A mammoth horse crashes through a carnival floor. A mysterious mare named Lady Wonder solves crimes in 1930s Virginia. A Harvard graduate meets his fate alongside his mule in the American West. These are not just stories—they're historical events transformed into spellbinding fiction in Jess Bowers's debut collection, Horse Show.

When I first heard about the book on the radio, I was intrigued. I grew up with horses and have never let go of their fascination. What I discovered in this book was far more than traditional equestrian fiction like Black Beauty. The thirteen stories in this collection unearth forgotten moments of American history and reimagine them with dark humor, deep empathy, and unflinching honesty. Through carnival attractions, crime scenes, and circus acts, Bowers explores the complex relationship between humans and horses—partners who together built the modern world, only for one to be left behind. Some stories break your heart, others make you laugh, and the best somehow manage to do both.

And the last one, cleverly titled “Of Course, Of Course,” has been nominated for a Pushcart award.

The transcript doesn’t capture the absolute fun of our conversation. Jess is passionately committed to her work, which she describes, not only as historical fiction, but also as anti-animal-abuse narratives. Her work combines obscure facts with shrewd imagination.

For our conversation, I chose some of my favorite elements and asked whether they were, “Fact or fiction?” Jess and I also talked about her writing and research techniques. Jess’s responses below illuminate both her creative process and the fascinating true stories behind this remarkable collection.

Horse Show is available from Santa Fe Writers Project.

This interview has been edited for concision and clarity

Amanda: Do you still have your little yellow pony?

Jess: I lost Billy during the pandemic. He's my first little yellow pony, but I got a second one, Teddy, and so we're going strong. He's 13. I got him at five. I figured if I wanted a green horse, my 40s were probably the last time to do it really. I don't see myself wanting to finish a horse when I'm in my 50s! Teddy is a Haflinger. They're an Austrian breed, and they're short, so he's like, 15 hands - a little taller than pony size. They're really smart. They're always golden with a white mane and tail.

I don't know what the point of having a horse is if you don't have a relationship with it. That's my other thing - that's why he's there. And so sometimes I'll just go out and love on him, even if I don't ride.

Amanda: Have you always written about horses?

Jess: I did not start writing about horses until I started writing this book.

Amanda: What did you write about before you wrote about horses?

Jess: Anything and everything but horses! I was a writer in search of a plot. I started working on this book in my PhD program. Prior to that, I had always shied away from [horses]. They always say, "Write what you know." And I'd always shied away from writing what I know, because I wasn't sure how to do it in a way that would make me happy. I think so often people associate horse fiction with young adult fiction, or Black Beauty, which I love, but I didn't want to do horses talking. I didn't want to anthropomorphize. So, I started with a long list of what I knew I didn't want to do.

When I wrote the first story for the collection and submitted it to my workshop, they were all really taken with it in a way that I didn't expect. I was really validated and vindicated by the way that workshop responded, because they started asking lots of questions and wanting to know more about horses. And that was the first time that I thought, okay, maybe "write what you know," maybe there is something to that.

I became really fascinated by ideas of personhood. I think our society is very anthropocentric to a disturbing degree. I wanted to explore the idea of the horse as this forgotten partner. The dogs get all the flowers with "man's best friend" and all that. And I love dogs, but the horse really was a partner in ushering in modernity, in a very real way, and in some ways complicit in its own obsolescence, which I also find completely fascinating. They were sort of complicit in creating the urban environment that eliminated them, or eliminated their role in modern life.

Horses are such a key part of our iconography and our entertainment. They represent so many things while also embodying a lot of different things. For a lot of people, they represent freedom, wildness. And there's also a lot of associations with the feminine unconscious. We ascribe all these things to them. I'm just fascinated by all-purpose symbols like that.

The book's title, Horse Show, kind of came out when I realized that I was writing not just about equines, but about spectacle. When I realized that, it really opened up the type of stories I let myself write in terms of how weird I was able to get.

Amanda: One thing I read on your site was that you weave stories from fact and imagination. I'd like to ask you about some of the elements in your stories to understand how that weaving takes place—what's fact and what's imagination.

Jess: I usually call what I do historical fiction. People get upset when I call it that, because it doesn't follow the genre conventions. But it's history, and I'm writing fiction about it. I think there's room in historical fiction for experimental approaches, for works that challenge our assumptions about both history and fiction.

Amanda: Tell me about Lady Wonder, the horse who draws a line at naming the killer?

Jess: Lady Wonder was fascinating - she became this sensation in Virginia, with people coming from all over to ask her questions. She would tap out answers using this special typewriter that Claudia's husband built. The really interesting part is that she was tested by both psychologists and police departments. Some people believed she had genuine psychic abilities, while others thought it was all a clever trick. But what drew me to the story was Claudia - this working-class woman who built this whole business around her special connection with this horse.

Amanda: How about the fire horse who lost its hoof?

Jess: It is true. It's at the Smithsonian. They don't keep it on display. I read about it in a blog post from the Smithsonian, and then from there, I fell down a rabbit hole of old newspapers and books about fire horses and how they were maintained, how they were kept. There's a really great book called The Horse in the City, by Joel Tarr and Clay McShane. It's all about 19th century horse-keeping in urban environments.

