Team!

Long time. More on that in a minute.

But first, I wanted to share what I’ve been working on. It’s a book called American Rambler. In it I spend a year walking (ok, sometimes driving) the path of Johnny Appleseed from birth to death. It is an ode to slow living, to nature, a trek into the heart of America—a real American odyssey, if you will—and it very much stemmed from this very Substack.

Now here’s the deal, the book comes out in 18 days on May 12th, 2026. Thus far American Rambler has been blessed with some incredible blurbs—including this one from Ethan Hawke (yes, that Ethan Hawke):

More wild blurbs from the likes of Colson Whitehead, John Green, Cheryl Strayed, Tara Westover, and other luminaries can be found at the end of this letter.

The book is also an Indie Next Pick, and has received two early ⭐️starred⭐️ reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly️.

So, why am I sharing this all with you?

Well, for starters, I’m very proud of this book. I believe it’s the best thing I’ve ever written. But also, to be quite honest, it is because you—every single one of you—have the ability to change my life right now.

“How so?” you wonder. I’m glad you asked.

Over 8,000 people subscribe to this Substack (thank you!!!). If a few hundred of you preorder my book—from either your own local independent bookstore, or one of the options below—that alone would be amazing.

But imagine if 1,000 of you preordered the book? Or half of you? Or more than half? Imagine if all 8,000 of you took the time to buy a copy of American Rambler today?

That would, genuinely, have such an incredible impact on the life of this book—and also my life—it would be unimaginable.

“What’s that?” You’re wondering, “What’s a preorder?”

Preorders are when you place an order for a book before its pub date. Those early orders help signal to the publisher that people are interested in the book, and single to bookstore owners that they should be carrying the book.

Preorders also help immensely with reaching the New York Times bestseller list. If 2,000 people—that’s only 1/4 of the people who subscribe to this Substack—preorder American Rambler, it will be an instant New York Times bestseller, guaranteed.

What a thing that would be.

So, I need your help. Let’s be honest about that. That’s what I’m doing here—straight up. I’m asking for your help.

As I said, if you have a local independent bookstore you love in your community, I urge you—and thank you hugely(!)—to take the time to preorder a copy of American Rambler.

Some of you might be asking, “What’s in it for me? Other than, you know, a book?”

Fair enough. If you want something to sweeten the pot, here are three incentives for preordering (these stores will ship the book to you!)—but most importantly, know that you’ll have my deep, deep appreciation.

First, you can preorder from Books Are Magic—and if you do, you’ll get a pair of very lovely, very comfortable, American Rambler socks (login for shipping orders).

That said, word on the street is Books Are Magic only has a few pairs of socks left, so…

Preorder from Blue Willow Bookshop and you’ll get not one but two signed prints by artist and friend Steven Weinberg.

Lastly, can also preorder from Barnes & Noble—who says,”We love Isaac Fitzgerald’s American Rambler.”

If you have already placed a preorder at this point. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart.

If you’re still reading, yet still not convinced, I’ve put an embarrassment of riches in terms of early praise for the book below.

“But Isaac,” you ask. “What about Walk It Off? Haven’t heard from you in awhile, and now you’re coming around with your hat out?”

Ok, true. I’m sorry for the long absence, and appreciate your patience.

While I have been offering this newsletter for free for over half a decade, there has always been an optional paid subscription. In honor of now having this book out—a book that was born of Walk It Off—I’m removing the paid subscription option entirely.

For those of you that did pay to subscribe to Walk It Off, know that you’ll always have my abiding appreciation. Thank you.

As to where Walk It Off goes from here, I’ve still got a couple of long walks in the queue (just working on a few edits), and I’m sure that I’m going to do more in the future. But given how much of my heart I poured into American Rambler, it’s now my job to head out on the road and push this book in bookstores across the country. I’ll send more info on the tour in a few days, but you can find the stops listed here. It’d be so wonderful to see you!

While I’m out there rambling, I’ll be doing what I always do: talking to people—often while I walk with them. I’ll be sharing those conversations, for free, as always, right here at Walk It Off.

I hope you continue to follow along.

Again, I am very proud of American Rambler. It is my deepest hope that you all read it and connect with it, too. Feel free to drop me a line and let me know what you think about the book.

One last incentive. If you preorder the book, and find me out there on the road in the next year or two, I’ll buy you a beer or cider, or other beverage of your choice.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. Thank you for reading, and with a mountain of gratitude,

-Isaac

PS-Oh right. As promised, in case you still need a lil’ convincing…

Early praise for American Rambler:

“This rollicking, heartfelt walk through America made me feel the kind of wonder and hope I’ve been longing for.”

—John Green, author of The Anthropocene Reviewed

“Part history, part travelogue, part meditative yawp, American Rambler is a quest for Johnny Appleseed that becomes a contemporary, warts-and-all portrait of the land he seeded. Isaac Fitzgerald taps into our need to lean on legends—apocryphal or not—in order to understand and justify the way we live now. This book is an absolute joy to read.”

—Patrick Ryan, author of Buckeye: A Novel

“What a profound pleasure it is to ramble along with Isaac Fitzgerald as he journeys deep into American history and his own searching heart. This absorbing, rollicking, and tender memoir made me laugh and cry, the way good books always do. Fitzgerald’s candid and clear-eyed portrait of a country, a family, and a life built one step at a time is a beautiful and unforgettable read.”

—Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild

“It takes a wild man to capture this wild land, and Fitzgerald is on the case. This time around, he brings his immeasurable charm and irrepressible humanism to bear on a genuine American legend, with fantastic results.”

—Colson Whitehead, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad

“An immersive walk through our country’s forgotten history. Fitzgerald carves out a trail through his own past as he explores the landscapes and lives that shaped a nation.”

—Tara Westover, author of Educated

“Part memoir, part history, American Rambler turns its clear-eyed gaze upon the myths that made us and the connections that sustain us. The spirit of Thoreau accompanies Isaac Fitzgerald on this pilgrimage of restlessness and renewal, and the people he meets along the way are rendered with humor, grit, and humility. Adventure, insight, and abandon all tangle in this compelling account of one man’s meander along the paths of perseverance and discovery.”

—Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son

“Told with loving tenderness and frank realness, American Rambler is a brilliant walking tour given by a sage party monk. A breath of fresh air that isn’t always all that fresh, but when it isn’t, it’s a little bit intoxicating. Fitzgerald’s voice is rare for its honesty and generosity, for how much you can feel his love in the writing.”

—Tommy Orange, author of Wandering Stars

“What Fitzgerald learns about himself and the state of the nation is more compelling still, with all their triumphs and tragedies. Blue Highways with hiking boots, and a grand entertainment for travelers real and armchair.”

—Kirkus (starred review)

“Throughout, Fitzgerald’s elegant prose, restless curiosity, and deep compassion leap off the page. The result is a stirring, singular entry in the American road trip genre.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“The author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts seeks ‘to separate legend from story from memory from fact’ as he traces the path of the American gardener and folk hero Johnny Appleseed from Massachusetts to Indiana.”

—The New York Times (most anticipated)

While walking with #1 New York Times, #1 USA Today, and #1 Sunday Times author V. E. Schwab, she told me, “I need the act of motion in order to be calm enough to sit still with the words.” It was a thought that resonated with me—one of many from our recent talk—as I too try and figure out ways to trick myself into doing, well, most things if I’m being honest. Schwab said, “We’re hacking our brains. That’s something I’m constantly doing—I am constantly hacking my brain. […] Tattoos, even. It's all just trying to keep myself alive. It's sanity. The walking is integral. The exercise is integral. Whatever shape it takes for me—walking or running or something else—because my brain doesn't work without it.”

Walking, exercise, tattoos—it got me thinking, what are the ways that y’all hack your brains? Tell us about the things that help you stay grounded and sane in the comments below.

“They’re beautiful—and so big.”

I look up. At first I think the elderly woman is talking to me—or maybe to a friend. But as I watch her, standing alone, I realize that she’s talking to herself. Sometimes yourself makes very good company.

To be fair, she isn’t wrong. We’re standing in front of a long row of extremely large wooden elephants that cut a swath through the Meatpacking District. The outdoor art installation, called The Great Elephant Migration, boasts being “the largest public art installations in New York City since Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s The Gates in 2005.” I saw The Gates, all those years ago.

I take a moment to be thankful for art that makes us feel small, before leaving the woman standing there—still looking at the wooden beasts—and cut across the street where I see the person I’m here to meet, V. E. Schwab. We say hello, and then take a moment to examine the spectacular sculptures together while commenting on the tremendous weather. After grabbing a couple of iced coffees, we turn toward the Chelsea Market Ramp and climb the concrete steps up to the High Line and become one with the legion of walkers already in motion.

Isaac: We're walking in New York City, but you're not from New York City—nor do you live here.

V. E. Schwab: I'm not from New York City.

I: What are you in town for?

VES: I'm in town for Comic Con—but I’m also doing some pre-publication work for my next book, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil. Plus I’m here to have this amazing chat with you and to walk on the High Line on a beautiful day.

I: It is absolutely gorgeous.

VES: Stunning.

I: But you bounce around quite a bit, is that fair to say? You tour a lot.

VES: Less so post-Covid—I toured 17 countries in 2019, I think—but now I usually tour once a year domestically, and then maybe six times internationally. I've cut it back.

I: That’s still quite a bit. Where is home base for you?

VES: Scotland. But right now I’m staying in Denver here in the U.S., because I'm signing the entire first printing of my next book.

I: Jesus. How many books is that?

VES: 300,000 copies.

I: What is that experience like? How long does that take?

VES: Roughly seven hours a day for two and a half months. So it is—

I: Wait, seriously?

VES: Seriously. Seven hours a day for two and a half months—because I can only sign about six to 7,000 copies a day. We know every day how many boxes of tip-in sheets I have to sign before I'm allowed to go to bed that night.

I: Do you ever go long?

VES: Well, I do a morning chunk, and then an afternoon chunk, and then an evening chunk. But I allow myself a drink while I do the evening chunk, so evening tends to run a little longer than the morning and afternoon.

I: So your full-time job right now is… signing books?

VES: Pretty much, but it's a gift I wanted to give to my readers.

I: Do you remember the first book you had that was signed that meant something to you?

VES: Well, that’s a bit of a sad story now.

I: How so?

VES: I wasn't actually a big reader when I was young. I was an athlete. I played soccer. My goal in life was to play in the World Cup.

So when I was 11, my mom was really trying to get me into reading. She had a friend at a bookstore in Southern California who contacted her and said, “Hey, there's a lady here. She's signing her debut novel. It looks like it's for kids around Victoria's age. Want me to grab a copy?”

What comes in the mail the next week? A signed copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

I: Whoa.

VES: So it's sad because, obviously, my relationship to that work and its author as a queer person—as a queer fan—is really damaged. Ruined. But that book is the book that made me a reader.

I: That book led you into a life of books.

VES: I was 11 and Harry Potter was 11 and the book was so, so important to me. Plus, the signature made it feel—for the first time—like the author who wrote that book was a real person.

I: Not just a name on the cover, but a signature. The person who wrote this book actually held it—put pen to paper and wrote down their name.

VES: Yes. The power of a signature. I remember that feeling as a young kid.

I: So now you want to pass that feeling on to other readers. That’s really special. But still, seven hours a day for two and a half months? How do you stay sane? Do you listen to music or watch television or—

VES: I'm catching up on audio books—because I can't listen to fiction while I'm drafting fiction and this was a pretty heavy drafting year for me.

I: Like writing an early draft?

VES: Right. So, I listen to nonfiction while I'm drafting—that’s when I listened to your book, Dirtbag, Massachusetts, actually—but obviously during this two and a half month window, even though I still have about two hours a day set aside for writing—

I: I’m sorry, what?

VES: I still have writing deadlines, Isaac.

But I'm spending a lot of time listening to fiction audio books. Plus, yes, I’m also watching television shows.

I: So you consume a lot of media.

VES: I’m a huge consumer. I need to fill my creative well at all times.

I: What’s a favorite tv show that you watched recently?

VES: I did a rewatch of Hannibal and that was really great for me—except that apparently my housemates were like, “Your personality is fusing with the show.”

I: How do you mean?

VES: We all went and got massages, because my arms were hurting and my hands were hurting—

I: From all the signing?

VES: From all the signing. Afterward I said, “I feel as if I was just tenderized—a bit like meat being marinated.” To which one of my housemates responded, “You have got to stop watching Hannibal.”

I: “Victoria, it's gone too far. You're talking about yourself like you’re food.”

VES: Exactly. Still, I finished the rewatch. Now I'm desperately trying—I try to read 120 books a year.

I: God damn.

VES: I consider it part of my job. I consider it part of my continuing education. But I’m really behind right now—so these two and a half months are my opportunity to catch up.

I: Signing and listening, signing and listening. A lil’ drink in the evening. A lil’ Hannibal. Then signing, signing, signing—listening, listening, listening.

VES: It's a little meditative. Rhythmic.

I: Do you get sick of it?

VES: Do I get tired of signing—in this context? Do I get tired of signing my name 7,000 times a day? Of course. Both physically—

I: The aforementioned massage trip.

VES: And mentally. But I will never, ever get tired of actually signing my books for readers. In that context, it feels like a victory lap. It feels like it's like a conquering maneuver.

I: How do you mean?

VES: If I’m signing the book, it means I survived the writing of the book.

I: So you're showing the book who's boss? Saying, “This is mine.”

VES: A little bit, sure. But it’s more, “You didn’t kill me. I'm still here.” Because every time I’m working on a book, I hit this point where it feels like the book might kill me. So signing the book—

I: Means you’re still standing. You made it through.

VES: People will say, “I’m so sorry for asking you to sign.” But never, ever apologize for asking me to sign a finished book. It reminds me—over and over again—that I conquered writing the thing.

I: You’re an international author. You’re work is available around the globe.

VES: I’m very fortunate.

I: Do you know how many languages your work has been translated into, off the top of your head?

VES: 39? 40? Either 39 or 40.

I: We can round up.

VES: It's quite an honor—especially because I didn’t start out in my career being translated. I mean, to be honest, I didn’t start out in my career even being shelved in bookstores.

I: Speak on that.

VES: I started really, really small—and in retrospect I'm incredibly grateful that I did.

I think there's this fetishization of the Million Dollar Debut Author,™️ and I get it. Money helps us live. I will never say anything negative about an author receiving that kind of money. But I also think it can be an incredible amount of pressure to put on a new novelist—especially one who doesn’t have an audience yet.

My first book deal was for maybe $10,000—which was nice, but wasn’t enough to live on.

But the flip side of that coin is, it was easy for me to get in the black.

I: To start making royalties.

VES: When I’m talking about readership—or audience—I think about it like a body of water.

If you have a million dollar book deal as a debut author, you are making this gigantic splash. But it's a gigantic splash in a puddle—the water is incredibly shallow and begins to evaporate immediately.

But when you start small, you have a teacup—you have this tiny amount of water—but it's deeper than it is wide. So with every book, my water got a little larger, my audience got a little larger, and it grew in such a way that it did not evaporate.

I: So now you have a—

VES: Now I have a lake.

I: I’d say an ocean, but ok.

VES: My readership has this stability that allows me to take chances—that allows me to take risks—because my readers have given me the gift of an audience that is now as deep as it is wide. Which in turn allows me to be the writer I want to be.

I: Which is why you’re spending two and a half months signing books. But what is, you know, “The writer you want to be?”

VES: A writer who is ambitious and—more importantly—strange. So I will never regret how small my career was when I started out.

I: Here you are now, all these years later, with readers around the globe. Translated into 40—or maybe 39—languages. Is there an area internationally that you love to visit?

VES: Honestly, I love touring internationally—another way in which I’m so, so lucky. I love meeting international readers. But the greatest gift for me is that writing is a job that I can do anywhere.

The reason I live in Scotland is because, in the late 2010s, I started touring so much that I was on the road more than I was home. So for me, going home meant going on vacation, in a way. So I asked myself, “Where is a place that I feel like I’m on vacation, that could also feel like home?”

Because writing is a job that allows you to work wherever you want to work—it's a job that you can do in a coffee shop, or in a library, or in an airport, or anywhere you have access to a pen and paper and an internet connection. Writing afforded me the freedom to live in the country that brings me the most joy, and that country is Scotland.

So, to answer your question, I love touring Spain. I love the book festival in Buenos Aires, I love visiting France—because that’s where my family lives. I'm looking forward to going to even more countries in which I'm published, but the greatest gift writing gives me is the ability to create wherever I feel inspired.

I: How did you end up in Scotland? Is it because it’s your happy place? Is it because it’s sort of centrally located if you have to tour the Americas and Europe?

VES: Where to begin? I was living in an ex-prison warden's garden shed outside of Liverpool in my early twenties—

I: A good opening to a story.

VES: I essentially had a book to write and no money. I thought, “I can either look at my normal view out my window in Nashville”—where I was living at the time—“or I can go somewhere else for a few months to finish this novel.”

I let someone—how to put this—trick me into going to Liverpool.

I: Trick?

VES: Because they didn't tell me they were dating someone there.

I: Ah. Got it.

VES: So I ended up in Liverpool, where I moved into a garden shed—like an à la Home Depot garden shed that was haunted and had no heat—but rent was $200 pounds. It was the middle of winter in Liverpool and I was absolutely miserable. So—even though I couldn’t afford it—I decided to give myself one night of happiness.

I: What’d you do?

VES: I took a train up to Edinburgh, Scotland, and I spent all my money to do one night at The Scotsman Hotel in what's called a “student suite,” which is essentially a closet. But I didn't care. Because when I got off the train in Edinburgh, it was as if all of the silt inside my heart settled to the ground. I immediately felt happier.

But of course I questioned it—as I do most things. I figured, “This is all rose-colored glasses, because my life in Liverpool is so rough right now.”

I: You didn’t trust how much you loved it.

VES: So I decided to go back to Edinburgh several more times to see if it was a trick of the light—to see if it was merely my circumstances, and the fact that I was on vacation that made me feel good. But every time I went to Edinburgh, that silt inside my heart settled. Every single time I felt at home.

I: Is that uncommon, for you? To feel at home in a place?

VES: You and I talked about tattoos when you were on my podcast—

I: We both have a few.

VES: I have wings tattooed behind both of my ankles, because I have this sense of wanderlust that has plagued me my entire life. A restlessness. Even when I’m staying in one place—walking, for example. I love to walk every single day. If I could, I would walk until I'm too tired to stand every single day.

I want to always be in motion.

I: You were an athletic kid.

VES: Being in Edinburgh is the only place I feel like I can stand still and be happy. Then my parents retired to France. So it's actually puts me closer to them, too.

I: Bonus.

VES: Plus it puts me five hours ahead of publishing here in the US, which means I get the whole morning—no matter how busy publishing is—the whole morning is mine to write before everybody else wakes up.

I: That's brilliant. Before you start getting peppered with emails or texts from people.

VES: I do most of my writing in the morning—so for me, it's just this preservation of everything that I love. Plus it's a tea and cake country, and I love tea and cake.

I: Who doesn't love tea and cake?

VES: Not me. I love it.

I: You mentioned that you walk every day. How much?

VES: It varies, but I try to get around 20,000 steps a day.

I: I aim for the same amount, which is around 10 miles a day.

VES: Correct.

I: Though sometimes I wonder if that much walking is a sign of… poor mental health?

VES: Well, it might stem from poor mental health, but for me walking is mental health. It keeps me sane.

I: So where do you find the time in your day to walk?

VES: I mean, the problem is I don't—do you know how long it takes to walk 20,000 steps?

I: Hours and hours.

VES: So, some days I cheat.

I: How do you cheat?

VES: I run, so that I can get my steps in.

I: Ok, I’d say that’s not cheating so much as… making it harder?

VES: Harder, sure, but more efficient.

I essentially have an overabundance of anxious energy. That's one of the reasons I write, too. My head is a tangle of yarn. When I'm writing, it's the only time I'm pulling those threads in my brain straight. I enjoy making order out of chaos. But writing is also an inherently sedentary job—and I am not a sedentary person.

So the first thing I do when I wake up is walk two miles or so, before I even sit down to have breakfast. I need my body to turn on, so that my brain can get a bit quiet. I need a little contrast—my legs need to move before I can put my butt in the chair to type and think.

I: What does your writing process look like?

VES: I’m an intense planner. I essentially plan an entire scene, beat by beat—

I: So you start with an outline?

VES: Yes. An outline, from which I expand. So for instance, my next novel is 350 scenes or so.

I: You outline scene by scene?

VES: I absolutely love structural play. In order to understand a story's structure, I need to have all of the ingredients—all of the form—and then I can start braiding the narratives together. I can start arranging it.

I: Almost like planning a symphony.

VES: I’ve had people ask me, “Doesn't that take the joy out of writing?” But no. For me it puts the joy into the execution. It also feels like a cheat.

I: A cheat like running instead of walking?

VES: It’s a cheat for perfectionism.

I: Are you a perfectionist?

VES: 100%—and as a perfectionist I often get stuck on the exact wording of a moment. Which puts me in the position of not being able to move forward until I have the exact words.

So outlining is a cheat against perfectionism. Because you're telling yourself you're not actually trying to find the words that will be in the book. You're just trying to find the shape of the scene. It's a really good way to keep perfectionism at bay. Because, as I'm outlining, of course beautiful sentences start getting in. Finished sentences start getting in. Pieces of dialogue start getting in. Which is when I invariably transition from outlining a scene to actually writing it.

I: For me this is writing with pen and paper. When I’m at my computer, I keep trying again and again to get a sentence just so. But when I’m writing by hand, there are no red squiggles pointing out my spelling mistakes or green squiggles telling me that I’ve switched tenses yet again. I just keep marching forward.

VES: We’re hacking our brains. That’s something I’m constantly doing—I am constantly hacking my brain.

I: Walking—or running. The way you write. It’s all ways to work around yourself.

VES: Tattoos, even. It's all just trying to keep myself alive. It's sanity. The walking is integral. The exercise is integral. Whatever shape it takes for me—walking or running or something else—because my brain doesn't work without it. I need the endorphins. I need the act of motion in order to be calm enough to sit still with the words.

I: How many tattoos do you have? Or maybe a better question is, how does getting tattooed hack your brain?

VES: I don’t actually know off the top of my head how many tattoos I have, but we can try to count. The very first tattoo I ever got was an Eye of Horus on my left hip—because I thought, “Oh my body will never change.”

Then I got a Latin phrase around the Eye of Horus that has a typo in it, which is what I get for thinking, “Google won't steer me wrong.” I was 19 —unmedicated and a little manic—and I said to myself, “I have to get this tattoo right now. Today. It has to happen.” So now that tattoo, with its typo, is a lesson in patience.

Then I got wings behind my ankles.

I: I’m guessing those hurt?

VES: Like a bitch. Then I have a key on my forearm, which is a real 18th century French key. I got that one so all the doors in life will open for me.

Then I have “rise up” on my other wrist in my own handwriting.

I: Hamilton reference?

VES: Hamilton reference.

So that's six. Then I have an entire sleeve made out of flowers. I don’t know if that counts as one, or—

I: We can stop counting.

VES: The flower sleeve is a bit ironic, because I'm not a very femme person. But I like the contrast of having something very femme.

It took many, many, many sessions.

I: It's beautiful.

VES: The reason I love it is because it's all fictional flowers. I gave my artist in Scotland permission to invent the flowers on the spot. So none of the flowers are real. Now, obviously they have references—poppies and roses and other blooms—but my artist dreamed them all up.

Some of the flowers are fully in bloom, others are only halfway open, and some of them are still in the very early stages of spring. Which is representative of the creative process to me. Some things are out there, others I’m working on, and others are still gestating.

I imagine that it's going to keep growing—down my left side. Just the other day I started getting the itch.

I: That little voice that says, “Time to get another tattoo.”

VES: The restlessness comes in. I don't know if it's masochism—or some kind of control, or something to do with agency. I know at least part of it is that I have chronic pain from sport injuries. That pain is with me every day. So, in a way—when I get tattooed—I get to choose my pain.

But I also have this need for commemoration. Along with a need to feel really grounded in my body—because so often I feel stuck in my own head.

Not to mention dysmorphia and body image issues. I never liked my arms. I always felt kind of blobby in them—no matter what my weight was. Then getting the floral tattoo sleeve helped me find something to love about my body.

But I need more tattoos. Do you want to hear a funny story?

I: Always.

VES: The first tattoo I got that my father saw is the aforementioned key on my forearm. When he saw it he sighed and said, “Well, you’ll never get a real job now.”

I: “That’s the point, dad!”

VES: No but really, I was already a bestselling author for five years at that point. So now, every time I get a tattoo, I show the new tattoo to him and say, “Am I going to get a real job now, daddy?”

He just laughs.

I: “They’ll never let me give the J.R.R. Tolkien Lecture in Fantasy Literature at Oxford University now, dad!”

VES: Oh wow—

I: I do my research.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. You mentioned that first book deal—and your little teacup—but I’m interested in younger you. Jock you. Walk us through how you got to that first book deal.

VES: Well, I was born in California to a Beverly Hills 90210 father and a penniless English mother.

I: Another great opening for a story.

VES: In the ‘30s, ‘40s, and ‘50s there was this place in Hollywood called Schwab’s Pharmacy. It was this really famous soda fountain shop—Lana Turner was discovered there, and a lot of producers and directors would take calls there and have meetings. That was my grandfather’s place.

I: Incredible.

VES: It really was—until it wasn’t. The place went bankrupt when my dad was 17.

It was sudden. My dad gets a red Corvette for his 16th birthday—he had a soda fountain by his pool—and then by his next birthday it was all gone.

I: So your father was raised with money, but then his family lost it all?

VES: Raised with money then goes to nothing. Whereas my mother was raised with nothing and then went to… nothing.

So they were very much about fiscal security and responsibility when I was growing up.

I: Did you have siblings?

VES: I'm an only child. It was very much a nuclear family. Just the three of us.

I was raised between two very different climates. Back and forth between San Jose, California and Nashville, Tennessee.

I: Because of div—

VES: No. Because my father was a software engineer and he would change jobs to go work at a startup.

So I was born in California, then we moved to Nashville for five years, and then we moved back to California for five years.

I: How old were you when you were in Tennessee?

VES: I was in Tennessee from three to eight, then back to California until I was 13, and then back to Tennessee from 14 to 18.

I: Got it. Were you a jock on both coasts?

VES: I went from playing soccer competitively in California—convinced I was going to be a World Cup athlete—to Nashville, Tennessee in the dead of summer at 98% humidity. Not to mention, I have asthma.

I couldn't cut it. So my soccer career went up in smoke at 15 years old. So I became a competitive fencer instead.

I: In Tennessee?

VES: Yes.

I: As one does.

VES: I went to an all girls Southern preparatory school instead of the large California public school I was attending before. So I was constantly all out of sorts.

I: Were you a happy kid?

VES: No. I was not a happy kid. I was lonely, always moving around, never had a good, solid group of friends. Then, as soon as I would find my stride—this would happen in college, too—it would be senior year and then it was over.

I: Where’d you go to college?

VES: I went to Washington University in St. Louis. I wanted to be an astrophysicist.

I: From World Cup soccer player to astrophysicist?

VES: Well, then I changed my major six times.

I: Six times?

VES: Again, I was very fortunate. My parents offered me two options. Option one was my parents would save some money and leave it to me when they died. Option two was they would pay for four years of college education, so I could graduate without debt.

I chose college.

I: Smart.

VES: So about three and a half years in and after six major changes, they reminded me, “We said four years, Victoria.”

I: Oh no!

VES: “You better figure it out. You better graduate on time. We said four years of education. Not five.”

I: What were the other majors?

VES: Astrophysics.

I: Naturally.

VES: But then I realized I was more into the narrative of space than, you know, the math. Don’t get me wrong, I was really good at the math and science, but what I really wanted to know was the history of the universe.

I: Of course.

VES: Then I got really into Japanese Culture and Mythologies—I had this course catalog that was 300 pages long, and I wanted to go and learn everything about everything.

I: Japan’s a good place to start.

VES: This is why I love being an author, actually. You get to be a temporary expert at something that interests you, then you get to move on.

I: So Astrophysics to Japanese Culture and—

VES: Astrophysics to Japanese Culture and Mythology, which led me to Art History, which in turn led me to Set Design, and then English.

I: That’s five.

VES: Finally I decided I would do something practical. So I went into Marketing and Graphic Design with a specific focus on Book Typography.

I: Practical?

VES: You sound like my parents. When I graduated—on time, mind you—they said, “For the love of God, you graduated with Book Typography.”

I: “Set Design isn’t looking so bad now, hey mom and dad?”

VES: Technically I graduated with a Communication Design Degree.

I: Did you go to graduate school?

VES: Four years later I would get my master’s in Depictions of Monstrosity in Medieval Art at the University of Edinburgh.

I: Practical.

VES: But here's what you have to understand. Sophomore year—I'm still only two majors in at this point—

I: Japanese culture and mythology, baby!

VES: Might have been Set Design by this point. But Sophomore year I decided, “I'm going to write my first novel.”

Up until that point I’d only written poetry and written short fiction, micro fiction, and nonfiction. But I'd never tried a novel-length work, because it seemed impossible.

I: Real quick. When did you start writing poetry?

VES: 13 years old.

I: That’s the time for it.

VES: I was the poet laureate of my high school. I was really, really serious about it.

But I was also practical, so when I got to college I said, “You know what? I'm never going to make any money as a poet.”

I: Very smart.

VES: Well, then I started thinking, “What if I try to take the things that make my voice special in poetry and figure out how to shape that into prose?”

I: I mean, I’d say, “Less smart.” But look at how it all turned out.

Were you a big reader at this point?

VES: I was still not a huge reader. I read for college—but I was still the kid that grew up on a soccer field, not in the library.

I: On the fencing—uh, what would you call…

VES: The fencing strip.

I: You were a jock.

VES: I was a jock.

Also, I was gay and didn’t know it.

I: How was that playing out?

VES: I really kept thinking, “Wow, I must be dating boys wrong. Because I hate kissing boys, and I don’t like being with boys, and dicks are gross—but I’m straight. So I must just be doing it wrong.”

I: “Yet, I love competitive sports where I’m surrounded by other women.”

VES: Exactly.

I: Hindsight 20/20.

VES: Hindsight 20/20.

The thing you have to understand is, I have an extremely adversarial nature when it comes to fear.

I: How do you mean?

VES: Some people freeze up when they’re afraid. But for me? Fear is something that makes me mad. Fear angers me, because it makes me feel vulnerable.

I: Examples?

VES: I had a fear of change, so I chopped off all my hair. I had a fear of being away from my family, so I backpacked through Europe. I had a fear of needles—

I: So you got your first tattoo.

VES: I got my first tattoo.

Sophomore year I think about writing a novel, but then I get scared. I had a fear of failure. But as soon as I realized I was afraid of failing to write a novel, I sat down and wrote a novel.

I: How old were you?

VES: 19 years old.

I: How long did it take you?

VES: I drafted my very first novel in two months.

I: So at 19, you drafted your first novel in two months driven by a fear that you would not be able to finish it.

Do either of your parents write, or were they interested in writing?

VES: No. My parents do not understand where I came from.

My dad is a math science person. Extreme binary. Software, not hardware—if you give him a piece of hardware, he doesn't understand what to do with it. His expertise is coding and nothing else.

My mother, on the other hand, worked 17 jobs. She was a chef and a caterer, but also an animal docent at the zoo and an administrator at an arts college. She was very creative, but never with words.

I made sense to them as an astrophysicist. I did not make sense to them as a novelist.

Power to them for being supportive, but I perplexed them.

I: Where do you think your drive came from?

