Lit Hub Asks: 5 Authors, 7 Questions, No Wrong Answers

The Lit Hub Author Questionnaire is a monthly interview featuring seven questions for five authors with new books. This month we talk to:

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Uchenna Awoke (The Liquid Eye of a Moon)

Ian S. Maloney (South Brooklyn Exterminating) 

Lauren Mechling (The Memo, co-written with Rachel Dodes)

Iris Mwanza (The Lions’ Den)

Nathaniel Popper (The Trolls of Wall Street: How the Outcasts and Insurgents Are Hacking the Markets)

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Without summarizing it in any way, what would you say your book is about?

Uchenna Awoke: A story of hope. Resilience. Human tabooing.

Lauren Mechling: Corridors. College reunions. Wormholes. Shame as diesel fuel. The Counting Crows.

Ian S. Maloney: NYC during the 1980s and 90s. Father and son exterminators riding in a death mobile of traps, poisons, sprayers, hazmat flags, and guns and serving posh clubs, airlines, nursing homes, racetracks, and everything in between. Oh, and handling lots and lots of rats, mice, and bugs.

Iris Mwanza: Oppression, colonial legacies, gender identity, power, justice, morality, courage, perseverance.

Nathaniel Popper: Mistrust, loneliness and money. But also young men looking for company and a sense of purpose.

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Without explaining why and without naming other authors or books, can you discuss the various influences on your book?

Lauren Mechling: Banana peel jokes. Cathartic sobs on the shower floor. Clown cars. Sheepcams. Small plates. Daily Mail posts about Dominic West. Nichols and May. Man buns. Amy Jellicoe (AKA Laura Dern in “Enlightened”).

Iris Mwanza: In the late ‘80s and ‘90s after the Berlin Wall came down, human rights and democratic ideals catalyzed change from the Soviet Union (now Russia) to countries like my home country Zambia, where The Lions’ Den is set.

Nathaniel Popper: Reddit, Discord, 4chan, Twitter and the odd people who have tried to make sense of them.

Uchenna Awoke: I was privileged to read books whose lush lyricism and surprising comedy offered hope and grace to their themes of trauma and disillusionment, the kind of prose that’s immersive and alive. I listen to their pulse and respiration. I etch myself closely to their soul.

Ian S. Maloney: Dirty Realism. Kunstlerromans. Quest narratives. Autofiction. And old-school, working-class Brooklyn.

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Without using complete sentences, can you describe what was going on in your life as you wrote this book?

Nathaniel Popper: Too much and not enough. Aging. Losing touch. Going more than slightly stir crazy.

Iris Mwanza: Love and marriage. Global travel. Global pandemic. Mind travel. Escapes across time and place. A manuscript finished.

Ian S. Maloney: Teaching and administering at a college. Working on literary prizes and fellowships, book festivals, and nonprofit boards. Raising three kids, falling in love again, and finding a way to juggle family, friends, work, and writing.

Uchenna Awoke: Sitting at a desk for eight hours. A job that hardly put food on the table. Struggling to write in the night, in-between exhaustion and growing violence. Falling asleep thinking of acts of discrimination and othering, conflicts between cowherds and crop farmers, wondering what monster would usher me into a new day.

Lauren Mechling: Mothers. Mothers-in-law. Bat infestations. Fannypacks. Professional heartbreak. Petty Icelandic farmers. Phone calls.

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What are some words you despise that have been used to describe your writing by readers and/or reviewers?

Ian S. Maloney: Someone after a reading once said he “struggled with writing about dirty, hard work and real-life human suffering and death.” I hated every single aspect of that precocious, privileged, and sheltered sentiment.

Uchenna Awoke: I value feedback, however snarky. I want to be challenged to write more, to write better, to use criticism to explore ways to strengthen my craft.

Lauren Mechling: “It’s too literary to be commercial and it’s too commercial to be literary.”

Nathaniel Popper: Dense. Confusing. Long-winded. Unfocused.

Iris Mwanza: It may sound trite but as a debut writer, I’m thrilled by all reviews. It’s not a small thing to read a book from an author you’ve never heard of, so I’m amazed and grateful that so many, including established authors, have been this generous.

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If you could choose a career besides writing (irrespective of schooling requirements and/or talent) what would it be?

Iris Mwanza: I have a full-time career. I’m lucky enough to have a dream job working in the Gender Equality Division of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. It’s not easy to manage it all (hence the nine years to write this novel) but I truly love doing both.

Uchenna Awoke: A radio personality. I finally met one after many years of adoring his well-groomed voice. His personality preceded him.

Ian S. Maloney: Wow, so many come to mind. Jedi Knight. Archaeologist. Private investigator. My dad wanted me to be a hitman at one point. Just not exterminator, not anymore.

Lauren Mechling: Dog walker in the summer, bassist and backup vocalist in a Canadian rock band in the winter.

Nathaniel Popper: Making beautiful music that moved people.

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What craft elements do you think are your strong suit, and what would you like to be better at?

Lauren Mechling: I’m good at being funny, could do better at being serious. Also, sex scenes are not my forte!

Ian S. Maloney: I think I have a strong sense of setting and story arc in my work. I always want to know where my characters are going and what places will enhance the story’s aesthetic and purpose. On the flip side, I always think too much about point of view (a dear departed friend called it a narrator neurosis years ago), which plagues me when I’m about to begin a story.

Nathaniel Popper: I can identify the moments that make up a narrative arc and figure out how to string them together to keep someone reading. I wish I was better at unspooling the quiet but important moments in between.

Uchenna Awoke: I like writing that’s language-driven, with vivid imagery, and being able to weave the threads of a story together in the end in a way that presents the reader with a climactic revelation. I hope that these are also strengths that are seen in my work.

Iris Mwanza: Plot. I think more about the story I want to tell than the craft of telling it. I feel my job is doing the best I can to honor the characters stories and hope to get better with every book. There’s no bigger thrill when the characters begin to speak to me and tell me what happens next.

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How do you contend with the hubris of thinking anyone has or should have any interest in what you have to say about anything?

Ian S. Maloney: Does it matter?  Must this be said? Is my crap detector going off?  This may sound like B.S. bluster, but my test is to return to Faulkner’s advice for artists in his Nobel Prize Speech (1949). I think about if the story holds to “the old verities and truths of the human heart…love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice… The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past…” Sound, timeless advice to keep the story grounded, meaningful, and worthwhile to tell in the first place. And, to keep narcissistic ramblings and hubristic rabbit holes, at bay.

Iris Mwanza: Blame (or credit) Toni Morrison who famously said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it”—and so I did!

Uchenna Awoke: There are incredible writers that have amazed me with their themes and writing styles, that’s what I think about when I write, and that’s why I want people to care about my story, because it explores a part of Nigerian culture and tradition not often examined in literature.

Nathaniel Popper: I lose confidence in myself and think of ways I can abandon ship, generally only returning to my post when I have no choice.

Lauren Mechling: They don’t, so it’s not an issue.