“In 2013, Kristopher Jansma came on the scene with The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards, a wild, clever, funny, heartbreaking novel. I read the book in two days and immediately vowed to follow Jansma down whatever road he’d take next.

To my great surprise, his second novel, Why We Came to the City, drops much of the manic, meta, playful energy that made Leopards so compulsively readable. In its place is an equally engaging, but altogether more serious and emotional work. It’s about five twenty-something friends—Irene, George, Sara, Jacob, and William—all trying to make it in New York when they’re suddenly forced to face the cruelty of life after Irene is diagnosed with cancer.

Jansma, also a frequently published short story writer and Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY New Paltz College, drew from his own experiences for the story. His sister, Jennifer, passed away in 2008 from cancer. Why We Came to the City is at once a reckoning with death and loss and also a hopeful reflection on how people grow and change into adulthood.

I spoke with Jansma about the process of writing Why We Came to the City, what he’s learned about living in a big city, facing adulthood in his thirties, and how he worked through his own experiences in fiction.”

Read more at The Rumpus.