INTERVIEW: Theo Elizabeth G. Brennen and "The Bathroom Body"

Brent Phakousonh interviews Theodore Elizabeth G. Brennen, about his piece "The Bathroom Body", featured in the 2026 Anthology, EXIT LINES, his writing process, and his time at Sheridan's Creative Writing and Publishing Program.

ABOUT THEO ELIZABETH G. BRENNEN

Theodore-Elizabeth G. Brennen is always for want of the written word. He has spent most of his life writing, inheriting his penchant for storytelling from his father, and initially found his footing with writing transformative works. Since then, he’s gone on to feature in Open Minds Quarterly and The B222 Journal. When he isn’t writing original work, he’s creating and reading fanfiction for his latest fixations, drawing, journalling, or lovingly tormenting his fellow writer and artist friends. Originally from the town of Carleton Place, ON, he currently lives in the Greater Toronto Area with his mother and sister.

INTERVIEW

BRENT PHAKOUSONH: What's the inspiration behind your piece? Why's it called The Bathroom Body?

THEO BRENNEN: So, I was initially inspired by the fact that when I had initially wrote this, I was doing a lot of Discord calls, so I would be recounting my day to my friends online. And I was taking a lot of bus trips from Ottawa to Toronto, because I live in Carleton Place, or, I used to live in Carleton Place. And so on reading weeks, I would go and I would visit my dad and see my bestfriend there – I grew up with her – and the trips were always so damn long that I was always worried like, God, ‘I hope the bus doesn’t break down’. Like, I would spend so long trying to like, nap or clear some time out, and I thought about how every so often in Kingston on the route that I took, I would stop at this gas station and grab like, a protein bar or something and I figured, what if something freaky happened? And then, a little after that, I had a dream that I was in a broken-down bus at night, and some stuff went down, and I thought also, wouldn’t it be messed up if there was a corpse that wouldn’t rot? So that’s an explanation for info and name, I guess.

BP: If you could tell your past self, like your first year self, that you’re writing this piece, how would they react?

TB: I think that my first year self would be very surprised at how quickly I got, like, macabre, because this is a piece I had originally made in third year. Also, first year me had no idea what was coming because there were a lot of different social developments that happened in College that I did not expect. I had initially gone to College for the first two years since high school graduation online because of the pandemic – graduating class of 2020 – and so I think that because of the fact that my first year self was arguably still capable of this level of macabre, but a little more, I guess, “soft-hearted” and not used to playing around with messed up concepts like this and, was a little more along the lines of making big expansive stories with fantastical elements that were very much outside of the realm of reality. I sort of figure that, he’d be surprised, especially because I also thought short stories weren’t my forte back then and I’ve been told by a couple people that this one’s actually pretty good.

BP: What’s the one thing you would say to the next graduating class of CW&P?

TB:  I think that what I want to say, and what I’ve made a point of saying, when I've been able to interact with lower year cohorts, is that you can write a lot more than you think that you’ll be able to. And I mean that both in the amount that you can write, but also the expansiveness when it comes to the genres and types of things you can write about. You can do whatever the hell you want in this program – you can do whatever the hell you want – and you should do whatever the hell you want, because art is best made when you are doing it for yourself, and then modulating it to make sense, and ultimately, don’t modulate it for other people. Only modulate it so it is the highest form of what you, yourself can create and want to create, because there will be people that want it, there will be people that will look at it and they will appreciate it. I know that right now, there's a pretty short lifespan to our program, and it’s on its way out in a very sad sort of way, so as someone stepping off of a sinking vessel, I say, play like your musician on the Titanic, write whatever you want, and know that the faculty that has been teaching us, will be proud to know that is what you are doing. 

BP: Perfect, thanks a lot Theo, I really appreciate it.

LISTEN TO "THE BATHROOM BODY" HERE