Spotlight Interview with Josh Denslow

If ever you’ve turned to magic in the hope of salvaging a relationship, Josh Denslow’s new story collection, Magic Can’t Save Us: Eighteen Tales of Likely Failure (New Orleans Press, May 2025), is sure to appeal to you. As the title suggests, you may not find answers in this book’s pages, but you will have the chance to join other adventurous lovers as they go toe to toe with spooky creatures in an effort to learn to ask the right questions. We had the pleasure of talking to Josh about the “heavy work” of discussing relationships in a playful manner, his day job at Bookshop.org, and much more. Find out more from this Spotlight interview.

Your stories combine astute descriptions of the many misunderstandings that can occur

in a relationship with the magical solutions the characters believe may resolve them. How

did you decide on this realistic/fantastical format?

The stories in Magic Can’t Save Us came about slowly over nearly eight years. I wrote them between other longer projects, and they were the most fun I have ever had writing.

I love mixing fantastical elements into stories where everything else seems exactly like real life. If the characters feel alive, literally anything can happen. In the past, I have given my characters magical abilities like flying or turning invisible or teleporting, but this was the first time I brought in non-human creatures.

I tend to find a lot of humor in bad situations, so sticking with relationship problems provided tons of great opportunities to explore the many ways two people can unravel. But the fun really started when I saw how every time I introduced a magical creature into the mix, things only got worse! There is no shortcut to solving life’s biggest problems, and my characters have to learn this the hard way.

Your magical worlds include harpies, zombies, dragons, etc., and even a haunted house

in which a poltergeist does “couples work.” What is your personal relationship to the

magical realm?

It’s interesting, because when it comes to magical stuff, I’m a bit of a skeptic. I don’t believe in much of anything that I can’t see with my own eyes. But in my reading life, I love to be taken out of this world. I love science fiction and fantasy and how these elements can be mixed into literary fiction. I want to hear about things outside my lived experience. I read writers from all over the world and with completely different world views than my own. The magic realm comes from the absolutely incredible works of art that human beings can create. It’s astounding what the brain is capable of. I’m in awe.

But tell me there’s a ghost in my attic, and I’ll just shrug it off.

In the story “Ache,” a grown man has been obsessed, since childhood, with his tooth

fairy. The humor here (and elsewhere) is playful and entertaining. Is it also meant to

symbolize certain behaviors you recognize in people around you?

Each story is narrated by a different guy with a completely different way of coping with the problems they encounter. I find “Ache” to be one of the funnier stories in the collection, but the narrator himself is not necessarily anyone I’d like to know. But I do, sadly, think that it symbolizes behaviors that exist in the world. The narrator is so focused on what he wants and what he desires that he’s completely missing the wonderful life he created, which could actually provide him everything he thinks he doesn’t have. His worldview is so narrow that he has let true happiness evade him.

One of the most important things I wanted to do in this collection was break down some of these male relationship behaviors in a way that doesn’t let anyone off easy. There’s heavy work going on in here, but I love that you have described it as “playful” because I think it’s that aspect that really ties it all together.

Your title, Magic Can’t Save Us, tells us everything. Do you think by reading between the

lines you also offer something that can?

I think what comes from reading between the lines is that if you discover that you can’t blame your problems on others, and you can’t wait for someone else to fix your mess (especially a magical creature!), then you could be on your way to taking responsibility, apologizing, and steering yourself to the correct route. Unfortunately, a lot of the characters in Magic Can’t Save Us miss this opportunity.

Most of our Five Directions Press Newsletter readers are women, and many of them

read mostly “women’s books.” Let them know why they will love your stories, all of which

have male narrators.

I guess you could consider me a bit of a guide into the interior world of each of these male narrators. Each story offers a different viewpoint. Some of the narrators are likable and some are less, but all of them offer me the opportunity to skewer the male ego while at the same time showing these characters at their most vulnerable.

I structured the collection itself to overall loosely follow the trajectory of a relationship and all the many stops along the way where things could fall apart. The stories toward the beginning are lighter and feature that flush that comes with first meeting someone. By the end, things take a slightly darker turn, and there’s the real pain that comes with the accumulation of years.

There may be magical creatures involved, but the relationships focus on the feelings that pass between people when they have chosen to live their lives together. In these stories, the focus is on what happens when those bonds begin to crumble, and the question becomes: Why are we still together? Magic Can’t Save Us shows many sides of relationships and many reasons why they have reached these crucial moments.

With these male narrators, I can offer insights into their thought processes and can reveal the difficult to obtain information buried in the morass of their male-ness. 

Plus, there’s a fair bit of humor to be found in these situations. Especially at their expense.

Besides writing, you are the email manager for Bookshop.org. What exactly does this

entail? Does the company feature books from indie authors or only from larger

publishers and booksellers? How can our readers benefit from visiting?

Bookshop.org is THE alternative to shopping at Amazon for books because we give a percentage of every sale to independent bookstores. And if you have a favorite independent bookstore, you can choose to have the money go to directly to that store. We have all the bestselling books along with the books from huge publishers down to small indie press stuff. Pretty much everything.

In the role of email marketing manager, I create the HTML code for the emails we send advertising books and the ones we send full of our editorial selections. I also do all the segmenting of our database and control the send times of each email. It’s a pretty hectic job, but a lot of fun to market books. Plus I work with an amazing team!

What are you working on now?

I currently have a completed beast of a novel (540 pages) that I have been shopping around that is full of magic as well. It also spans three decades and deals with the literal (possible) destruction of the universe.

In addition, I’m completing (hopefully by this summer!) a fourth pass on a middle grade novel which is full of cats, because I promised my children I would write a book I could allow them to read!

Josh Denslow is the author of Not Everyone Is Special (7.13 Books), Super Normal (Stillhouse Press), and the upcoming collection Magic Can't Save Us (UNO Press). His most recent short stories have appeared in Electric Literature’s The Commuter, The Rumpus, and Okay Donkey, among others. He is the Email Marketing Manager for Bookshop.org, and he has read and edited for SmokeLong Quarterly for over a decade. He currently lives in Barcelona.