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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Noé Álvarez (Accordion Eulogies: A Memoir of Music, Migration, and Mexico)
Anna Dorn (Perfume & Pain)
Abby Geni (The Body Farm)
Aimee Nezhukumatathil (Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees)
Lee Upton (Tabitha, Get Up)

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

Abby Geni: What to do if you’re bitten by a shark. Strategies for dealing with a family curse. The secret lives of nonagenarians. How to commit the perfect murder.

Lee Upton: Extraordinary male beauty. Unappeasable loneliness. Impossible love. Outsized ambition. Futile Deception. Wicked optimism.  A snippet of hair. A fringe vest. Hectoring Save the Date cards. Why “making the bed” isn’t referred to as “squeezing the bed into its ghastly wardrobe.”

Anna Dorn: Pheromones, patchouli, pulp. Eucalyptus trees. Himalayan salt lamps. Single white females. Lesbians, limerence, lies. A dog named Jackie O. Tumblr. Amphetamines. Mania, mommy issues, the moon.

Noé Álvarez: Accordion Eulogies is a ballad about “going into battle with an accordion for a gun” and mourning the world through music (corridos, blood ballads, zydeco, conjunto, etc).

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Love. What does (and does not) nourish us. That wild and audacious—in publishing, anyway—(insert sarcasm) testament that it is possible to have a partner and kids and family—blood AND chosen—who aren’t, well, a drag. And that bold belief that it should be celebrated.

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

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Sun. Moon. Stars. Ocean. Sugar. Salt. India. Philippines. Orchards. Airplanes. The first bite of stonefruit dribbling down your chin as you stand outside, mid-morning sun, mid-June.

Lee Upton: Les Diaboliques and Vertigo. Also: televised scenes where women sing atop pianos, memories of being too broke to pay rent, the experience of seeking a job as a waitress and being denied the opportunity to fill out an application.

Abby Geni: Getting twelve stitches with no anesthetic. Swimming through a decades-old shipwreck. Chopping off my waist-length hair to see how I would look with a pixie cut. Laughing hysterically with my mother in the bathroom during a funeral.

Anna Dorn: Flung out of space. Globus hystericus. Summertime sadness.

Noé Álvarez: Diablitos. Malignos. Empaches. And malas jugadas.

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

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: A global pandemic, home with my family, crying and worrying every day. Not sleeping well. Slowly unmasking—literally and figuratively. my beloved geriatric chihuahua of a decade—Haiku—passed away as I was finishing up. Welcomed a totally opposite chihuahua (half Haiku’s size) as I was doing final edits on the book. More pool and water time than I’ve ever had in my entire adult life. First true break from teaching in fourteen years. Discovered, having had only a sister, that two teen boys can eat an entire refrigerator’s contents and not have an ounce of body fat on them. Totally appalled and totally jealous.

Abby Geni: The pandemonium—my kid’s word for “pandemic.”

Lee Upton: A terrible illness in my immediate family, requiring hospitalizations, continuing medical procedures. Witnessing bravery and stoicism.

Anna Dorn: Wrinkling, mild PTSD, living beside a freeway, falling in love.

Noé Álvarez: Fatherhood.

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

Lee Upton: Say anything, just don’t tell me about it if it will pierce my heart. Although, actually, I like many words, but the expression “goes too far” bothers me; I haven’t even gotten where I want to go. Then too, I would object to any description that suggests my character Tabitha is not firmly rooted in our shared reality. She simply has a particular, less usual, highly precise form of intelligence.

Noé Álvarez: Anything assuming working-class folk are incapable of verse or that our narratives are not also poetry. Allow me to slice you up a new one.

Anna Dorn: “Unlikeable women,” “unreliable narrator,” “sapphic chaos.”

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Exotic. “All-American.” Like what the heck? I was born in Chicago and literally know how to speak just English and some tiny Spanish so that I can order at a café.

Abby Geni: “Too literary.” I object to that one on logical grounds. You can critique my writing all you want, but let’s be clear: books are literature, and literature can’t be too literary.

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

Anna Dorn: If I had an ounce of musical ability I’d be doing that. Singing and producing. I’d also like to score films. I’d be Lana Del Rey meets Mica Levi meets Grimes (pre-Elon).

Aimee Nezhukumatathil: Marine wildlife photographer.

Abby Geni: Marine biologist. Ideally I would be surrounded by sea creatures at all times.

Lee Upton: A dancing singer who leaps across stage to perform a drum solo. Everybody wants that career so there’s a lot of competition.

Noé Álvarez: I am already many things through my writing, living in the wisdom of others. But if I had to choose, I’d say something in film. Hollywood, here I come.

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

Noé Álvarez: Empathy, intimacy, and complicating narratives. These are my priorities. Dialogue annoys me. What matters most to me are the things that go unsaid. Indie film, here I come.

Anna Dorn: I’ve been told pacing is my strength. And humor. I’d like to be better at describing scenery and feelings.

Lee Upton: Quasi-philosophical meandering: I don’t know if I’m good at it, but I certainly enjoy it. Most challenging element: plot as a function of cause and effect—I return to it even though it keeps killing me.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil:  I love beginnings, and even more when I nail the ending in essays and poems especially. I would love to know the magic of making a novel. I mean, my gosh—the sheer number of words makes me faint as a poet at heart. It just seems like pure magic.

Abby Geni: I love the natural world, and it shows. If you want beautiful descriptions of ostrich feathers or porcupine quills, come to me. I find humans more difficult. It takes me an excruciatingly long time to fully understand who my characters are.

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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?

Abby Geni: I’ve written fiction since I was six. I’ve written hundreds of stories that were never published. I write because I have to; it’s the way I’m wired. Don’t get me wrong, it’s always incredible to see my work in print, but if I never published anything again, I would keep writing.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil:  I write towards and through love. I write with the belief that humans are truly hungry to share and listen to anecdotes of each other’s lives. I mean we physically need that sharing. Even when our body is at rest, our mind keeps going and makes dreams for us to sate that hunger for storytelling. I write not just for my heart, but with other hearts in mind, too.

Lee Upton: Well, we all have things to say. It’s not hubristic to talk and listen to one another. Really, though, I wouldn’t mind a bit of hubris to help keep me going. Any time I’ve seen one of my books in someone’s hands I’ve felt incredible gratitude to the point of tears and have to restrain myself from seeming entirely too creepy. If you are reading this, I love you.

Noé Álvarez: Is it hubris to desire human connection? There’s nothing exaggerated about the pain and suffering too many of us experience in isolation. My book puts bleeding hearts together and makes music out of it.

Anna Dorn: Ungracefully. I suppose self-deprecation is its own form of hubris.