Too-Much-ness: When the Story is “About Too Many Things”

By Arya Samuelson

In the second year of my MFA program, I submitted a workshop essay about queer desires, lost friendships, being too close with my mother, and watching an octopus splayed against the aquarium glass, gruesome and glorious.

There are two pieces of feedback that I remember from that workshop. The first was from a student in the class who told me that it was “about too many things.”

Those words clenched around my throat, their sting reminiscent of a familiar childhood st...