‘Choose Your Own Adventure: Inventing a Form to Fit Your Content’ with Tenacity Plys

Found-document fiction can be dismissed as a gimmick, but Tenacity Plys’s new novella Family Curse – Field Notebooks (1880-2020) proves that when the form fits the content, that’s when the magic happens. Ten will give a reading, then discuss how xe crafted the form to fit the content while developing the story. Plus, xe’ll give a writing prompt so you can try out the same principles yourself!

➡️ Video Stream Link

📔 They say in town that every generation, fairies lure a member of Virgil’s family into the local woods, never to be seen again. Virgil doesn’t really care about that; they’re just squatting at their aunt’s vacant house during quarantine. But one night, they’re awoken by a knocking at the back door that leads them into a tangle of family secrets, and a mystery that’s as heartbreaking as it is chilling.

📔 To avoid disappearing themself, Virgil has to piece together journal entries from three generations of their relatives, who all spent their lives wondering why their siblings were taken. If Virgil can solve the puzzle, they won’t just save themselves — they’ll put more than a hundred years’ worth of family history to rest. This story of a neurodivergent family’s struggle to understand themselves is by turns spooky, funny, sad, and hopeful despite everything.

👤 Tenacity Plys is a nonbinary autistic writer based in Brooklyn, with publications in Hobart, Ethel, Bullshit Lit, Alien Buddha, Word Gathering, and Pif Magazine. Xir Pushcart-nominated story “I Love My AI Son” will be featured in Alien Buddha’s Best of 2022 anthology at the end of this year. You can find more of xir work at tenacityplys.com!

Saturday, October 15th at 2:00 p.m. at Iffy Books