VES: The aforementioned all girls Southern preparatory school was extremely sink or swim. It created young women who were extremely self-driven, because if you failed, they weren't going to hold your hand. You had to be disciplined enough to go home and do the five hours of homework assigned to you.

I: A very tough place to be gay but not understand that you’re gay, I’d imagine.

VES: Yes. Of course I fell in love with a girl and then—you know, unrequited love—it builds character. I fell in love with my best friend.

I: But still thought you were straight?

VES: Definitely still thought I was straight. A very confusing time. Also, an extremely homophobic environment. The school worked hard to put any thoughts about your sexuality out of your head.

I: So you’re in college, you’re 19 years old, you’re self-disciplined, and you decide to write your first novel?

VES: I think that's something you have to have as an author.

I: Self discipline?

VES: Yes—because so often all publishers do is give you a deadline. Say that deadline is eight months from now, it’s up to you how you’re going to spend those eight months.

I: I’d argue some of us are better at it than others—but that you are exceedingly good at it.

VES: Militant. But yeah, I attempt to write this novel—a short one, obviously—and I discover that I am able to take my voice from poetry and put it into my fiction. Which makes my writing strange enough that it got a little attention.

I: How so?

VES: I stood out in the slush pile—I actually got my first agent when I was 19.

I: You haven’t even found your final major yet!

VES: But I had an agent. It was weird.

I: How did you even know where to send your work?

VES: I had no idea what I was doing, but I did research. This was back in the olden days—the internet existed, but it wasn’t very helpful for this sort of thing quite yet.

I got my hands on this giant book of publishers and agents—

I: When is this? Early 2000s?

VES: 2006. So through the book I discover Nathan Bransford, who I then do look up online. Bransford would host contests on his blog, and you could submit—some of them were for an opening chapter, others were for dialogue. My dialogue was super quirky, because I was super quirky. So I submit with 12 hours left in this month-long contest and I get one of the top three spots.

I: Was there an award?

VES: The reward was that Nathan would consider representing you. So he would ask for your query letter and your pitch—so I rushed to put all that together.

But I also sent the work out to a few other agents as well—now that I knew there was interest.

I: Are you kidding me?

VES: What?

I: I—let’s just say I didn’t have this sort of drive at the age of 19.

VES: Well, at the time I was simply concerned with being agented—not agented by the right person.

I: Hey, you're 19 years old. Cut yourself some slack.

VES: Well, I got my agent.

I: Not Nathan Bransford?

VES: Not Nathan Bransford.

I: What’s next?

VES: I want to get a book deal. So the book goes on submission. It’s on submission for eight months, and it gets to acquisitions—which is the final step in the publishing journey—four times.

I: Holy smokes!

VES: But you know what else happens? It fails four times. Because it doesn’t actually have a plot, Isaac. Because I had never written a novel before.

I: You were 19! You didn't have the plot of your own life yet!

VES: I could make words pretty, which is why it got as far as it did. But—thankfully for me, in the long run—eventually someone would realize, “The writing is beautiful, but this book doesn’t have a plot. It’s just vibes.”

I: How would you describe what the book was about?

VES: It was Alice in Wonderland, but on more drugs. So that manuscript got me in the door, but it doesn't sell—which was devastating to me that year.

I: I know I sound like a broken record at this point, but you’re still only 19!

VES: 19 is when I learn a very important lesson in my life: If things are going well, you're going to need to write another book—and if things are not going well, you're going to need to write another book.

I: Jesus. How’s your fear complex doing at this point?

VES: Oh, it’s kicking in. Now I’m afraid that I’m a fluke. I tried to write a book. It didn't sell. I'm either going to be a fluke or I'm going to do it again.

Now by this point, I'm a senior—

I: Thank Christ.

VES: So I decide I have to take this seriously. I'm a second semester senior with a major and two minors and I'm trying to catch up.

I'm completely overworked and overwhelmed. I'm a Studio Art Major at this point—because I'm in Communication Design—and I start checking myself out of my studio space every night from nine to 11 pm. I walk across the street from campus to a coffee shop and put in two hours of work on the next book. Some nights I’d write 500 words, and some nights I’d write 2,500 words, but I was treating writing the next book like a job.

I: What was the next book?

VES: That book was called The Near Witch and it was very, very weird—it was only 160 pages or so, I still wasn’t getting a whole lot of guidance—but that book went on submission the week that I graduated.

I: So not only do you graduate after exploring six majors in four years—and graduate on time—but you also sent your second book out on submission?

VES: Correct. My parents basically said, “You can have the summer. You're going to have to figure your shit out on September 1st.” But September 1st comes around and my book hasn't sold.

Whoopsie.

I: So, what happens next?

VES: It sells on September 2nd.

I: God damn it!

VES: I had started looking into grad schools at that point, but the book sold.

But remember, it did not sell for a lot of money.

I: Right.

VES: It is not a life-changing amount of money. My whole life does not change.

But I do.

I: How old were you?

VES: I had just turned 22.

I: So your life begins.

VES: My life begins—and then, shockingly, everything goes off the rails.

I: How so?

VES: Well, for starters, I’m told to rewrite the book from scratch. I receive a 23 page—single-spaced—editorial letter.

I: Yikes!

VES: So every time there was a tiny bit of validation for my writing, there was also this massive caveat. It felt like publishing was saying, over and over again, “You’re good, but not that good, ok?”

My feeling at the time was, “Why did you even pick me? If you’re going to edit me this much—why did you even buy my book? Did you even like it?”

But they obviously saw something, and I’m really grateful for that. So I set out to do the rewrites they wanted, and also I began writing the next book.

I: Where are you living at this point?

VES: Great question. Ok, so I sold The Near Witch in 2009, but it didn’t come out until 2011. I was living in the Liverpool garden shed for a little while—around this time is when I get the idea for The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, but that will take another ten years to publish.

I begin working on book two, The Archived—

I: Before The Near Witch hits shelves? That fear engine never turns off, huh?

VES: Then I moved back to Nashville, because I had no money. I learned that lesson that every author learns—

I: That your payment is broken up and paid out over months—or years—not in one lump sum?

VES: That’s the one! But around the time my second book comes out in 2013, I decide to move to New York City.

It was the worst.

I: Really?

VES: Like I said, none of this was a life-changing amount of money, but in my 20s?

I: You’re thinking, “This money’s gonna last forever!”

VES: Correct. I basically did that miserable thing so many creative people think they need to do, which is be close to their industry in order to succeed.

I was so, so, so broke.

I: Writing often doesn’t make a lot of money, yet the heart of our industry is in the most expensive city on the planet.

VES: I had nothing. I lived in a closet. I couldn't afford to do anything fun. I couldn't afford groceries. When I finally tapped out, it was because I was so determined not to go into debt—I had four dollars in the bank when I left New York City.

Something I realized in hindsight is, I came here to be around other authors—but there was no one single place that all the authors were hanging out. There was no singular bar that all of publishing showed up at every night.

I: But when you’re young, you think it’s going to be like it is in the movies—or Sex and the City.

VES: I would argue, the closer you are to publishing, the less it values you.

I: Oh wow.

VES: You don’t want to be available on the time, it turns out. They get excited when you visit—they aren’t as excited if you’re always around.

I: “I thought I was getting points for saying ‘yes’ to doing all those events—”

VES: But your value was actually going down. So I moved back to Nashville.

Again.

I: Let me get this straight. California, Nashville, California, Nashville, college in St. Louis, Nashville, Liverpool garden shed, Nashville, New York, Nashville. A master’s program in Edinburgh somewhere in there. Is that right?

VES: Close enough. But this time I land in Nashville and I'm there for about a decade—with a one year break to get the aforementioned master’s.

I: So that’s the Where You’re Living Map,™️ as it were. But how about the publishing map? Because you were saying everything was going off the rails—

VES: Ok, so I write and publish my second book, The Archived, and it performs. Then I write the second book in the Archived Series, and it performs a little bit less—

I: To be expected, the second book in a series usually performs less.

VES: Well, my publisher at the time didn’t see it that way. They cancelled the series only two books in and tell me it’s my fault.

I: Whoa.

VES: It couldn’t be their fault, so it must be my fault.

So I make a public declaration online that the series is no longer moving forward, and I then have to make a public apology to the publisher for making that first statement insinuating that they are no longer invested in my work, even though—

I: They just cancelled your series, so they aren’t invested in your work.

VES: I’m 25 years old and being told that I failed by my own publisher so, yeah, things aren’t going well. I am three books into my career and I am so scared of not being able to write for a living anymore.

I: Again, that fear of failure.

VES: So I start doing work for hire to bridge the gap.

I: Like freelancing or—

VES: Work for hire is essentially when a publisher brings you a concept and they say, “We have a space on our list that really needs to be filled.” It's often for children's books.

So I start doing work for hire to bridge the gap—and there's a lot of shame among writers for doing work for hire—but I was so lucky that Scholastic offered me the opportunity to audition for one of those roles. I will never ever tolerate writers being shitty about work for hire, because it's the only thing that kept me alive in the industry.

I: Amen.

So I publish the Everyday Angel series for Scholastic—but because I'm so bitter about what happened with my first publisher, I decide I'm gonna leave publishing.

I: Time to get back into astrophysics, or try out for the World Cup soccer team.

VES: What happens next is, I write one more book out of spite. A sort of “Screw you!” sendoff to publishing.

I: And that book is?

VES: Vicious, published by Tor Books.

I: Hot damn!

VES: Remember, that first publisher had told me that I wasn’t marketable, that I wasn’t loud enough, that I wasn’t bold enough. That my books were unsellable. So I said, “Fuck you,” and I wrote my super villain book.

I: Was this after the Everyday Angel series?

VES: This was during. I reached out to my—I had a new agent at this point, Holly Root, who is still my agent and I adore her. So I wrote Holly, “I have a book,” and she says, “When did you write this book?” To which I respond, “It was a secret. Don't worry about it. I’ve been writing it for the past two and a half years.”

So Holly has her worries—

I: What are her concerns?

VES: That the market is never going to accept a super villain book that has no basis in Marvel or DC.

But I push, because this is my swan song, right?

I: So are you planning on doing work for hire from here on out or—

VES: No. I was dead. I was 25 and I was burnt out and I had—what to me, felt like failures. After this I was planning on peacing out from publishing altogether.

So I send Vicious to Holly and she’s unsure if we can even sell it, but I’m telling her we have to, because I have nothing else.

I: At the same time you’re getting the work for hire gig from Scholastic?

VES: Exactly. This is all in the same month, or maybe even the same week. Scholastic gives me 10K per book for three books—the Everyday Angel series—just enough to get by on, and then Vicious sells to Tor for 10K.

Tor tells us flat out, “We don’t really think this is going to sell, but we like what you’re doing and we want to see what happens next, so we’ll buy this.” Also, for Vicious I decide to publish under V. E. Schwab instead of Victoria.

I: So what happens?

VES: Vicious is never a bestseller—but it sells well.

I: How well?

VES: Vicious has sold the same number of copies every six months for 10 years.

I: Oh wow. What a blessing. That’s amazing.

VES: Vicious has now sold somewhere around half a million copies.

I: Jesus. So this isn’t so much the fear engine this time as it is—

VES: Spite. This time I am fueled by spite. True of the Everyday Angel series, too— which turns around and sells a million copies in Scholastic book clubs and fairs.

All of a sudden the lights are back on in my house. All of a sudden I can stay in this industry a little bit longer. Vicious is doing well enough that Tor says, “We’ll buy some more books from you. What else do you want to write?”

I: So what’s your answer?

VES: A Darker Shade of Magic.

I: I’m running out of ways to say, “God damn.” How old are you at this point?

VES: 27 years old.

I: You waste no time.

VES: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is book 25, if you’re keeping track. A Darker Shade of Magic is book number eight—my three first books, then Vicious, and the three Everyday Angel books, then Darker Shade.

I: Got it.

VES: A Darker Shade of Magic is also not a bestseller. My ninth book, A Gathering of Shadows—Darker Shade’s sequel—is my first bestseller.

I: Ninth book—out of 25—first bestseller.

VES: Right, and when I say “bestseller,” I mean it was on the The New York Times Best Seller list for one week, and then it was gone. One week.

I: Same with Dirtbag. One week and then it was outta there!

VES: Still counts.

I: Still counts. Not to skip ahead, but how long was The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue on The New York Times Best Seller list?

VES: Addie LaRue, which is my 20th book, I think was on there for 47 weeks.

I: Not too shabby.

VES: Around that time I wrote about—what I called “the slow pursuit of overnight success.”

It happens so often, right? “Wow! So and so came out of nowhere! An overnight success! What a sensation.” Which is of course great coverage to get—but it usually ignores the ten or so years of toil that went into making that “overnight success” happen.

It has not been a smooth road.

I: You’ve written 25 books. I’m sure your writing process has changed over the years, but can you tell us a little bit about your current process?

VES: My creative neuroses around structural planning have really codified in the last four or five books, and now my process is pretty solid. Will it work for me five books from now? Who knows, but it’s working for me right now.

First off, I am not a fast writer—

I: Really? Because 25 books—

VES: I am a consistent writer.

I spend a year making a book. For the first three to four months, I’m outlining. I’m not writing a single word thinking, “This will be in the book.” I’m building the scaffolding of the house that I will then decorate with my words throughout the rest of the year.

I: Do you have a daily word count?

VES: Not one that I keep in mind, but when I’m writing it's anywhere between 500 to two or three thousand words a day.

I: Do you have any mentors—or did you, earlier in your career? Are you part of a writing group?

VES: I didn't really have, say, a critique circle or anything like that. I've always been a little bit of a loner. The best education I've ever given myself was about 10 years ago—when I decided to read at least one hundred books a year.

I: You mentioned that earlier.

VES: It’s the best education you can ask for. It’s a study.

In my mind, we all have an internal story demon that lives behind our ribs, and we have to feed it. We feed it television, we feed it films, we feed it books, we feed it comics—and the more we feed that internal demon, the more it understands intuitively what makes things work.

For example, I’ll often watch a movie twice. The first time I watch it is just for fun, but the second time I'll look at the scenes that I love—or the scenes that I don't—and I'll start looking at how many beats they have. I'll start examining what it is about a particular scene that is really working for me, or isn’t really working for me. I start analyzing. I assess everything that I consume, basically. Especially if I like it.

Then, when I go to sit down with my own work, I have a better internal sense of what is and isn’t working. Which scenes need more beats, and which scenes need fewer beats. I might have a breakthrough on how to fix a narrative flow issue I’ve been having.

Some people love a three act structure, or a nine beat grid. If that works for you, great. But it doesn’t help me, because it's prescriptive. I really believe storytelling—in any and all its forms—should be organic. I like when a story is surprising, not prescriptive.

I: More free-form. Less paint by numbers. Would you say the harder a story—be it movie or show or novel—is for you to take apart, the more you enjoy it?

VES: Bingo. Also, when I say I read a hundred books a year, I don't mean a hundred fantasy novels. I mean I read memoir, poetry, nonfiction, fantasy, sci-fi, children's books. For example, I loved your memoir, that’s why I asked you to be on my podcast.

I: Now would be a good time for me to thank you for reading Dirtbag.

VES: I believe in creative cross-pollination. I believe that's how we learn.

I: Do you find that helps with your world building?

VES: Of course. When it comes to world building, I think there are two kinds of world builders—let me take a moment to apologize that, after all that, now I’m making prescriptive statements—

I: We’ll forgive you.

VES: But I think there are two kinds of world builders. There are the Tolkiens, who decorate the whole house.

The Tolkiens say, “Here's a house. I'm going to give you the keys to the house. You can go into every single room. You can explore every square foot of this house. You can pick up objects and look at the art hanging on the walls and examine the wallpaper. If you don't see it in this house, it doesn't exist in the house.”

I: “Also the tables will have little, intricate designs. I've invented 20 languages for this house.”

VES: Right. “I've done it all. There's nothing left to your imagination. You're just here to inhabit the space I've built for you. Walk around. Enjoy it.”

Then there are the world builders who—

I: This is more your style, I take it?

VES: Yes. I like to take the house, decorate one room in the house with exquisite detail—then never even let you in the house.

I: What?

VES: You can stand outside the window of that room I’ve decorated and peer in—and from what you see in that one room, you need to infer what the rest of the house looks like for yourself. The reason I do that is, it creates space for the reader's own imagination to expand.

Another analogy would be to think of a painting where the center of the painting is completely realized and the edges are going to sketch.

I: The reader can fill in the rest of the painting on their own?

VES: I'm encouraging the reader to believe that the rest of the house is modeled the way this section is—I just don't bother filling in all those other rooms. If the characters never go in those other rooms, I'm not designing the other rooms. I try to make sure that world building is always tethered to plot and to character.

I world build through the clothes that my characters are wearing, through the things that they're engaging within their world—through the minutia. You should be able to infer the larger landscape on your own.

I: Your world building is very much character-focused?

VES: I think that characters need to feel as if they’ve grown out of the very soil they’re standing on. We are all—every single one of us—such a product of everything that’s happened to us. We’re a product of where we’ve lived, what we’ve seen, and how we’ve existed. So when characters don’t feel grown in the soil of their world, I start to disconnect from them. Because I feel they could be anywhere.

For example, if I'm playing a video game and I could pick the character up and move it to a completely different video game or landscape—and that character remains the same? That doesn't work for me.

I: It feels shoehorned in.

VES: Exactly, while at the same time feeling a little clichéd.

I: Do you write differently—or approach your writing differently—when you’re writing for children versus adults?

VES: In a way, but really it's just writing for a different age of myself.

I don't know what anyone else was like at 10 years old, or at 17 years old. But I know what I was like at 10 years old and 17 years old. So when I’m writing books for kids, I write for 10 year old me—the weird little shit that I was—and when I write YA novels I write for 17 year old me.

I: So you are the audience you're writing for?

VES: I don’t know what everybody else’s childhoods were like, so I can’t write for them. I only know what my childhood was like, which is weird.

There's a paradox in writing that I still struggle to wrap my head around, which is that the more specific you write, the more universal the writing feels. Whereas the more general you write, the less applicable it feels.

So I have to focus my lens very sharply. I learned that from Vicious. I learned that from writing a book for no one but myself—and that book being the broadest appeal of anything I’d ever written up until that point. Everyone saying to me, “I saw myself in this book,” this book that I wrote solely for me. Vicious is full of mirrors, but the mirrors were directed at me—or so I thought. Turns out the mirror is directed at the reader, too.

So I found that the more specifically I write, the more readers actually see themselves in my writing.

As for adult novels, I'm writing for a version of myself—whoever I am right now.

Our books are time capsules of who we are when we're writing them, not of who we are as people for the entirety of our lives.

I: How often do you publish?

VES: I publish one adult book every year to two, but then sometimes I have comics, or scripts for television or film—a lot of which doesn't actually make its way to the shelf for consumers, but it is stuff that I'm working on continuously.

I call it productive procrastination. I'm being productive by cheating on one project with this other project. I simply can't be doing nothing.

I: Why do you think that is? There’s the fear. There’s the spite. But like you just said, we’re always changing—as is our work. What’s the current fear?

VES: I think what I'm afraid of now is that it was so hard to get to where I am—and it feels like you’re on an incline. Like if you’re not moving forward, you're slipping back.

I: Sliding back down the mountain.

Do you think that’s part of why you choose to live in Scotland now? Because living in Scotland allows you to focus on the work?

VES: I’m my most productive when I'm in Scotland, but I'm also my most sane. I was talking with another writer recently, talking about how boring my life is. How ritualistic—how repetitive it can feel. But he said something that really stuck with me, which was, “I think the world has to get really small and boring so that the creative life can be really loud.”

I: Well said.

VES: That’s what it’s like I'm in Scotland—it's perfect.

I wake up every morning, I take my dog for a two mile walk along the ocean, then I come back and have my peanut butter and banana on toast, then we go to the coffee shop on my corner—where my dog gets a sausage and I get a pot of tea—and then I sit there for two hours and write. After that, I go on with my day. It’s this minutia that brings me a huge amount of joy.

I: It’s how you wrote your most recent book, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil.

You just said a moment ago, “Our books are time capsules of who we are when we're writing them.” What do you think this book says about where you are now?

VES: Well, it’s nickname is the Toxic Lesbian Vampire book—so it’s a book about vampires. But really, it’s a book about hunger. It's specifically a book about taking up space in the world.

Addie LaRue was a book about immortality and hope, this is a book about immortality and anger. It's about specifically being a woman—or someone in a femme presenting body—and being told not to take up space. Especially being a queer woman and being told not to love a specific way or not to want a specific thing.

It's about three women who become increasingly unapologetic in their desire to have and to feel and to be free. I'm both really, really proud of it and really, really terrified of it.

I: Addie LaRue's angrier, older sister, I love that.

VES: I’d go even further and say Addie LaRue's angrier, older, feral sister.

A vampire book is a dream come true, because vampires have been such a cultural touchpoint over the course of my life—and over my childhood specifically. Obviously, I'm a huge fan of Anne Rice, but I often feel like I haven't seen the vampire story that represents me, yet. Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil is so much about coming into your body and coming into your identity and coming into your own desire and and realizing that, sometimes, it's ok to be angry.

I: We’ve touched on it throughout the interview, but when did you realize—or come to terms with—the fact that you’re queer.

VES: 27. I jokingly say—it's not a joke, though—but I grew up with Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So, the only lesbian or queer models that I saw were Tara and Willow, but I didn't feel like either of them, thus I thought I was straight. It's one of the reasons I made First Kill.

I: That’s the Netflix show based on your short story, right?

VES: Yes, which was in the 2020 anthology Vampires Never Get Old: Tales With Fresh Bite. But that lack of seeing myself reflected in the pop culture I grew up with, it's definitely one of the reasons that my books have gotten more overtly queer over the years. It's never about the plot—it’s because I came out so late, I need queer existence stories, not queer coming out stories.

Now, I'm really glad the queer coming out stories exist, obviously. But what I need is queer people who get to take up space in the narrative in ways that have nothing to do with their queerness, which is, at times, subtextual. But other times—like with Bury Our Bones—it's very textual. It's very much about being queer at different times in history and how the lack of societal comprehension also fuels our own lack of comprehension about ourselves.

I was in my 20s when I came out. It's still such a journey. You know what I mean? I’ve spent 30 plus years figuring out sexuality—not to mention gender. It’s all very much a continuum for me. It's all very much about exploration.

It took me a really long time to come out, because I didn't have models. I didn't have people. We were taught such binaries, which is why it's really important to see different versions of people—and I think the three women in Bury Our Bones are all very, very, very different lesbians.

Also, this is a book about queer women, but it's not only for queer women. It's a book about relationships and toxicity and falling in and out of love.

I: Like you said, taking up space.

VES: I think we're all always trying to figure out how much space we get to take up in the world, how much space our passions are allowed to take up, how much space we're allowed to want.

But yeah, it took me a really, really long time—and I think so much of it was I didn't see anyone that made me feel like me.

Had I had Villanelle in Killing Eve as a 13-year-old, we would not even be having this conversation.

I: You would have figured it out.

VES: Yes. Also, I did.

This book is very much about toxic women. For so long, queer characters didn't get to be toxic or they didn't get to be villainous. They didn't get to be messy—because then it was seen as a reductive equating between queerness and toxicity or queerness and villainy.

So this is also a declaration of getting to be at a point culturally where we get to play all the roles. We get to be bad—and it's not because we're queer.

I: Making sense of yourself through your fiction. Untangling yourself. Figuring new parts of yourself out. Like you said, capturing a time capsule of yourself in this current moment.

VES: Exactly. But it's scary as shit because I—unlike you—am not a memoirist. I like to hide behind the confines of my fantasy. I like to hide behind the illusion of speculative fiction.

So, to have something that is so overtly about my own identity, is terrifying.

V. E. Schwab and I hug by a hotdog stand at the foot of the stairs we initially climbed a couple of hours earlier. We have walked the High Line from one end to the other, and then back again. I don’t know it yet, but I will do an event with Schwab at the Strand to help launch Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil (the event is June 18th). What I do know is that—no matter where or when—I can’t wait to talk to her again.

Another thing I don’t know is that this conversation—especially the discussion about outlining as a way of hacking one’s brain to get a project moving—will help me get a draft of my next book down on paper in the following months.

Sometimes an afternoon walk—filled with discussion and curiosity—can reinvigorate you in ways you didn’t even understand you needed.

But all that would come later. For now Schwab and I grasp each other, and then go in for another hug. I wave as I watch her walk off into the gorgeous late afternoon sunlight that is filling New York City.

Looking for another way to support me? Consider picking up a paperback copy of Dirtbag, Massachusetts for yourself or a pal. Thank you!

Team!

A quick note to say that I published an essay over at GQ. It's about scouring London to find the perfect flat cap, but really it’s about grappling with personal style while trying to mature.

Here's a short excerpt:

“I dressed like a skater throughout my teen years and into my 20s. When I worked at a motorcycle metal bar in San Francisco, my outfits remained the same, only blacker. Eventually, I took to wearing a flipped-brim baseball hat—West Coast punk style—which was a questionable fashion choice (especially for someone who grew up in New England) at 24, let alone at 28, or 31 when I moved back East and continued dressing like a Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater NPC well into my mid-30s.”

Click here to read the entire piece.

In the GQ essay, I’m assisted by a man named Maxwell Newman, who works at Lock & Co. Hatters at 6 St. James's Street in London.

I asked Maxwell a few questions that didn’t make it into the piece, so I figured I’d share our conversation with y’all here. A mini-Walk-It-Off, if you will. Picture us meandering around an extremely stylish hat shop.

Isaac: How did you get into hat selling?

Maxwell: I was very lucky to get into Lock’s. I used to sell vintage menswear in Camden Market, which is where I developed a love for heritage style—hats included. I was already a bit of a hat-wearer myself and had become friends with one of the milliners at Lock & Co. I mentioned I was interested; she helped me get an interview, and the rest is history. It felt like a natural progression, moving from vintage to one of the oldest hatters in the world."

I: What do you look for when matching a hat to a customer?

M: I look for a few key things: face shape, sense of style, and what they’re hoping to express. A great hat should complement their aesthetic and enhance their look. It’s about balance—the hat should never overwhelm. It should feel like it belongs, as if they walked in already wearing it.

I: Are flat caps having a moment right now? Or would you say they aren’t currently in fashion?

M: Flat caps are definitely having a resurgence. They’ve never really gone out of style, but there’s a renewed appreciation for their versatility. They bridge the gap between casual and smart-casual. With the rise of vintage and heritage fashion, we’re seeing them styled in fresh ways—with suits, separates, or everyday wear. It’s a style enjoying its moment again.

I: What about hats in general? How would you say the hat market for men is doing at the moment?

M: The men’s hat market is thriving. There’s been a shift towards personal expression, and hats offer a subtle but strong way to show individual style. From trilby’s to beanies to bowler hats, men are choosing pieces that reflect their mood and personality. The renewed interest in craftsmanship and sustainable, slow fashion has given hats—and heritage brands—a real boost.

Large, heartfelt thanks to Maxwell—seen below—for all of his assistance.

In other news, I appeared on The Today Show recently recommending books—alongside Jasmine Guillory—to fabulous host Craig Melvin.

Click here to watch the segment—and here’s a photo of me on set thanks to Nathan Congleton (a fantastic photographer):

You can click here to see more of Nate’s photos from my Today Show visit—and feel free to keep up with my more frequent adventures by following me on Instagram.

Lastly, we’ve got some exciting walks coming up with V. E. Schwab(!!!) and Debbie Millman(!!!). I’m working on edits now, and should have ‘em to y’all soon(ish).

In the meantime, keep walking. ❤️

Looking for another way to support me? Consider picking up a paperback copy of Dirtbag, Massachusetts for yourself or a pal. Thank you!

“Mommy, look! A water drop.”

Rachel Lyon and I are standing in front of the Pier 6 Playground Water Lab as her four-year-old son splashes in the puddles made from jets of water surging out of the ground. For a moment I wonder what made that particular water drop—out of so many—interesting enough for the boy to highlight it, but I forget to ask him and then get quickly distracted.

We’re at the park to say hi to Rachel’s mother—who is watching Rachel’s son and daughter—while Rachel and I are out for our walk. Rachel’s mom and I have met before, and we talk in the shade for a bit, catching up while the mist from the skyward shoots of water cools us. It’s summer in Brooklyn. One of the hottest days of the year.

[Editor’s note: This particular Walk It Off happened over 8 months ago. Yes. I know. It is now March. I promise you more are coming, but for now please pretend that it is sweltering hot. Thank you.]

Rachel and I worked together on an island 10 miles off the coast of New Hampshire when we were children—or, more accurately, newly formed adults. Our early twenties. We also lived in San Francisco for a time after that, when a motley crew of friends from that very same island decided to move across the country for no other reason than it seemed like the sort of thing one should do when one is young.

It strikes me, watching Rachel’s mother watch Rachel’s children, while Rachel watches them—and I sort of talk at everybody—that it’s not often you get to see three generations of a family gathered together, one right next to another. Like Russian nesting dolls that are also somehow time capsules of DNA.

The boy lets out a laugh and I take a moment to appreciate it.

Before Rachel and I meandered down to the waterfront, looking out at Governor's Island and the ships passing through Buttermilk Channel, we met at Poppy’s. We both bought iced coffees in a futile attempt to fight off the heat and set out into the cloudless day.

Isaac: You grew up around here, right?

Rachel Lyon: We’re a block away from my parents’ house.

I: Did you grow up at that address?

RL: We moved there when I was a freshman in high school. My parents moved to Brooklyn from Chicago when I was a baby. We were in DUMBO until I was 10 or so, then Fort Greene, then we moved to Carroll Gardens.

I: And where are we walking now?

RL: Cobble Hill.

I: Has the area changed since you were a kid?

RL: Honestly, I think Cobble Hill has probably changed the least when compared to other areas in Brooklyn—because it has always been an upper middle class residential neighborhood. I remember when we moved here it was very much an area code shift for us.

I: You went to Saint Ann's School.

RL: Correct.

I: Mike D from the Beastie Boys is an alumni. Jennifer Connelly. Emma Straub. Meghan O'Rourke. Lena Dunham. Jean-Michel Basquiat attended for a bit.

RL: A lot of writers, actors, artists, and musicians.

I: You taught there for a short time, too, right?

RL: I did. For two years after college—in the lower school.

I: Your parents are both involved with the art world, right? When you and I first met—almost twenty years ago, now—you were a visual artist. Is that fair to say?

RL: My mother, Debra Pearlman, is an artist and my father, Christopher Lyon, writes about art—so my childhood was very arts world-adjacent. So when I went to college, that was the world I was familiar with. I felt comfortable talking about art.

I: You were smart at art.

RL: Sure. So that’s what I majored in, and for my senior thesis I did an exhibition of my own work.

I: Which was around the time we met. What shifted, for you? When did you begin pursuing writing as a medium over visual art?

RL: I’d say I grew up a little bit in my early twenties. I shifted gears—sort of slowly, and then all at once—working in images didn’t feel right to me anymore. Language began to feel more comfortable.

I: Which is interesting, because your father writes about art—emphasis on the “writes.” Did you feel a little torn asunder between your mother, the artist, and your father, the writer?

RL: I try to follow what feels most natural, and at that time in my life it felt more comfortable to write. I’m a person who likes to take my time when I’m expressing myself, and writing is an extremely satisfying process for someone who wants to slow down and articulate themself thoughtfully.

Images can be misinterpreted, or interpreted many different ways. That’s something I really enjoy about visual art. And literature is obviously open to interpretation, too. But at the time, I was looking for specificity. Clarity.

I: Control?

RL: Control! Also, with a painting, or a sculpture, or a drawing, the viewer can see it in a gallery, stop, take a quick look, and move on.

There’s a statistic about this. People usually stand in front of a work of art for an average of nine or so seconds. But for a novel? You have to sit down and spend days with it. Or weeks. Or months, even, depending on your schedule, or how quickly you read.

