Ariel Marken Jack: 'The way I fight back is through my writing'

We've already heard from Linda Mannheim and Richard Smyth in this Winter series, and now it's time for Ariel Marken Jack and their story The Bread Boy.

Marken Jack tells us how their writing began in isolation, flat on their back with chronic fatigue syndrome. This debilitating illness is giving rise to writing they call "the most 21st-century form of literature that I can imagine… Who among us doesn't have that feeling that almost everything in life is completely outside of our control?"

They reflect on the second guessing common to all those marginalised by the patriarchy: "This thing happened. This was bad. Was it really that bad?" And they pay tribute to the value of connecting with those who have had similar experiences.

They also wax lyrical about the alchemy of making bread and the joys of making pickles – a "vote of confidence in the future".

"It takes about three weeks to make a good jar of sauerkraut," Marken Jack explains. "So you're slicing the cabbage and you’re going, 'I'm going to be here in three weeks. And this cabbage is going to be amazing'."

Over the next three weeks at Fictionable we’ll be hearing from Robert Neuwirth and Liam Hogan.

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