I worried about that as I was writing the book, I was like, okay, I have a motif here of horses falling, and I have motifs of horrible things happening. And then I thought, well, you can't have a good anti-war story without talking about war. And you can't really tell a good anti-animal-abuse story without showing that.

It's just the frivolity of it too. Particularly with Babe in "One Trick Pony," the frivolity of her death. Jesse James, the movie she was killed to make, is a terrible movie and I personally value the life of that individual animal far more. Much of this book is about just my own perspective on who gets to be a person.

Amanda: My favorite was "Two on a Horse." I love Pupetta Gargiulo. Just wonderful. And the image of her just flying, with her albatross arms.

Jess: With "Two on a Horse," that one started when I was researching. I heard about the steeplechase ride at Coney Island, and I found footage of it, and I was just blown away by the facts of the thing. A lot of the early Coney Island attractions were engineered specifically to allow people to touch each other. I thought about how disadvantaged a woman would be in that scenario. And they really did make the women ride side saddle in the early days of the ride. I mean, this thing was high up and there weren't brakes. There weren't seat belts.

The history of Coney Island's attractions is fascinating - they were always pushing boundaries, seeing what they could get away with. The steeplechase ride was particularly interesting because it combined the thrill of "mechanical" horses with the social dynamics of the era. Women were expected to maintain proper decorum even while essentially riding a roller coaster.

I invented Pupetta because I really wanted an example of someone finding transcendence in something like that. Because for me, the experience of galloping a horse has always been a transcendent kind of thing. She became this character who could embody both the restrictions of her time and the possibility of breaking free from them.

Amanda: What about Fred Loring?

Jess: He's real. I'm speculating wildly about his experiences. His love for another man. But the evidence is there. He graduated Harvard, traveled out west, was writing dispatches to Appleton's Journal. Then he just got into the wrong place at the wrong time. I found out about Fred from the picture. I was just so struck by the image because he seems uncomfortable next to "his mule." That picture was taken in Wickenburg about 48 hours before he was killed.

Amanda: How did you find all these incredible stories?

Jess: My research process is actually very traditional - I use academic databases, newspaper archives, historical society collections. But what I do with that research might be less traditional. I'm looking for the gaps, the moments where history leaves room for imagination. I'm particularly interested in the stories of those who didn't get to write their own histories - animals, certainly, but also marginalized people whose lives intersected with these animals in interesting ways.

Often my friends will send me weird stuff. Right now, the project I'm working on, I'm doing the same research that I did with this book, but I'm expanding my scope to lots of different animals. I'm getting weird emails daily from my friends, which are like, "Have you heard of this?" It's fascinating because each animal brings its own historical context and relationship with humans. I'm finding incredible stories about everything from circus elephants to carrier pigeons.

Amanda: How did you decide on the ordering of the stories?

Jess: This was the only aspect of the book that had a really strong editorial hand. I had very few developmental edits on this book, I was really kind of shocked how little they wanted me to change. But the one thing that I needed a lot of help on was, how the heck do we order these stories?

My editor, Andrew Gifford, came up with the idea of ending with "Of Course, Of Course." The idea of Wilbur Post's wife driving off into the sunset as the last image of the book. We liked opening with the mammoth horse, because it kind of has this raconteur, "step right up" kind of vibe.

Amanda: Can you tell me a little bit about your writing process?

Jess: I usually start with just like a weird thing, whether it's like a piece of ephemera, like a photograph or a mention of something in a book. I'm really adept with Google. Like, to a freaky degree. Also I've got all my institutional access to databases, archives, all that. So, I just hit it from every possible research angle I can, finding as much as I can. And then from there, usually characters emerge.

I like to write in the mornings, ideally. My schedule doesn't allow for writing every day because I teach four courses, so I'm running around a lot! I always write with music. Music with lyrics doesn't bother me, which I'm told is unusual. I need large blocks of time. I'm infinitely jealous of people who can just write in little snips, like my poet friends. I need at least four or five hours to really get anywhere.

Amanda: Can you tell me a little bit about your publication experience with Santa Fe Writers Project?

Jess: I found them through their annual contest. I got an email saying that I was on the long list. Then, I didn't win, but I got an email that said, "Hey, sorry you didn't win, but we would love to publish your book." I had to laugh, because that was the part of the prize I really wanted!

I could not have asked for a more wonderful experience. This press has been around for about 26 years now, and it's the brainchild of Andrew Gifford. When you sign with Santa Fe Writers Project, Andrew gives writers a whole suite of materials to help organize a marketing plan, and then they have international distribution as well, and aggressively pursue translation and film and TV rights.

What really impressed me was their attention to the book as a complete package. They understood exactly what I was trying to do with these stories, and they gave me so much creative freedom. The cover design process was collaborative - they really wanted something that would capture both the historical aspect and the element of spectacle that runs through the collection.

For more about Jess Bowers and her writing please visit her website: www.jessbowers.org