That type of long term engagement with a piece of art by the person receiving it feels immersive… it feels like a real relationship.

I: Would you say it’s more intimate?

RL: Yes. For me. A really great visual artist can make work that feels incredibly intimate and clear—but I wasn't, in my opinion, a great visual artist.

I: Agree to disagree. I remember being blown away by your art when we were young.

RL: That’s kind. I mean, I've always been interested in both. I was always interested in writing. I took a lot of creative writing classes—I was one credit shy of a creative writing certificate in undergrad. I loved my poetry classes in college. So it was always a part of what I was doing. It was just that, as I said, I was more familiar with the visual art world, so I felt more confident in that space when I was younger. My love of writing—my want to write—it felt more fragile. Like a secret I wasn’t ready to share at the time. It took me an extremely long time to take my interest in writing seriously. Even longer than that to call myself a writer.

I: When did you decide to get your MFA?

RL: I was one of the oldest people in my MFA program. I didn’t have a portfolio until I was 28.

I: So you grow up in New York City, go to college, spend some time in San Francisco and then back here teaching in Brooklyn. Where did you go to graduate school?

RL: Indiana University.

I: As someone raised in New York, did you love going other places, or did they seem small? Less exciting?

RL: I really enjoy other spaces and landscapes, but sometimes I worry that I stick out like a sore thumb. For example, at IU I still didn’t have a driver’s license. I was living in Bloomington, Indiana and I couldn’t drive to the grocery store—always had to ask other people for a lift.

I: Very New Yorker of you. So you feel a bit like a fish out of water in other places?

RL: Always! I mean, not always, but often. I mean… isn't fish out of water such a crazy phrase, when you think about it? Like, we use it to indicate someone who doesn't feel at home, here or there, but a fish, out of water, literally cannot breathe, literally suffocates. Out of water, a fish dies. I know it's just a cliché, but it's actually really evocative and sort of terrifying when you think about it. And, to answer your question, maybe I do sort of feel that way, sometimes.

I: Do you think that's part of why you wanted to figure out ways to express yourself?

RL: It’s funny, one time I had a friend from high school who said to me, very bluntly, “Do you think you're a writer because you have trouble communicating? Like, when you're talking to people?”

I: Jesus.

RL: It hurt my feelings, for sure. But honestly the answer is, “Yes.”

I: Do you feel better understood after you publish something? Or when somebody connects with your work—

RL: Oh my God, yes. It’s so meaningful. There's nothing better than having someone really connect with—really understand—my work. Fruit of the Dead, touched on a lot of personal topics—

I: Mothers. Addiction. Desire.

RL: When young women have reached out to tell me that they shared the book with their mom, or that it helped them with their own recovery, those notes mean everything to me.

I: We’ll definitely get to Fruit of the Dead, but I’d like to talk about your first novel for a moment, Self-Portrait with Boy—is it safe to say that book is about the art world?

RL: Yes.

I: Did you choose that topic for the same reason you studied visual arts in college? It’s a space where you felt comfortable? Write what you know, in a way?

RL: Absolutely. Everybody tells you to write the book that only you can write. “Write what you know.” So, I started with this loft building in DUMBO, which is very much based on the building where I lived as a child. Then I worked outward from there.

I’d overheard this story when I was growing up. Not the whole story, but little snippets. Bits and pieces of the story, over the course of my childhood, that there had been a young kid who fell off the roof of the building where we lived and died. So that's where my first book began, with the idea of that building, and this vague story—ghosts of the East River.

I don’t even know if I totally believe that advice anymore.

I: What’s that? “Write what you know?”

RL: Yeah. I think it's a good place to start, especially if you’re at the beginning of your career. But an experienced writer? I think an experienced writer can make their way into any story—with enough research, and respect for their characters. With imagination and creative thought. You don’t have to write what you know if you know what you’re doing.

I: Put that on a t-shirt.

RL: That said, I’m not sure I totally know what I’m doing yet.

I: But I think that’s an encouraging thought. Especially for people who are maybe interested in writing—but haven’t lived what they think of as spectacular lives. In my opinion, any piece of writing advice is never 100% true. There are always so many exceptions to the “The Rule,” that my only rule is that no rules actually exist.

RL: Exactly—and for folks worried about their lives not being “spectacular” enough, there’s that Flannery O'Connor quote.

I: Which one?

RL: “The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”

I: How did your parents react to Self-Portrait with Boy—given that you were writing about the art world, the loft space where you grew up? Your world, of course, but also their world.

RL: It's interesting. My parents have a constant ongoing dialogue about their own creative work—especially my mom’s creative work. What her work means outside of their relationship. Outside of her as a person.

I: They give each other feedback not as partners, but as artist and critic, respectively.

RL: Right, and they brought that to my work, too. Don’t get me wrong, on one hand I’m their daughter and they’re proud of me, which is really nice and special. But on the other hand? “A pretty decent debut,” would probably be their reaction. Not in a cold way. Honesty around art is just—

I: The language of your home?

RL: That’s a nice way to put it. The coin of the realm. They’d say, “Do me the honor of looking at my work objectively. From a critical standpoint. Please. And then I’ll do the same for you.”

I: That’s touching, in a way.

RL: It is…

I: Do you think they appreciate that this is the life you decided to pursue? The life of a writer? Of an artist?

RL: Definitely. I also think they left me no choice. So, they better be happy with it.

I: That’s an amazing way to put it.

RL: There was no way I was going to be a lawyer, or a doctor coming out of our household. They simply did not prepare us for that.

I: How does that make you feel?

RL: I appreciate it now, but I would probably have a different answer if you asked me when I was 22.

But overall, I’m really lucky. A lot more lucky than, say, my mom, who grew up in a household where nobody was interested in art, which she started pursuing in earnest at the age of 11. The rest of her family wondering, “What’s Debra doing in the basement?”

I: “What’s Debra going to do for money? When’s she going to get a job?”

RL: Exactly.

I: I hope it’s alright that we’re talking about your parents so much, but I find the idea of an artistic family fascinating.

RL: No, I get it.

I: In a way, it’s similar to you being from New York City. An oddity for those of us that didn’t, but for you it’s simply a part of your life. I remember when we met, you were one of the first people I’d really known who grew up in NYC, so I would pepper you with questions.

RL: While for me, New York is just where I grew up.

I: In the same way, your family is simply who you grew up with.

RL: Which is how I feel, but now that I’m older I get why it's interesting. In a way, I’m a second generation artist.

I: Yeah! You nailed it. It’s this weird thing—

RL: It is this weird thing, but it’s also all I know.

I: So the Self-Portrait with Boy book comes out. At that point are you finally saying, “Ok. I’m a writer. I can do this.”

RL: I’d say that’s accurate. I mean, I definitely made some big changes at that point. I quit my full-time job and started teaching classes four nights a week. Which, like, not recommended. My agent—our agent! Meredith Kaffel Simonoff, truly the best—specifically said, “Don't quit your day job.” Good advice that I did not take! But I wanted to make an effort to support myself as a writer.

I: How’d it go? Do you enjoy teaching?

RL: I love teaching. I’ve been doing it ever since. Though I don't teach as much now. And fortunately we are a two-income family.

I: You and John—your husband—and the kids live in Western Massachusetts now.

RL: That's right.

I: Moving out of the city, one of the best ways to support yourself as a writer.

RL: Absolutely. I’ve been teaching a class at the library there, which has been wonderful. I was a visiting faculty member at Bennington last spring, and the spring previous—that was fun. I have a residency coming up at the American University of Paris.

I: Oh wow.

RL: Yeah, I'm psyched. It'll be so fun to talk to those students.

I: Huh.

RL: What?

I: Just the way you phrased that, “It'll be so fun to talk to those students.” Do you think teaching gives you that same thing—the same thing writing does—which is a way of communicating?

RL: Yes. Teaching forces you to articulate your thoughts and philosophies in a way that is clear to other people, and therefore clear to yourself. In that way, teaching and writing are very similar to me.

It’s also super helpful for my creative process. I’ll talk about something in the classroom, and it will often help me figure out something on the page. Nine times out of ten, when I come out of a class, I’m super invigorated to sit back down and keep writing.

I: Let me know if I’m getting to close to The Therapy Zone™️—but why do you think you’re so obsessed with communication? Is it something from childhood?

RL: Last week I did a live TV segment on a local member station in Springfield, Massachusetts—

I: Hell yeah.

RL: It’s called Mass Appeal on WWLP. Right off the bat, the host turned to me and said, “So, why did you want to become a writer?” And my response was, “Ah!” I was totally caught off guard.

But what I ended up saying—again, on live television, which is super embarrassing—was, “I was a shy kid. So it was useful for me to sit down and take my time communicating. When I’m put on the spot, I get very self-conscious. I clam up.”

I: “Much like what you’re doing to me right now, Mr. TV Host.”

RL: Right!? But that’s the real answer, I think. I was self-conscious as a kid. So I had two choices, either don’t communicate with people, or lean into it and figure out how to communicate with people.

I: So you were a shy kid growing up?

RL: I was very self-conscious. Like many writers. I loved reading and spending time alone and making stuff.

I: While we’re on the subject of lil’ ones, do you think it’s going to be interesting raising your kids not in New York?

RL: It's already interesting. The four-year-old knows the names of all of the birds and can identify them by their song—

I: Extraordinary.

RL: He’s this little naturalist—in a way that I never, ever was. Both of my children like to be outside all the time. Whereas, when I was a kid, I didn’t like grass.

I: I’m sorry, you didn’t like grass?

RL: Literally, the feel of grass on my legs freaked me out. I hated it.

I: That’s the most New York City Kid™️ shit I’ve ever heard. Are you happy for them?

RL: Definitely. It’s special, that they have all that space. At the same time, I also feel strongly about bringing them back to the city on the regular. Making sure they feel happy and comfortable here, too.

I: The best of both worlds.

RL: The same way they’re obsessed with nature, they’re also obsessed with everything here in the city. They perk up every time we leave my parents’ house in Brooklyn. Always pointing things out, talking about them. Exploring.

I: Communicating and sharing.

RL: Like you said, the best of both worlds.

I: So how did you come to your second novel, Fruit of the Dead? When did you realize you wanted to do a retelling of the myth of Persephone, Hades, and Demeter?

RL: It was 2017, and the Me Too movement was starting to really take off. So I was thinking a lot about power dynamics and sex and relationships. Re-examining things that had happened to me—to so many of my friends. Having important conversations. But I was also getting super frustrated by some of the dialogue around Me Too. Especially the response from men.

I: How so?

RL: There was this feeling that the Me Too movement was a new thing. That it was suddenly happening, instead of—

I: It highlighting a tale as old as time.

RL: Exactly. So, I was already working on a book about a young woman who gets involved with her employer, but—born of that frustration—it occurred to me that it would be interesting to incorporate an ancient story as a kind of undertow.

I: To say, “This isn’t new.”

RL: A lot of the responses I saw from men were, “Uh, hang on. You guys are changing the rules!”

I: Whereas you’re saying, “No, this shit is a forever story.”

RL: It’s ever-present. As long as there is testosterone, there will be stories like these.

I: Did that elevate the book for you?

RL: Completely. The story was there first, but it really started working once I decided to incorporate the myth into the novel. It broke the whole book open for me.

I kept returning to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. I read it and then re-read it and then re-read it again, always finding strange new details and turns of phrase. By highlighting poetic moments, it became a sort of conversation between this ancient text and my yet-to-be-fully-formed novel. I’d never done that before, and I found it invigorating. Seeing how many things from that work I could weave into the story I was writing.

So I started working in all these Easter eggs, which led to me putting an actual Easter egg hunt in the book. I kept playing with new ideas, inspired by this meta dialogue I was having with the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. I liked the idea of making the gods of Olympus the 1%—because the book is about power and wealth and late capitalism. The seduction of money and luxury.

I: The book is very much a story of seduction.

RL: Seduction and entrapment. So what better myth to use, really?

I: Did you always know that there was going to be a pharmaceutical aspect to the novel?

RL: At first, Rolo Picazo—

I: The pharmaceutical executive. Sort of your novel’s Hades—

RL: At first he was an author, and Cory Ansel—

I: The protagonist, your Persephone.

RL: Was going to be his writing assistant.

I: No kidding? It’s hard for me to picture your book without the pharmaceutical aspect.

RL: This was before I incorporated the myth—which, again, felt so right—but not long after I figured that all out, a new problem arose.

I: Ain’t that always the way it is.

RL: So one of the more challenging aspects of working with these old texts—and maybe scholars of Greek mythology would disagree with me—but in the versions I found, there isn’t a lot of interiority in terms of the characters. The reader isn’t getting into the heads of the characters in the way that we do in contemporary novels.

These texts are telling us what happened, but it’s up to the reader to extrapolate what the characters’ motivations are. As a contemporary reader, it feels foreign. But it also opens up a lot of opportunity.

I: How so?

RL: It allowed for me to sell the motivations of these characters. So a natural aspect of the novel that revealed itself to me—as I was writing—was giving my Persephone character agency. In a way, that was my primary creative project.

I remember thinking, “I want to give Cory agency. I want her to be making these choices—good or bad, wise or unwise—and for those choices to feel reasonable and realistic for an 18-year-old to make to a contemporary reader.”

So that’s where the pharmaceutical aspect came in. I started leaning into Rolo, not as an author, but as a billionaire pharmaceutical executive. Which allowed me to create the fruit—the drug—as another form of seduction, of course, but also as a believable reason that an 18-year-old girl would stick around in a threatening place for as long as she does.

I: Is it fair to say that addiction and substance abuse are topics that interest you?

RL: I am both familiar with them and interested in them, yes.

I: Are you comfortable talking about your sobriety?

RL: Sure.

I: How long have you been sober?

RL: Six years.

I: I can do math. So you were working on Fruit of the Dead when you got sober?

RL: I started working on this book around the very end of my drinking. It was the summer of 2017—Self-Portrait with Boy hadn’t come out yet, but I was super anxious about its release.

With my debut coming out, there were going to be a bunch of parties and book events. I wasn’t sure how I was going to act or what I was going to say at those events if I were drunk—and at that point I was drunk every night. So I gave myself a deadline. Get sober before the book comes out.

I: Did you?

RL: Self-Portrait with Boy came out in February of 2018 and I quit drinking in January of 2018. I’ve been sober ever since.

I: Ok. Don’t shoot me—and please let me know if I’m leading the witness here—but in a way, your sobriety is also about making sure you were clearly communicating. I’m sure your sobriety about so many other things, as well. Sobriety is vast, or course. But, you were worried about being misunderstood, or making a fool of yourself—

RL: Definitely. I don’t think that’s a stretch at all.

I: At the time, were you considering it a break from drinking—or were you shooting for sobriety from the start?

RL: I had tried breaks before. They never really worked. In May of 2017, I remember, I tried to take the entire month off. I lasted six days.

I: Did you find it hard to quit when you really quit?

RL: 100%. In fact, at my book launch party for Self-Portrait with Boy I remember my friend—our friend—Kendra Allenby, she kept handing me glass after glass after glass after glass of sparkling water. There was wine everywhere, so she made sure my hand always had a glass of water in it.

I: That’s a very thoughtful gesture.

RL: I had really wanted to be chill, for it to feel effortless. But I was very not chill. That first year was really, really hard.

I: Has it gotten easier since?

RL: I’m hesitant to say “easier.” But it’s more comfortable. I’m more familiar with it.

I: Do you think being sober has changed your work?

RL: Yes. I used to write hungover in the mornings. I would get up at 5:30am and write—it felt helpful, in a way. A good brain space, because you’re unfiltered—

I: Hazy. Tired. But you stay out of your own way. You don’t overthink things.

RL: Exactly! Then you get the buzz from your coffee. So the caffeine and this fucked up brain mash together? That was a very productive place for me.

As counterintuitive as it sounds—learning how to write without a hangover was a challenge for me.

I: How’d you do it?

RL: It was hard at first. But then, moving through this new, sober mind it felt almost like I was exploring my brain for the first time in a long while. I found that in place of that unfiltered, easy voice was a kind of metanarrative I hadn't been able to hear before. I was able to track my thoughts better. I wasn’t as distracted. My ideas felt sharper, clearer.

I: There it is again.

RL: What’s that?

I: Another aspect in your life where you’re searching for clarity.

RL: I think some people truly understand themselves. They know themselves. Know their own personality. They come out fully formed. But I’m not that person. I’ve had to dig inward—even when I was a child—to try and figure out who I am. What motivates me. And I’m still very much doing that.

I: You like figuring out what makes things tick.

RL: I try extremely hard to get where people are coming from. That’s a big part of my interest in fiction. Exploring the motivations of each character.

I: And yourself?

RL: And myself.

I: Fruit of the Dead is also, in part, about a fierce mother. Do you find yourself—now that you're a mother also—more empathic to fierce mothers?

RL: Yes, I do.

I: Is it safe to say—I’m not sure how to put this—because, you and I knew each other when we were in our early 20s, and—

RL: Are you trying to ask me about my mother, Isaac?

I: Yes.

RL: When you become a parent—at least this has been my experience, and the experience of many people I’ve spoken with—your relationship with your parents changes in so many different ways. My relationship with my mom has become so much more solid and loving and relaxed than it was, you know, 20 years ago.

I: Which makes sense.

RL: When I was writing Cory, though, I was really interested in that late adolescence, early adulthood phase of life that you’re talking about.

I: 20 years ago.

RL: That phase of resistance and individuation, alongside that super critical relationship between a daughter and her mother. When I was in that time of my life, I had a lot to be angry about, and I was carrying a lot of resentment.

Now that I have kids… well, on one hand I realize what a pain in the ass I was being—and I realize that I, too, am now gonna deal with this at a certain point. But, also, I understand now how fucking difficult it is to be a parent. It's really, really, really, really hard. So it’s easier for me to be more forgiving of my parents, these days.

I: You understand the instinct to protect your children—

RL: That deep desire to protect them, which can come out in warped ways sometimes. Our desire to protect and love someone doesn’t always translate into loving and patient words, right?

I: Or actions.

RL: Or actions.

At my house we have a step stool, so my son can help with cooking. But the other day my daughter—who isn’t even two yet—she climbed up on the step stool and had somehow gotten ahold of a knife, which she was starting to drag across her hand.

I: Oh shit.

RL: So I flipped. Loudly. Immediately.

I: “Put that knife down!”

[Editor’s note: I yell this rather loudly, and a few people walking by look over to see what all the fuss is about. I wave as if to say, “All clear. No knives here.”]

RL: Right.

I: You’re just trying to keep her safe.

RL: But on her end, she’s thinking, “What the fuck? What’s happening?” It's this emotional moment of fear and miscommunication.

But you’re filled with that fierce desire to protect your child—mixed with not having the time to explain to them that dragging a knife over their hand is dangerous. So there’s this emotional moment of fear and miscommunication.

Do you mind if I ask how you're doing, Isaac? I know your mom died recently. I'm so sorry.

I: Taking it day by day, as cliché as that is. It’s hard. Fucking hard. A mother—it’s a wholly unique relationship, right? Like we’re saying. And now that relationship is gone. Or not gone, but—

RL: Paused? Like someone hit the pause button, without realizing the play button is broken, and now you're stuck only with what you had? Like you never get to finish the story?

I: I mean, perfectly put. But it’s also… There’s no story to finish, right? That was it. That was the end. There’s no extra tape to try and salvage. So all I’m left with are attempts at reinterpreting the parts of the tape I got to hear.

[Editor’s Note: For younger readers, the metaphor we’re referencing is a tape getting stuck in a tape deck. Here’s a video, if you’d find that helpful.]

Did you know that the mother character, Emer—your Demeter character—was going to be such a big part of the book from the jump?

RL: No. I didn’t.

I was pretty committed to writing the story solely from Cory’s perspective at first. Because in the versions of the myth I'd found, none of them included Persephone's perspective. The myths always made her sound like an object. “Persephone was abducted. Persephone was raped.” Everything happens to Persephone—it’s all passive verbs—she’s never making her own choices.

So at first I was sticking to Cory. But then, partway through, I was writing all this trippy prose, because Cory’s partaking in a new drug that Rolo is manufacturing, but hasn’t brought to market yet. She's high a lot of the time, and hungover a lot of the time—and that's not a stable narrative voice.

That’s when I started using Emer’s voice as well, to give the reader a vicarious POV from which to watch the events unfold. Also, I was becoming a mother myself—a profound change in my life that I wanted to write about it—so a lot of my own experiences, thoughts, feelings, and freaked worries got in there, too.

I: It allowed you to have more complex characters, which of course leads to a more complex story overall.

RL: Moral ambiguity—that’s what fiction is for, really. Right?

There’s this book I found on my father’s bookshelf that I really love, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience by Erving Goffman. It’s all about how framing can shift the way was see things.

I used Goffman’s ideas in Fruit of the Dead. Literally. Corey sees herself through two different frames. One of the frames if driftwood, and Corey sees herself wild, young, daring, and free. The other frame is solid metal. Heavy. Which is her mother’s frame, and through that frame—the permanence of that frame—she can see that she’s making multiple significant mistakes.

But that’s the literature I love to read and the literature I love to write.

I: The different ways we can view the world, and also the different ways we can view ourselves.

RL: The ways perspectives can so easily shift.

I: You mentioned being a really interior child. Do you think you felt a little misunderstood?

RL: As a kid?

I: Yeah.

RL: That's a hard question for me, to be honest.

I’m not sure “misunderstood” is accurate. I went to a school where everyone was very supportive—arts were a top priority both at school and at home. I was appreciated for my writing, for my violin, for my drawings. I definitely felt appreciated. Is that the same as being understood? I don't know.

I think it's more a question of understanding myself. Which is something I still wrestle with. I think I confuse representation of the thing with the thing itself.

I'm a storyteller. I'm a romantic. I have the image of the thing, and I write a whole narrative about it. But how does the thing really feel? Sometimes I don't know.

I: Do you think that art, music, writing, expression—all those things—might be a way of keeping actual experience at arm's length?

RL: Maybe.

I: You said earlier that you feel like you didn’t have a choice about getting involved in the arts. What do you think you would have done if you weren't a writer?

RL: For a brief time I thought about medical school, but that was short lived.

I think the way I was wired—my brain, my family, my school—all those factors were conspiring toward some type of creative life. Not in a bad way, or in a good way. It just is.

I: Do you find it fulfilling?

RL: Yes and no. What I do find fulfilling is the community of writers that I've met. I have a little writing group in Massachusetts, two other women who are working on really interesting projects. We meet every month and share work and talk about it, and it's one of the best parts of my month, every month. When I was in New York, I had a really awesome writing group. I'm still in touch with a lot of those people.

I don't think my satisfaction is dependent on writing per se, although I've learned to rely on it for my own mental health. But I don't know, maybe I would have learned to rely on seeing patients or doing surgeries for my mental health, if that's the direction I'd gone.

I: Do you still pick up the violin? Do you still draw?

RL: I don’t draw much anymore, although I've done a few illustrations around Fruit of the Dead. And violin is also super loaded for me, because I was very skilled as a young person—but now that I don’t practice as rigorously, I’m not as good as I used to be.

I do still pick it up every now and then. There’s all this emotion that comes with it. I love playing. I’m thinking about taking lessons again, and making time to practice more. I’m going to try and commit to playing more often, when my kids are a little older.

I: Is it a bit like a talented sports player who gets back on the field—they're still great and they enjoy it, but they're never as good as they once were?

RL: Totally.

It’s the same with writing—or anything, really. If you don’t write for a few days, or a few weeks, you get rusty. Like a muscle, you have to keep working on it. But it’s a lot less obvious than the physical muscles of your fingers. My violin skills go noticeably downhill every year I don’t play.

I: But you can still play?

RL: Right now I’m probably as good as I was in eighth or ninth grade.

I: Do you enjoy sharing the arts with your kids? Or are you trying to make sure they have the option to go to medical school—giving them Fisher Price doctor kits and toy stethoscopes?

RL: Oh, I don't care what they do as long as they're happy and can support themselves. But that's all still pretty far off. And contingent on the fate of the Earth.

I: What is your process now that it's not waking up hungover?

RL: I write when I can. The kids are in daycare and preschool during the day now, so I have a little time. I also write at night, which I never thought I could do before. Turns out I can.

But mainly I write where I can fit it in. I don't have a routine anymore. I have these little pockets of time, and I try to use them as best I can.

I: Do you find there are a lot more hours in the day now that you're sober? Or did that time get replaced by motherhood?

RL: Definitely replaced by motherhood. There are no hours left in the day. But you can make them—with effort.

Still, it’s hard. I had an idea earlier this week while I was driving—it had to do with structure, and where to place a certain chapter for this new book I’m working on. I planned on writing it down the moment I got home. But I didn’t.

I: Now it’s gone?

RL: Five days later I’m still trying to remember it. I know it’ll come back to me at some point, but by then it will be different. Not exactly the idea I had. The longer you leave the idea, the more it changes without you.

I: Do you relate more to your own mother—as a mom and an artist—in a way you maybe didn't fully grasp before?

RL: Absolutely. I had no idea how difficult it was for her.

I was a kid—self-involved in the way all kids are—so I had no idea how hard she was fighting to establish herself. Especially with two children who were born eight years apart.

I: That’s your younger brother?

RL: Right. So she was mothering young children for a long, long time, which must have been so frustrating for her career-wise. Plus she came of age creatively during a time when there wasn't much dialogue happening around motherhood and artistry. The art world was much more misogynist—I mean, it still is, but even more so in the ‘80s and ‘90s.

I remember whenever she would bring me—or me and my brother—to a gallery or an art opening people would give her dirty looks. “Get those kids out of here.”

I: “This is an adult space.”

RL: “This is not a space for children.” Which, or course, is shorthand for, “This is not a space for mothers.”

Also, so many of her friends and colleagues would say to her, “Every woman artist I know who had kids stopped making work. Are you going to stop making work now?”

I: Which was not what happened.

RL: It’s not what happened She's still showing. She's still making new and exciting work. It's incredible. But she still holds a lot of that ambivalence from her youth, even now. I feel for her, and at the same time I feel that, as her daughter, part of my project creatively, personally—even spiritually—is to recognize that ambivalence in myself and grow out of it. Or through it. To move past it, and examine it in my own work.

I: Take it out and examine it on the page.

RL: Right.

I: What about your dad?

RL: I take after my dad in a lot of ways. He's a writer by nature. He's someone who needs to sit down and write things out. That’s how he grapples with how he feels about things, what he really thinks, and I’m like that, too.

I: It really feels like writing is your way of figuring yourself—and this world—out. Which is true for your father. Widen that aperture to making art, and I believe it’s true of both your parents.

RL: That gets back to the idea of the second-generation artist.

I: How so?

RL: On the one hand, I have this feeling of, “I'm doing this on my own. This is my art. This is what I do.”

I: Which is true.

RL: But on the other hand, of course it's influenced by my mother and my father. My family is almost its own little artistic community.

I: So what were some of your favorite places in this neighborhood when you were a kid?

RL: Well, if I’m being honest I’d say my boyfriend’s house.

I: Nice.

RL: It was only a block away.

I: Even better.

RL: We went to Cobble Hill Cinemas a lot. That’s where we went on our first date, to watch the Little Mermaid re-release.

I: Awww.

RL: We were nostalgic little ninth graders.

I: “We must recapture the lost youth… of first grade.”

RL: “We're so complex and adult now. Jaded. Oh, to be seven again.” I still love Cobble Hill Cinemas.

I: Did you go into Manhattan a lot as a kid?

RL: I went to music school at Third Street Music School in Lower Manhattan. So I was there twice a week my whole childhood and teenage years. Sometimes more. Plus I had friends in Manhattan, so I’d go to visit them. I had a Rocky Horror Picture Show phase when I was in 8th grade.

I: Oh wow. A perfect phase for 8th grade. Which do you think shaped you more, the city or your family?

RL: I'm not sure I can separate the two. I grew up naive about certain things as a New Yorker. But I also think growing up in the city made me adaptable.

It’s why I want to bring my kids back here as much as possible. I want them to know how big the world is. I want them to learn that—the ability to make room in your life for a lot of different people being a lot of different ways.

But on the other hand, you can feel out of place, or like you don’t fit in once you’re outside of the city.

My dad worked at the Museum of Modern Art, and my mom lectured there when I was a kid. So I was at MoMA all the time. I grew up surrounded by these incredible works of art.

I was fascinated by Henri Rousseau's painting The Dream. What I mean is it’s a really unique childhood, which on the one hand is special, but on the other hand—

I: It’s different than most of the children in America.

RL: Exactly. I talk to my husband about his childhood, who grew up near where you did in Massachusetts—

I: It was different.

RL: When I talk to John about his experience growing up and my experience growing up, I can recognize that those are two different experiences. There were definitely special things about being a kid here in NYC. Valuable things about exposure and sophisticated consumption in terms of art.

But that's not all of life.

I: That’s not the whole story.

RL: There’s always more to learn.

Rachel has been pushing her almost two-year-old daughter in a stroller for the last leg of our conversation. After some time talking, we’d looped back to the waterpark at Pier 6 Playground and picked the child up from Rachel’s mother, who in turn went off with Rachel’s son.

The girl has been mostly quiet, observant, interrupting us only to point out a few things of interest: A butterfly. A flower. A large garbage truck.

Rachel has been able to reaffirm her daughter without breaking stride nor the flow of our conversation—an almost constant, ongoing magic trick. Eventually we pick up Rachel's son, too, and make our way back to the family’s house in Carroll Gardens. Rachel’s father, Chris, is heading out into the city on his bike, but stops to say hello.

Again, three generations, all together. All these different ways to understand one another.

Be sure to check out Rachel Lyon’s Substack:

Postcards from Mountain House

Notes on writing, thinking, and life.

By Rachel Lyon

Looking for another way to support me? Consider picking up a paperback copy of Dirtbag, Massachusetts for yourself or a pal. Thank you!

[Editor’s note: We have a lot to catch up on, so many of these links pertain to things I’ve been up to recently. Apologies for the self-involvement.]

Dave Eggers and co. recently launched the 270 Reasons project. What is the 270 Reasons project, you ask? The logo pretty much explains it all:

I contributed an essay about the famous Harris/Walz hat, which you can see me wearing here:

The essay is also about camo and the complicated history of symbols.

Here’s a taste:

You can read the rest of the essay here, and I hope you do (thank you!).

Plus, be sure to check out the numerous other pieces written by an incredible slew of wildly talented writers. 🇺🇸🗳️

In other news, I was recently a guest on the wonderful and brilliant V. E. Schwab’s podcast, No Write Way. Schwab was an excellent host, and I opened up about, well, quite a bit—especially pertaining to where I’m at these days. If you’re interested, give it a listen.

Will V. E. Schwab join us for an upcoming Walk It Off? Perhaps.*

*Just kidding, the answer is yes. I can’t wait.**

**Speaking of waiting, I know y’all have been very patient while waiting for the next Walk It Off. I promise you it’s coming this month! Our guest is Rachel Lyon and I couldn’t be more thrilled.

Lastly, something pretty magical happened to me yesterday evening. I saw the Northern Lights for the first time. You can see the photos I took—and read about my experience—over on my Instagram.

That’s it from me, y’all. I hope you get a chance to go outside and enjoy the world at a human pace this weekend. 🍓

I had such a pleasure walking with two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist Chloé Cooper Jones recently, and loved our conversation, which encompassed some incredible writing advice, a deep dive into the idea of devotion, and plenty of special drinks and perfect snacks. If you haven’t read this week’s Walk It Off yet, I highly recommend you take some time to do just that this weekend.

