frustrated/lonely/confused and want general support, I text or call my friends who are writing at their own desks (novels; dissertations; songs; magazine features). I’m lucky to have a lot of self-employed artists in my life, and so there’s abundant and excellent company for commiserating, pep talks, resource sharing, and celebrating.

EB: I loved how in the acknowledgements of your book you thank several writers you’ve never met, but whose work was influential in your own writing. What are some essay collections that provided guidance and inspiration for you while writing Thin Places? Or books in general? I know that sometimes a novel or short story can actually heavily influence me while writing memoir or a personal essay.

JK: Many, many. Among the recent (i.e. roughly contemporary) books: Annie Dillard’s Holy the Firm; John Jeremiah Sullivan’s Pulphead; Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams; Toni Morrison’s Jazz; Mary Ruefle’s Madness, Rack and Honey; Anne Carson’s Short Talks; Jericho Brown’s The New Testament; Mark Doty’s Still Life With Oyster and Lemon; Hilton Als’s White Girls.

EB: In general, what do you find most challenging about writing nonfiction? And what do you find most rewarding?

JK: I’m always navigating how to balance my obligation (and desire) to tell the truth as directly and compellingly as possible and my equally strong desire to consider the feelings of the people I write about. What I find the most rewarding is that I get to pursue eclectic curiosities and talk to fascinating people and call that a work day.

EB: Finally, what is a favorite passage of nonfiction by a fellow non-man writer?

JK: From Helen Macdonald’s essay “Why Do We Feed Wild Animals?”:

White-­haired, with a faintly aristocratic glamour, Mrs. Leslie-­Smith lived alone in a wooden bungalow full of books and glossy houseplants a few doors from my childhood home. One warm autumn evening more than 30 years ago, she invited my mother and me to watch her nightly ritual. She scattered broken cookies outside her garden doors, where they glittered dustily under the light of an outside lamp. We sat in the darkened room and waited.