Contributor Interview:

Joe Baumann's "Leave in Death with Ease and Plenty" appears in the Summer 2026 Issue of Broad Ripple Review.

What is your favorite punctuation and a literary hot take you have?

Oh, I love a well-used semi-colon. I used to be a big em-dash fan, but as my style changed over time (as I think many writers' styles do), I left it behind. And of course, now there's all the humbug with AI-generated garbage overusing them, so semi-colon it is. 

My literary hot take, which may not actually be that hot of a take in certain circles, is that the fiction in The New Yorker is almost always the weakest piece in a given issue!

What inspired you to write “Leave Us In Death with Ease and Plenty"?

As with most things I write, the story came from a single image (that's usually all I have to go on to start): a grieving spouse cratering in their recently-deceased loved one's gone-to-clay face. I realize that's a very strange and specific thing to have pop into one's head image-wise, but that's what happens to me more often than not as I'm letting my brain wander and conjure ideas! I had that picture in my head and thought, "Well, what's that story?" And so I sat down and found out.

What is a change in the writing/publishing industry that you have enjoyed this year?

Now this is something of a toughie. I'm not sure if it's a this-year thing, exactly, but I've noticed a lot more variety in the publications that are finding their way into the big prize anthologies—the O'Henry, Pushcart, Best American. It used to all be just about the same three, four, maybe five journals being featured over and over, and there's been a lot more movement toward smaller (and even online) journals. 

I saw that you have written two novels and six short story collections. Do you have a preference between long-form and short-form pieces? Or do you think there are fun elements in both?

I am definitely, at heart, a short story writer. I feel like the novels kind of happened by accident (well, one was a lucky result of a NaNoWriMo that went way better than expected). I always tell people that if I had to only read and write one form for the rest of my life, it'd be the short story (or short story collection).  There's something about the challenge/puzzle of working within such a space limitation that I enjoy— the pressure to pressurize, if that makes sense. I love trying to make a lot out of a little. It's not that novelists don't do the same, but I think the compressed nature of short fiction really allows/forces a writer to make even more out of what's put to the page. I also think that for me, personally, as someone who leans more into the speculative/surreal, it is easier to sustain a bizarre/fabulist premise in short form. I don't really know why. Maybe personal incapacity to do it in longer work!

I also learned that you are a writing professor at Lindenwood University. Has teaching affected your own writing process in any way?

I'd say that the other way around is more frequent, of course: my writing habits imbue my teaching and what I teach (don't we all think we do things the right way and thus want to share our ways with students?).  I'm an exploratory writer, in that I rarely have a plan/outline/sense of what I'm doing, and I try to convince students to take that kind of discovery attitude into their writing as much as possible. That said, when I'm engaging with students, talking about their work or talking about writing in general, I do surprise myself in that I sometimes say something in a way I hadn't conceptualized it before that ends up making a good deal of sense to me, so I manage to teach myself in the process of trying to teach other people.

Now that “Leave Us In Death with Ease and Plenty” has wrapped up, what is next on the writing docket?

I'm in the midst of finishing a manuscript that's a series of linked stories (or maybe a novel-in-stories?  Who can say.) called The Terrible Careers of Frankie and Lars, about, well, the strange and terrible (and often weird) jobs that these two men take on over the course of their life together. My last project was a big story about loss, and this was more of a (sort of funny) love story that I am having quite a bit of fun with.

Do you have any advice for upcoming writers looking to get their work published?

As pessimistic as this seems, I think it was really helpful for me: Assume no as the default. When it comes to magazine submissions, agent queries, contest entries, etc., you are going to hear and receive no a whole heck of a lot. You can't count a single no (or three, or thirty, or a hundred of them) as a marker of your own abilities or whether you're any good or 'belong' in publishing. Keep writing, keep submitting, and the yeses will come sooner or later.

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About the Author

Joe Baumann is the author of six collections of short fiction and the novels I Know You’re Out There Somewhere and Lake Drive. His fiction and essays have appeared in Third Coast, Passages North, Phantom Drift, and many others.

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About the Interviewer

Ollie Sikes (they/them) is an evolving queer writer, editor, and creator based in Dallas, TX. They completed a double BA in Creative Writing and Theatre at Butler University. Besides volunteering with Broad Ripple Review, they also serve as Content Creator for the little things literary magazine. Their poetry has been published with Synchronized Chaos. You can follow them on Instagram @ollie.sikes.