Alex Miller discusses his story “We Who Sleep in the Dust of the Earth,” featured in the Summer 2026 issue of Colorado Review, with Assistant Managing Editor Abi Nelson.
Alex Miller is a novelist and short story writer who lives in Denver. He is the author of the story collection Field Guide to Mediocre Men (forthcoming in 2028 from Unsolicited Press), the novel White People on Vacation (Malarkey Books, 2022) and the story collection How to Write an Emotionally Resonant Werewolf Novel (Unsolicited Press, 2019). His stories have been published in literary journals including Flyway, Pithead Chapel, and MoonPark Review.
Abi Nelson: There are a lot of chuckle-inducing Christian media references throughout this piece as well as characters displaying a wide range of faith and understanding. In a story that directly confronts belief and love, what was the process of finding that delicate balance? Was there anything you had to “pull back” or amplify through the revision process?
Alex Miller: For this story, I was really interested in having fun with all the Christian pop culture stuff I grew up with. I was in high school in the 90s, when Lifeway Christian bookstores were popping up all over and Christian pop music was being aggressively marketed to teenagers. And I can remember a time when I was young and very into all this Christian media, and also how by the time I graduated from high school it all seemed pretty embarrassing. In between, there was a lot of code switching. I’d listen to Jars of Clay with my youth group, then I’d hang out with my regular friends, and we’d listen to “Cop Killer” by Body Count. I didn’t feel much of any sense of contradiction about it. I think the experience of being a teenager teaches us to become comfortable passing between worlds.
There’s a lot of contrast between the pop culture stuff and the more weighty stuff, where the characters are looking for answers to questions about spirituality and sexuality. When I was writing the story, I really didn’t worry much about striking a balance. All I wanted was for my characters to be fully themselves.
AN: The portrayal of youth and loneliness are often in tandem throughout this story. What influenced the shape of these quieter, contemplative moments as you worked on this piece?
AM: There’s a particular loneliness you feel as a kid. Adults get lonely too, but we have coping mechanisms. I think most writers will understand what I mean when I say the character in the story is not me, but also that I put a lot of myself into him. In elementary school I was a super quiet kid who didn’t talk much or have many friends. All that changed by the time I became a teenager, but for the story I think I transposed my early memories of loneliness onto the narrator. I imagined a lonelier version of my teenage self and brought him to life. As horrifying as that sounds.
AN: This story is full of so many delightful jabs and jokes to balance out the occasional looming surveillance of childhood. Are there any moments or scenes in particular that you enjoyed writing? Are there any that transformed dramatically throughout the drafting process?
AM: I loved writing the scene where the narrator and his youth pastor play Dungeons & Dragons in the church basement. In some ways, it’s a heavy scene, because it reveals a lot about the characters and their struggles, and it’s one where the narrator begins to see some faults in his youth pastor, who until now he’s unabashedly worshiped. He’s also seeing some cracks in the religious faith he’s always accepted at face value. But all the jokes keep things light. And I like how the scene just descends into chaos.
AN: The theater arcade cabinets, hair-dyeing movie night, and church basement D&D game were wonderful patches of color and life for our narrator. How did escapism through media play into these revitalizing moments?
AM: I enjoyed populating the story with the media and pop culture phenomena I grew up with. I lived in a small town, and media allowed me to feel connected to the rest of the world. The Seattle grunge scene was happening a long way away, but I could sit in my bedroom and listen to a Nirvana CD. I was the type of kid to disappear into a book for an entire day. Part of that was escapism, but it was also a way to plug into the wider world. Pop culture allowed me to be part of something larger than myself.
In high school I made some homeschooled friends through a theater program, and I remember how media-starved they were, like they were living in a bubble. There was just a lot of pop culture that I took for granted that they didn’t know anything about. I tried to write Chrissy in a way that was true to that, how she’s never had Papa John’s pizza, never heard of Sarah McLachlan.
AN: In a story where the narrator is set on securing a relationship, how did you navigate having characters with varying perspectives on what love is, who it’s coming from (whether it’s really God or a fellow youth group attendee), and when you “know” you’re in love?
AM: I wanted to include perspectives on love that a teenager would be likely to encounter. Chrissy’s parents don’t believe young people should be dating at all. The narrator’s mother humors his relationship but doesn’t take it seriously because he’s young. His youth pastor means well but is still hurting from a painful breakup. As we grow older, we get wiser, but we also get a little warped. We develop issues and hangups, layers of grief and trauma pile up on top of us. All of that junk prevents us from experiencing love the way young people do.
In the story, I tried to describe viscerally the feeling of falling in love for the first time. The way the narrator is swept up in the tornado of it, how he feels like he’s ascending to a higher plane of reality. Falling in love as a teenager is intense, and it shapes us, in some ways, for the rest of our lives. I think it’s important for young people to ignore a lot of the advice authority figures give them—however well-meaning—and just be present and enjoy the experience of falling wildly in love.
AN: We leave the narrator as he is propelling himself forward toward a future he’s just decided, holding all the people in his life who have left; what do you think he needs to find out if he’s going to carry these lost ones into his dreamed future?
I think he’s going to continue growing up, and his concept of heaven will continue to grow along with him. His idea of heaven—as a place to reunite with everyone you’ve ever loved—is what he needs at this point in his life. It helps make sense of his breakup with Chrissy, his anxieties about college and leaving home. Most of all it helps him come to terms with the death of his friend Marcy.
Early in the story, the narrator makes a cynical comment about the meaning of life, saying the point is that eventually everyone dies. The end of the story serves as a counterpoint—maybe heaven is a place where you find all those lost people. After all the crap I put him through in the story, it felt nice to leave him somewhere good.
Abi Nelson is the Assistant Managing Editor of Colorado Review and an MFA candidate in fiction. In her work, she aims to confront normalized systems, explore the limits of blurry boundaries, and hold humor close during dark times.