Jennifer Bannan’s latest short story collection, Tamiami Trail: Miami Stories, was released in October 2025. Her first collection, Inventing Victor, also from Carnegie Mellon University Press, was published in 2003. She has had stories in the Autumn House Press anthology, Keeping the Wolves at Bay; in literary journals including the Kenyon Review online, ACM, Passages North, Chicago Quarterly Review, Exposition Review, Eclectica Magazine; and more. Together with Hattie Fletcher, she is the creator of Thinking Out Loud, a civic engagement reading series that takes place on front porches throughout Pittsburgh. Tamiami Trail tells the stories of women and girls in Miami, Florida. Their tales encompass different time periods and identities, but they are united by the vivid, chaotic city where they must contend with fraught relationships, societal pressures, the rewards and punishments of bringing hidden desires to light, and disasters both personal and far larger than themselves. I saw myself in all of Bannan’s protagonists, as will any woman who lived for years in a major city or grew up being told she should get used to having a boot to her neck. I felt their every fear, triumph, and despair as they fielded professional failures, everyday violence and harassment, and doomed romantic partners in search of emotional connection, individual identity, and artistic muses. I had an illuminating conversation with Bannan over video chat, where we discussed the real-life dystopia of modern marketing, why society’s faults get blamed on the individual, and the beauty and brutality of Miami. *** Angeline Stratz: Your last book, Inventing Victor, came out in 2003, and you’re back with nineteen short stories in Tamiami Trail. I’m so curious about how you assembled this collection. Did you always envision every story winding up in the same book? Jennifer Bannan: Definitely not. (laughs) The stories came along over the course of 20 years. I got divorced in that time span. I got remarried; my second husband, Brian, died of pancreatic cancer. To me, my real themes are consumerism, absurdity, and the struggle against emptiness. And a complaint about the way we insist that the individual has to fix these problems instead of everybody figuring out how to fix society. That’s not an elevator pitch kind of a theme, though. So when I gave the stories to my editor, she was like, “What’s tying all these together?” I said, “A lot of them take place in Miami.” I decided I wanted it to be Miami from a woman’s perspective, because the harrowing nature of society when you’re a woman was really on my mind. Miami is a very macho, kind of violent place, or it was. The little, tiny vignettes that are peppered throughout were ones I wrote in preparation for turning this in to my editor. She said, “I think we need some things to break it up a little bit.” I can’t often say that I have a great time writing. It’s hard for me, but I loved doing those. It was really cathartic. AS: The first story, “This Crisis Brought to You by Me,” has a subtly futuristic, speculative bent. There’s the novel concept of selling corporate sponsorships for hurricanes, plus a dystopian undertone lightly concealed by the main character’s point of view. It’s almost apocalyptic, with the storm threatening physical and personal worlds. What kind of experiences or media inspired this premise? JB: Ever since I started working in marketing, I’ve been pretty obsessed with how people are spoken to by marketers—and they don’t even really know it. If you ask somebody what controlling forces are in their lives, they will talk about their parents and religion, but they rarely say marketing, and marketing is so down our throats, 24/7. Let me tell you a story: I had an account, they made fire protection equipment. One of the things that we had was thermal cameras, so if it was really dark and smoky, you could still maybe find a body and drag it out of the fire and save somebody’s life. My boss, he’s like, “Jen, what do you think about calling the news stations and saying, ‘That fire that just happened, it was really terrible. You know, what if they had had a thermal camera . . .’” And I was like, “Yeah, I’m not making that call.” It was ambulance chasing! Then, about 20 years ago, when Al Qaeda had some visibility on the internet, they used to behead people [on video]. I admit, I watched a couple of them, because I’m like, “Oh, I guess this is the world now, we watch people being beheaded.” And there would be an ad! So my mind was on that kind of stuff when I was writing [that story]. I don’t think dystopia is only in the future. This was a more official, standardized, “Oh, it’s all very normal that we’re gonna profit off of this disaster.” AS: In “You’re Always Game,” another businesswoman character, Meira, resorts to unorthodox means to expand her success. Sometimes I felt like she wanted to put herself a cut above her male partners—business or romantic—and other times, I felt like she was aligning with exploitative business practices pioneered by men. Why do these characters feel