This past fall, theNewerYork, one of my favorite literary websites and purveyors of all things weird, launched a bureaucratic literature contest. The idea is that as theNewerYork builds its own experimental city of writing, this city clearly needs a governing body. And what is government without forms? The contest asked participants to “take the dull bureaucracy of paperwork, legal documents, laws, and forms and tell some stories, make some art.”
I decided to join in the fun and submitted my own piece, “Church Exit Interview Form.” In the vein of an exit interview one would participate in upon quitting a job, I took my own personal experiences of “quitting” religion and applied it to a handy dandy form. Sometimes it can be wildly cathartic to take some of the harder experiences you have and find a way to laugh at them, which is what I attempted here. I earned a spot in the top ten finalists for the piece, which was a nice bonus.
Click the link here to read it. Happy reading and stay weird!