We also talked about Jones’ all-consuming interest in art, with her saying, “There are lots of things in this world to write about—and I'm extremely interested in a lot of things—but I always come back to art.” Jones introduced me to the work of Richard Serra, and her next book tackles The Rose by Jay DeFeo. I admire both her knowledge of—and her obsession with—art, which got me wondering: What art inspires all of you? Is there a piece of art, or a collection, or a museum, or even one particular artist that deeply moves you? Tell us about your artistic obsession in the comments below.

“The Fruity Pebbles cupcake looks amazing. Then again, every cupcake looks amazing.”

“Wolfgang's a huge fan of the s'mores bars.”

Chloé Cooper Jones and I are examining what’s on offer at the Little Cupcake Bakeshop in Prospect Heights. I’ve been tasked by Jones to find “a special drink and perfect snack,” a quest she is usually completing with her son, the aforementioned Wolfgang—but more on what that entails later. For now, know that it’s a delightful distraction from the sweltering hot day, one that has Chloé and I popping in and out of cafés, bakeries, and ice cream shops up and down Vanderbilt Avenue in Brooklyn.

At one point, I mention to Chloé that I feel bad going into the shops, but not buying anything. She assuages my fears.

“Isaac, peeking is normal. That’s what shops are for. You can go in and see what they have—I promise you nobody is getting upset. Don’t get too Catholic about this, ok? Besides, I’ve bought so many treats at all of these places, I promise you.”

This is something Chloé has done a lot over our years of friendship. Told me to breathe. Talked me off a ledge. Tried to make sure I see the world the way it is—not the way my anxiety-riddled brain often makes it out to be.

“Sometimes you want a doughnut, other times you want an ice cream. It’s ok to look around and see what you’re interested in.”

It’s one of the many reasons I appreciate spending time with Chloé: I’m usually learning something. Whether it’s about art, or writing, or the philosophy of living—of moving through the world. It’s almost as if Chloé, a longtime teacher, is never not conveying information or imparting a warm lesson of some kind.

Long before our snack hunt, though—before I even knew treats were the mission of the day—I met Chloé at her apartment and we set out into the hot, bright afternoon.

Isaac: Where are we?

Chloé Cooper Jones: Crown Heights. I've lived here for 15 years, total. My entire time in New York City.

Wolfgang went to elementary school right over there at PS 705. On Fridays I would pick him up from school and then we’d head across the street to the Neptune Diner, where we’d order ice cream or grilled cheese sandwiches and sit outside.

I: How’d you come to live in Crown Heights?

CCJ: I had a friend who had an apartment and said, “You can live here, but it's above a very, very loud bar.” Still, the rent was extremely cheap, so I took it—and I've held on to that deal ever since.

I: What made you want to come to New York City in the first place?

CCJ: I initially came for a writing class with Gordon Lish at the Center for Fiction in 2009. I was living in Kansas at the time, but I came here that summer and fell in love with New York. I met a lot of writers who are still some of my best friends in that class.

I: So you wanted to be in New York to be a part of the writing scene? You wanted to be in the mix?

CCJ: Yeah, I had a tremendous community here—and it felt that way immediately. I knew this is where I wanted to be.

I: You also came to New York to study philosophy, right?

CCJ: Right.

I: Do you think studying philosophy helps you as an artist?

CCJ: Definitely.

I believe philosophy is a wonderful pursuit for artists of any discipline, really, because philosophy is the practice of studying unanswerable questions. The second that something is known—or can be answered in any sort of convincing way—it's not philosophy anymore.

Astronomy, for example, began as philosophy. But once we could measure distances between stars or understood what an eclipse was, it became science. Which is true of many, many disciplines. They all started as philosophy.

So I think it's a good practice, to train your mind to sit within concepts and ideas that are completely unknowable. The unanswerable questions. Because the work of writing a book is often sitting with all these possibilities of what the book could be. What form will it take? What structure will you discover while writing it? What will your characters do? What parts of your life do you want to write about?

You could sit there forever being unable to make any decisions, because there are no easy decisions to make. Yet philosophy teaches us that—even though these questions are unanswerable—we have to take a stab at them, in order to move knowledge forward.

Which is very similar to the process of writing a book. What you could write about is infinite. The ways you could structure the book are infinite. But if you get totally bogged down and overwhelmed by that infiniteness, then you will never finish the book. How do you take a step forward when you're not necessarily sure what comes next?

I: What you’re saying reminds me a bit of that E.L. Doctorow quote—I think Anne Lamott uses it in Bird by Bird. “Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Is that how writing Easy Beauty felt?

CCJ: Yes. There was a lot of feeling my way forward with Easy Beauty. I wrote a lot of pages while working on that book—three or four times the amount of pages that ended up in the manuscript.

I: Wow.

CCJ: There was so much writing that got done for Easy Beauty before I even understood what shape the book would take. It was truly a process of discovering the book through the work. That was just how I had to do it.

I: Will that be your process for this next book, too?

CCJ: With the second book, I've done a lot more conceptual mapping. I’ve made decisions and have done a lot of outlining, sketching, and research—the second book is so research heavy that, in a way, it’s imposing its own structure. A necessary structure.

So much of the work that I've done for this next book has been about finding the shape. Now that I have the shape, I'm actually filling in the pages. I haven't written that many pages. I've written a lot of words, but I haven't written a lot of pages—every writer will understand what I mean by that. But overall, I feel much more confident moving forward, because I know where I’m going this time around.

I: How much of this are you figuring out on your own, sitting at your desk? Or do you work with your agent, editor—or maybe friends or a writing group—to help you plan?

CCJ: Both?

My agent and editor are so helpful in so many different ways—but a lot of the early structure stuff I’m doing on my own. That’s not because I think I’m so smart, or anything like that, it’s more that I’m really, really possessive.

I felt this way with Easy Beauty, too. It felt like, if anybody saw it—if the manuscript even saw the light of day—it would disappear.

I: Disintegrate.

CCJ: Exactly. I really needed to keep everything private. I couldn't discuss it. I couldn't show it to anyone. I didn't show it to my agent or editor until I had a full first draft.

Now, my editor, Lauren Wein, is a genius. She massively shaped Easy Beauty. She’s so good at pushing me to a point of really telling the truth. Being honest on the page—because she’ll call me out when she thinks I’m hiding, or shying away from something. If I’m being a little self-protective, or being protective of other people, Lauren will call me on it.

Lauren is such a tremendous listener on the page. Which in turn, is something I really try to be for my students. I really try to hear them on the page—and what I mean by that is, being sure to listen for the thing they really want to talk about. Often there will be a scene that you can tell holds the most urgency—this is the point the writer is trying to make. But they’ve written through that scene or moment really, really quickly. Lauren is great at spotting when I do that, and I in turn try to do it with my own students, or when I’m reading a friend’s work.

I: But you fumble in the darkness alone, first.

CCJ: Yes. I make the skeleton in the dark. I figure out what the book is in the dark. Then Lauren says, “That’s fine. That’s great. But let’s add some muscle here. Let’s put some more guts here.” The book becomes more bloody, more messy, more true—all because Lauren pushes me to be more honest on the page. More fearless.

I think every writer really needs a good second reader, whether it's an agent or an editor or a best friend or another writer that you really, really trust—you need somebody on your team who can say to you, “You’re shying away, here. You’re not being fully honest, here. Hey. You're bullshitting. Stop.”

I: “You're hiding something.”

CCJ: You're doing it subconsciously. You don’t mean to hide on the page, but it happens. We all do it. Our brains are wired to self-protect, and to protect the people we care about. So there’s naturally a certain limit to how far you can go on your own. It helps to have someone there to push you. To really listen. You have to have brutal eyes on your work. I’m thankful to both Lauren and to my agent, Claudia Ballard—they’re both incredibly good at pushing me to tell the truth. They’re both brutal readers, and my writing benefits so much because of that.

I: You also have to be open to their edits. To their thoughts, and critiques.

CCJ: Oh, absolutely. You aren’t going to benefit from help—from brutal readers—if you’re not prepared to hear what they have to say. In that moment as a writer, you have to drop your ego and be focused on one thing: What will make this book better?

I: When you and I first met, you were teaching at a nursing college in Harlem—

CCJ: Yes, all my students were New York City nurses, but they were doing a full bachelor's degree. So they had to take English, and they had to take philosophy, and sociology, and history—

I: The humanities, baby.

CCJ: That’s right. So I started there as an adjunct, then was hired full-time, and by the time I left I was the head of the Humanities Department.

I: That’s impressive.

CCJ: Well, it was a very small department.

I: Still, difficult—during COVID especially, I’d imagine.

CCJ: Really, really hard.

I: But now you’re at Columbia University. What's your favorite thing about teaching?

CCJ: The students—everyone, really. The people. I love being around people who are hungry to learn.

I: Because you yourself are someone who is hungry to learn.

CCJ: It's so cliché, but it's true. It's very intoxicating to be around people who care about the same things you care about, and it can be very validating and energizing to immerse yourself in an environment where everybody around you is in love with literature and reading the same way you are in love with literature and reading. A whole group of people who agree, “Reading books is great. Let's talk about them.”

Because, of course, everything else in our lives competes with the desire to write and make art, but if you spend 40, 50, 60 hours of your week around people who think that's really, really important, it's exhilarating.

Do you want to grab some tacos?

I: So where do you want to walk to next?

CCJ: Ok, so this is crucial—it’s time for you to make a crucial decision.

I: I’m in!

CCJ: During Covid, Wolfgang and I would walk this loop—every day, Monday through Friday—which you and I will now walk. It was a way of marking the end of Wolf’s school day—because his class was online, so we weren’t leaving the apartment, right? He’d be learning in his bedroom, and then 2:30pm would roll around and, well, we’re still just sitting there. So we started walking this loop as a way of delineating the end of his school day—around 3pm every day. A way to give structure to these structure-less days we were stuck in.

Now here’s the crucial part. The walk always includes a special drink and perfect snack.

I: A drink and a snack?

CCJ: A special drink and perfect snack. Every time we did this walk, Wolfgang would search for that day’s special drink and perfect snack. It became our ritual. Now I want to do that same walk with you.

I: A hunt to find my special drink and perfect snack?

CCJ: Yes. Because we’re in the perfect place for it. Treats Crossroads.

I: Treats Crossroads? That’s the name of this area or—

CCJ: That’s what Wolfgang and I call this area.

I: Stop. I’m dying. This is too cute. Wait, so we’re—

CCJ: On Vanderbilt Avenue in Prospect Heights—we usually start at Vanderbilt and St. Mark’s. Look at all that Treats Crossroads has to offer. There’s ice cream at Ample Hills. Cupcakes at the Little Cupcake Bakeshop. Or Mille-Feuille Bakery if you want a chocolate croissant. Want a doughnut? We’ll go to Dough Doughnuts. The possibilities are endless.

I: Treats Crossroads has it all.

CCJ: That’s what Wolfgang and I would do most days during the pandemic. We’d walk down St. Marks, then hit Vanderbilt, then walk around this little radius and visit all these cute, little places—looking at all the treats on offer. Then, once Wolfgang had made his decision for that day, we’d double back to that bakery or store and buy his—

I: Perfect snack. What about the special drink?

CCJ: Well, you had a margarita at Alta Calidad.

I: Presumably Wolf isn’t grabbing margaritas on Vanderbilt quite yet. Is he going for a milkshake or—

CCJ: No, that would be too close to a perfect snack. The special drink needs to have a little contrast—

I: Actual liquid.

CCJ: Actual liquid. For example, say it was really hot out. Wolfgang would try and find the perfect lemonade. Or perhaps the special drink of the day would be a fancy spritz—

I: Like an Orangina.

CCJ: Sure, that’d be a pretty good special drink.

I: The way you said that, I feel like maybe Orangina’s a little basic for special drink.

CCJ: There are so many corner stores, and even a couple of grocery stores around here that have a plethora of unique drinks to choose from—walls of fancy seltzers, or imported juices. So Wolfgang might choose an Umeboshi Plum drink imported from Japan.

I: I’m starting to see the vision.

CCJ: I would usually hunt for a really nice tea. But we would try to change it up every day. It was helpful—breaking up the day with a walk, sure. But the special drink and perfect snack were helpful, too. I don’t know about you, but I usually start to lag in the afternoon—

I: Oh, totally.

CCJ: 2:30pm, 3pm—that’s when I really start to get tired. I start to get sick of what I’m doing. But Wolfgang and I would go for our little walk to Treats Crossroads, we’d find our special drink and perfect snack, and we’d get our energy back up for the rest of the day.

I: So that’s my crucial decision. I have to find a special drink—assuming I don’t want to count my margarita—and perfect snack.

CCJ: That’s your crucial decision, yes.

I: How long have you been teaching?

CCJ: My first semester teaching in a college classroom was fall of 2006.

I: And you’ve taught ever since?

CCJ: I took a year off when Easy Beauty came out, but pretty much. I’ve been teaching for a long time. To be honest, I really thought about not returning to the classroom once Easy Beauty came out, but then I got this opportunity to apply for my job at Columbia and it felt too good to pass up.

I: How has it been, being a part of the writing program at Columbia?

CCJ: Amazing. My colleagues are some of my literary heroes, like Margo Jefferson and Leslie Jamison. I remember reading The Empathy Exams ten years ago. It was a huge light bulb moment for me—for so many of us, right? In terms of understanding what nonfiction can do—

I: Absolutely.

CCJ: Now she’s not only my colleague, but we share an office. The caliber of writers who teach there is mind-blowing to me. But again, it is really about the students. The students are—they’re geniuses. They’re incredible.

When I’m in the classroom and my students are giving feedback on each other’s work, and they’re really pushing their classmates—or themselves—to do something new in their work—

I: When they’re helping each other not hide on the page, for example?

CCJ: Exactly. Those are the moments where I find myself thinking, “This is the most worthwhile thing I could possibly be doing with my life.”

The only thing more important to me is being a good mother.

I: Teaching is fulfilling for you.

CCJ: It feels so, so good. Selfishly good, even. Because I want to believe that all this time I give to writing means something—that I’m not wasting my life.

To be around these students who are so engaged and passionate about art and writing and the books that they’re working on, it’s the best. It’s a total dream job. I’ve never felt luckier.

I: Look at all these fancy macaroons.

CCJ: Do you want to pop in here?

I: What is one of your favorite lessons to impart on your students?

CCJ: I owe so much of my teaching—so much of everything, really—to Deb Olin Unferth, who now teaches at the University of Texas in Austin but was my professor when I was at the University of Kansas. She’s a brilliant writer and a brilliant educator.

One of my favorite ideas about writing comes from her. An idea that I often teach to my students. Although, Deb’s told me it’s not a direct quote from her—I get it a little bit wrong. So it’s become a sort of—

I: A Chloé and Deb hybrid?

CCJ: Yes.

I: As often happens with quotes and ideas.

CCJ: But I remember her teaching me this—the idea is, basically, “When you sit down to write, imagine you’re sitting down at a piano. You’re looking at the 88 keys of a piano, and think about all the people throughout history who have played these 88 keys. All the millions and millions of times these 88 keys have played throughout history. All of these different combinations and all of these different chords and structures. So many people have played these keys and created so much music using these 88 keys. Now, your job is to sit down at these same 88 keys and find the one note that only you can play.”

I: I love that.

CCJ: “It might take a lot of time to find that one note, but you have to keep searching for it.”

Because all of us are telling stories that have been told before. A tremendous number of books have already been written about all sorts of experiences throughout history. But what is that one note that only you can play? What is that one story—or one way of telling a story—that only you can write?

You have to figure out your own extreme particularity.

I: In December of 2020 you and I went on a trip to Dia Beacon.

CCJ: We did!

I: I didn’t know what Dia Beacon was, and I wasn’t familiar with the work of Richard Serra. So you taught me. When did art become so important to you? To use the 88 keys concept, why is art such an integral part of your writing—of your singular note?

CCJ: I've really been thinking a lot about this, recently. Asking myself, “Why do I want to write about art so much?” There are lots of things in this world to write about—and I'm extremely interested in a lot of things—but I always come back to art.

My second book is about a huge painting—

I: The Rose. You took me to that, too.

CCJ: The Rose by Jay DeFeo, that’s right. I keep wanting to write about other artists, too. Also, my fiancé is an artist, Matty Davis—so art has this way of taking over our whole lives.

But why do I keep coming back to art? What is the true answer to that question—and I think I’ve figured it out. For me, it’s about devotion. Devotion gives one’s life meaning, and I think that’s something that I love about art, and artists. Writing and writers. All of it. For me, it comes down to an obsession with devotion.

Because, if you’re devoted to something, it gives meaning to all of the awful tasks, the logistics and boring detritus of life. How much of your life do you spend looking for parking? Or getting stuck on the subway here in New York City? Or dealing with bills or writing emails? If you really thought about it, you’d tunnel into despair, at least I know I would. We have this very short life—and I don’t mean this in a grandiose way, it’s simply a fact—we have this very short life, and we’re always trying to figure out the calculus of that very short life.

How much time do we give to work? To paying our rent? To simply surviving, you know? Versus how much time do we give to the things that are meaningful to us, however we define that. That calculus can be so depressing, so soul-crushing, when you really look at the numbers. But add devotion? Through devotion, we can create a way that those—let’s call them “tasks of life”—that those tasks of life are a part of what we find meaningful.

For example, let’s take teaching. There are so, so many boring tasks that go into teaching, but if the meaning or purpose you find in teaching is what you get from your students, that joy of being in the classroom—if that purpose is of a high enough quality, then the tasks themselves begin to hold meaning.

I: They are a part of the overall meaning.

CCJ: Exactly. They aren’t these boring, mundane tasks that are eating up hunks of your very short life. They are done in service of the very thing that gives your short life meaning.

I: Therefore they aren’t drudgery. In a way they’re holy.

CCJ: Yes, absolutely. Another great example is parenting.

Quite a lot of boring tasks come with parenting, right? No surprise there. So much task completion. But those tasks can take on great meaning, because they're in service to something that is a core organizing principle in my life, which is being a good parent. Loving my son well. Trying to provide for him. Do I hate doing the laundry? Yes. How about grocery shopping? I genuinely hate that, too. But these tasks have meaning, because I am doing them for him.

I: You are devoted to Wolfgang.

CCJ: Exactly. Devotion turns those pain-in-the-ass tasks into—

I: Ways of expressing love.

CCJ: The calculus of my very short life is no longer soul-crushing, because the things that feel monotonous now have purpose.

I: You do them for the child you’re devoted to. Or you grade the stack of papers late at night for the students you’re devoted to. I just used the word “holy,” because this rings true of one of the plus sides of religious devotion to me. The difficult work of living is going to be rewarded, in a way.

CCJ: I didn't grow up in a religious tradition, which is also part of why I keep coming back to art, I believe. From a pretty early age, art was a divine organizing principle in my life. Truly believing that art was a valuable—a necessary—aspect of human existence. A lot of the suffering that I went through early on in my life, I told myself it was in service of art, and making art.

I’ll talk with writers who say to me, “I went through this horrible breakup, but one piece of my brain is remembering everything that’s happening so I can write about it later.” Or a visual artist friend, who tells me about a beautiful pond that he stumbled upon while on a walk, and he walked himself to the point of exhaustion because he wanted to get close with the pond, telling me, “I had to spend time with this pond, and walk around it multiple times, so that I could draw it later.” Art, for me, has always been an organizing principle to make sense of pain, loss, difficulty, struggle, boredom, and all the life-siphoning tasks we endure.

I: A devotion to art.

CCJ: Now that I’m older, there are other organizing principles. Other devotions. My family. Teaching. My friends. But all of it really is simply devotion, and devotion is a way of subordinating despair-causing realities. I spend more time doing mundane things than I do with my son, or writing, or making art, or spending time with my friends. But those mundane things are all in service of the things I love. The things I’m devoted to.

I: You mentioned your fiancé, Matty Davis. He’s an artist and choreographer, and you recently wrote a piece for New York Times Magazine about being in his work. I know you’re also interested in theater. Do you find yourself excited about these new art forms you’re exploring, outside of writing? How does it feel to be a participant—instead of an outside observer—of other forms of art?

CCJ: I, as a disabled person, grew up under a false belief that certain artistic practices were not available to me. I was really interested in the theater when I was growing up—acting as well as writing and directing. Like so many young children, I wanted to be an actress. But time and time again I was told, “Well, you can't be an actress, not with a body like yours.”

I was also always interested in dance, but again, “Your body isn’t built for that.” Which of course, is not true. But I didn’t know that at the time. But that’s true of so many things in my life—

I: The story of your life, in a way. You were told you couldn’t give birth—

CCJ: Right, yet now I have this beautiful son. Which brings us back to devotion. Because I'm so devoted to art, because I believe so intensely—with a religious fervor—that art should be a tremendous organizing principle in one’s life, the greatest gift someone can give me is expanding my artistic practice. And Matty did that by inviting me into his work, showing me how I can participate in art in new ways. It’s been the greatest gift.

Meeting Matty and having him expand my understanding of what dance can be, what performance can be—and being influenced and inspired by playwrights who really care about different bodies—it’s been transformational.

Will Arbery—who introduced me to Matty—really thinks a lot about disability, and has written roles specifically so they can only be played by disabled actors. Arbery has really expanded my sense of what theater can be.

It’s almost as if I have a whole new chamber of this “church of art” to explore. A whole new room in this church, where I can further explore my own devotion. It’s allowed me to be an even more creative person, to live an even more creative life—to question the narratives I was living under and the limitations that I put on myself.

I: Does that expansion of your artistic church influence your writing?

CCJ: Yes, I think it all feeds back into the primary craft of writing. I’m a big believer that writers should try and express themselves in other artforms—and so many writers that I admire do. Teju Cole, for example, is an extraordinary photographer. So many writers I know also paint or draw. I have a student, Randle, who also writes music and can sew and embroider really well—she makes these beautiful crafts that I can’t even fathom being able to do.

I think that it's such a gift to feel the stretch of your devotion in that way. I owe a lot of that to other artists in my life.

I: Well, if you'll allow me, I will also say that you also owe it perhaps to your own curiosity.

CCJ: Oh, that's nice. I think that's very kind. If you see me as a curious person, I take that as a deep compliment, because to me curiosity is about as fantastic a trait as a person can have.

It’s something I think is true of you, too. You’re a very curious person. I'm very inspired by people, like yourself, who seem to have a yes-ness—a yes orientation toward life.

I think one of the greatest tools that a writer can have—or an artist can have—is a genuine openness to other people. An openness to experiencing life. I try to be very curious, so I appreciate you saying that.

I: Do you ever find it difficult? Being curious?

CCJ: Absolutely. I write about that in the piece you mentioned, a bit—how fucking scared I am. I do try to be curious, but that doesn’t mean I’m also not terrified. I aim for that same fundamental “yes-ness to life,” but I’m also scared, anxious, resistant, angry, and annoyed at the fact that I’ve said yes, sometimes.

It’s important to acknowledge that it’s not easy. I’m confronting creative failure over and over again. So many times I’d catch myself saying, “I can’t do this,” which was another way of saying “I’m afraid to do this.”

I: The voice inside your head that says, “They’re all going to laugh at you.”

CCJ: “They’re going to judge me. I don’t want to do it. I can’t do it. I don’t have what it takes.” Which leads to, “I don't fit in. I don't belong here.”

I: I mean, in a way, it reminds me of you describing your process while writing Easy Beauty. Fumbling forward in the dark—

CCJ: One thing I try to teach my students—which is probably also something I ripped off of Deb, but then twisted—is: try to make friends with failure.

I: Try to make friends with failure?

CCJ: It’s one of my little maxims. If you’re fundamentally afraid of failure, you aren’t going to move forward in any real way. In my opinion, you have to court failure. Be its best friend, in a way. Develop a psychological relationship with failure. Failure is a necessary—and therefore positive—part of the process.

But it’s one thing to teach it, and it’s a whole other thing to live it—

I: You’ve had so much success as a writer. Two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and all. So much of your failure in that medium is in the past—

CCJ: Let’s not go that far, but I get what you’re saying. I understand that type of failure—I’m familiar with the ways that failure feels.

I: That’s a better way to put it. You’re already best friends with failure in terms of writing. But with dance, you’re really out of your comfort zone again.

CCJ: Right. It’s a totally new space. A totally new art form. Different people are engaging with the art.

Have you decided on your perfect treat, yet?

I: I think my perfect treat today is going to be ice cream.

CCJ: Great choice. I think I’ll join you.

I: It’s interesting the way all of these things tie together. Devotion as a way of making the tedious parts of life bearable, becoming best friends with failure in order to not shy away from new experiences. Do these ideas also inform your feelings around being a mother?

CCJ: I didn't know I was pregnant until I was five and a half months along. At that point the feeling was, “Well, we’re doing this, I guess.”

So there was—what would be the best way to put this? There was an endless terror around that. I had never even contemplated having a kid before. I’d been told my whole life up until that point that it was extremely unlikely. Then, all of a sudden, there was going to be a child in my life in a matter of months.

Also, in the same way I was saying there weren’t a lot of examples of disabled performers when I was growing up, there also weren’t a lot of cultural models for disabled mothers, either. This changed, I feel, in Wolfgang’s lifetime. In the 12 years that he’s been alive, I’ve seen more and more public models of disability and motherhood.

I: Yourself being one of them.

CCJ: But when I was pregnant—at that time, I hadn’t grown up with any examples to follow. There were no movies in which, say, a disabled woman becomes pregnant and then lives a good life. I couldn't think of any novels that I'd ever read in which that was a major plot line.

Or, if there were examples that were out there, they hadn’t been presented to me yet. I didn't know any other disabled mothers. I certainly didn't see any on the cover of magazines. It wasn’t part of the cultural consciousness. There were so many stories about motherhood, sure, but none of them were about the experience I was having.

The only cultural narrative that did exist around disability and motherhood—and for a large part still does—is that it's a very scary thing for many, many people.

I: How do you mean?

CCJ: Well, it's the basis of the eugenics movement, for one. Here in the United States a large part of the eugenics movement was based on this strong belief that we should be sterilizing women who had any sort of disability—even if they were extremely mild cases of epilepsy, or a suspected lower-than-average intelligence. Disabled women were sterilized against their will, and without their consent.

Culturally—and this is still true for many people—one of the scariest things they can think of is a disabled person having a child.

That was the narrative I was raised under. That was the closest thing I had to a narrative about my body and what was happening—and that narrative was reinforced everywhere when I was pregnant.

I: For example?

CCJ: My doctor said to me. “I think it’s unethical that you’re doing this.” People were obsessively worried about me. Others were really disgusted. Very few people were saying, “This is so great! Congratulations!”

I: “This is amazing! This is so beautiful!”

CCJ: Comments like that weren’t really a part of my pregnancy story. To be honest, they weren’t a big part of my motherhood story, either—not until Wolfgang was older. Which made me, well, it made me angry. I had so much love and support from my own mother and my close friends, but it felt like there was no larger cultural guidance. No societal help.

Which I thought a lot about while writing Easy Beauty. Thinking to myself, “At least I'm putting a story into the world—a true narrative, that you can go get at any bookstore that’s about a disabled woman who has a kid.”

I: Write the book you feel is missing on the bookshelf, in a way.

CCJ: It’s not a fairytale. It isn’t all great, or perfect. But it’s a true motherhood narrative. I feel really proud of that.

I: What is it like watching Wolf perform in Matty’s pieces?

CCJ: For so long I’ve felt, “I know this kid inside and out.” We joke about having the same brain, and having a psychic connection. I know what he’s going to say before he even says it.

I: You can tell which perfect treat he’s going to go for, or special drink.

CCJ: I know what he's gonna want before he says it. We really know each other so well. It's that deep connection you have with your child. He came out of my body. We’re made up of each other’s cells and DNA.

But when I watched him perform? I’m seeing this completely new side of him. It felt like I was meeting him for the first time. There was this utter composure. A maturity that shocked me, and I have a lot of belief in his maturity. But he was so brave and so confident. A truly gifted performer. Like I said, a side of him I had never seen before.

I believe that art really allows you to see someone completely differently. You can find a whole other way of loving a person through what they created.

I: In a way, it sounds like what you were describing earlier, when you discover a new room in the church of your devotion. Finding this whole other nave you didn’t know anything about, but in this case it’s your son.

CCJ: Exactly. Watching this completely new side of him blossom in front of me. I think it's a wonderful part of parenthood—this great gift, to watch your child become their own person.

It was an incredible moment. All I could think was, “Who the fuck is this?”

I: We were saying earlier that being curious can, at times, be hard. Do you find it even harder to stay curious—to have this “yes-ness” orientation toward life—as you get older?

CCJ: No. If anything, I think I’m becoming more curious.

I: Why is that?

CCJ: Because I'm closer to dying.

[Editor’s note: I stop walking for a moment to let out a laugh so loud that a few nearby pigeons take flight.]

I: Jesus. Say more.

CCJ: The closer I am to death, the more desperate I am to learn. I can feel the clock ticking.

I: Can you give me an example?

CCJ: I’ve always wanted to go to Japan. When I was 20, I’d say to myself, “There’s plenty of time. I’ll surely get to Japan someday.” But now? I might not. Not if I don’t plan some things. Not if I don’t make some serious choices. So we’re looking at tickets.

There are so many books that I assumed I'd have time to read—or hell, books I assumed I’d have time to write. I think the pressure of curiosity only increases as you get older. Luckily, I have a child.

I: Wolfgang helps you be more curious?

CCJ: Absolutely. The older he gets, the more curious he gets. I know it’s cliché, but I really do get to see the world anew through his eyes. I get to go to places with him that I’ve been to, but he’s experiencing them for the first time. It’s really inspiring.

Do you find it harder to stay curious as you get older?

I: I agree with everything you’re saying, but for me I think there’s a temptation to grow stagnant. You have to remind yourself to stay curious, I’d say.

CCJ: I’m definitely more selective in the things I’m curious about. My time is more limited, so I really want to focus on the things—and people—that I love.

So I get what you’re saying, in that sense. I find myself asking, “Do I really want to get on the G train at 10pm to go see this band play?” There are things I’ve experienced that I used to be curious about, that I’m less curious about now. I find myself needing to go to fewer parties.

But my general curiosity is still very strong. I have a better understanding that time isn’t infinite. So yes, I’m less compromising. I don’t need to spend time with people I don’t want to spend time with anymore. But I’m doing that because I’m protective of my time. I have a lot of boundaries, because I want to use the time I have left to be curious about the things that really interest me.

I: Death can be one hell of a motivator.

CCJ: You’re right. When you see death up close—which both you and I have—it really can make you conscious of your own limited time.

I was taking care of my mom when she was sick—and I remember telling you this at the time—but all I heard was this loud voice, my future self screaming at me. “Don’t delay your joy. Don’t delay your joy. Don’t delay your joy.”

So I’m making a conscious effort to live with a lot of joy.

I: How do you experience walking in the city? How do you experience yourself “moving through the world at a human pace,” as Garnette Cadogan puts it?

CCJ: With a lot of pain. I mean, doing this is a pain in the ass, to be quite honest. So I’m glad you asked this question

Walking is very romanticized. There are whole schools of thought in philosophy—the peripatetic philosophers, for example, who believed you really couldn't do your best thinking unless you were walking and moving around. Socrates famously walked, and there are all of these great travel writers and poets. There’s this whole incredible history that champions the value of walking, which is all true and fine. But my body? My body fucking hates it.

Right now I’m in pain, and I’m tired. My joints hurt. The amount of walking I’m doing now will exact some sort of cost from me later, and that’s always the case. Which is fine. I wanted to go on this walk with you, much like I wanted to walk this loop with Wolfgang during the pandemic. But if we walked more? If we walked further? If we walked a really long distance? I would pay a very heavy price for that later, physically—and during.

All of this means that I have a different relationship to walking.