the need to undertake such risky endeavors? JB: I think I started writing this story before that book by [Sheryl Sandberg]. I’ve always been a little bit obsessed since it came out. She was part of Facebook, like the Chief Operating Officer, and she wrote a book called Lean In. It always struck me as an odd concept, because I don’t think the corporate world is really an ideal place. Why not change it to be more emblematic of what we’re all about—men and women—instead of “lean in” to be more like a man? I think that they were like, “Yeah, if you’re a CEO, you want to be on top, you’re thinking out of the box. You’re doing crazy, kooky things, you’re living wild.” And the characters in the story were acting like businessmen, definitely. I don’t know that they really cared about being above the men, but yeah. I left the corporate world for about four years, maybe longer. When I first got there, it was just like, “Man’s world.” Not fun. Then I re-entered the corporate world around 2018, and I was really surprised to find way more sensitive behaviors. We talked about empathy and we had sensitivity trainings. I do think great strides have been made in bringing something about to counter all this cutthroat nonsense that, unfortunately, the mostly male world insists upon. But I think women in the ’90s and even the 2000s—especially in leadership roles—were like, “You’ve got to play it the way that it’s played.” So I don’t think many women were really thinking about changing it. They were like, “Let me see what I can get while I’m here.” But it must have been a contingent of women, I would think, who helped change the corporate environment somewhat. AS: The book is named after the road that connects Tampa to Miami, and Miami feels like a character itself in every story. I felt its presence strongly in “Museness,” which takes place at Monroe Station, a real-life rest stop on the Trail. The bewitching descriptions of the environments do so much to convey the theme of searching for diamonds in the rough. What is your approach to weaving the setting into the fabric of a story? JB: In a first draft, I don’t think the Everglades was quite coming through enough, so I did a lot of rewriting on this piece. My wish was that it would be clear that [the main character May] realizes that the Everglades are her muse. The place was everything to her. This wacky guy [she meets] was just sort of, like, interesting, but really more of a clock—helping her measure out the years and become closer to this place. I grew up going to the Everglades when I was little. My father did have a camp, and we would go out there, and it was just totally in my bones. So it wasn’t really hard to evoke the place, because I had all the details, from Spanish moss to cypresses and the heat when it’s off-season—the best time to be there is in the winter, because it’s bearable—and just the smells and the blue sky. The sky is this really strange baby blue, almost like a powdery blue. It’s so pretty, and yet it’s not traditionally a beautiful place. It’s a strange, ghostly place. AS: The real Monroe Station burned to the ground in 2016 due to negligence by a visitor. Tamiami Trail also mentions destructive storms, environmental conservation, and the depletion of nature. What are the merits of preserving places through fiction? Especially today, when it feels like any place could be gone tomorrow. JB: I’m definitely really worried about the environment. One of the things that I think that people have done wrong, when they try to advocate for action around stemming climate change, is they haven’t talked enough about health. There’s a lot of proof that burning oil and gas is extremely bad for our bodies. Miami could be underwater soon because of rising sea levels. It’s just changing so fast. And I lost a husband who was very dear to me. I wish that I could get it all down, write it all down about the things that we lose. My mentor, Sharon Dilworth, has said that she thinks that fiction is ultimately about loss . . . that makes a lot of sense to me, because we’re losing every minute. But you gain something as you lose. You gain perspective or depth or strength, or beauty. So let’s do good things with loss, but let’s also try to stem loss where we can. AS: I also really find it disappointing how much blame is being put on us as individuals, like, “It’s your fault because you didn’t recycle.” JB: Yes. Meanwhile, oil and gas companies are being subsidized. It’s disastrous, and to blame the consumer is just outright criminal, in my opinion. AS: I feel like art has always been the way that we voice that frustration. JB: Yeah, sometimes that’s all there is. AS: In “Tidal,” the protagonist Audra has just had an abortion, and more women in other stories tell their partners they do not want children. Meanwhile in “Power Shovel” and “Lobscousce,” mothers struggle to pay full attention to their children due to turmoil in their relationships. It feels like the pressure of motherhood, or a lack of motherhood, looms large in this book. JB: Men don’t really have that, do they? When