Perfectionism, Art and Institutional Discrimination: A Q&A With Jamison Shea, Author of I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me

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While this is your debut novel, you have a wide array of creative ventures. Writing has always been a big aspect of your life — what encouraged you to be a writer above everything else?

I’ve always been a big reader — I got my first library card after I saw Matilda (1996). I thought I was Matilda. Books and bookstores have always been powerful to me, and so writing felt like a very punk, DIY way of having power too: I started rewriting story endings when I didn’t like them.

What authors/books have inspired you as a writer, and were there any that helped you while writing I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast Is Me? 

Hate to be a cliché but Edgar Allan Poe has been the biggest influence — I read too much Poe as a kid because I loved how dark and haunted his poems feel, even the “happy,” romantic ones. Even now, I keep coming back, so I think naturally, it bled into my voice and how I wrote BEAST. I didn’t think it was horror at all; in my head, I was writing an adventure comedy. 

And also, Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray was a very obvious inspiration for my premise: the wealth and corruption, how much beauty, wickedness and tragedy go hand-in-hand. I even reread it when I was in Paris revising an earlier draft of BEAST. 

Your debut juxtaposes the beauty of art against the reality of racism and leaving everything on the line in order to succeed. Given your extensive performance background, how much did “real life” influence your fictional writing?

Well, I’m not a ballerina at all, so the specificity of ballet comes entirely from research and imagination. However, I was a classical flautist at an elite, private academy and then a hip hop dancer at an elite, private university, so the emotions of ostracization, anger, desperate hope and erasure were all pulled from my own experiences. It didn’t matter if it was music or dance, creative writing or advertising, there was always hostility from the institutions towards people who were poor and/or culturally “other” that got in the way of the work itself. 
 
I once tore the stitches in my mouth so I could be first, only to watch second place get a prize for losing. That’s the real horror.

Laure’s desperation for perfection is a major driver in the story, but it’s also her biggest downfall. Why do you think so many artforms require perfection above all when it so often stifles creativity and individuality? 

I blame money. Artists are competing with each other constantly for fame, prestige — which translates to money. In our world of capitalists, it doesn’t matter how creative or original or good your art is, it needs to be the perfect commodity. Laure strives to be perfect because that’s the only way she knows she’ll be chosen, taken care of and treated like a person. Then she finds an alternative. 

What books are you reading and recommending right now?

I’m currently reading Miranda Sun’s If I Have to Be Haunted — I love a horror-romance combo, and what’s better than an enemies-to-lovers ghost story? At the same time, I’m finally working my way through House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski to reset my brain on storytelling and what horror means, what it looks like, the formats it could take. 
 
As for recommendations, I’ve been screaming from the rooftops over The Spirit Bares Its Teeth by Andrew Joseph White, which has a little romance, a lot of gore, feral girls and a trans boy banding together to resist institutionalization and the abuse rife within. Also, I’m a sucker for novels in verse, so I also loved and recommend Hannah Sawyerr’s All The Fighting Parts.