Bryan Washington on Queer Friendship and Intimacy

In "Server," your novella, an American teaching English in Japan is drawn into an old video game, where he finds his former best friend, Vic, now dead, somehow alive and in control. Until this novella, very little of your work has included fantastical elements. What led you to incorporate this idea, and what challenges did it pose for you? It was pretty challenging: this was fairly far outside my comfort zone. Nothing I've written--book, essay, audio fiction, nothing--has taken me as long to actually finish.