it comes to kids, so much comes down to, “Do you or don’t you?” I do want to say that for most of the 2000s, maybe the teens, maybe even in the ’90s, I was noticing this trend in writing about women who just didn’t have the motherly instinct, or they hated being a mother. I really thought it was dishonest, because [the struggle] really doesn’t—in my opinion—come down to what the one woman is feeling. It’s a whole network of stuff. I loved being a mom, but I had a lot on my side. I was working from home; I didn’t have a commute to deal with; I had a helpful husband for some of it. It was easier for me than it is for a lot of people. For all those characters you mentioned, there’s these demands on these women, despite the stuff they already have on their plate—to be exceptional as a good wife or to make the decision [about motherhood]. It’s like a mother has to be “all in” with mothering, but then, even as she’s doing the hard work, the world sort of has its hand out like, “What else do you have for me?” It’s just so much pressure. AS: The question of “Will you or will you not?” was something I was thinking of. I feel like in the cases where a woman in the book straight-up says, “I’m not having kids,” it was almost as if she were answering a question that either the reader might have, or that society asks of us. JB: I think it was important to me to write about it now, when “Are you or aren’t you?” sometimes isn’t within your power, like with the Dobbs decision. We’re in this really tough place. I also kind of wanted to write a little bit about consumerism, where [the male lead of “Tidal”] has got this sort of magazine version of “How we are when we’re in our 20s and our 30s,” and [Audra] just feels so dirty and visceral. Like this biological thing that doesn’t fit with his vision. His black-and-white thinking says, “No, you go live with that situation because you’re a biological being.” It’s another way of othering. AS: Firearms are a prominent motif, making literal and figurative appearances throughout the collection. Guns can be both protective and offensive tools. How does this dichotomy relate to the city of Miami, in Tamiami Trail and your own experience? JB: I don’t think of guns as protection . . . I think of them as pretty much 95% bad. I have three or four people in my life who committed suicide by gun. And what if there hadn’t been a gun? What if it just hadn’t been handy? I think most of those times, the gun was in the house ostensibly for protection. All of those examples that are in [the book] happened in real life. They’ve been fictionalized, but there’ve been so many close calls in my little life. I’ve actually thought about writing or putting together an anthology of just close-call gun stories, because everyone I know seems to have one. I feel like a lot of people I know have two or three . . . and that’s close-call stories, that’s not school shootings, which we also get every single day. These stories, the ones [that take place] in the ’90s, happened before Columbine. I was right out of college when Columbine happened, and that was really the beginning of this nauseating run that we’ve been on, where I just cannot believe we’re still in this situation. Now that you mention it, I can think of my dad pulling out the gun to try to get Brian’s attention when he was asleep in the woods. I hated him doing that. I was so angry at him for that, but what am I gonna do? He’s a gun guy. AS: I loved the color symbolism in “Pulling Plaid,” where teen girls struggle to be individuals in a world that uses black-and-white rules to codify their existence. What color(s) would you use to define your own teen years and why? JB: Blue of the Miami sky, which I mentioned. It was always a very special blue, different in Miami than the Everglades, a little more turquoise-y in Miami. And fluorescent clothes were really popular in the ’90s. We wore the kookiest colors and I have to say, I loved that. I had a line of stuff that was just like, “Now I get to wear the fluorescent green tank dress with my low-slung belt that has all these different fluorescent colors on it.” And then, maybe because we don’t think of Miami as a winter place, I always got the most amazing feeling, completely oriented around color—coming off of the Tamiami Trail down 80th Court, the street that led to my house, and seeing when my dad had strung the Christmas lights. I remember more than once leaving the house for something and coming home to find them strung up in the dark, and they just looked so good! I love those colors. So I think unfortunately, except for the baby blue sky, my favorite color is every color. I don’t want to pick, I like them all. AS: Sometimes colors can be very abstract. I got the tones of that memory for sure, even though you didn’t name exact hues. Next up: Female guilt and sacrifice are emotional through lines in the book. Women shoulder these burdens instantly, which the men in their lives usually take for granted. Yet none of the characters come across as spineless or heartless; their reasons for engaging in