Submission Sunday 5.10.26: The Rejection Interview with Dinah Lenney

Our latest rejection interview: "However painful, rejection reminds us we’re in excellent company. We’re in the game."

Happy Sunday, writers! Thank you for subscribing. Your support is much appreciated always.

Herein I continue my quest to interview successful people about their experiences with rejection. I’m grateful to writers Cecil Castellucci, Kate Maruyama, Camden Noir, Tamara MC, Jennifer R. Edwards, Diana Wagman, Rachel Kramer Bussel, and Sara Campbell for agreeing to participate in The Rejection Interview series. I’d love to conduct some more interviews with writers coming from a variety of perspectives, so please get in touch!

Somehow we haven’t had an installment in the Rejection Interview series since last May! I’m so excited to rectify that. Next up in our series, we have writer, editor, actor, and teacher Dinah Lenney.

Longtime actor and teacher Dinah Lenney is the author or editor of six books, most recently Snapshots: An Album of Essay and Image. She lives in Los Angeles, and you can find her on Instagram @dinahlenney or at www.dinahlenney.com.

I first met Dinah when she included my essay “Thoughts on Time After Viewing Christian Marclay’s ‘The Clock’” in the anthology she co-edited with Judith Kitchen in 2015, Brief Encounters: A Collection of Contemporary Nonfiction. Since then, I’ve run into her at various Los Angeles literary events, but we reconnected when we were in the same French class at Coucou LA in 2025. Last month, we had coffee a couple times in the neighborhood where we were both staying, the sixth arrondissement in Paris, and Dinah generously agreed to revive the Rejection Interview series.

Let’s get this interview started…

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SS: Thank you for being here, Dinah! Do you fear rejection? Why or why not?

Deep down, maybe I do. But mostly I expect it. Not because I have a lousy attitude, not because I’m not hopeful (the audacity of hope trips me up all the time); but consider my original training, as an actor, I mean, where rejection is not only part and parcel, but a means to an end. For actors, each audition is as much for the next one as it is for the job at hand. It’s just so rare that you get that job. What you get is an opportunity to make an impression/connection. So, my well-honed sense of entitlement notwithstanding, I’ve experienced far more rejection than otherwise. And, as a late-blooming writer, having put whole decades into that other humiliating career, I anticipated rejection from the get-go. I was stunned, frankly, and thrilled by every little acceptance. Still am.

SS: What does literary rejection mean to you?

Well… Literary rejection might mean I have work to do. Or it might simply mean that a piece hasn’t yet found the right home. Either way, it hurts. Especially as a writer of nonfiction, I’m bound to wonder: Is this publication rejecting my work or my experience? My voice or my values (reflected in my voice), or both? Especially now, in the current cultural climate, I can’t help but be afraid that my concerns (personal, domestic, picayune) are inconsequential or boring. That’s my first thought when I get a rejection: I’m not interesting enough.

SS: What’s a rejection that you mourned at the time but now are grateful for?