When It’s Good, It’s Really Good

Cameron Engwall talks with Cora Lewis about “Information Age,” her debut novella.

By Cameron EngwallJuly 16, 2025

• Fiction

WINDY GUSTS and cloudy skies are a welcome chaser to Brooklyn’s latest heat wave, but there’s an uneasiness between strangers today. We don’t look each other in the eye much, embarrassed by the humbling downpour from the night prior; by how subservient we are, in a walkable town, to the weather.

But across from Green-Wood Cemetery, a son and someone I assume is his father seem unconcerned, engaged. Speaking a language I can’t identify, the father encourages the son, decked out in safety gear (including helmet and hat), to scooter across the intersection. The kid’s in no rush—he’s taking in the world from his street-corner home, as if to ask, Where’s there to go? The dad looks up at me with an apologetic smile and a shrug, despite it being a traffic-free Friday in Sunset Park. I cross the street; they stay.

Such observed scenes are the base for Cora Lewis’s Information Age. The striking new debut novella, written by a journalist-by-trade, collages a personal plot, observed vignettes, and portraits of a changing techno-political landscape. Lewis’s narrator wafts between spaces, both intimate and cavernous, noting the connections between disparate parts with a light, loose thread. I liken her novella to a deeply affecting movie—when you leave the theater, you stay in that world for a spell, mindful of a nonexistent camera angle, film score in your ears.

We meet up at a spot of her choosing: a maritime-themed dive bar promising tavern food from scratch. “Sometimes they let you feed the koi in the back,” she texts ahead of time. In the backyard by the pond, we talk about the professional and scholastic backgrounds that have fed her writing style, the unfortunate timelessness of American political cycles, and the fastest way to write a good sex scene.

¤

CAMERON ENGWALL: Was the goal always to write a novella? I feel like that’s a rare aim to set out with.

CORA LEWIS: No, I definitely set out to write a novel; it was just taking me a really long time. And it was kind of a fairy-tale publication story: Maddie, an editor at Joyland, asked if I had any stories, and I sent her one. We worked on it together and they published it. Then Michelle Lyn King, Joyland Publishing’s founder, decided to start putting out novellas—defined as 40,000 words or fewer. Maddie asked if I had a manuscript, and mine was only 30,000 words, which was part of the reason no agent wanted it. So I sent it to her, and they said they’d love to publish it. If that hadn’t happened, I might still be working on the same manuscript, trying to get it to the length people want.

Right. In your Creative Independent interview, you talked about the journalistic urge to pare things down, so I was wondering if it was a big thing that got cut down, or if it was always spare to begin with.

I think it’s more accurate to say I always lean toward compression and being economical. In the MFA, I would write longer and looser, but I’d always come back and edit. A couple of the looser sections made it into the book—some boyfriend flashbacks, the subway scene, but staying in scenes is hard for me. I end up with snippets, vignettes, snatches of conversation. But when I force myself to linger, sometimes the result is good.

That makes the book so enjoyable to read—the snippets. I thought I was a genius, thinking, Oh, it’s like Sheila Heti. Then I read the Creative Independent interview and realized others had made that connection too. Also Rachel Cusk—that kind of removed-feeling autofiction. You’re working with a narrator who is not unreliable but unyielding, close to the vest. They tell you only what they want to, but they’re not lying. It’s cool to see all those books in conversation.

I’m so glad you got that. I love that.

The book ends with a shift toward AI, making it feel very current, even though it started pre-Trump. Does the book still feel current to you, or does it feel like a snapshot of a previous moment?

I hope it feels current. I definitely tried to make the ending up-to-the-moment. The last edits were submitted after Trump was elected the second time. That flashback, rerun feeling makes it still feel relevant—regrettably.

There’s a timelessness because these cycles just repeat.

It might be better if it weren’t relevant. But there’s no happy ending.

Well, maybe in the next book, AI dies. So, viewing your writing history up to this point, were you writing fiction before journalism or vice versa?

I didn’t take any fiction classes in college. I was a philosophy major. I took a poetry workshop with Louise Glück and a playwriting workshop, which might be why I write so much dialogue.

That makes sense—there’s spare language in both journalism and poetry.

Ironically, she told me I wasn’t “afflicted by poetry.” But later, she learned I was writing fiction, reread my old poems, and said, “It makes sense.” They were very vernacular and narrative. But I was always curious about journalism. It was the responsible thing I did. Fiction was the secret, irresponsible thing. So going to get an MFA felt rebellious—what if the responsible thing doesn’t work either?

Something I noticed: Your vignettes often end with a gut-punch line, a kind of reverse thesis. The headline at the bottom.

Some teachers have reminded me: you don’t always need a zinger. It can become stylized, repetitive, which is a risk when you compile them.

Well, you come from poetry, playwriting, journalism—all stylized forms. Fiction is inherently formless, and you’re stylizing it.

Maybe I’m going for “real.”

You’re putting rules on rules.

Exactly. Embrace your tics but also fight them.

There’s an assumption about a first book, that there’s often an autofiction element pulled from life, like you have to get it out of your system.

That hits home. You put as much of your limited experience into the first book so you can free yourself up later. More perspective, more distance.

Last thing: Were the sex scenes fun to write?

I wrote them not thinking about people reading them.

You have to, right?

Yeah, it’s the only way. But now people are reading them. It’s an interesting few weeks ahead. I love books that are candid about sex and relationships. If you don’t include that, you miss a huge dimension. When it’s good, it’s really good. The Sally Rooney of it all.

¤

Cora Lewis is a writer and award-winning journalist at the Associated Press. Her fiction debut, Information Age, will be published on July 15, 2025, by Joyland Editions. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, near Sunset Park.

¤

Featured image: Author photo courtesy of Cora Lewis.