In conversation with Elias Rodriques

Referred to by Carmen Maria Machado as “all blood and nerve and near-unbearable beauty,” Joseph Earl Thomas’ Sink is a coming-of-age memoir that chronicles the author’s escape from an upbringing of deprivation and abuse to a geek culture in which he could build a family and community on his own terms. An excerpt of this work won the 2020 Chautauqua Janus Prize. His other writing has appeared or is forthcoming in n+1, The Kenyon Review, and Gulf Coast, among other literary journals, and he has received writing fellowships from the Fulbright program, Bread Loaf, and Tin House. A doctoral candidate in English at the University of Pennsylvania, Thomas is the Director of Programs at Blue Stoop in Philadelphia and an associate faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. 

Elias Rodriques is an assistant editor of n+1 and author of the novel All the Water I've Seen is Running. His work has been published or anthologized in The Guardian, The Nation, and Best American Essays.