Senaa Ahmad, "The Skin of a Teenage Boy Is Not Alive"

It’s December 18. Senaa Ahmad, a Canadian short-fiction writer, has never been that bored.

How would you describe your story?

SENAA AHMAD: High-school horror, cults, possession, a demon, a friendship on the cusp of change.

When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?

SA: I wrote this story in the fall of 2018. I’d just spent the summer at a writing workshop in San Diego and it was this frantic, anxious, incredible experience where almost every day I was reading other people’s writing or trying to scrape away at my own. My fellow writers at the workshop produced so many spectacular horror stories, and reading them made me keen to write my own horror-tinged short story. The writing process didn’t vary too much from my usual (lots of teeth-gnashing and despair).

What kind of research went into this story?

SA: I was writing some historically inspired stories at the time, so part of the appeal of this story was how little I needed to research. I can’t remember if I read or watched a lot of horror in preparation, but I did think about those works that ooze tone, like It Follows and Charles Burns’s Black Hole comics, and how they managed to accomplish their distinct sense of horror and atmosphere.

What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can’t?

SA: Short fiction’s such a wonderfully slippery form—there’s so little time and space to distill any complexity, emotion, or narrative. I particularly love the experimentation and chaos and breadth of short stories. Reading or writing them for a sustained period of time feels like a detour into a mad scientist's lab.

Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?

SA: I have a sparse internet presence but I do maintain a website and a very occasional newsletter.

What's the best gift you've ever been given?

SA: The best gifts have also been the most intangible: time, attention, kindness, opening previously closed doors. I also got a lovely engraved pen necklace from a friend in tenth grade that’s still very meaningful to me.

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