The genesis of “Q & A”
was a passing mention in Dava Sobel’s book Galileo’s Daughter, where, when she was discussing the trial of Galileo by the Inquisition, she mentions the surreal effect of the transcript in which all the questions are written in the third person but the answers given are in the first person. I found this intriguing and wanted to employ it in a story.
Since the original question and answer format came out of the inquisition, I imagined a sort of contemporary inquisition and decided that some betrayal in love would be the target of said inquisition. As for just who is asking the questions, I leave that to the imagination of the reader.
The first version of this story was workshopped in a class at UCLA Extension under the leadership of Adam Cushman. I took a revised version of it to my MFA program where it got further attention from TIbor Fischer, Kat Grilli, Steven Paul Lansky, Kossiwa Logan and Ryan McConkey
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