When you first asked me to do this, I was thinking about taking you to Times Square. I was picturing us taking a very unpleasant walk. So you could see what it’s like for me all of the time, especially in crowded places, where people will jostle me and push me aside. But even now, here, on this quiet street with a nice breeze, my body is in pain. I'm hot, I'm tired, my back hurts, my hip hurts. Again, it's also quite beautiful and worth doing—but there’s always a price.

I think it's good for you, as someone who's writing walking and moving through the world at a human pace, to think of all the vastness of experiences there are for people.

I: Absolutely.

CCJ: Thinking about that, makes your subject stronger, and more vital.

For me, walking anywhere is like I'm always in Times Square. I’m constantly trying to crowd out the noise of my own body. So I thought you and I walking in Times Square in the middle of summer might be a good metaphor for that.

But then I said, “Fuck it. Let’s get treats.”

Hesitantly, I ask Chloé if my special drink can be a black iced coffee, while promising her I’ll do a better job finding a more intriguing beverage the next time we walk to Treats Crossroads.

“It’s your special drink, Isaac. If your special drink of the day is an iced coffee, that’s great.”

When asked what she plans to do after our walk, Chloé tells me that she’s going to rest on her couch and cuddle with her dog, Dolly. But first I turn off my recorder again and we simply catch up as friends, talking about such important subjects as how big the chunks in a chunky ice cream should be.

“Careful,” Chloé says to me. “Your perfect treat is dripping.”

Looking for another way to support me? Consider picking up a paperback copy of Dirtbag, Massachusetts for yourself or a pal. Thank you!

A quick note to say, thank y’all so much for your patience while I dealt with a death in the family. I’ll have a smidge more about that in my next Friday Flowers.

With that out of the way, it felt extremely good to go for a walk with Ada Calhoun—and it’s clear that many of you enjoyed the walk, too (thanks so much for all the kind notes!).

During our conversation, Calhoun said, “Everybody has a year that the city was good, and then the city was never good again after that. Usually, that time is when said person was 19 or in their early 20s.” Which got me thinking, when—and where—would you say your best times were? Do you have beloved memories of adventuring in your youth? Or maybe you’re happy where your life is now. Maybe (hopefully?) both! But lay it on us in the comments below.

Also, given how many people wrote me to say that this was one of their favorite Walk It Offs of all time, a request: If you enjoyed this walk, it’d mean a great deal to me if you took the time to send it to a friend—or enemy—and it’d mean even more if you helped get the word out to folks to subscribe to the series. Thank you so much!

Looking for another way to support me? Consider picking up a paperback copy of Dirtbag, Massachusetts for yourself or a pal. Thank you!

“My ma died in February.”

Ada Calhoun and I are at the International Bar in the East Village, and I’m telling her the specifics of my mother’s death. The afternoon is gray and rainy, but the day-drinkers around us are jovial, and the Guinness I’m sipping warms my chilled bones a bit. Ada kindly listens while I talk, she herself having lost a parent in October of 2022—which, if I’m being honest, is probably why I called her to ask if she wanted to go on a walk. Reaching out to somebody who might, in some way, understand.

But Calhoun is also a New York native, a species of person I find fascinating, and I’ve been wanting to walk with her through the neighborhood of her youth—where she also currently lives—for some time now. So, after another Guinness or two, neither of us in a rush to get out into the wet, cold, early Spring day, I finish what I have to say about my ma for now, and Ada and I pay our tab and set out on foot. 

Ada is smart enough to have brought an umbrella, which she offers to share with me, but I decline, the damp somehow a comfort. 

Isaac: So why are we starting at the International Bar?

Ada Calhoun: Well, it was one of the only bars nearby open this early, for starters—and it’s one of the bars I drank at as a teenager. I like that it’s still around, that it’s still exactly the same bar as it was back when I was growing up.

I: You were a born and raised Manhattanite who drank here as a teenager. Did they not check IDs? Did you have a fake ID?

AC: I’ve never had a fake ID in my entire life—I mean, I didn’t have a real ID for a long time, either. I didn't learn how to drive until college.

I: So you grew up in this area?

AC: I grew up on St. Mark's Place between 1st and 2nd Avenue—and I’m living there again, now.

I: Do you think New York City was more fun when you were growing up?

AC: I’m hesitant to agree with that. So many people are always saying, “Oh, the city used to be so good. It used to be so fun.” Most people who say that aren’t even from here. They’re comparing New York now to a New York they’ve dreamed about or read about. Secondly, so much is still the same. The International Bar is a great example.

I: I mean, they’re better at checking IDs now.

AC: Sure, but other than that it is exactly the same. Same with Holiday Cocktail Lounge, Tile Bar, B&H—the kosher lunch counter that’s been open since 1938—Blue & Gold Tavern, Veselka. The list goes on and on. There’s still a lot of the city that I grew up in. It’s still here.

I: Is it safe to say that what you’re talking about is a… sort of philosophy for you?

AC: How do you mean?

I: I’ve thought about this a lot—I even write about it in Dirtbag, Massachusetts. When I was living in San Francisco in the aughts, people were like, “Oh, you should have been here in the 90s. You missed it. That's when the city was really happening.” But now when I go back to visit, people are like, “Wait. You were here in the aughts? What was it like? I hear that’s when the city was really happening.”

AC: Listen—and I’ve said this before. Everybody has a year that the city was good, and then the city was never good again after that. Usually, that time is when said person was 19 or in their early 20s.

I: When they were young?

AC: When they were hot. Whenever a person was at peak hotness—

I: With the least amount of responsibilities—

AC: Exactly. “Oh, there was an era when cool people would simply talk to you on the street, and you’d be invited to parties in warehouses that nobody else knew about? So you miss 1994?” No. You don’t miss 1994. You miss how good you looked that cool people talked to you on the street and invited you to parties in warehouses that nobody else knew about. You don’t miss the ‘70s. Or the aughts. Or the ‘80s. You miss that time in your life—

I: When you looked good in a halter top—

AC: Or in your baby doll shirt. Or when you were young enough to be a hot, confident skateboarder. Or to look hot reading books in bars. It goes on and on.

I: Did you always want to be a writer? Growing up in Manhattan. Going to bars in your teens. Did you—

AC: No. I wanted to be a farmer. Or a translator. I had a very domestic fantasy of sitting in a cozy farmhouse reading books all day.

I: Did you dream of not being in the city?

AC: Yes. I wanted to live in the country. I wanted to do manual labor, while also having time to read a whole bunch. That was my idea of heaven—not writing—reading. I didn’t want to be a writer. My father and all of my father’s friends were writers—and I did not want to be like my father. Writing was his job. So I avoided it. Strenuously.

I: Readers who are familiar with Also a Poet will know, of course, but for those who aren’t, can you tell us a bit about your father?

AC: He was an art critic named Peter Schjeldahl, who was very revered in the art world.

I: So you grew up surrounded by that world—but your dream was, “What if I milked cows?”

AC: Not so much a dairy farmer, per se. More that I was growing plants, while having time to—

I: To read.

AC: Correct. There was a book I found at a used bookstore when I was young called A Flatland Fable by Joe Coomer—do you know that book?

I: I do not.

AC: Oh, I love Joe Coomer. I’ve read everything he’s written. A Flatland Fable is this tiny little book about a day in the life of this guy who lives in a small town and his wife’s pregnant, I think, and his father’s dying. Anyway, the book is so beautifully written, and I remember reading it and feeling, “That’s it. That’s what I want. I want the exact feeling that’s so alive in this book.” And that feeling involved neither writing nor living in a city.

I: So when’d you fuck it up?

AC: I mean, there’s still time, Isaac. I can still get out of this. It’s not over.

I: Fair enough, but you are—currently—a writer living in New York City.

AC: Yes.

I: Did you go to college here in NYC?

AC: Well, first I took a year off after high school and traveled and did some manual labor.

I: You brought it up, so now I have to ask— especially with you growing up here in Manhattan—where’d you go to high school?

AC: Stuyvesant.

I: Ok, so you went to Stuyvesant and then you took off a year to go learn that farming ain’t all it’s cracked up to be—

AC: Not true. I loved reading on trains and pruning trees and having European boyfriends and all of it.

I: Then you came back and went to college where? In New York?

AC: No, I went to McGill for two years.

I: Harvard of the North. By that point were you interested in writing? Or in journalism?

AC: No. At that point I was interested in translation.

I: What’d you want to translate?

AC: Sanskrit.

I: Sanskrit?

AC: Sanskrit. 

But hold on, this is one of the things I wanted to show you on our walk. Do you know this statue?

I: I don’t. To be honest, I don’t know where we are. Where are we?

AC: We are in Tompkins Square Park and this is a Temperance Fountain. In the late 1800s and early 1900s there was this craze for temperance and a real organized attempt to get everyone to stop drinking—and one of the strategies of the temperance movement was to make fresh drinking water widely available, in hopes that everyone would drink nice, cool, clean water instead of alcohol.

I: Often people were drinking beer because the water was contaminated. Beer was safer.

AC: Hence the temperance fountain.

I: What does it say on each side?

AC: Temperance, charity, hope, and faith.

I: So you traveled and worked before college?

AC: Yes, I traveled quite a bit. I did manual labor in Switzerland, and then with my cousins in Norway. I traveled through India for three months and did volunteer work.

I: You volunteered at Mother Teresa’s mission, correct?

AC: I did. But here’s something else I wanted to show you. The Slocum Memorial Fountain. Do you know what the greatest disaster in New York City history was before September 11th?

I: I mean, I have a guess now—but no.

AC: So this entire neighborhood used to be all German immigrants. There were these large, German families, and they used to participate in these big church picnics—getting dressed up in fancy clothes and spending time together. Every year they would charter a ship and sail up the East River to go picnic.

Then, in June of 1904, close to 1,400 passengers—many of them women and children—boarded a paddle steamer called the General Slocum, and while en route to Locust Point in the Bronx, the boat caught fire and sank. About a thousand passengers died—

I: Jesus Christ.

AC: It’s the worst maritime disaster in New York City’s history and—

I: The worst overall disaster in the city’s history until September 11th, 2001.

AC: Correct. There are many theories as to what happened. One is that the captain was drunk and—after the boat caught fire—he sailed into the wind, thereby stoking the flames.

But the general consensus is that the boat wasn’t very well maintained. Plus all the life preservers had rotted. Also the women were all in these enormous, heavy dresses, making—

I: Swimming rather difficult—or, to put it another way, sinking rather easy.

AC: As I recall, the disaster eventually contributed to the fall of Tammany Hall, because people realized that the safety inspectors had all been bribed. It helped expose all this massive corruption in the city.

But it was also the end of Little Germany. The end of this neighborhood mainly being German immigrants. The whole area was gutted. Full classes of children—as in, say, a kindergarten class—were just gone. The funeral processions were huge. I have a really beautiful, horrible picture of a street full of hearses. The entire community was decimated, and, on top of all that, most anyone who survived decided to move, anyway. It was simply too sad to live here.

I: Terrible.

AC: Here’s another landmark. Do you know why this tree is special?

I: Hang on, Ada—let me process the boat disaster! But no, I don’t know why this tree is special.

AC: This is the Hare Krishna Tree. In the mid-1960s Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada—the spiritual leader who helped spread the Hare Krishna mantra—came to this tree and, along with his followers, held the first outdoor Hare Krishna chanting session in the United States. I think it was the first one outside of India in the whole world, actually. Allen Ginsberg was here. It was a whole scene. I have a photo of that, too.

I: So would you come to this park a lot as a kid?

AC: Not so much. There used to be a lot of violence in the park. One friend of mine growing up—the first time she ever saw people having sex was a couple who were apparently living in Tompkins Square Park.

I: Not exactly kid-friendly.

AC: No. A child who I used to babysit found a loaded gun in the sandbox here once.

I: What? That’s like a New York Post story come to life.

AC: There was also Daniel Rakowitz.

I: Who’s Daniel Rakowitz?

AC: In 1989 Daniel Rakowitz killed his girlfriend—some people say it was a his roommate, not his girlfriend—but either way he murdered her and dismembered her and then cooked a soup using some of her body parts and fed the soup to the unhoused people who were living here in the park.

I: Uhhhh, what?

AC: He tasted the soup himself and claimed he was a cannibal for the rest of his life. You didn’t know about that?

I: No, I’m sorry, I didn’t know Tompkins Square Park had its own Sweeney Todd. At the risk of sounding squeamish, is there something else to show me without so much tragedy and mayhem?

AC: Sure. Do you like witches?

I: Who doesn’t like witches?

AC: Here, I’ll take you to the witch store.

I: When did you start getting interested in writing and journalism?

AC: Well, it turns out there aren’t a lot of day jobs that require Sanskrit translation skills, and I needed to make some money. I had done a few internships at magazines when I was in high school, jobs I had gotten because I also babysat for many editors and writers.

I: Friends of your father?

AC: More just friends of the family and people we knew in the neighborhood. So I’d often start out babysitting and then move into an assisting/intern role at the magazine. So I was working at Esquire and Spin—

I: When you were in high school?

AC: Yeah, when I was 16 or so.

I: So when you came back from McGill you started working in magazines?

AC: No, I worked there when I was still at Stuyvesant. By my senior year I already almost had enough credits to graduate so I took a light schedule of classes and worked a lot during the week.

I: Ada, goddamnit.

AC: What?

I: I’m sorry. I’m a stickler for a timeline. You come back from McGill—

AC: I went to Massachusetts and worked on a farm with my Canadian then-boyfriend.

I: Not more farming.

AC: Yes, more farming. Then I decided I wanted to go back to school.

I: So you hadn’t graduated from McGill.

AC: No. But I had been offered in-state tuition from the University of Texas at Austin when I was originally applying and so I reapplied as a transfer student to see if they’d still give that to me and they did.

I: Hook ‘em horns.

AC: So I transferred down to Austin, where I went to school for two more years. I graduated from UT Austin in 2000. When all was said and done it took me six years to get my undergraduate degree.

I: But you were working the whole time—or taking time off to farm.

AC: I worked at so many different places, but eventually I ended up working at The Austin Chronicle, because I couldn’t find any Sanskrit translation jobs and—

I: So that’s how you came to journalism.

AC: Yes. 

I: You already had clips because of your magazine work in high school, but you started getting serious clips while working at the Austin Chronicle?

AC: Correct.

I: I’m going to regret asking this, but what’d you love about Sanskrit?

AC: I still love Sanskrit. I think it’s the best language. The way it’s constructed is so interesting. It has so much grammar. So I kept taking classes—and then graduate classes. “This will be the rest of my life,” I thought.

But then the work at the Chronicle became more and more interesting. I started writing as one of the paper’s theater critics, which is when I changed my name—

I: Was it important to you that nobody knew you were your father’s daughter?

AC: Well, in New York City he was very famous—or at least it felt that way to me, right? Outside of New York, though? I didn’t know. But I figured, “Better safe than sorry.” Also, I didn’t want people to associate us.

I: How do you mean?

AC: I didn’t want people thinking I was getting work or whatever because of him, especially because I wasn’t. So I figured I’d simply use my middle name as my last name while writing for the Chronicle. Also, that way he and my mother wouldn’t necessarily hear from people what I was doing. People wouldn’t know we were related.

I: Wouldn’t be able to keep tabs on you, I understand that. Was it also a way of setting out on your own—is that fair to say?

AC: Nailed it.

I: So where’d your middle name come from? Calhoun?

AC: Elizabeth Calhoun Baker. She was an editor at Art in America. Baker was a friend of my parents. I was born on St. Patrick’s Day, and my parents thought her name was Irish. But Calhoun, it turns out—

I: Is Scottish.

AC: Very good. Calhoun is Scottish, which my parents learned when they called her to tell her the good news.

AC: This witch store—which is called Enchantments—used to be at a different location, but it’s been around since I was a teenager.

I: Good to know that an honest witch store can still make it in this town. So when do you come back to New York after your time in Austin?

AC: 2001.

I: And what are you doing for work?

AC: I worked in photo labs. That was my big day job for a long time—both when I was in Austin and then here in New York—my fallback if I couldn’t get work writing or editing.

I: Developing film?

AC: Developing film and making custom prints.

I: Sadly not as dependable a job as it once was. The witch store perseveres, even as the film labs go out of business.

So you’re returning to NYC in 2001. Where have you worked at—or written for—up until this point?

AC: Let’s see, I worked at a bunch of magazines in high school, like I said. Spin, Esquire, and World Business. Then in Austin I worked at the Chronicle. Then when I moved back to New York I did photo labs and then worked at Vogue as an editorial assistant. Then I went to New York Magazine as the theater listings editor.

I: What’d that entail?

AC: Doing blurbs for shows, managing the listings, and then doing three or four mini-profiles or mini-previews every week. So I was watching a lot of theater at that time—like sometimes six Broadway shows a week—because I had free tickets to everything.

But I kept pitching story ideas to other sections of the magazine and never getting any of my pitches accepted, so I left and took a job at the website Nerve.com, where I was a culture editor for a while, and then a deputy editor and then, eventually, they spun-off a parenting site called Babble and I became the editor-in-chief there.

I: Back in 2012 when I was 28 or so Nerve listed me in a piece called “Meet Your Favorite Websites' Most Eligible Single Staffers,” which I appreciated at the time.

AC: I was gone by then, but I’m happy that worked out for you. I left Babble in 2009, and, well, I’ve basically been a ghostwriter as my day job since 2009.

I: Ghostwriting—also more reliable than photo labs.

AC: I would still take small jobs here and there. I worked at the New York Post crime desk for a few months—

I: Wait. What was working at the New York Post crime desk like?

AC: It was a reporting job to make some money.

I: No. We are not smoothly moving past this, Ada. What the fuck was it like working at the New York Post crime desk for a year? For the record, that’s my go-to news source for all things related to the Gilgo Beach serial killer—and really all serial killer news, in general.

AC: It was a great experience for me. Before that, I hadn’t done much boots-on-the-ground reporting. I wasn’t used to getting doors slammed in my face, or people hanging up on me.

I’d been doing a lot of arts reporting before that, and people are usually happy when you show up as an arts reporter. But when there’s crime involved, for numerous reasons, the person you’re trying to get a quote from might not be so willing to talk to you. So I would work all day trying to get quotes from people—suspects, lawyers, law enforcement, witnesses—and that was a really good experience for me. Good training.

I: A PR person for a theater production will make celebrities available to you for quotes, whereas—

AC: Here I had to gather quotes, and really figure out what the story was. With a play, you’re covering the play, right? But with crime, there are so many different moving pieces that you have to figure it all out, and you have to try really hard to not get it wrong. The stakes are higher. There’s more pressure.

Before working at the New York Post, if you’d asked me if I was a reporter, I would have said, “Yes.” But looking back now, I don’t think I was actually a reporter until that job.

Do you want to see where Frank O’Hara used to live? It’s a poke place now.

I: I will not be distracted by the uncapturable meaning behind Frank O’Hara’s old apartment building now being a place called Poke & Roll. Tell me a story about your time at the New York Post.

AC: A story? Ok, one time when I came into work the managing editor was so happy he was crying. So I asked, “What’s going on?” And he responded, “Russian spies were arrested last night.” I remember thinking, “Ok? Do we like spies? What’s so special about spies?” The managing editor must have seen a quizzical look on my face, because he got sort of exacerbated and pushed on, “Ada. Look at her. Look at the spy.” He then held up a photo of what could only be described as a very, very sexy spy, “Look at her!”

So I said, “Oh, that’s great. I’m so happy for you—”

I: Meanwhile he’s probably thinking, “You don’t get it! This is New York Post gold!”

AC: He really did. He kept going! “No, Ada. You don’t understand, yet. Look at her. Look at the color of her hair.”

I: What color was her hair?

AC: It was red, which is what I said, “It’s red.” And he kept going, “That’s right. It’s red. Red, Ada! Do you know how many headlines we are going to get out of a hot, red-headed, Russian spy?!”

[Editor’s note: At this point I have stopped walking because I am laughing too hard.]

I: That’s so beautiful. This is such a gorgeous New York Post story.

AC: Well, there’s an epilogue. Because my first job that morning was to hit the phones and start doing research on the internet to try and find out everything I could about this sexy, red-headed Russian spy, right? So, later that day, I walked up to my managing editor and got to say, “Guess what? She’s got a sister.”

I: No!

AC: He practically started crying all over again. I’ll never forget, he said, “God bless you. Do you want to work here forever?”

I: But you didn’t work there forever. Because it turned out ghostwriting was perhaps a little more lucrative than tracking down red-headed Russian spy’s family members.

AC: Ghostwriting became my main source of income, yes. Do you want to grab a drink at another one of my teenage haunts?

I: I love this place. So you came here a lot—

AC: As a young lady. Yes. I think my friend Lisa Crystal Carver got banned for life from here because she got caught having sex in the bathroom.

I: So after working at all the places you mentioned—the babysitting to media job pipeline, as it were—

AC: You joke, but that really was a part of it. I would be watching someone’s kids and then they’d say, “After you’re done here, can you go into the office and transcribe my interview with Mike Tyson?”

I: That’s amazing. So babysitting to assistant editorial work—with a lot of farming in the mix of course—

AC: Of course.

I: To arts coverage, and then to editorial work, to covering crime at the New York Post. How old were you then?

AC: In my mid-thirties.

I: Then what?

AC: Well, I was freelancing to get my own byline out there, writing for Country Living, the New York Times, and a bunch of other places—but I haven’t had a day job in well over ten years.

I: Like you said, ghostwriting becomes your day job. So how do you come to ghostwriting? Are you allowed to say who your first project was with?

AC: Tim Gunn from Project Runway. Gunn and I had the same agent, and he was at a publisher that I’d done work for—Gallery—and they were aware of my work at Nerve and Babble and so forth. So they trusted me and let me take a crack at it. Tim put my name on the cover, which is why I can talk to you about it, and it became a New York Times bestseller.

I: Wow. A success right out of the gate? What was the title?

AC: Gunn’s Golden Rules.

I: Did it feel good that the book was a hit?

AC: Of course.

I: Did you get some of the royalties?

AC: No. Ghostwriting is almost always a flat rate. Almost always. People occasionally get that, but I never have.

But yes, it was great. Tim and I became good friends, and he was really cute with my kid, Oliver, became what we called his Lego patron—

I: How old was Oliver at the time?

AC: Oh, probably five.

I: So you liked ghostwriting?

AC: Absolutely.

I: So much that you made it your full-time job. Now, I know there are many names we can’t discuss, but can you tell us the number of books you’ve ghostwritten?

AC: 28.

I: Jesus. That’s a lot of books! For you, what are the joys—and the pitfalls—of ghostwriting?

AC: I definitely enjoy helping people tell their stories. In a way, I get to be the you in the situation we’re in right now—and I really enjoy that. Also, I really like structuring books. It’s fun for me. I’ve done so many now that it’s simply how my mind works. I look at a manuscript, or listen to someone tell their story, and I start to see things—like in the Matrix.

I: It’s all code to you. It’s all green numbers and letters streaming down the screen. “Bad childhood moment goes here. Triumphant overcoming of adversity in early 20s goes there.”

AC: If I spend a dozen hours interviewing someone—which is usually around 60,000 words—I can often see the whole story. It’s like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. My friend Kathleen says I’m like the girl in the chess show watching games on the ceiling. Which is why I love ghostwriting so much. It’s the person I’m working with’s story—it’s their words—but I know how to take those words and structure them in a way that will be satisfying for a reader.

I: I know you can’t name names, but have you ever had someone you really like, or deeply admire, say to you, “You nailed it.” Someone you were excited to collaborate with who was absolutely thrilled with how the book turned out?

AC: Yes. It feels amazing. That said, most people have a period of trauma first.

I: Because they’re uncomfortable being seen?

AC: It’s really hard for them.

I: Have you gotten that response, too?

AC: Plenty of times. A lot of, “Wait. I said that?” It’s the same as when you hear a recording of your own voice for the first time—the way your voice sounds different in your head versus when you’re hearing it. Or when you see photos of yourself. It’s like that, but on the page.

I: So what do you do at that point?

AC: I sit with them and ask, “What doesn’t sound like you?” Then we work on it until it is more in line with what they were actually trying to say. In a way, this goes back to what interested me about translating Sanskrit.

I: How so?

AC: When translating Sanskrit you have these stories from thousands of years ago, right? You’re attempting to translate those ancient texts into contemporary American English, all while ensuring that they’re still accurate.

Well, with ghostwriting, you’re taking transcripts of interviews with a celebrity and you have to guarantee that they will still sound like themselves—that it’s still their voice—while also turning those transcripts into a book that a reader will enjoy.

In each case, you’re somehow both making a lot of changes, while at the same time trying to make sure the core meaning doesn’t change at all.

I: Have you ever had to battle with someone whose vision of themselves—for example, someone self-lionizing to an incredible degree—put you in a position where you had to bring someone back down to earth?

AC: No. But I’m lucky in that I get to be very selective with which projects I take on. I turn down a lot of books—especially these days.

I: How many projects do you think you’ve turned down?

AC: Oh gosh, a bunch. To be fair, I’ve also interviewed for projects and been turned down, as well.

I: Does it hurt to get turned down when you’re up to work with someone that really interests you?

AC: No. It’s business. It’s my day job. I know I’m good at it. I know I’m really fast. But the chemistry has to be right on both sides. If one book doesn’t work out, something else will come up. 

I: That’s part of it too, isn’t it? Speed?

AC: Yes.

I: There’s a saying about haircuts. With enough time, anyone can give you a decent enough haircut—but what you’re paying a barber or hairstylist for is how quickly they can give you a good haircut.

AC: Oh, I never heard that. But yes.

I: What’s your speed? How long does a ghostwriting project take you?

AC: It can be as short as five weeks or so. But you usually get anywhere between three and six months to finish a book.

I: Five weeks? Jesus. I want to hire you.

AC: I’d hire myself, frankly. 

I: So it’s different when you’re working on your own stuff?

AC: Of course.

I: Because you’re in your own head. It’s your own words, your own story, and thus it’s harder to structure—at least to structure as quickly as you can structure somebody else’s story.

AC: Exactly.

I: So you’re like a midwife—

AC: A midwife of other people’s stories?

I: Yeah.

AC: That’s right.

I: Were you already ghostwriting before you published St. Marks Is Dead?

AC: Yes.

I: When does that book—your own book—come out?

AC: 2015.

I: You got a lot of love for that book, correct?

AC: I did.

I: You were on the cover of the Village Voice.

AC: Not long before it shut down for the first time, which I try not to take personally—but yes, I was. I really loved that profile. We came here to the Holiday, actually.

I: But people really loved the book—folks in the neighborhood loved the book.

AC: Yes, it felt really good when people connected with that book, because I worked really hard on it. I did more than 200 interviews and tons of archival research—I was in the library all the time—so I was happy when people liked it.

That book, while it was a lot of work, it also taught me how fun a book could be. The tour for that book was an experience. I had this crazy book launch party and so many people from the neighborhood came out. It was at Cooper Union, and—this was Adam Horovitz's idea—

I: Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys?

AC: Correct. It was Adam Horovitz's idea to have a book party cover band—a sort of supergroup—that only played songs about Saint Marks Place. So all of these friends and people I knew from all of these different bands showed up and played music, and I gave a talk from the Lincoln lectern. Around 800 people were there. It was really special. The whole tour for that book was phenomenal.

I: Did your dad come to the launch party?

AC: He did. There’s a picture of us.

I: At this point was he at all like, “Hey kid, I thought you wanted to be a farmer. What gives?”

AC: No. I think he was proud of me. Distantly proud.

I: Two years later you publish Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give. How’d that book come to be?

AC: That came from a piece I wrote for the New York Times, “The Wedding Toast I’ll Never Give,” which I wrote in 2016. I wrote the piece in a hotel room. At the time, I was so mad at my then-husband, but I was trying to convince myself to stay with him. 

We were going to a lot of weddings, but I was not experiencing the love and promises that so many toasts and vows at those weddings were selling—how magical marriage is. I was really struggling.

I: How long had you and your then-husband been married for at that point?

AC: I think we would’ve been married for eleven years or so.

I: That’s a long time.

AC: We got married kind of young, which means we were going to weddings when we were older and watching a lot of our friends saying things like, “This is going to be so awesome!” Whereas we sorta felt, “Yeah, sure. Awesome.”

But the essay was very loving, and about why, you know, marriage is quote unquote “worth it.” In hindsight, though, it was me trying to talk myself into staying in a marriage that had become difficult in certain ways.

I: Do you regret writing it?

AC: No, I don’t regret writing it. Because it did work, at the time. I stayed. Also, that article became one of the most read Modern Loves of all time, so clearly it helped other people—or gave them something they were looking for—even though my circumstances eventually changed. Plus, it led to my second book.

That said, Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give didn’t, uh, do great.

I: Ruh-roh.

AC: Yeah. The book did not sell well, and my publisher seemed disappointed. I tried to talk about other book ideas, but was told, “We love you, but sales track is sales track.” I thought I would never write another book—another one of my own books—again.”

I: Really?

AC: I thought, “Well, that’s that.” I could keep ghostwriting, but I wouldn’t sell another book under my own name.

I: But that’s not what happens.

AC: No. I keep ghostwriting and freelancing. Then, in 2018, O: The Oprah Magazine approached me about writing a piece about Gen X women, and how… sad we are? And I thought, “I’m sad. I can write that.” Because I was really sad. I thought I’d never sell another book under my own name again. I was pretty broke. So I did some research—it turned out a lot of Gen X women were sad—and wrote the piece.

I: I remember this piece. It was long, right?

AC: 8,000 words.

I: If memory serves—much like your wedding toasts piece for the New York Times—uh, how to put this? A lot of people read it.

AC: It went viral, yes. Like I said, it turned out there were a lot of sad Gen X women.

I: That seems to happen to you a lot.

AC: Being sad?

I: No, you writing a piece that strikes a chord with the culture.

AC: Only those two, really.

I: I mean, those two were monsters. Giant hits. But you’ve gone viral a bunch.

AC: I’d say a few times, I guess?

I: Ok, there are more important things for us to talk about, so I’m not going to fight you. But agree to disagree.

Anyhow, that piece then led to—ta da!—you selling another book. A book written only by you, Why We Can't Sleep.

AC: Yes.

I: Which also got a ton of praise, right?

AC: No. The reviews were… middling. But it sold the best of anything I’d done by that point.

The way it breaks down is St. Marks Is Dead sold decently for what it was, but the reviews were incredible and the tour was like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Wedding Toasts I'll Never Give got pretty good reviews, but poor sales. That said, I made a lot of friends who I treasure through that book—a lot of people reached out to me when it was published. Why We Can't Sleep got some negative reviews, to be honest. At least one reviewer called it “whiny.” But it sold better than anything I’d ever published on my own up until that point.

I: New York Times bestseller?

AC: For three weeks.

I: A commercial success. Apologies for all the shop talk, but this sort of thing fascinates me—and I’m just so, so, so glad you didn’t quit writing.

AC: Me too.

I: Because then you write your latest book, Also a Poet.

AC: I do.

I: So you’re coming off a book which didn’t get great reviews, but did sell really well. How do you choose your next project? How did you know it was gonna be a book about your father and Frank O'Hara?

AC: In 2018 I found these tapes in my parent’s basement while I was looking for something else. I remember thinking, “Hey! What the hell’s all this?” Saying to my father, “There’s like 40 hours of tape here. That’s so much tape, and you never finished the book? How’s that possible?”

I: 40 hours of your father interviewing Frank O’Hara?

AC: No, interviewing his friends. O’Hara died in 1966. This was ten years later, for a biography.

I: But 40 hours. Whereas when you’re ghostwriting a book—

AC: Exactly. I sometimes get 12 hours of tape max for a book I do with a celebrity. So I asked my father if I could have the tapes and his response was, “Sure, whatever.”