this dynamic are clear. How do you write these kinds of conflicts with such nuance? JB: I am totally obsessed with guilt. Women were pinned in the Hebrew/Christian tradition to bear all blame, right? As soon as I heard the apple story, when I was probably two or three years old, I thought, “Wow, that’s a lot that’s on me.” I think I’ve internalized it as a theme of being female, for good reason. It’s all over our culture. But I also think it’s very useful. I don’t know if you remember when people were really complaining about white guilt; I could go back and maybe pick that apart and understand the argument a little bit better, but I think guilt can be very constructive. I feel like if people don’t feel bad and responsible . . . how are you gonna improve anything, right? If you can’t name the problem? I think maybe the whole thing [with] complaining about white guilt was that people just want to run away from it as fast as possible. But I’m like, “Okay, let’s bring it back. And no running away; face it, deal with it. Reflect.” I just wish more men would feel guilty. You know, he watched her bite the apple. He was right there. Why don’t men ever say they’re sorry? You know what happens instead? People say, “Why do you say sorry so much?” and they yell at women for saying they’re sorry. AS: The vignettes “Enough,” “Home Again,” and “Protection” show parents reinforcing the societal misogyny their daughter must contend with. The narrator pulls no punches about what is happening and her frustration is palpable. It can be tough to call out your upbringing through writing, directly or indirectly. Do you ever have reservations about this, and how do you push past them? JB: I’ve avoided writing this kind of stuff down at times, but in Inventing Victor, I had some reference to stuff that angered me about my family. Usually it was around control and sexism. With my mentor, I have asked her, “What about if people get mad at you for something that you write?” She’s like, “They won’t know it’s them. Write whatever you need to write.” And my mother did call me on a story—she didn’t like the way her mascara was running. I was like, “You thought that was you? She’s the mom in the story, but it’s fiction. Your mascara has never run.” So that’s where you just say “it’s fiction.” I do think with the internet, the “Don’t worry, they’ll never read it” advice applies less. [In the past] a lot of stories were in fiction journals on the shelves of maybe 100 libraries, and then 100 more subscribers. There weren’t a lot of people reading that stuff, and now it’s online. You probably could get called on the carpet more than you did in the past. AS: I read a very interesting post where someone said, “You used to be able to put something as scandalous as a nude photo of yourself inside a magazine, knowing that only 50 people would see it, because it’s like a tiny little local magazine. Now if someone posts that to Twitter, everyone and your grandma might be able to see it.” This has always been a question in fiction, the ethics of what you can talk about, who you can include, how they’re going to feel about it, and now it’s transforming due to this new media. JB: I do think Sharon’s early advice holds true, though, that people don’t really see themselves in your writing. The meddling parent who reads a kid’s diary . . . that same parent, if presented with a book of the stories you want them to read, they probably won’t read it. I think my dad did read my last collection. We’ll see what he does this time. But he has changed a lot. He was that dad who pounded the table and told me to shut up when I was talking about something that should matter. He pretty much stayed the same for years, but then he voted for Trump the first time. And I really let [my parents] have it. But then he actually went to the polls and voted for Kamala Harris. So he’s changed; he started to see that this is all nonsense. What the heck was happening today with Pete Hegseth pounding his chest and saying “We’re all going to be killers and warriors”? And we’re just gonna kill with impunity now. That’s not how you talk to the military! Where is the decency? A lot of this is backlash to women getting some power. Yeah, there’s more women in college. Get over it. And guess what? Now college costs a lot more too. They’ve been screwing women over for a damn long time. This is not supposed to be a book about how things have changed greatly for the better. AS: I think that the book has a really realistic view of a world that has made strides, but there are still a lot of flaws. Even though some parts of it are very dystopian, I never finished a story and just felt bad about everything. There are some stories out there that are brilliant about our modern world, and they call out all the right things. But then I put it down, and I’m like, “I feel worse for having read that.” With your pieces, I was left with a nice contemplative mood. JB: We can make it better. I really do think that’s true. I guess a few really bad things could happen in the next year or so, but I’m hopeful.
