… Macon Leigh

1. What’s the time of the day when you feel most like yourself?

It’s not a specific time, but I always feel most like myself when I am lost in a task – be it writing or working or talking with a friend. I feel most me when I am engaged – mind, body, soul – in whatever is in front of me. I like to do. I feel most like me when I am doing.

2. What’s your coffee order? 

Always iced. I am not a warm beverage person.

Either a black cold brew or iced coffee with sugar or stevia or whatever sweetener is available or, if I am feeling very particularly like basic white lady I am, I’ll get a vanilla sweet cream cold brew.

3. Describe yourself in three words?

Never not trying.

4. What do you think of possums?

So, confession time, I am not an animal person. I mean, I don’t hate them and like looking at them. I’m a queer person who loves being outside, so obviously I’m very into dogs. But I never went through an animal phase as a kid. I never had ZooBooks. I didn’t watched Steve Erwin. It just wasn’t my hyper fixation.

This has left quite the gap in my basic animal knowledge.

Not long ago, like just a few weeks ago, Liz Grey (noted podcast co-host and absolute badass human) came to visit me in Arkansas. We were driving down the street and a giant possum darted out into the road causing me to exclaim, “Holy shit, look how big that possum is!”

Liz looked over at me, “What did you just call it?”

“A possum.”

“Macon,” you have to imagine Liz’s voice holding back laugher while at the same time being very kind, “that is an armadillo.”

“Right. Aren’t they the same thing?”

And that, my friends, is how I learned that a possum and an armadillo are not, in fact, the same thing.

So, what I think of possums is this – they are way cuter than armadillos, but probably could use more natural armor as their primary predators – at least in the south – are F-250s.

5. Who’s the most fascinating person you’ve ever met? 

I have started and stopped the answer to this question so many times, because the simple truth is this: I am afflicted with a condition where I find everyone I meet and spend time with and talk to endlessly fascinating.

6. What makes you smile? 

Watching someone I love do/talk about/engage with something they love.

7. Do you believe in soulmates?

Yes.

8. What is the most obscure thing you are or were into? 

I was VERY into The Babysitter’s Club. VERY INTO IT. For longer than was developmentally appropriate. Like, read and tried to collect all the books and all the variants – even the Little Sister books (Don’t tell anyone, okay? No one can know I give one single shit about Karen. Can you imagine the humiliation?).

For those interested, I am a Kristy rising with a Mary Ann moon and Dawn ascending.

9. What makes you cry?

Great art. Not so great art. Cheesy commercials. Getting my feelings hurt. Being very angry. Sports… oh, um, turns out almost everything makes me cry.

10. What personality trait gets you most often in trouble?

My chronic people pleasing combined with my deep need to be liked.

11.  What is the one thing you wish you could quit?

Procrastination. What would it be like to just… be able to do things before panic kicks in and you have no choice but to act or fail?

12. Who’d play you if Hollywood made a movie about your life?

I’d be down for anyone as long as they are southern and really good at pratfalls.

13. In a crowded room, what makes you notice a woman?

Kindness.

14. What is the assumption people make often about you but it happens to be completely wrong?

If people only know me from the internet they often think I am a VERY SERIOUS PERSON and it turns out I am, in fact, one of the goofiest humans in the game.

15. What would be the title of your autobiography? 

Trying so Hard: The Macon Leigh Story

16. Three women you’d have over for dinner and what would you serve? 

Currently Living

Liz Grey, Mikki Kendall, and Chloé Cooper Jones

Soul food, cold beer, good bourbon, and banana pudding for dessert.

Any time in history

Mary Oliver, Zora Neale Hurston, and Edna St. Vincent Millay

I’m not as concerned with the food here, as there is no way this doesn’t end up with the food forgotten as we drink black coffee and red wine while smoking cigarettes, I regret the next day but no one else does.

17. What is the one memory you’d give anything to relive?

Well, you see, um… maybe this one isn’t for print. ;-)

18. What’s in your fridge right now?

I run a summer camp for my day job, and I just finished camp up. So, in my fridge, very literally, are the condiments that wouldn’t go bad over the summer, diet coke, topo chico, and left-over Thai food I ordered for dinner two nights ago I forgot about until I went to check the fridge to answer this question.

19. If you could choose one song to be played every time you enter a room, what song would that be and why? 

Rocky Top!

Because: V O L S. V O L S. V O L S. GO VOLS GO!

20. Funniest/best/saddest/proudest (choose one) thing that ever happened to you as a sapphic fiction author?

As I am writing this my book isn’t yet published (one hour and counting), so I don’t feel qualified to answer this question as an author yet. I will say that I am endlessly thankful for the incredible people writing a book has brought into my life. People think of writing as such a solitary act, and maybe the first couple drafts are, but I have never experienced anything so communal as putting a book out into the world. It’s such a gift, this community and the people who have helped me through this harrowing and incredibly beautiful process. I’ll never stop thanking the universe for this moment and these people.

Macon’s amazing debut The Flight Risk - and left me say this again - it is absolutely amazing - is available here: https://mybook.to/MaconLeighTFR