So I took the tapes and tried to make a biography out them, but then I ran into all of these roadblocks—

I: With the Frank O’Hara estate?

AC: Yes, among other things.

I: So the original plan was to take the tapes and turn them into a straightforward biography almost in the same way you’d take tapes from a celebrity and ghostwrite a book. You’re thinking, “I’ve spun gold out of less.”

AC: Exactly. I had this feeling toward my father, “How could you have all of this information and not make something out of it?” So I figured I’d do it.

But then I ran into these roadblocks, and also my father got diagnosed with cancer and given six months to live. Then the building my parents lived in burned up in a freak electrical fire. So at that point I was doing a lot of caregiving, and it was a very rough time. 

It also brought my relationship with my father front and center, which is when I realized the book was less about Frank O’Hara and more about me and my father. Or, to put it more succinctly, these Frank O’Hara tapes were kind of an excuse to examine my relationship with my father.

My friend Alysia Abbott says this thing about Medusa and the mirrored shield—have I told you this?

I: No.

AC: You may find this useful, too. Alysia says when you’re writing about something, a lot of times you need something to bounce off of. The same way Perseus needed the mirrored shield to battle Medusa—because if he looked directly at her he would turn to stone—so he looked at her reflection in his shield while fighting.

So in the same way, to look at my father—

I: You needed Frank O’Hara.

AC: Alysia’s very smart.

I: What were the roadblocks with the estate?

AC: My father told me he had been denied permission to quote the material and had been denied permission to look at certain letters and archives by the Frank O’Hara’s estate because he had been deemed, to summarize his words, not worthy.

Which made me figure, “Oh. No problem. I’m so nice, compared to my father. They’ll love me. I’m respectful and thoughtful and know how to ask for things in a kind manner. I’m not like my father at all.” 

But it turned out they didn't like me any more than they liked him.

I: Is it because they’re waiting for, say, a Walter Isaacson or Ron Chernow type person to write the big, full biography at some point?

AC: I wouldn’t presume to know, but I don’t think so. I think it’s more that the estate believes—and I understand this—the work speaks for itself.

I: Also, Frank O’Hara is so beloved. I can see not wanting to let anyone tinker with that reputation in any way.

I mean, you had that experience yourself. Falling in love with Frank O’Hara’s poetry. So many of us have.

AC: Yeah, my dad introduced me to Frank O’Hara’s poetry when I was eight, which meant a lot to me. Of my father’s whole world, O’Hara’s poetry was one of the only things I could really latch onto. Frank O’Hara always struck me as funny, kind, and interesting. His poetry was wonderful, and I fell in love with it at a very young age. The way that his writing wasn’t esoteric—

I: Which, I’m sure, a lot of your father’s world did feel esoteric.

AC: Exactly. Which is why I carried that collection my father gave to me around everywhere I went. It made me feel special.

I: So, we’ve been talking a lot about your dad, but your ma is the actress Brooke Alderson.

AC: She is.

I: How’d she and your dad meet?

AC: They met at an opening at the Whitney—introduced by mother’s friend, Alfa-Betty Olsen. I think the story goes that Olsen was maybe going to date my dad, but upon meeting him my mother told her, “If you’re going to date him, don’t bring me around anymore.”

I: What a line!

AC: That was sometime around 1973.

I: Do you have feelings about your ma’s career?

AC: I mean, she was in Urban Cowboy. She did a lot of commercials when I was a little girl. She was a character actress.

I: Were you interested in her career as well, when you were growing up?

AC: Of course. She was in an Atari commercial when I was in elementary school. I also remember an Alpo commercial—she had a real run of commercials when I was growing up. She was also on Family Ties and Murder She Wrote. She had a very impressive career.

I: Were those commercials paying the bills? Was your ma the breadwinner? 

AC: Oh, absolutely. My mother was the breadwinner. I didn’t think a lot about it at the time, of course—but in retrospect it’s amazing.

I: Was your dad proud of how well Also a Poet did?

AC: I mean, mostly. He loved the book. He thought it was really good—almost to the point where it seemed like he was a little surprised by how good it turned out.

I: In a way that made you feel, “What the fuck?”

AC: A little. But no, he told me, “This is a really good book.” He was also a little surprised, I think, at how much attention it got. That part, I’d say, was harder for him. 

He liked the book, but I don’t think he liked how much I promoted the book—or how much attention the book received.

I: Because your dad, for lack of a better word, was a cool kid.

AC: Cool kids don’t do press.

I: But you got through it, because he also really liked the book.

AC: He also really liked the book.

I: Not long after the book’s publication, though, your dad dies, right?

AC: Around four months later.

I: Are you glad that he got to read the book? That it came out before he died? Or would you have preferred—

AC: No. I’m so glad he got to read the book. It was the best thing that could have happened for us. Because he was proud of me, and he was able to express that, which was such an important thing. But more importantly, it gave us an excuse to talk about all of these other things that we’d never talked about.

It was also extremely hard. Not all of these conversations were good news, or wonderful experiences. But they were real. True to life. The hard conversations are important, too. One that I put in the book is, I basically told him, “I think you never thought I was interesting and never really liked me all that much.”

To which he responded, basically, “Yeah. That’s fair.”

I: He wasn’t saying, “No! I was trying to give you space. Allowing you to find yourself!” He simply said, “You’re right.”

AC: Yeah. But it was really good to have those conversations, even the ones that felt horrible. Because then, when he died, I at least felt like there was nothing left unsaid.

The truth is always better. That’s something I believe. Even when the truth is terrible, the truth is always better. You don’t want to live in lies or delusions. It’s always better to know reality. 

Because, if you’re honest with yourself, you know the truth anyway. Even if you don’t say it out loud, you know it in your body. So I knew that. I knew my father didn’t think that much about me. Was having him say it aloud—to hear that—was it tough? Of course. But then having it out in the open, there’s something important about that, as well.

I: Why do you think your father wrote?

AC: That’s a good question. My father wrote because he was good at it. He was an extremely talented writer—and he knew it, and he loved having that skill and talent. He genuinely enjoyed flexing that muscle and being praised for it. He really took pleasure in it. I have memories of him coming out of his office and saying, “I'm a good writer.” Or simply, “I'm a writer.” He was so excited to have that rush, to have that feeling. He loved it. I've never had that. That's not why I write.

I: You don’t have that?

AC: No. Do you?

I: Oh, all I want in the world is for somebody to pat me on the head and tell me I wrote something well. Or, you know, that I’m a good boy.

AC: For me it’s really about connecting with other people. I like writing something and having someone connect with it. That’s why I write.

I: Why is the death of a parent so profound?

AC: The death of a parent is very profound, but what’s also difficult is that it’s profound in so many different ways. When my dad died, I thought I’d prepared —because I’d written about him, and we’d had all these long conversations. But it turns out I wasn’t prepared at all. In all honesty, there’s maybe no way to be prepared.

This might sound silly, but “dying” and “death” are so completely different. My father had been dying for three years. But death? When he was actually gone? That was completely different.

I: How did you find out?

AC: I got a call from my mom when I was in therapy. I had missed her call—because I was in my session—but her voicemail said, “I think this might be it.”

Then, when I called her back, she said, “No, maybe it’s ok now. He’s up again, smoking.”

I: He smoked cigarettes until the very end?

AC: Correct.

I: Was it lung cancer that killed him?

AC: Also correct. But I decided to go up and visit, so I could be there with him. On my way I talked to my aunt on the phone and she said, “No, it’s probably pretty close.” Anyway, I got up there and he was dead in three days.

I: But you got to be with him?

AC: “Got to.” You say it like it’s a prize. It wasn’t a prize. It was pretty awful.

I: Hard?

AC: Yeah.

I: The physicality?

AC: Sure, but also, he wouldn’t take hospice, even though he was clearly dying. I kept telling him, “But it would make it so much easier. So we don’t have to bath you”—

I: “So we have some assistance.”

AC: The hospice was provided by insurance. It would help us. But he refused. Until I realized the way to sell him on it—which was to tell him all the good drugs he’d be getting. So I said, “Oh, ok. I guess you don’t want a drug concierge.” To which he responded, “Wait. What?”

I: Smart.

AC: But it’s also true! “You don’t want all these drugs, Dad? I would want all these drugs.”

I: And he said yes?

AC: Yes. Once I started calling it “drug concierge” my father took hospice.

I: You come from all of this—a writer/art critic for a father, and an actress for a mother—and you yourself are a writer. Your son is now almost 18, heading off to college soon. Do you want the artist’s life for him?

AC: My son is amazing. He’s so smart and so sweet. I love him so much. He’s a fantastic photographer, a great actor, and a great writer. He knows more geography and history than anyone else I know, including adults. He’s thoughtful, a considerate friend. He’s also extremely tall and handsome and good company. And he has all these cool hobbies, like he’ll pick a direction and walk fifteen miles, just to see different parts of the city. He is a wildly talented person—he has everything, artistically speaking. 

Now, what will he do with all of that? I don’t know. He’s really interested in government, public policy, and city planning. I truly believe he could write novels, or be in movies, if he wanted to. But the truth is, whatever he does is going to be so much more interesting than whatever I can imagine for him.

I: Are you going to miss him when he goes to college?

AC: Yes. I already miss him. We watch Veronica Mars every night, and eat dinner together. I love having him around—I love being with him. I’m going to miss him so much. So what happens next? With him going away? That’s really hard to anticipate. Maybe I’ll do some residencies? Move to Europe? No idea. In the end, I’m simply excited for him to go to college. For him to get out there and be exploring on his own.

I: Final question. Do you ever worry that you being a ghostwriter influences how people see your own work?

AC: How do you mean?

I: To put it another way, you’ve worked extremely hard to get to where you are today. Do you feel like your work as a ghostwriter, or—and to be clear, this may be me projecting my own insecurities—the fact that you wrote viral essays for the internet that turned into book deals. Or even the fact that your father was a well known critic, and your mother was an actress. Any of that, do you worry that people factor that in while judging your writing—your art—as it stands on its own?

AC: Or that my grandfather was Gilmore Schjeldahl, the inventor of the plastic-lined airsickness bag?

I: I had found that in my research, but thought it might be too much to pack in here at the end. But, yes.

AC: I like that my grandfather invented things. I have the art my grandfather had in his factory hanging up in my office—two panels of abstract ‘60s paintings of satellite balloons he invented. I like the idea that the office that I work in is my factory and I am showing up for work each day, even if my work looks different than his did. I loved my grandparents—especially my grandmother—who died just a couple of years ago at the age of 102.

Now, do I worry that people look at all of that and not simply my work? I don’t know. Or, more honestly, I don’t care. Something I’ve always loved is how Dolly Parton answers this question—when people ask her, “Do you mind that people don’t take you seriously?” Or, “Do you worry about all the ‘dumb blonde’ jokes, Dolly?” 

Do you know what Dolly Parton said?

I: No.

AC: She said. “I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes, because I know I'm not dumb, and I also know that I'm not blonde.”

So yeah, that’s how I feel about it. I don’t care what other people think about me.

We stop at the Village Works bookshop, and browse the store’s offerings. Ada points out books that she loves, or local writers who are meaningful to her. Outside we pass the St. Marks Hotel. We are close to Ada’s apartment where, in a few weeks, she’ll celebrate her birthday on St. Patrick’s Day. I’ll come over for the party and take a photo of her and her son, Oliver, on their apartment building’s roof as the moon shines behind them. Oliver will have heard from some colleges by then, his next decision—where he goes to school—laid out in front of him.   

But for now, Ada walks me up to a large, black cube on Astor Place. I’ve always noticed the large piece of artwork, but never really paid any attention to it. 

“It’s Tony Rosenthal’s the Alamo,” Ada says to me. “But most people just call it the Cube.” 

It’s still raining and I’m soaked—I have nobody to blame but myself. I shake out my wet hair, as if that might help in some way. Ada closes her umbrella and puts it under her arm.

“It moves, you know,” Ada continues. I didn’t know that. I reach up and touch the sculpture's smooth, black surface. 

“It takes two people, though.” I watch as Ada positions herself on one of the other corners of the Cube. “Wanna see?”

She looks at me and I laugh as she says it. But she’s right. I do really want to—I want to use my physicality to change something, anything, even if it is simply this big, black box. People hurry around us, as if they can avoid the rain if they simply move fast enough. Nobody stops to watch, nobody comes over to join us. It’s simply the two of us, our hands on the Cube. Ada’s back to me as she quietly says:

“Ok. Here we go. Push.”

Looking for another way to support me? Consider picking up a paperback copy of Dirtbag, Massachusetts for yourself or a pal. Thank you!

Team!

A quick note to say that I published an essay today thanks to the kind folks at Dirt. It's about theaters at the mall, sneaking stolen food into cineplexes, and—to quote my friend Conner—"the parts of life they don't show in the movies." 

Here's a short excerpt:

“We would enter the theater with our oversized jackets and wide, loose jeans stuffed with off-brand candy bars and Pringles-shaped—but not Pringles brand—potato chips, along with Sam’s Cola soda, Dr. Thunder, and lemon lime Twist Up.”

Click here to read the entire piece. 

It's also worth mentioning that Dirt published one of my favorite essays of 2023, "Bad Waitress," by Becca Schuh. Here's a taste:

“A book critic once told me, 'a website could never be staffed by service people, the quality of the writing would be too low,' and I wanted to laugh. I suspect it’s easier to teach a waitress to be a writer than an intellectual to be a waiter.”

It's a beautiful piece of art about, well, working and art. Read it. Then, consider subscribing to Dirt. They're doing a phenomenal job over there of covering culture and publishing great writers.

Plus, look how cute their mascot is:

Oh, one last thing. Here's the house I mention in the essay:

Ok! That's it from me. Hope everyone's February is off to a great start! 🍓

Looking for another way to support me? Consider picking up a paperback copy of Dirtbag, Massachusetts for yourself or a pal. Thank you!

[Editor’s note: I want to start by drawing y’all’s attention to our fabulous new logo. HUGE thanks to design genius Walter Green—who also designed the original Walk It Off logo. Walter dropped this welcomed surprise on me at the end of last year. Hope y’all dig it as much as I do. Three cheers for Walter!]

[Editor’s note, continued: Also, before we get started with links to other places, I want to encourage you to read the latest Walk It Off featuring Karolina Waclawiak (if you need more encouragement, my father texted to tell me how much he enjoyed this one). Also, this week’s “Tell Me” is all about the people who have encouraged us over the years. There’s already numerous heartwarming stories posted. Go give those a read if you need and pick-me-up, and consider adding one yourself.]

Ok. Let’s get started. I am what I am (for better or worse) so we’re gonna kick-off this “Friday Flowers” by celebrating that Billy Joel has released his first song in 17 years… and it’s good!

Take a listen (or feel free to skip, if you ain’t as big a Billy Joel fan as I am):

“The internet has made it so that no matter who you are or what you do—from nine-to-five middle managers to astronauts to house cleaners—you cannot escape the tyranny of the personal brand.”

Rebecca Jennings writes a fascinating piece on how “Everyone’s a sellout now” for Vox.

[Editor’s note: With that said, you can now follow me on TikTok. I told a short, somewhat spooky story recently, and people seemed to like it…]

@dirtbagfitzgeraldHave you ever had a Stephen King moment happen in your life? #creepy #stephenking #booktok #stephenkinguniverse #creepystories #scarystories #spooky #stephenkingbooks

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[Editor’s note, continued: Following me on Instagram is great, too. Thanks for considering!]

“‘Eleven years ago, I was pissing the bed,’ [Kaveh Akbar] said. ‘And now I’m living this life.’”

Elizabeth A. Harris brilliantly profiles Kaveh Akbar for the New York Times. With congrats to Akbar, whose new novel Martyr! is an instant New York Times bestseller.

“I was myself a ‘child of divorce,’ as they say, as if divorce were a parent. When I was very young, I thought divorce involved a ceremony, the couple moving backward through the choreography of their wedding, starting at the altar, unclasping their hands, and then walking separately down the aisle.”

Speaking of books, there’s a new excerpt from Leslie Jamison’s forthcoming memoir, Splinters, in the New Yorker.

[Editor’s note: If you’re a Jamison fan, don’t forget to read her Walk It Off, if you haven’t already.]

“I was likely a twin once, a fact I learned only recently, when I underwent routine testing during a pregnancy. Genetically distinct DNA was detected and explained to me as being the possible remnant of a prenatal twin, a boy, who did not survive, and whose tissue I had absorbed into my own.”

Apologies for doing two New Yorker links back to back, but Parul Sehgal reviews How to Be Multiple: The Philosophy of Twins by Helena de Bres—and then does so much more.

I was on the Today Show at the beginning of last month, recommending books—along with Cord Jefferson’s adaptation of Percival Everett’s 2001 novel Erasure, the now Oscar-nominated American Fiction— to beloved hosts Al Roker, Sheinelle Jones, Craig Melvin, and Dylan Dreyer. The segment ended with a hug from Al.

Lastly, a bit of housecleaning—it has come to my attention that people are taking my hyperlinks in Walk It Off, uh, seriously…

Thank you, Estelle Tang, for texting to roast me.

Here’s the thing, I do link because I think it’s funny—but also in case somebody doesn’t know what people are talking about! Some people don’t know Lemmy, others might not know Jennifer Aniston. I stand by my ridiculous hyperlinks, which I will also claim are a joke. I contain multitudes.

Ok, that just about covers it. Like I said before, I’ll be doing Walk It Off on a somewhat more regular schedule this year (but please do let me know if I’m emailing y’all too much).

Don’t forget to have some fun this weekend! 🍓

Looking for another way to support me? Consider picking up a paperback copy of Dirtbag, Massachusetts for yourself or a pal. Thank you!

Karolina Waclawiak has lived a life, and I loved hearing all about it during our most recent walk. Something she talked about that I really related to was the number of people who helped her along the way—giving her advice, helping her with her writing, or simply encouraging her to lean into her ambition. I’ve also had numerous people help me over the years, so I wanted to make some space for the people who have championed us in the past. Tell me, who has encouraged you during your life, and why did their encouragement matter?

“You should order the ass juice.”

Karolina Waclawiak and I are at the Double Down Saloon in the East Village. When Waclawiak was getting her MFA at Columbia, she would travel the length of Manhattan to come downtown and drink at the rock and roll tavern. She liked that they played avant-garde porn intercut with footage from punk shows and skateboarding videos on the bar’s televisions, and heavy, thick, guitar-driven metal on the bar’s speakers. I mean to ask her if there’s something about the graffiti-covered Double Down Saloon that reminds her of the bars she hung out in during her early years in Los Angeles—where she still lives now—but I get distracted by the offering of “holiday ass nog.”

It’s early evening, but the sun is almost gone. The short days of winter. There are only a few patrons in the bar. I inquire with the young bartender about the ass nog.

“It’s ass juice, but festive.”

Fair enough. I order a glass for myself and a gin and soda with heavy lime for Karolina. Karolina and I have known each other for years, at times working together. I have long admired her writing—along with her skills as an editor—so was pleased to have spent the afternoon walking with her through the East Village, where she spent much of her teenage years wandering, before she moved west.

Earlier in the day, back before I was sipping ass nog (which, to be fair, is delectable) Karolina and I shared a hearty meal at Momofuku, and then set out for our walk in Lower Manhattan.

Isaac: So where are we?

Karolina Waclawiak: The East Village

I: And where are we walking to?

KW: The Double Down Saloon.

I: Now, I’ve known many different iterations of Karolina over the years. But one of those iterations is Karolina Waclawiak the rocker—a rock and roll gal. Is that fair to say?

KW: Yeah, I think that’s right. It started when I was in elementary school. I was really, really, really into heavy metal. I had an older sister, so I knew about Guns ‘N Roses and bands like that when I was in the fifth grade, which was when I started—to be frank, that’s when I decided I wanted to be a groupie.

I: In the fifth grade?

KW: In the fifth grade. I had just started smoking cigarettes and drinking and I thought I was very cool. Now, to be clear, I didn’t really know what being a groupie meant, or what it entailed. I just studied MTV very carefully and knew I had to get to the Sunset Strip. So, at 18—

I: Wait a second. So eight years later? Almost a decade of holding on to this dream of being a groupie?

KW: I told my Polish mother, “I want to run away to Los Angeles to be a groupie.” Now, my mother didn’t know what a groupie was either, but nonetheless she was horrified. I got really into it. Big bangs. Lots of makeup. My first concert in the seventh grade was Megadeth.

I: How'd it go?

KW: Oh, I loved it. But it was really embarrassing, because my father picked me and my friend up and there was, of course, all these hot guys with long hair around who I—as a seventh grader—thought I had a chance with.

We didn’t meet my dad where I said we were going to meet him, so he ran up looking for us in a full tennis outfit, with the short shorts and everything. Once he saw us he started yelling at me. I wanted to die. To be fair, my dad loved and introduced me to Black Sabbath so he wasn’t like a square or something. But it was mortifying.

I: So in the fifth grade you decide your dream is to become a groupie. In the seventh grade you’re trying to ditch your father to hang with heshers at a Megadeth concert—

KW: By age 13 I was plotting to get backstage to meet the band. I was friends with a girl who had older brothers with Iron Maiden and Slayer posters on their walls, black lights, and waterbeds.

I: Oh no.

KW: Oh yes. And those older brother’s girlfriends told me the trick to getting backstage, which was giving security guards blow jobs. But I didn't know what that meant. So I simply nodded and took mental notes, but in my mind I truly thought “blow job” meant, well, blowing on a penis. So I remember thinking to myself, “That’s it? Seems weird to blow on a penis, but as long as I get to meet Axl Rose.” I was extremely clueless about sex — as you maybe should be at that age. And on top of that I had a Catholic mother who was dragging me to church all the time to counteract this craziness that I had inside me.

[Editor’s note: At this time we have to take a break from walking because I am doubled over in laughter. Passersby seem concerned for me as I catch my breath at a crosswalk.]

I: At which point you and Axl Rose would—what? Fall in love? Was that the dream?

KW: Kind of. Well, it's interesting because later—much later—I was working for a music manager, Irving Azoff, for a spell. Azoff is huge, and his company repped Scott Weiland—

I: From Stone Temple Pilots?

KW: Right, but we repped Weiland’s new band at the time, Velvet Revolver, which was a supergroup formed with members from Guns N’ Roses. Slash, Duff McKagan, and Matt Sorum were all in Velvet Revolver. So I got to meet all of them, eventually, in my 20s. And I was living down the street from and sometimes hanging out at The Rainbow in Los Angeles.

I: With Lemmy?

KW: I only had the guts to go up to him once.

I: Ok, hang on. We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Before we get out to Los Angeles—tell me about New York City.

KW: I used to take Metro North into the city as a teenager. I moved out to LA when I was 18 and went to film school. But, by the time I actually moved to Los Angeles my dreams of being a metal groupie had died. At that point I had gone through my grunge phase, and then my hardcore straightedge phase. Really, I just loved going to shows.

I: What was it about shows that you loved?

KW: All the angry young men.

[Editor’s note: Another laughing break at a crosswalk.]

KW: Is this entire interview just going to be, “Well, she’s a tramp.”

I: No!

KW: I actually wasn’t at all! Mostly because of all that Catholic guilt and shame that was being thrown at me. My mom knew what worked. But I was a really angry teenager. So, I loved going somewhere—anywhere—where I could feel like I was part of a community of other like-minded, disaffected youth. Which meant that most of my friends were angry, alienated skater boys.

I: You spent a lot of time hanging out in parking lots.

KW: Correct. But I would also take the train into New York City, because I was taking a writing class at Columbia as a teenager. I couldn’t care less about school and had really mediocre and sometimes terrible grades, but it was decided I was gifted at writing.

My parents were super strict, but because I was getting into these high school writing programs at places like Wesleyan and Columbia, they were like, “Well, thank god she’s good at something.” 

I: Remind me, what did you parents do for work?

KW: Both of my parents were electrical engineers. Extremely intelligent and extremely practical. They were focused on survival 100% of the time and choosing a creative life path was not the path to financial security to them. It involved too much risk as far as they were concerned.

But, I was accepted into a prestigious writing program at Columbia when I was 16 and then kept going during the school year on Saturdays until I graduated high school. My dad would drive me to the train station at 7am, and my class would be at 10am. Every Saturday was like this. It was the 90s, so this is pre-cellphones, so my dad would just say, “Take the train from Grand Central to be back in New Haven by 10pm.” I had a three hour class at Columbia, but after that? I could do whatever I wanted. There was also a point where I was also taking a zine writing class taught by members of ACT UP at the New School in the afternoons and then a sewing class at FIT because I was obsessed with fashion—I paid for those myself with after school job money. And then I would simply take the subways everywhere and wander around the city. I had an old family camera my dad gave me so I would take a lot of pictures. Sometimes I’d link up with friends and we’d wander around the East Village and the Lower East Side. Sometimes I’d just be wandering alone in the city for hours listening to music on my headphones and taking pictures. 

I remember one summer, when I was at the Columbia program, 16 and sitting on the roof of my friend Deborah's sister's apartment. I was looking down at Tompkins Square Park in the middle of the night, and it really felt like I finally belonged somewhere. Like I was a character in the movie Kids. It was that era. Does that make sense?

I: So many kids at that time wanted to belong like that, just not many of us could get to New York City. Teenage Karolina could actually get to New York City.

KW: It seems pretty crazy now when I think about it. I feel very fortunate that I was allowed to go. I mean I wasn’t allowed to hang out in downtown Madison, Connecticut in front of the movie theater with friends and had already been caught smoking and drinking when I was 11. I was arrested in the 9th grade. But I was allowed to have a teenage life in New York City because I think my parents wanted me to understand there was a world outside of the suburban boredom that was getting me in so much trouble. I think they thought it would open my eyes to something more and I wouldn’t be so self-destructive. But I was going to afternoon matinee hardcore shows at CBGBs for god’s sake. I would shop at X-girl because I was obsessed with Kim Gordon and X-Large because I was a Beastie Boys fanatic. I would hang around on Lafayette hoping to befriend Chloë Sevigny— she worked at Liquid Sky, so I would bum around Liquid Sky. 

My teachers in the Columbia program would assign me these short stories—stories I’d never be assigned at my suburban, Connecticut high school—Jamaica Kincaid, Edmund White, and Grace Paley. Those stories showed me that there was a whole wide world out there. I remember seeing Jim Carroll and Richard Hell at the Central Park Summerstage, and thinking, “Wait. This can be literature, too?” So I read The Basketball Diaries and Go Now. “Holy shit. Literature isn't just Shakespeare?” Shakespeare being what was assigned to me in Connecticut—and which I hated. In high school I’m getting C minuses in English, but at these writing programs I was encouraged to get out into the world and capture real life. I was being told I was good at capturing it. Then I had to go back to high school every Monday morning and I was like, “Fuck this place already!”

I: When does writing become the dream?

KW: When I was 12. I decided I was going to be a writer when I was 12. It was my singular vision, “That’s it. I know what I’m doing with my life.” When it came time to apply to college, I applied to NYU Journalism school—

I: Undergrad?

KW: Undergrad. I didn’t get in. I was devastated. I couldn’t get out of bed for days. But I did get into the University of Southern California Screenwriting program, which only accepts like 25 people—

I: It’s a crazy hard program to get into.

KW: Right. So I got in there, but I didn’t get into NYU. So I said goodbye to New York and moved to LA.

I: Did you love movies, too? The way you loved the short stories and books that you were reading?

KW: Yeah, I liked weird shit. I saw Cronenberg's Crash—not the 2004 Crash, to be clear—in an empty movie theater when I was at another writing program in Oxford, England and was like, “Oh. This is what I want to do.” Like, “J. G. Ballard is the shit.” But then I go to a school that birthed George Lucas and was teaching students how to make blockbusters—all while I was trying to write the next Welcome to the Dollhouse.

I: Safe to say, the fit wasn’t great?

KW: Not great.

I: Did you have teachers—like at Columbia—did you have teachers who were encouraging you in your weirdness?

KW: Not at first. I got a C+ in my freshman year screenwriting class. The teacher—I won’t name him—told me flat out that he didn’t think the program was for me. I was so embarrassed. I actually almost dropped out of school the first semester of freshman year. I begged my mom not to send me back after Thanksgiving.

I: Jesus.

KW: I didn’t respect that teacher or his body of work, so in the back of my mind I believed he was wrong. But he got to me. I felt I had earned my spot there so I was so confused! I think I said in the first class, “I don’t really know why I’m here” and meanwhile most of the rest of the class had dreamed of being in the movies since they saw E.T. as kids. And I think he clung to that and threw it in my face like I was ungrateful or something. But it messed with me because I thought that being in a writing program like that, I wouldn’t feel like a fuckup anymore. Because all through  school in suburban Connecticut I had felt like such a fuckup—I almost got expelled from school in the 5th grade, Isaac. But anyway, other teachers in the program really championed my writing. And the head of the program John Furia, who had written for The Twilight Zone, really got me and encouraged me to stay. Every writing teacher at USC I had was incredible after that first one. I had him again in a directing course and he tried to fail me. An actual F. He was such a dick. The TA, who is now a very successful screenwriter, had to step in and save me. But yeah, my success was never assured.

I: Even in your writing courses?

KW: External writing programs I was great in. Those writing professors encouraged my writing and specifically my darkness. But then you know, I’d get a D- in my senior year creative writing class in high school. I couldn’t get out of my own way sometimes. I knew I was smart, but I didn’t apply myself to things I didn’t care about.

I: Wow.

KW: To be fair, I told my senior year creative writing teacher off in an essay.

I: That might have had something to do with the poor grade.

KW: Listen, I had an attitude problem.

I: Had? Interesting. The past tense is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.

KW: Isaac.

I: What does this part of the city make you think of?

KW: This area makes me feel lucky.

I: How so?

KW: The longer I think about it the luckier I feel. I was so lucky to find other people who were taking their writing seriously—that’s true throughout my life, going all the way back to being a teen at the Columbia writing program. Now, let me be clear, we were writing extremely bad poetry. Yet, that was the first time I found a community of other kids that—they had trouble expressing themselves in productive ways, like I did, but we all discovered we could express ourselves through writing. We quickly became a support network for each other. We hung out with each other outside of class, and we had these teachers—they were all grad students, but we looked up to them so, so much.

One of our teachers invited us to a reading in Hunts Point, in the Bronx. We all go out there together, and at the event our teacher reads poetry about her rape. I was blown away. “Finally,” I thought to myself, “people are treating us like adults. Talking about real things, instead of infantilizing us.” There were a bunch of us—the students—who had really lived through some rough stuff, so to hear her tackle that subject in her work… it was important. We finally had permission to talk about things that were happening to us on the page and to each other.

We were all from different places, mostly in the tri-state area, but we discovered we had so many things in common. At home, in Connecticut, I connected with my friends by going to shows and sharing music—and now I was sharing short stories and going to The Strand. Every time I came into the city I would stop at two places: Tower Records and The Strand. Once I started publishing and my books were at The Strand? It was life-altering.

I: It meant the world to you.

KW: That was it. I had made it. All I had wanted when I was 16 was to have a book that I wrote on those shelves. My dad used to go to The Strand all the time when he had to go into the city for work and he would always bring me home books he thought I’d like. I remember seeing the first book I wrote on a table at The Strand and thinking, “That’s it. I don’t have to do anything else.”

So, I’m feeling lucky. Lucky that I’ve found people who took writing seriously throughout my entire life, starting at a pretty young age.

I: But it ain’t all seeing your book at The Strand, right? Going back to LA, you didn’t exactly love your screenwriting program. You—how to put it? You don’t gel with the academic setting. Did you graduate?

KW: I graduated. But it was wild. I was in one of the most competitive—if not the most competitive—film program in the world. We were writing scripts, sure, but also making short films. We had to cast them, direct them, shoot them, edit them, score them—everything—and then present our films in class for critique. But, I didn't want to cast actors, so I started making stop-motion animation films because I was really into the Brothers Quay and Jan Švankmajer. 

At that time I was also volunteering at a needle exchange in Hollywood, so I did a documentary about the street kids at the needle exchange. How they ended up in LA, how they ended up on the street, what their lives were like as teen sex workers. Then I made another one about a needle exchange on Skid Row. On 6th and Gladys, I think it was. And these old timers who had seen everything on the streets and were still alive and vibrant and amazing. And the director of the needle exchange screened the short films for doctors at USC hospital in East LA so they could have more empathy for the people who were seeking care in their ER off the street. I felt really proud of that. I felt like, ok this is why I came to film school. To communicate the truth about people’s lives.

So I didn’t feel like I was particularly fitting in with the USC community but I was super ambitious. So, as in high school, I looked outside the classroom. I became an intern at a management company. I did anything I could that might help me “make it.”

I: You felt like you had a shot.

KW: USC made you feel like there were 100 agents waiting for your script upon graduation—and, to be fair, I did get a manager right out of college. But it was such a fucked up experience. I needed to get my ass handed to me to get the chip off my shoulder. Because I was convinced I was going to make it at 22 years old. Which is preposterous—and it didn’t help that I’d already been delusional since I was, let’s say, 12. But honestly, I just felt like I had to make it ASAP to prove to my parents and maybe everyone that I wasn’t a complete fuck up.

I: You were driven.

KW: I was emailing the heads of production companies saying, “You should read my script,” like a crazy person. Simply getting my hands on their email addresses and sending them my scripts, cold.

I: Like I said, driven. No fear.

KW: Or delusional. But I knew in my heart—I felt it so strongly—that I was going to make it. That it was only a matter of time. I felt like I had to prove it to myself.

I: I mean, not to bring up your parents, but it’s a very immigrant outlook. 

KW: Yes. I had no connections. I knew no one in LA. I knew no one in the industry. But I figured if I simply worked harder than everybody else, I would make it.

I remember when I was going to USC, my parents were like, “You have no connections. How do you think you're going to break into this business?” And I said, “Don’t worry. I’ll figure it out.”

I: “I’m going to make those connections myself.” So what does that look like in reality?

KW: I mean, I eventually did end up working as an assistant for The Simpsons. In my mind, I had reached Mount Olympus. Being in table reads for Simpsons episodes was next level. I felt lucky to be cleaning the garbage out of the writers room after everyone had gone home.

I: Hey! That’s not bad.

KW: Yeah. But then the 2007 writers’ strike happens.

I: Would you have preferred to go to school in New York? When you were applying to colleges was New York better than LA in your mind?

KW: Yes.

I: Had you ever been to Los Angeles before?

KW: No. I had never been to LA before. But I visited the USC campus after I got accepted, and there was no question that I was going to go there because of the prestige of the program.

But my dad said, “You better figure out a way to apply these writing talents in a way that will get you paid.” He wasn’t going to help me go to college to study poetry, you know? Again, like you said, real immigrant shit. But that was part of it too, for sure. Hollywood at least seemed more lucrative than focusing on the emo poetry I was still writing.

There’s this weird saying I have, which I think applies here. Or at least applied to my Hollywood ambitions in my early 20s: I really believed I was a piece of shit at the center of the universe.

I: A philosophical mix of self-loathing and importance.

KW: I had this belief in myself that also came with self-loathing. Exactly.

I know I was put on this earth to do this—but I also heard capital-N, capital-O, “NO” so, so much. So my philosophy, to use your word, out in LA was, “I’m going to be the last man standing. I’m simply going to stick it out.” I watched people quit school, or immediately stop writing after school, and I said to myself, “All I have to do is keep writing.”

After college I was dating someone in law school. So every Saturday we would go to the downtown public library, sit in the same seats, and he would study for law school while I would write scripts. Cut to me at the LA Times Book Festival years and years later—there was a gala at the Los Angeles Public Library, and I snuck away from the party to go look at that lil’ table that we used to work at.

I: Awwwwww. It works out! Ok, so you make it through school by—to put it bluntly—fighting like hell. Last man standing philosophy. But, I gotta get to this while we’re talking LA. How does Lemmy and your time at the Rainbow fit in here?

KW: Oh, that’s easy. I was a hard worker. But I was also a maniac. So I broke up with the law school person—

I: What? What happened? The lil’ table at the library, Karolina!

KW: I broke up with him after he took the bar. I went home for a while then, back to the east coast. To collect myself. Then I came back to LA.

I didn't really know what the fuck I was doing at that point, because I was barely writing. I had even gone through all the city tests to be a 911 operator and thought I would just work for the city of LA forever or something. I had totally lost confidence in myself. All the “no”s I was hearing were really starting to build up.

I: What were you doing for work?

KW: I always worked odd jobs. Mostly retail. Beauty shop. Clothing store. Low wage hourly jobs. That kind of stuff. So right after college, I ended up being the manager of a high end vintage and design furniture store. When I came back to LA after my breakup I went back to the furniture store for a while even though I promised myself I wouldn’t. I had to pay rent. Listen, here is a great example of what a crazy person I was. The storeI worked for had celebrity clients, so I had to email them about their $30,000 Italian sofas. So I would write them as a representative of the furniture store, and then later I would write an email from my personal account saying, “Do you want to read my script?”

I: Oh no!

KW: I was that person. But how else was I going to make it?!

I: That's amazing.

KW: I did it to Jennifer Aniston. No shame. I remember thinking to myself, “Maybe. You never know.”

I always really respected the person I would write to—because I wanted to work with them, right? But they would always write back, “How did you get my email?” To which I’d respond, “I don’t know.”

I: I'm sure the furniture store appreciated you not saying, “I stole your email from the place where you bought that expensive bed you love so much.”

KW: Well, they didn’t appreciate how much I wrote while I was on the clock, I can tell you that. After that job I worked secretary or assistant jobs, temp jobs, where I would also write. Every job I had, I tried to write as much as possible. I had two goals: Get a paycheck and have time to write.

But this is the closest I came to giving up. I was 26, nothing was working out. I came so close to applying to nursing school and giving up on writing entirely.

I: Again, a very tried and true Polish immigrant path.

KW: 100%. I was considering it because my dad kept saying, “Go be a nurse. Enough of this. Go be a nurse. It’s not working. Figure something else out. You would be a great nurse.”

I was about to apply, but first I said, “Let me try to make it in LA one more time.” So I moved in with this woman, who I had only met a couple of times before—we ended up becoming best friends. But I quickly became, there’s no other way to put it, I partied a lot.

I: This is where Lemmy comes in.

KW: Yes. I got the aforementioned job working for Irving Azoff, which was an assistant job, but an assistant job with perks. So I would have these assistant jobs that comped me courtside Clippers tickets when my boss didn’t want to go or better seats at Dodgers Stadium than Larry King had. But I was only making $34,000 or $40,0000 a year answering phones and scheduling executive lunches. In that era, it was the Cobrasnake era, I spent a lot of time hanging out in Hollywood clubs with Hollywood club girls. It was really fun to be honest.

Then I got the job at The Simpsons. I remember the first time I walked into the writers room at The Simpsons like it was yesterday—because I had grown up on The Simpsons. I was obsessed with The Simpsons. I even had a poster of Bart Simpson on my wall when I was a kid.

I: Bart Simpson and Axl Rose.

KW: Like I said, anyone who was bad.

But I remember walking into the writers room and thinking to myself, “This is it. I made it,” but also, “How did I get here? I’m an immigrant kid with immigrant parents. I didn’t go to Harvard”—

I: You were born in Poland, right?

KW: Yes. I was born in Poland and then my parents escaped communist Poland—and now I’m standing in the writers room of The Simpsons. It was a God shot moment. It felt like a sign to me. There’s some higher power at work here, and I’m going to get where I’m going, so long as I’m patient.

It was an incredible experience. Sitting in on table reads, and listening to the voice actors do their thing. Watching writers react when their jokes hit—or watching what happened when their jokes didn’t hit and they rewrote the joke in the room. I learned so much. But I wasn’t writing.

I: What was your job?

KW: I was the assistant to one of the producers, Richard Sakai. My name is only on 25 or so episodes, “Assistant to the producers.”

I: Only 25 episodes? Karolina, that’s amazing. In the credits, you mean?

KW: Yeah.

I: When is this?

KW: Around 2007. 

I: So what happens during the writers’ strike?

KW: That’s the thing. Then it all stopped. We were twiddling our thumbs. Well, I was twiddling my thumbs and partying. Being afraid I was going to get laid off at any moment after finally getting the dream job. Running up my credit cards, going out every night, all while not writing at all. I wasn’t writing before the strike either, I was being an assistant. But it was around that strike that I realized, “I’m going to die if I don’t start writing again. I have to leave Los Angeles. I have to stop partying.” But I was also mostly hanging out with people who went to CalArts. So I was into art and music and film, too. Not just like, taking Percocet and passing out.

But right before I left, that’s when I was partying the most. One guy I was dating off and on came out from the east coast and we went to the Rainbow and Billy Idol had just left but we talked with Lemmy—there’s a photo of me kissing Lemmy on the cheek that night—and then we went to the Cat Club and Jimmy Fallon was there, funnily enough singing the hell out of a bunch of Motörhead songs. My ex and I are still friends, and he still talks about that night as one of the best nights out he’s ever had.

Another friend visited me once—one of my childhood friends who was as obsessed with Guns N’ Roses as I was when we were growing up—and I got to introduce her to Duff and Slash, which was really special. I was an assistant and I knew the other assistants and we would help each other out, and let each other know where the party was, things like that.

I: A bit of an operator.

KW: An operator, sure. But I wasn’t writing, and I was really partying. I began to realize that the longer I stayed in Los Angeles the more likely it was that I was going to become a drug addict. That the partying could go from fun to—something dangerous. 

I: Off the deep end.

KW: Yes. So, I applied to school. I applied to one school. Columbia.

I: New York City, which you of course have fond memories of, especially in terms of writing when you were a teenager.

KW: Correct. It gets me back to New York.

I: How old are you at this point?

KW: 27. So I get into Columbia, which is great. But of course, right as that happens, the writers’ strike comes to an end.

I: Oh no! Decision time.

KW: I remember asking my boss, Richard Sakai, “What should I do?” And to his credit he said, “This assistant job will always exist. People will always need assistants. If you want to be a writer, go be a writer.” I mean he had nurtured Wes Anderson, Luke Wilson, and Owen Wilson’s early careers. He had let them stay in his house when they had no money!

So I listened to him—I left and went to New York.

I: Hooray!

KW: Well, not exactly. Because I’m starting over, in a way. Again. I know absolutely nothing going into grad school. Everybody is reading Ben Marcus and I’ve spent my 20s reading Charles Bukowski and John Fante.

Once again, I was really out of my depth. A party person who, at best, was trying to slow down the party—and all of a sudden I’m surrounded by all of these literary people. It was a real education. And I felt dumb for a long time.

I: You did? You weren’t thinking, “Fuck these soft, overeducated nerds?”

KW: No! I was immediately thinking, “I’m an idiot. I don’t belong here.”

I: But hang on, because this begins to look like a pattern now. You felt this same way at film school in undergrad—

KW: In a way, the same thing sorta happens again. I keep trying to write about lived experiences, and some people around me are really into being the next David Foster Wallace. Which isn’t a knock, I simply hadn’t read Infinite Jest. So I went to Columbia with a real learning curve—

I: Who were your classmates?

KW: Oh, the talent was wild. Jessamine Chan. Diane Cook. Catherine Lacey. There were 35 students, or maybe 40 tops in each year at that time. It felt like a real incubator of talent. That’s where I met Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, she was in the nonfiction program there.

Plus the professors were great. I studied with Sam Lipsyte, which was really life-changing for me—because Sam writes stories about overlooked people, the same kind of stories I wanted to tell. I studied with Christine Schutt, who really made me fall in love with the sentence. Gary Shteyngart was my thesis advisor, Donald Antrim was there. Everyone at Columbia—both the students and the professors—were just an incredibly talented bunch of people who were really generous with their time.

Now, it was also crazy expensive. As was USC for undergrad. I couldn’t afford either school I went to. But my mom was of the mentality, “Go to these schools to be around rich people and it will open doors for you.”

I: Again, a very immigrant mentality. Was she right?

KW: She was. Now, I’m not going to tell you what student loans I have, but her theory was sound. My mom was obsessed with access, and she was right.

My parents instilled that in me. Even at Columbia, I was still thinking, “How am I going to make money? Nobody is going to give me money.” So, when I was in LA, it became very clear to me that spec scripts weren’t selling, but adaptations of books were selling—adaptations of books and Marvel movies, which had just started selling. I knew I wasn’t going to write a superhero movie, but I figured, “I can go write a book and then I can sell that book to Hollywood. That’s how I’ll make some money.”

I: Wow. So, yet again, your answer is, “I simply have to work harder.”

KW: Go in through the side door.

I: Not so much with the, “Work smarter, not harder” mentality. 

KW: Oh no, not at all. I’m just going to work really, really hard.

I: So what do you do at Columbia?

KW: At first I wrote some short stories—and one of those stories eventually became the basis for my second novel The Invaders. But the main thing I accomplish at Columbia is my thesis, which Christine, Sam, and Gary very much helped me with. My thesis becomes my first novel, How To Get Into the Twin Palms.

Again, the process was very similar—a few important people that I really respected encouraged me, and that crumb was all I needed.

I: Another pattern emerges.

KW: I took the book out and queried agents and, again, all rejections.

I: So you finished your first book while you were at Columbia?

KW: Absolutely. When I arrived on campus I told myself, “I’m leaving here with a finished book.” Which is what I did.

I didn’t pay that tuition, and go into that much debt, to not leave with a book.

I: At what point do you start working at The Believer? Do you work there during grad school?

KW: God damn it, Isaac.

I: What?

KW: Nothing, just—this is yet again me being an absolute loon.

During the first few weeks of grad school they have all of these intro meetings with the professors, where they tell us about opportunities for internships—and everyone wants an internship at the New Yorker. But the internships at the New Yorker are only for six months or something, and then you’re out of there. So I decided to aim for a smaller place, somewhere that might let me stick around, or maybe even move up the masthead.

So Heidi Julavits and Ed Park are professors at Columbia.

I: Editors at The Believer.

KW: Yes. So I start emailing them—

I: Another pattern!

KW: I keep emailing them, “I would like to be your intern. I would like to be your intern.” No response. So then I look up Ed Park’s class schedule—

I: Karolina!

KW: What?!

I: How do you even know what The Believer is at this point?

KW: Funny you should ask. Richard Sakai—

I: The Simpsons producer? Your old boss?

KW: Correct. Richard had all of these issues of The Believer in his office, and he told me, “These are collector’s items. Don’t touch them.” So I would read them when he left the office, and I remember being really impressed.

I: Thinking, kind of, “This is the cool kids magazine.”

KW: So when I found out Heidi and Ed were teaching at Columbia, and I thought to myself, “That’s where I want to work.”

I: So you started stalking Ed Park—

KW: I looked up Ed Park’s class schedule—he remembers this, too, because we talked about it somewhat recently. Anyway, I waited outside of his classroom, and he went to go to the bathroom. So I waited outside of the bathroom—

I: Karolina!

KW: When he got out of the bathroom I accosted him, saying, “I want to be your intern. Did you get my emails? I emailed you about wanting to be your intern.” He was so taken aback, but he finally said, “We don’t really have interns.”

I: To which you responded?

KW: “I don’t care, I’ll do anything.”

So Ed relented and said, “Let me talk to Heidi.” After that they interviewed me—and I remember thinking, “These two people are so much smarter than me. Even if they do let me work at the magazine, how will I even do this?” All the while, they were saying, “We’ve never had an intern before. We have no money.”

I: But you got the job.

KW: I mean, yes. They let me read the slush pile. But that led to another one of those, “I did it,” moments.

I: When you became an intern?

KW: When they made me an assistant editor, and started paying me $75 dollars an issue. I couldn’t believe it. I was actually working for a magazine.

I: So that was Columbia.

KW: That was Columbia. I read, I studied, I wrote, and I obsessively read The Believer slush pile. Eventually they made me deputy editor. Still getting a tiny stipend.

I: Sweet. Do you remember any standouts from the slush pile?

KW: Leslie Jamison’s “The Immortal Horizon”—the essay about mud-running—was in our slush pile. We published that, and then her essay “The Empathy Exams.” I was really proud of that. I found a lot of brilliant writers in the slush pile.

Eventually Heidi and Ed trusted me to start editing pieces, so I was working with writers I was a huge fan of. Heidi and Ed’s trust meant so much to me. I would do a first pass, and then Heidi and Ed would really rip it up. I learned so much from watching them edit—and editing other people’s work really helped improve my own writing.

I: How long were you at The Believer?

KW: Eight years. I ended up at the top of the masthead.

I: Like you were hoping.

KW: At the end, for a few issues, it was Heidi, myself, and Vendela Vida as the top editors.

I: So this is through grad school and then after grad school. Were you always in New York?

KW: Well, eventually I moved back to LA. So I was working on The Believer, but was paying my bills working as a secretary at a law firm. But I kept those two lives very separate. I published How To Get Into the Twin Palms and eventually The Invaders, but I remember keeping it all very secret from most of my bosses at the law firm. I was worried I’d be fired for not being serious enough about being an assistant.

I never expected to make a living just from writing. Maybe editing, maybe selling a script or having a book optioned. But all the writers I admired? They all had day jobs. Or they all came into success much later in their lives. So I had my writing life, and I had my working life.This was a real white glove law office. The place represented Steven Spielberg, Clint Eastwood, and Stephen King. Eventually, my boss—who was a paralegal—found out I was a writer and was really excited about it. She was cool. But yeah, I was once again in LA, surrounded by some of the most powerful people in the world, with no power of my own at all.

I: So, did you have an agent at this point?

KW: I didn’t have an agent when I sold my first book—which, unsurprisingly, gave me this whole, “I don’t need you assholes,” attitude. Which I’m happy to say I got over, and I ended up working with Kirby Kim, pretty much immediately after I sold my book. I love Kirby so much.

I: So you’re working at a law firm in LA, but you’re editing The Believer. You mentioned Leslie Jamison already, but what other writers did you love working with while you were there?

KW: Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah’s piece about Dave Chappelle is, of course, extremely special to me. I remember her calling me—she was trying to track him down. She eventually even went to Yellow Springs, Ohio without him agreeing to anything or even responding to her interview requests just to try and see if she could get to him. I remember Rachel calling me and asking, “What are are going to do if he doesn’t talk?” And we decided we could write around him. Enough people—other people—would talk about him, that we could build it from there. Plus, he’d heard through the grapevine that Rachel was interviewing people about him, so maybe eventually he would actually talk. 

When Rachel was in Yellow Springs I remember she called me and said, “I saw him. I’m in a coffeeshop and I saw him. But he won’t talk.”

I: Wow.

KW: She said he had walked in, saw her, and then left. But Rachel went on to write this incredible, incredible profile of him—without him. It was so good. No one got him like she got him. Even without the interview. And then we worked on it together, and then it was nominated for a National Magazine award. So that one was really special.

That was the first time I really allowed myself to think, “Oh, maybe I am sort of good at this. Maybe I’m not a piece of shit.” Not long after, a bunch of essays I worked on where in Best American, or writers would email me or call me and say, “That essay we worked on together got me a book deal.” That’s when I really fell in love with editing. I loved the feeling of helping people—and especially helping people figure out this world that had been such a struggle for me.

I: What were you making at the law firm?

KW: $65,000. The most money I’d ever made in my life, easily. But in the back of my head, I was thinking, “Man. I thought I was going to be successful.” I was happy with my editing work, and it was fulfilling, but it sure was looking like I’d be working at the law firm for the rest of my life.

I: Is that when you get the job at BuzzFeed News?

KW: Yes. A few magazines in New York had reached out about editing jobs, based on the pieces I’d edited and published at The Believer. But there was no way I was going back.

I remember, when I was still living in NY before I left, waking up on my 33rd birthday and feeling total doom. I had already published a critically acclaimed book! But every credit card I had was maxed out. I couldn’t afford rent. Bill collectors were calling me. I was behind on my student loans. I remember wanting to walk in front of a bus—I just couldn’t do it anymore. So even when job offers appeared, I promised myself I wouldn’t go back to New York. I was traumatized by how broke I had been there. And I was actually managing to crawl out of some of that debt in LA.

I: But with BuzzFeed News, you could work in LA.

KW: Correct.

I: How long after your “throw myself in front of a bus” 33rd birthday did you start working there?

KW: I was 36 when I started working at BuzzFeed.

I: And how long were you there?

KW: Eight years, give or take. A long time in media, to be at one place.

I: So you start as the deputy culture editor at BuzzFeed News, working with Executive Culture Editor Saeed Jones. Then he moves on and you become Culture Editor, and eventually the Editor in Chief of BuzzFeed News, right? No longer in need of a secret job, I hope.

KW: No. Finally I could have one job and not 4-5 cobbled together to make a living. It was a singular experience that can never be recaptured in another media job. But it had similarities to my time at The Believer, just with a lot more money. I loved helping people make their work better. Improve their writing, report out their stories, turn their wild ideas into pieces that hit a nerve and had millions of people reading their work. I loved encouraging writers to take big swings. To take risks! I really enjoy helping people. We had carte blanche to do things no other place would ever in a million years let us—certainly not me—do.

I: Build their careers? Would that be a good way to put it?

KW: Yes. At BuzzFeed I also produced—and as a consultant continue to produce—documentaries based off of reporting through BuzzFeed Studios. So I was also trying to get those stories out in an even bigger way.

I: Given your time at BuzzFeed and—how best to put it—the current media landscape, any thoughts on what's next for the industry as digital media seems to crumble?

KW: There are so many talented journalists—with incredible stories. Sadly, there are fewer and fewer outlets at which to tell those stories. For me, that's really hard, because I built my career on helping talented writers get their work out there—and what’s happening now just feels really, really bleak and really, really sad. Especially because it means that there are more voices—young, vibrant, smart, diverse, culture-shifting voices—that are going to be left out of the conversation.

Now, I do believe other media outlets and other publications will rise up—will fill the void of this moment, you know? I love what Defector and 404 are doing—they’re producing incredible journalism. But for the rest of media— I’m wary of writers and journalists simply operating at the pleasure of billionaires. I mean, I guess at this point we’re all alive at the pleasure of billionaires.

I: Let’s talk more about your own career outside of editing for a moment, though. Because you do help other people build their careers, but you’re also an extremely talented writer yourself. Your latest book, Life Events—I loved it. One thing the book gave me—I’ve lost so many people over the years, and as I get older more and more people in my life are dying. We don’t talk about death well, as a society. Even now, I’m having a hard time articulating what I’m trying to say. I guess I could start with, thank you for writing such a good, straightforward book about death.

KW: I was talking to someone about this recently—about being death obsessed.

It feels like I've been death obsessed my whole life. When I was a little kid, in the summers, I would get dropped off at this pool. But the pool was next to a cemetery, and while my sister swam, I used to sneak away to go hang out in the cemetery. More than once, there would be a burial taking place, and I would try and hide behind a tree or a bush or a tombstone so I could watch it. Or I would simply wander around, looking at headstones and reading the people’s name and asking myself, “Who were these people? What were their lives like?”

I: Did anything happen—when you were young—to spark this interest?

KW: I would say I was death obsessed because my mom got sick with cancer when I was 12. And from then on I was waiting for the other shoe to drop through the remissions and returns.

I: Waiting for her to die?

KW: I know how it sounds, but yes. I sort of grew up waiting for my mother to die. So, I don’t know. Death interests me. And I think there’s no honesty about death in America. We hide sick people away. We hide death away.

In a way, I think the pandemic forced many of us—or society—to look at death in a straightforward manner for the first time. I don't think people have experienced mass death across the globe, in such an acute way before. I mean, at the time I was working in a newsroom. I watched people tracking those deaths in real time, and I watched the fatigue happen in real time. People just didn't want to face—couldn’t face—what was happening. People started to simply ignore it, because they didn’t know how to process what was happening. And it was as if that was the first time some people had even considered death. Which seems crazy because we’ve long lived in a culture of mass death—with mass shootings, wars we fund, etc. Some people just tune it out.

But I really believe we need a culture shift in America when it comes to talking about—and accepting—death. Which is also a way of saying that we need a culture shift around aging. America is obsessed with trying to reverse aging. I am constantly fascinated by all of these billionaires who are pouring money into trying to live forever. Their hubris is so interesting to me. Accept facts, you’re mortal too. You don’t get to cheat death.

There's a tech visionary Ray Kurzweil, who wrote a book about the singularity. I watched a documentary about him—and I wasn’t so much interested in the singularity as I was by what motivated him to focus on this one particular topic with such intensity.

To me, it seems so clear to me that he is focused on life extension and solving the “problem” of death because he couldn’t handle the grief of his father dying. Or, maybe a better way to put it would be that he didn’t know what to do with his grief, so he became obsessed with solving this issue to alleviate pain. 

I mean, I don’t know. We're all gonna die. Everyone you love is going to die. You will likely have to watch them die. I think these are painful and uncomfortable truths  to grasp. Life Events is all about how people try to avoid the pain of loss. But we need to figure out better ways to talk about it, and to face the inevitable.

I: Beautifully said. Now let me do exactly what you’re talking about, and not face death by changing the subject. 

Something I’ve always loved about you—and, at certain times throughout us knowing each other, something I’ve been intimidated by—are your hand tattoos. Not just on your fingers, but tattoos on the palms of your hands. Can you tell me about them?

KW: I had a period where I was really captivated by white ink tattoos. So I tattooed my knuckles in 2007—

I: Sort of the final days—back when tattooing your knuckles could be considered an actual job-stopper.

KW: I got a diamond in white ink, and then I kept getting hand tattoos in white ink. I have a bunch of white ink tattoos on me. Then I finally decided to tattoo my palms with black ink, which was really physically painful because you have to do it a few times on the palms for it to stay.

I’ve had them for a long time now. Sometimes I love the way my tattoos look, and other days I think, “What the fuck is this? Why’d I do this?”

It’s funny that you use the phrase “job-stopper.” Because I remember thinking that at the time—not so much that my hand tattoos would be job-killers, but more, “I hope whatever job I get is cool enough that these aren’t a problem. That I won’t be judged for them.”

I: That’s a great way to put it. Ok, another thing you love, along with death and hand tattoos—apologies, that’s a rocky transition. But you love the desert. I’m an ocean man, myself. So tell me, why do you love the desert?

KW: I love the desert. I remember living in New York and feeling, “I don’t see the sky enough. I need to see the sky.”

We immigrated from Poland to Texas. And so when I was a kid my family would  take road-trips. We couldn’t afford to fly, obviously. Driving through West Texas when I was five years old—those trips had a real hold on me. I have vivid memories of staring out the car window, completely lost in the big, endless sky of West Texas.

I’ve never really felt at home anywhere, so I think I’ve been drawn to these early childhood memories I have of vast expanses. Which is why I got out to Joshua Tree so often.

I: The big, endless sky feels like home to you.

KW: A big sky and a long horizon line is very comforting to me. To see that much sky, it reminds me that I’m just here for a moment. That we’re all just here for a moment. Nothing Is permanent.

I: Not even the sky.

KW: All of this land will be here longer than us. These things that I think are insurmountable, or soul-crushing—the problems in my life. Well, they’re actually pretty meaningless. The desert was here before me and the desert will be here after I’m gone. We’re all pretty meaningless, in the grand scheme of things, and I don’t know about you, but I find that to be very comforting. I like that we’re impermanent. I like that nothing lasts forever. My problems are so insignificant.

Things that scare me? That I think have power over me? I mean, in the end, who fucking cares? Because I have faith that what is meant for me will not—and cannot—pass me by. 

By now the sun is long gone, and I’ve had my fill of ass nog. The Double Down Saloon is starting to fill up with young drinkers setting out on the start of their Saturday night adventures, along with older, rock and roll-worn regulars.

Still, Karolina and I continue to talk as the bar around us becomes rowdier. We discuss her fourth book, which she recently finished, along with her future plans for Hollywood. We talk about astrology and the tarot, both of which are intrinsic to Waclawiak. She promises to give me a reading the next time she’s in town.

But mostly we talk about a life spent chasing dreams, and the dreams we continue to chase.

[Editor’s note: Things are picking up around here after I spent the last 18 months on the road either promoting Dirtbag, Massachusetts (now in paperback—makes a great gift!) or doing research for my next book, American Dionysus. I don’t wanna make *too* many promises, but I’m hoping to get one last Walk It Off up before the end of the year, and y’all should know that this lil’ walking blog is gonna get a lot of love and elbow grease from yours truly in 2024 . A heartfelt “THANK YOU!” to y’all for being such a kind, patient community—and don’t worry, I promise not to email y’all *too* much in the future. Nobody wants that. ❤️]

“At the time, it felt like my reputation was sealed. No one would know me for anything else. I was now the reverse racist lady, the Asian who hates white people. But these days, when I introduce myself to people—even journalists who’ve previously written about me and my bad tweets—they will, at most, squint and look a little puzzled. ‘I’ve seen your byline somewhere,’ they say sometimes.”

The talented folks at The Verge published a fantastic series titled, “The Year Twitter Died” (the art design alone is worth checking out). I know the demise of social media is a lil’ obsession of mine (apologies), but I especially enjoyed Sarah Jeong’s piece looking back on her time at the heart of an online harassment campaign (which the above quote is taken from), and Nilay Patel on how Twitter broke the news.

[Editor’s note: The best place to keep up with me on social media these days is Instagram.]

I recently saw the revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway. I don’t bring this up to brag—although, if you’re in NYC and get a chance to see it, you absolutely should—but to point you toward this wonderful New York Times piece by Ben Brantley (published last year) about actor and director Maria Friedman’s attempt to do the musical justice.

“Grandmama was the best chef, cook, food conjurer, and gardener in Scott County. Hence, she hated on all food, and all food stories, that she did not make. 

But Grandmama never, ever hated on the cuisine at Jr. Food Mart, our favorite restaurant that served gas.”

The brilliant Kiese Laymon writes poignantly about how, well, his favorite restaurant served gas.  

“It’s hard to see history when you’re in the middle of it, harder still to distinguish Swift’s impact on the culture from her celebrity, which emits so much light it can be blinding.”

Taylor Swift is Time’s person of the year, and the accompanying profile is written by a writer I quite admire, Sam Lansky.

Ok, now this is bragging. A picture of the 1950s Signet Classics Edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass that I found on the street, which I’m going to go read right now.

That’s it from me. Don’t let the cold air keep you from getting outside and seeing what there is to see. 🍃

While walking with Maggie Smith in Bexley she told me staying rooted—never having lived anywhere other than central Ohio, save a nine-month stint in Gettysburg, PA—is one of the ways she takes care of herself. “If you take care of yourself, you're taking care of the writer inside of you, and thus you’re taking care of your writing.” Maggie went on to say, “Taking care of oneself looks different for different people. Some people really need to travel to take care of themselves […] Some people really need to be close to their family to take care of themselves, and others need to be as far away from their family as possible.” With the holidays on the horizon, the end of the year approaching, and the sun seemingly setting mere minutes after it rises, I wanted to ask y’all—and perhaps take a moment so we could all remember the importance of focusing on what feeds us—how do you take care of yourself?

“I drew a face on a potato and now Rhett won’t throw it away.”

Maggie Smith and I are standing in her kitchen in Bexley, Ohio—a suburb right outside of Columbus. On the table in front of us is, indeed, a potato with a small smiley face drawn on it.

“Rhett even made a lil’ bed for it.”

Rhett—named after the lead singer of the Old ‘97’s, Rhett Miller, who is a friend of Smith’s—is one of Maggie’s two children.

“For a while Rhett was wrapping the potato up in an Ace bandage—swaddling it—and it was sleeping on his dresser. But I was like, ‘Rhett, c’mon buddy.’ So now it lives out here on the kitchen table. He’s a cute kid.”

Maggie Smith’s entire house is filled with knickknacks and art, although the smiley-face potato appears to be the only item that involves produce. Light fills each room, and between the sunshine and the art—both child-made and adult-made—the word that best describes Maggie’s home is “bright.”

An avid fan of music—John Darnielle once turned one of Maggie Smith’s tweets into a Mountain Goats song titled “Picture of My Dress”—Smith turns off the record player that’s been quietly humming in the background before grabbing her purse and ushering me out the door.

Outside, Bexley, Ohio is also bright, and almost as welcoming at Smith’s living room.

Isaac: How long have you lived here?

Maggie Smith: I've lived in this house since January 2010. 13 years. I like to tell myself that the paint looked gray in the can, but it’s fucking Periwinkle. Crayon—fresh out of the box—Periwinkle. I plan on repainting it soon.

But yeah, 13 years. My daughter, Violet, was one when we moved in, and now she’s a freshman in high school. It’s the only house my son’s lived in.

I: Seems like the vibe is very “friendly neighborhood.”

MS: 100%. Everybody knows everybody. My neighbor across the street from me—I can see her porch, so when she’s out there with her dog and a drink she’ll wave me over and we’ll sit together.

I: Now, I know that you are very much a multi-generational Ohioan. But you’re also—you’re from Columbus, right? Born and raised?

MS: My parents grew up in Columbus. I grew up in a suburb. In Westerville. From, say, first grade until I was in college. Before that, yes. I was born in Columbus and spent my first six years there.

I: Ok, but Westerville is… not far.

MS: No, extremely close.

I: So it’s fair to say that you have roots here. Columbus, Ohio is home—going way back.

MS: Absolutely. My father’s family was originally from West Virginia—but yes. Very Ohio. Very Columbus.

This is my son's school. I like to walk by sometimes, hoping that they kick a ball over the fence. When you grab the ball and throw it back, you get to feel like a real hero for a minute. The kids go nuts.

I: This is a pretty short commute for your son.

MS: I mean, that’s one of the great benefits of the house. How close it is to this school. All the kids in the neighborhood go to this school.

I: Do they all get to hangout together afterwards? Riding bikes and—

MS: Oh yeah. They run home and ditch their backpacks and then yell, “I’m going to so and so’s house,” or sometimes they come over to our house and I’m handing out popsicles. My daughter’s school isn’t far either.

I: Did you go to college around here, too?

MS: Yes. I applied to a school in Colorado—I remember thinking, “Maybe I’ll have a grand adventure.”

But then, when I was in high school—my first high school boyfriend’s best friend went to Ohio Wesleyan University, which is a small liberal arts school about 40 minutes north of here. So we would go up there on the weekends and go to parties. I liked the people I met there—the school was very artsy. And small. And really close to home. So when it came time for me to make my decision, I decided to go where I already knew people.

I: You felt comfortable.

MS: I felt comfortable. So I ended up staying close to home for college and dating my second high school boyfriend almost all the way through. And then, when I graduated, I moved home and slept in my twin bed—the same bed I had been sleeping in since I was six.

I worked as a receptionist for a year. I answered phones and wrote poems and applied to MFA programs and answered phones and wrote poems and—you get the idea.

I applied to a bunch of different places. And, same as college, it once again came down to the grand adventure—Tucson, Seattle, etc.—or home. Columbus, Ohio. I said to myself, “I'm definitely going to one of those other places. It’s time.” I visited Tucson, Arizona. Tucson was going to be my place. But then… I got a full fellowship at Ohio State University.

All those other places? I was going to have to teach the whole time and also take out loans. I’m too practical. So, I chose Ohio State.

I: Go Buckeyes! Ok, but you were already writing poems and pursuing an MFA right out of college. When did you first take an interest in writing?

MS: I distinctly remember writing my first poem. I was 12 or 13—in the seventh grade. But I wrote that poem and then put my pen down. I wasn’t consistently writing poems at that point. I don’t think I wrote any poems in 8th grade.

Then, when I hit high school, I really started writing poems. Poetry helped me make sense of the world. If something didn't make sense, I would write it down. Or if I couldn’t figure out how to say something out loud, I would try to figure it out on paper. I don't know why, but I didn't really know what I meant until I wrote it down. Writing it down—turning that thought, or feeling, or confusion, into a poem—helped me better understand the why of it.

So I started keeping this manila folder. I would handwrite my poems on looseleaf paper and then put them in this folder, which I kept in my locker. Then I gave my locker combination to two or three people—friends of mine who I thought were cool. My friend Barb, who is also now a poet. This guy Robert. My friend Megan at one point. Anyway, they would check out my poems. Like, actually check them out—as if my locker was a library. Sometimes they would write notes and give me feedback, which would all be waiting for me in my locker at the end of the day.

I: So you were basically in a secret high school MFA program. I sold cigarettes out of my locker, you workshopped your writing.

MS: That’s right. Because I wasn't a part of the literary magazine—

I: You had a high school literary magazine?

MS: There was one, yeah. But I didn’t work on it. I wasn’t a joiner. I submitted poems once, and I remember getting them back and the only feedback was someone had written, “Too introspective,” at the top.

I: Wow.

MS: Isn't that perfect? So I figured, “Maybe I'm not that good at this, but I like it.” So I kept doing it. Eventually I shared my poems with two of my English teachers, and a school librarian, and they started taking them home and giving me feedback and teaching me different aspects about poetry and giving me reading recommendations.

It wasn't for class credit or anything. Simply something I was doing on the side. But they actually took the time to really, really, really encourage me. I’m still in touch with one of them—his name is Jim Grannis. He even came to the launch event I did with Saeed Jones for You Could Make This Place Beautiful. I called him out in the middle of the event—there's a card from him that I keep at my desk that he gave me when I graduated high school. I look at that card when I’m writing—

I: You keep it on your writing desk?

MS: I do. It's Mozart with pink hair, and when you open it up, it says, “We're not afraid to be ourselves, eh?”

I: So were you a pretty good kid?

MS: I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t make some questionable choices in high school and college, but after that I cleaned up my act a bit—

I: So you graduated from college, moved back home, and got a job as a receptionist.

MS: That’s right.

I: Then you said to yourself, “Ok, I’m going to go study poetry.” You knew that was what you wanted to do?

MS: I knew that was what I wanted to do. I had a professor in undergrad who told me, “It’s really hard to get an MFA. You might not get in. So think long and hard about whether that’s what you really want to do.” Which is why I took a year off and moved home. My thinking was, “I'm not going to have deadlines, and no one's going to be making me do it. Under those conditions, will I still want to write poetry? If I'm still doing it, and it’s still making me happy, then I feel I've earned the right to pursue it.” So that’s what I did.

I: We don’t have to name ‘em all, but Ohio has a lot of colleges.

MS: Ohio does have a lot of colleges.

I: There also seems to be a strong literary scene here—especially in Columbus. You just mentioned Saeed Jones, who lives here. Hanif Abdurraqib is famously from Columbus. But there are so many writers and artists who live in the area. Do you think that’s because of all the schools?

MS: I’m sure that’s part of it. Between the state schools, the community colleges, the liberal arts schools—that’s a lot of writers teaching, as well as a lot of undergrad students and grad students, which in turn leads to a lot of reading series. There’s also a lot of performance spaces. That’s the Drexel Theater right over there. That’s where Saeed and I did the book launch. It’s such a gorgeous building. They put my name and book title, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, on the marquee and left it up for two or three days—I kept driving by on my way to the grocery store. I mean, that’s the local art house theater, and it’s been in this neighborhood for years. I saw movies there in high school and in college! So to see my name up there, it was really special.

I: So you keep writing the year after college, and you decide to apply to MFAs. Was there a plan past that?

MS: No. I had no idea what I was going to do for a job. The only poets I knew were college professors, so I thought that I’d maybe do that. Becoming a professor seemed somewhat more possible back then. But even then the prospects of becoming a professor were slim. So I decided to simply use the three years as a type of immersion—

I: Immersion?

MS: I treated my MFA like a three year apprenticeship. I wanted to really soak it up. Write poems. Live off the very modest stipend they paid me. Cover my impossibly cheap rent and that was it. My hope was to really focus on the work.

I: Where were you living back then?

MS: I was in Grandview, which is another little suburb that’s close to the OSU campus. But I moved every year for many, many years. I lived in the Short North, and Victorian Village. Harrison West and German Village and Clintonville. Every cool, walkable neighborhood, really. So long as it was on the bus line. If the neighborhood was on the bus line, I could live there.

I: Were your poems being published at this point?

MS: My first poems were published by Poetry Northwest. The poems were actually taken from my MFA application—that was the summer of 2000. Then I published fairly regularly while getting my MFA, so I knew I could do it. But I still needed to pay my bills, right? A lot of my friends and people in my program decided to get PhDs. Why not keep going for four more years? But I knew I didn’t want that. I saw myself as a writer, not as a scholar. I didn’t want to get a PhD in literature.

Even getting my MFA was a stretch. Earlier I mentioned my high school English teacher, Jim Grannis. When I was getting my MFA, I visited one of his high school classes to work with the students. I remember he said something about how surprising my path was because I he didn’t think of me as someone who was “scholarly by nature.” Jim knew me as this high school student who was going out to see bands a lot and clearly having a good time. As I said, not always making the best choices. So Jim didn’t really see me going the academic route back then. And he wasn’t wrong. I didn't apply to any PhD programs. I had no idea what I was going to do.

I: Back to answering phones?

MS: Maybe. But then I got an offer to do a one year lectureship at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. I moved there for nine months and taught creative writing classes. But during that time, I didn't write anything. So I decided to move back to Columbus and find a job that was writing adjacent. That was steady. That didn’t demand any prep from me, so that I could focus on my own writing when I was off the clock. I knew I needed to make time for my own work. To take care of myself. And part of taking care of myself was being here, at home, in Columbus.

When Elizabeth Egan wrote an “Inside the Best-Seller List” mini-profile of me for the New York Times, she asked, “How does being from Ohio feed your writing?” And I thought about it, and the answer is, “I’m not sure it feeds my writing, but it does feed me.” If you take care of yourself, you're taking care of the writer inside of you, and thus you’re taking care of your writing.

Taking care of oneself looks different for different people. Some people really need to travel to take care of themselves, and thus take care of their writing that way. Some people really need to be close to their family to take care of themselves, and others need to be as far away from their family as possible. That’s how they take care of themselves and their writing. For me, I’m a deeply rooted person. I like a lot of stability. I like feeling part of a community—

I: Do you feel supported by the community here?

MS: Absolutely. I feel supported by my community. I feel supported by my family. I feel supported by this environment.

I: You feel supported by Columbus?

MS: I feel supported by Columbus, yes. I grew up in this area. I went to college in this area. I went to grad school in this area. And then—save one nine month trip to Gettysburg, PA—I stayed.

[Editor’s note: At this moment we head into Gramercy Books, where all the booksellers seemingly know Maggie. Sometimes fan mail for Maggie is delivered to the store, and they have a small bundle waiting for her when we arrive. Maggie slips the envelopes into her bag.]

I: Something I said often—earlier in my life—is that gambling is the one vice I don’t have. But then I realized I do have that vice, it’s simply that publishing scratches the gambling itch for me. As writers we gamble with our time, with our stories, with our money, with, at the risk of sounding dramatic, our lives—or at least our livelihoods. We take risks—risks that often don’t pan out. Do you find the community here in Columbus helps you take risks as a writer? As an artist?

MS: Oh, absolutely. I take bonkers risks.

I: Being a poet, for one.

MS: Being self-employed since 2011. Being a single parent. That’s why the stability I mentioned earlier is so important to me—not to mention the community. I haven’t merely spent my entire life in the state of Ohio, I’ve spent my entire life in central Ohio. The same 20 minute loop—running past the same streets and stores and people over and over and over again. But because of that—because, say, 80% of my life feels so incredibly settled, I’m able to go nuts with the other 20%.

I: You can take big swings—

MS: Being so grounded—so rooted in where I live—allows me to be untethered artistically.

There are times when I’ll be having a shit day and someone I know will simply reach out, “Hey, can I come over?” Or someone will drop off a cinnamon roll from Kittie's Cakes on my front porch with a note that reads, “I got your address from the middle school directory. Seems like things have been tough lately. Enjoy.”

When I say this place feeds me, I mean people here quite literally feed me.

I: Do you feel like a representative of Columbus? An ambassador? Again, at the risk of sounding dramatic or grandiose, but if Columbus had an NBA-style team but for artists, is it safe to say you’d be on it?

MS: I don't necessarily feel representative. I’m me. I represent me. But I think one good thing about thriving where you're planted is that it shows other people that they can thrive where they are, too.

I: They can build in the same way.

MS: And, if they’re lucky, find the same nourishment that I have.

I: To turn for a moment to You Could Make This Place Beautiful—was it difficult to release such a personal memoir when you’re so deeply rooted in this community? A place where everyone seems to know your name? Or were you prepared? Did you feel comfortable, after publishing poetry for so long?

MS: No one's ever prepared. Poetry really didn't feel much like preparation, to be honest, because in a poem there's a speaker. “This isn’t me, it’s ‘the speaker.’” In a poem you can deflect.

With that being said, I don’t feel terribly exposed. There’s an asymmetry with memoir, of course. People who I meet who have read the memoir certainly know more about me than I know about them. But as I was saying before, I feel really cared for here. Anyone I’m close with already knows what’s in the book. They've watched me live here. They've watched my kids grow up here. They've watched the hardships of the last five years. And people here—

I: Are supportive.

MS: Super supportive.

Earlier this year, my refrigerator started fritzing out. I was in a total panic, but got it together to take some measurements and order a new refrigerator online. When the delivery guys got to my house, though, they couldn’t couldn’t install the fridge because my place is almost 100 years old. I didn’t know what to do.

The delivery guys told me to call a plumber as they left, but before I did that I complained about the situation to my neighbor Shawn. He texted back, “I’ll come over tomorrow,” and sure enough he came over the next day and redid my plumbing so the guys could come back and hook up the refrigerator, no problem. Shawn simply said, “Venmo me”—and the amount was way less than a plumber would have charged, and a plumber certainly wouldn’t have come so quickly. Also, while this was happening, all my perishables were at my neighbor Wendy’s house across the street, so I didn’t even lose any food.

I know I can text my neighbors or friends anytime and say, “Hey, I need help with X,” and they’ll help me. And they know they can do the same with me.

I: You said you’ve been self-employed since 2011. What were some of the jobs you were doing before that?

MS: After I came back from teaching at Gettysburg College, I got a job working for a children's book publisher. I would read the slush pile, or write jacket copy. Then I worked for the Junior Library Guild, reading children's books at the galley stage and writing catalog copy for them. Next was McGraw Hill—I worked in educational publishing for a few years—working on English and language arts textbooks for elementary school kids. And, finally, I went to Zaner-Bloser—which is owned by Highlights for Children but headquartered right here in Columbus—doing the same thing.

I: You found what you were looking for, like you said—writing adjacent jobs.

MS: Yeah, I worked in educational publishing for most of that time. A regular job where I sat in a cubicle, worked, and then would have downtime to write poems. Writing during lunch breaks, or if I finished up early, that sort of thing.

I: Why’d you make the leap to freelance?

MS: Well, after Violet—my eldest—was born, I started noticing how much time I was wasting at work. Neither efficiency nor speed are rewarded at an office job, right? They just give you more work! Either that or you’re killing time. So I would sit there, looking at the clock every day, already done with my work but not able to go home—I just couldn't wait to physically get my hands on Violet. I wanted to hold that toddler so badly. I wanted to take her to the zoo.

Then I got an NEA grant. $25,000 is a lot of money for poetry.

I: It sure is.

MS: But not enough to live off of it for years, or anything like that.

I: Nobody’s buying a boat.

MS: Right, but I figured it could be a safety net. So I left work and went freelance—I figured if I fell flat on my face and couldn’t get any clients or make any money, the grant would help while I figured out my next move. But honestly? There was a lot of freelance work right away.

I: So similar work to what you’d been doing—copy writing, catalog writing, slush-pile reading—but more on your own time and setting your own rates?

MS: Exactly. It gave me more time to focus on raising my kids and to work on my own writing. Eventually I moved into freelance editing and helping other poets and writers with their work, too.

I: This whole time, though, you’re publishing poems, correct?

MS: I published my first few collections while I was working in educational publishing.

I: The title You Could Make This Place Beautiful was pulled from one of your most famous poems. When did “Good Bones” happen?

MS: I wrote “Good Bones” at a Starbucks right here on Main Street in 2015. I remember sitting there for 45 minutes or an hour, and just writing that poem. My kids were still little. Then I submitted the poem to a bunch of different places—a lot of print journals—and it got rejected everywhere, which ended up being a blessing.

I: How so?

MS: Because, when it was finally picked up, it was by a relatively new, online journal, Waxwing. Being published online allowed the poem to be shared in a way that a print magazine simply couldn’t.

I: It came out around the same time as the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando—

MS: Yes. And the murder of Jo Cox in England.

I: So, around June of 2016, but you had written it back in 2015?

MS: Yes. Before then I was online, of course, but I wouldn’t have considered myself an online person. But all of a sudden a few friends starting telling me they were seeing my poem on social media, and then journalists started contacting me. At the time I had two young children, I’d published two small press books. It was a very strange moment, all of a sudden all these people—

I: All of these people were seeing your work—reading your work—and then trying to get in touch.

MS: The truth of the matter is, if I had any idea how many people were going to read “Good Bones,” I never would have finished it. I’d still be sitting in that Starbucks trying to make it better.

I: Polishing it.

MS: Also, to have it get that much attention—

I: To go viral.

MS: To go viral, yes, but to go viral specifically because the world can be such a shit place, with these terrible tragedies happening. It was surreal and it was heartbreaking.

I: And life-changing.

MS: And life-changing.

I: When do you start thinking about writing a memoir?

MS: Well, I wrote prose for Keep Moving—

I: Which came out in… 2020?

MS: Yeah, Keep Moving was the gateway drug to the memoir. I enjoyed writing essays—I enjoyed the possibilities.

Whenever I do a poetry reading, someone will often come up to me and say, “You’re funnier than I thought you’d be.” Which… thank you? But that’s my personality! I like to make people laugh. And for whatever reason I feel more casual when I’m writing prose. I can be more voice-y—more talk-y—on the page. 

I: Keep Moving stemmed from social media, right? So you did end up becoming a more, to use your phrase, “online person.”

MS: I found a real community online after “Good Bones.” Keep Moving began during the time that I write about in the memoir, but wasn’t really sharing with people yet—

I: Hard years.

MS: At some point near the end of 2018, I tweeted the first—what I’d call the first “Keep Moving” tweet.

[Editor’s note: Here’s the tweet.]

I: I remember.

MS: Clearly I’m talking to myself here. But I wasn’t ready to share what was going on in my personal life yet. So I kept doing these “Keep Moving” tweets— as a pep talk to myself, honestly, but also, they were resonating with people.

A few months after that, I wrote an essay for the New York Times’ “Modern Love” column. So it’s a gradual unfolding, right? First the tweets happen, and people were like, “Oh, something’s bad.” Then the essay came out, and people were like, “Oh, that’s why it’s bad.” But I still didn’t say much about what was going on.

So, as you asked, “Why write a memoir?” I was asking myself that same question. I never thought I would write a memoir, but now, looking back on it, that’s clearly where I was headed. I wrote “Good Bones,” then I was writing these tweets, then I got comfortable writing essays, then I came out with Keep Moving—it was all leading up to this thing I never thought I was going to do, which is write You Could Make This Place Beautiful, a memoir very much about the things I was trying to avoid talking about.

I got to a place in my life where—I described it to someone recently like this: I was stuck in a room without even knowing it, and the book was this very large piece of furniture—like an armoire—parked in front of the room’s doorway. The only way I was going to get out of that room was through that doorway, and the only way through that doorway was to move that very large piece of furniture. And the only way I could move that very large piece of furniture? Write the book. I needed to contend with everything I’d experienced on the page.

I: To make sense of it, like when you started writing poetry as a kid.

MS: Do you want to swing in here for a drink? They have this drink called Silver Dollar Pony that I absolutely love. When we cheers, we say, “Giddy up!”

[Editor’s note: We go inside Harvest Pizzeria for a drink.]

I: What was the cheers again?

MS: Giddy up.

I: Giddy Up! So, you had to move this very large piece of furniture—you had to write this book. When you realized that, though, did the book come easily or—

MS: I don’t usually write every day, but I did work on this book every day. I approached it like a day job.

I: I really loved the rhythm of your memoir. You can tell it was written by a poet.

MS: The best way I can describe it is, I have published four books of poems, but I have never written a book of poems, you know? I've only written a poem at a time. The poem shows up, and you coax it into the clearing by being very quiet and very still. Then, if it stays long enough, you can write the thing. Later—maybe a few weeks, maybe a few months, maybe a year later—another poem shows up. So it takes me many years to write a collection of poetry. I never know if I have a book of poems until I print a bunch of them out and look at them all together.

Another way to put it is I'm painting an inch of canvas at a time, without having any idea of what the image I'm actually painting is.

I: But with the memoir—

MS: This book is the only book I've ever really written as a book. With the idea of a finished product in mind from the starting point. I think—for many years—poetry saved me from thinking about writing as a business.

Maybe it’s different now, but 25 years ago when I was starting out, no poets I knew had agents. You’d basically work on your poems, eventually they would become a manuscript, and you would send that manuscript out to publishers or contests. It was a complete and utter crapshoot. Which is exactly how my first two books got published. One hit right away, and the other one took four years of sending the manuscript out over and over again before it found a home.

So it wasn’t even a question of, “Will this make any money?” It was more, “How much money will I lose submitting this?” Every time you mailed a manuscript out you were spending $30 or $40 dollars. Spending money to send it out into the void, unsure if you’d even get a rejection letter back, let alone find a publisher.

Back then publishers used to slice their rejection slips off of one single 8.5-by-11 piece of paper—so they could get around 20 rejection slips off of one sheet. You would hold up your self-addressed stamped envelope—in your own handwriting, right? You’d think “Oh shit,” when you saw an envelope in your mailbox with your own handwriting on it, and then you’d hold the envelope up—and it’d be light as hell, because it was a rejection—you’d hold it up to the sun and you could see the skinny rejection slip right through the envelope.

Which is all to say, I never thought I would make any money off my writing. I would have writing adjacent jobs, but I didn’t think I could make money from my own writing. It was more a question of how much money was I willing to lose.

I: When does that change? You write your first poem at 12 or 13 years old. We’re talking over 30 years of writing, give or take. When do you feel like you might actually be able to make a living off your writing?

MS: I mean, I'm still teaching. I still do speaking gigs. Writing is a part of my income now—a fairly large part—but it isn’t the whole pie. I'm still editing books for other poets. My Substack is part of my income—one that I’m grateful for. I’m a self-employed single parent. In a way, the need to hustle has never been greater.

And yet, I have less time than I have ever had to write. So it’s important to me that writing remains art, not commerce. I’m not comfortable putting commercial pressure on my work. I still very much want to write only what I want to write.

I: You wrote You Could Make This Place Beautiful in 2021, yeah?

MS: I started in January 2021 and wrote through the end of that year. I turned the manuscript in on New Year’s Eve. So I wrote the book in one year. I scaled back my teaching, I scaled back my editorial work. I wasn’t traveling for speaking gigs because of the pandemic. I was focused on parenting, writing this book, and making space for poems when they showed up.

I: More so than a poetry collection, did you know where this memoir was going before you set out to write it?

MS: I sold it on proposal, so in that sense I knew I was writing a memoir. But I didn’t know what it would look like at all. Much like what we were discussing at the beginning of this walk—I feel grounded, so I allow myself to take risks. I didn’t know what form this book was going to take or where it was going to go.

I: Did you know it was going to be a memoir about divorce?

MS: Honestly, I don’t think of this book as a divorce memoir.

I: A better question, what is this memoir to you? What picture do you see, now that you’re done painting it and it’s out in the world?

MS: Of course “divorce memoir” is what a lot of people see. People are so quick to categorize it—people are so quick to try and categorize everything, really.

I knew I was going to unpack things about my divorce in this memoir, but it also didn't look like any of the other breakup books or divorce books I had read. I knew it was a book about grief, but again, it didn’t take the form of other grief books that I’d read. I do think it’s a book about figuring out where you are in life, a sort of “better late than never”—doubling down on yourself at a certain stage in life—type of book. But it’s not self help. In a way, it’s a very slippery book.

I: Would you wish for no category at all?

MS: I have a hard time encapsulating the memoir in a sentence or two because it’s really about my adult life. If you have an elevator pitch for your adult life, you’re living too small. Another way to put it might be, it’s my job to write the thing, not sell it. So I try not to categorize it. But I understand that other people might want to—or need to. Still, I do think the most reductive way to talk about this book is to call it a “divorce memoir.”

I guess I would call the book a reappearing act. I talk a lot about ghosts, vanishing, invisibility, magic, and sleight-of-hand in this book. Those are metaphors I use often. That’s because I think I allowed myself to become small—to sort of be a vanishing act in my own life. I made a lot of decisions that had other people’s best interests at heart, and not my own. So I think of this book as a reappearing act. Pulling myself out of a hat. It’s not that I wasn’t there—when someone pulls a rabbit out of a hat, the rabbit was always in the fucking hat. I was always there. 

I: This feels like stating the obvious, but it’s a memoir about you—by which I mean, it’s not a divorce memoir, because to call it that would be to say that you are now defined by your divorce. The whole point is that you aren’t—the whole point is that you are larger now, not diminished.

However you want to categorize it—or not categorize it—though, people obviously responded to what you wrote. What was it like when you found out you hit the New York Times best-sellers list?

MS: I was folding laundry when my agent called me. I never want to know numbers—my agent specifically tells people not to send me shit with numbers because, as she puts it, “It will freak Maggie out.” Even if it’s good, I don’t want to hear it. Of course I’ll do anything to support the book. Podcasts, interviews—

I: You’re not moving to the middle of the woods and not talking to anyone about it.

MS: Right, but I don’t want to know anything about, you know, what’s actually going on. It doesn’t help me, it simply makes me nervous.

I: So you’re folding laundry.

MS: It was five o’clock and my kids were home—or Violet was home and Rhett was out playing because he always plays until right before dinner. I was folding laundry in my living room and my agent called, because I wasn’t responding to any of the emails they were sending because, well, I was folding laundry.

When I picked up she told me to get to a computer, so I did, and that’s when I saw it. My name. Well, not really my name so much as Prince Harry's name under my name, and that really freaked me out. Because it felt like someone was playing a trick on me. Using Photoshop to prank me. It was just a huge surprise. It's still very surprising to me.

I: At the risk of labeling or categorizing—Ohio poet does good.

MS: I know I get cranky around labels. I hate it when people try to pigeonhole women writers, or parent writing, or divorce writing—as we just discussed—but you know, that one doesn’t bother me. I’ve heard people use the term “regional writer” in a degrading way. As a slam, or a putdown. But I don’t see it that way. From a commercial standpoint, “Ohio poet” is a very narrow aperture. I understand that. But that’s the label I love. I love being an Ohio poet.

Maggie Smith and I order some food and move to an outdoor table. A few friends of hers stop to chat, and a neighbor waves hello. Eventually, a woman who I noticed standing hesitantly on the street approaches us.

“I just had to say, I love your work! I’m such a fan.”

Maggie stands and talks with the woman. I can’t hear their conversation, but there’s laughter, and a brief hug. When Maggie comes back over, she asks if we should invite Saeed Jones to join us. Soon he’s ordering a Silver Dollar Pony too, and the sun is setting. A waitress kindly takes our photo.

Giddy up.

Dirtbag, Massachusetts is now available in paperback!

I’m so thrilled! Paperback books are my favorite type of books—cheaper! portable! foldable!—so to see my memoir in its final form is really special to me. Up until now, all of my books have been hardcover. This is my first paperback! If you haven’t picked up a copy of Dirtbag yet—or are interested in gifting it to a friend—you can now do so for less money! If ya wanna see me stick a copy in my back pocket, I made a lil’ video over on my Instagram.

Speaking of my love of paperback books, I wrote an essay about just that for Esquire.

If you give the piece a read and enjoy it (thank you!), please feel free to share it with another paperback-lover in your life (double thank you!).

Now, the official pub date of Dirtbag, Massachusetts in paperback is Tuesday, November 7th, but I’m starting the party early this evening at Books Are Magic in Brooklyn (Montague Street location). I’ll be in conversation with Tara Westover, author of the wildly acclaimed memoir, Educated, which—you guessed it—is also available in paperback!

If you’re in the New York area tonight, we’d love to see you!

But don’t worry, if you ain’t in New York City at the moment, I’l be hitting the road for a lil’ paperback tour. All the tour info is below—I’ll be in conversation with some real literary superstars—so if you’re nearby please come out and say hi! Every stop is at a wonderful, beautiful independent bookstore.

Now, if you’re thinking, “That’s great and all, Isaac, but when’s the next Walk It Off?” Fear not! I have a fantastic walk with the brilliant poet and memoirist Maggie Smith that’s almost ready for publication. I can’t wait for everyone to read it, so I’ll have it up soon! I promise!

Ok, I think that’s it from me. As always, thank y’all so, so, so much for all of your support. It means the world to me. If you want to keep up with me while I’m on the road, you can find me on Instagram, Threads, or Bluesky.

See you soon! 🤞🖤🔥

[Editor’s note: A lil’ housecleaning to start, I’m going to stay on Twitter for promotional reasons, but if you follow me on socials and are looking for the fun stuff, probably best to do so on Instagram, Bluesky, or Threads (in that order). Thanks! ❤️]

“I’m super grateful, obviously, for everything—I mean, before this I’d been on a plane twice in my adult life. And I’ve made great friends who are writers. But the desire for an external anything to make you happy is going to lead to an emptiness…”

That’s author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah in this wonderful profile of the man himself by Leah Greenblatt for Esquire. Nana’s incredible book (easily one of the best of the year), Chain Gang All Stars, has been shortlisted for the National Book Award.

“A question from my interviews also came up a lot in Colorado: What does masculinity, ‘being a man,’ actually mean anymore? Is it trading crypto for testosterone supplements? Swapping spouses on Feeld? More importantly, what might a healthy, confident version of masculinity look like today?”

In what easily could have been a very cringe-y article, but instead was an incredibly warm and lovely read, author Rosecrans Baldwin visits the Confident Man Ranch Retreat for GQ.

“I’m hyper aware that cultural trends are cyclical and we might no longer be cool in two years’ time and that’s fine too. It doesn’t change anything about the way in which we publish books. We’re just going to keep on publishing literary books because we like them, not because of what other people think.”

Meet Jacques Testard, “the man behind Fitzcarraldo, Britain’s coolest”—and award-winning—“indie publisher,” thanks to Susie Goldsbrough at The Times.

“I was a young, angry, confused kid from a violent household who was two years deep into figuring out that drinking made my brain itch less. Here was an anthem filled with longing that I didn't fully understand, but one that I felt. Deeply.”

Over at Luke O'Neil’s Welcome to Hell World I—alongside many other fantastic writers—wrote about the importance of Elliott Smith’s music.

I was also recently on the Today Show recommending books with author extraordinaire Jasmine Guillory and beloved host, Hoda Kotb.

One of the books I recommended on the Today show was Jesmyn Ward’s latest phenomenal novel, Let Us Descend. Ward was recently profiled by the brilliant Imani Perry in the New York Times. Don’t miss it.