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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Ross Barkan (Glass Century)

Elizabeth Greenwood (Everyday Intuition: What Psychology, Science, and Psychics Can Teach Us About Finding and Trusting Our Inner Voice)

Susanna Kwan (Awake in the Floating City)

Lincoln Michel (Metallic Realms)

Domenica Ruta (All the Mothers)

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

Domenica Ruta: Love, sex, babies, breastfeeding, not breastfeeding, bad friends, good friends, NYC real estate insanity, and chosen family.

Susanna Kwan: Art and caregiving and disappearing worlds. Patience and presence and water. Memory and memorials, San Francisco, impermanence, and one ordinary and transformative year.

Ross Barkan: It’s the sweep of history, the love of a family, and the great, peculiar glory of New York City.

Lincoln Michel: Friendships and starships. Aliens and alienation. Late capitalism and being late to the party. Living (screaming), laughing (crying), loving (throwing up).

Elizabeth Greenwood: Anxiety and intuition. Learning to trust myself. Psychics, tarot, reiki, and empirical studies, fMRI imaging, MBA psychology. Intergenerational errands. My sons.

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

Lincoln Michel: Playful postmodernism, gonzo science fiction, the cosmos, 360-degree satire, internet nonsense, and real life maaan.

Elizabeth Greenwood: Caffeine, the Delta, the Brooklyn Public Library holds system, psychedelics, an honest to goodness drive to answer a vexing question, sitting in the power, Geoffrey’s kitchen table.

Ross Barkan: The way the sun glimmers off a skyscraper; the thrum of an overhead train; the feeling of smacking a tennis ball in the center of a racquet; antiheroes and vigilantes; the slow creep of time, and how it comes for us all.

Domenica Ruta: “Better Things,” “Gilmore Girls,” “Absolutely Fabulous,” “Kate and Allie,” “Sister Wives” (these are TV shows, all scripted except for the last one, which is reality TV), and my own tragicomic life as a single mom.

Susanna Kwan: Other people’s memories, the Northern California coast, Chinese American history, vocal harmonies, maps, cemeteries, gardens, ecology, fireworks, anticipatory grief, a gold dress.

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

Elizabeth Greenwood: Creeping fascism. Wondering if it’s perimenopause or living in the 2020s. Saying goodbye to the dog of my life. Breakfast table silliness. Reversing generational curses.

Domenica Ruta: The pandemic, a newborn, hybrid schooling in NYC public schools, cancer, chemotherapy, radiation, multiple surgeries, parenting, and partnering.

Susanna Kwan: Droughts and wildfires and floods, pandemic, caring for an aging parent, cycles of doubt and belief, heart palpitations, birdwatching, lots of jobs, love in many forms.

Lincoln Michel: Pandemic lockdown. Crumbling world. Missing friends. Also falling in love, getting married. Long time to write!

Ross Barkan: Turning thirty, hiding from the pandemic, eating black beans out of tin cans.

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

Ross Barkan: None stick truly out in my memory because I tend to forget anything lousy said about my work, but there was a snotty line from a Kirkus review about how my novel was “predictable” because characters die in 9/11. I was annoyed about this until I heard about how little they pay people to write these reviews, and then I just felt pity.

Lincoln Michel: I try to avoid reading reviews, but there is a fine yet vital line between “weird” (good) and “whimsical” (bad).

Elizabeth Greenwood: One review of this book said, “Those interested in alternative ways of seeing the world” will be into it. On behalf of the alternative-ways-of-seeing-the-world-community, THANK YOU!

Domenica Ruta: Woke.

Susanna Kwan: I’m grateful to have any readers at all! But okay, I’m not a fan of “I wish this book were about __________.”

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

Susanna Kwan: Landscape design, to make living breathing paintings people can move through. Or nursing, maybe. Years ago, I thought I might go to nursing school—interned in labor and delivery at a hospital, shadowed nurses, registered at the community college for a science prereq I was missing. But on the first day of class, I was in a minor car accident and ended up losing my spot on the roster. Shortly after that, I took my first writing workshop…

Lincoln Michel: Singer in a dirty punk band or elbow-patched philosophy professor.

Domenica Ruta: Witch.

Ross Barkan: That’s an easy one: professional baseball player. I’d choose to be the very best, a five-tool centerfielder for the New York Yankees. I’d have at least three World Series rings and three MVPs. They would serenade me in the streets. Nothing could be better.

Elizabeth Greenwood: Quality control consultant for spas. Test kitchen taste tester for Yotam Ottolenghi. Dog appreciator.

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

Domenica Ruta: I’ve always enjoyed how easy and fast writing dialogue feels. Whether anyone else thinks it’s “good” is none of my business. This book has gotten praise for the character development, which pleases me to hear. I used to be bad at plot so I deployed the most basic-bitch big-movie-studio plot devices in this one to prove I can do plot, I just sometimes choose not to.

Elizabeth Greenwood: I can describe the f**k out of anyone. I ride or die for profiles. I’d like to get better at forms that are not profiles.

Lincoln Michel: I think I’m strong with ideas, dialogue, and structure. There are many elements I’d like to be better at and I think, in a semi-conscious way, my books have been attempts to teach myself craft elements. The Body Scout was in part a way to teach myself plot. Metallic Realms was looking more at character and an ensemble cast. Perhaps I’ll try a setting-focused novel next…

Susanna Kwan: I’m decent at sensory description. I’d love to be better at humor, dialogue, nonfiction, and structural thinking.

Ross Barkan: I am strong writer of character, as well as interiority. I am proud of how I can describe a person, a place, or situation. On the sentence level, I think I can compete with anyone, and my novels hum with ideas. I can imagine, quite effectively, worlds into being. I am a good plotter, and believe in narrative propulsion, but I can always be better.

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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?

Susanna Kwan: Nobody asked for my writing! I never forget that. But this book is about the search for connection at every level—from the most basic task of figuring out how thousands of written fragments fit together, to the relationship between the two central characters, to my hope for eventual readers who will find something meaningful within the pages.

Lincoln Michel: Well, it is 2025. Everyone is shouting into the din all day long. Is it so hubristic to say “please maybe try reading this novel I poured my blood, sweat, tears, and years of my one precious lifetime into” when everyone everywhere is asking you to pay attention to ephemeral social media posts, tossed off TikToks, and cell phone photos they spent half a second’s thought on? Novels might be downright humble these days.

Ross Barkan: I just do. I am sick of the faux humility novelists must adapt today; it’s all very tiring. Everyone humble-brags, no one is truly humble. So I dispense with artifice. I think I am very good, and I think you should read me. If you don’t, that’s fine. Not all literature is for everyone. I believe, strongly, in what I do, and that’s enough.

Domenica Ruta: I grew up with abusive working-class parents who were ambivalent at best about education and didn’t give a shit about my opinions on anything, so I was burned alive in this particular fire long before I was ever published a word and rose up from the ashes giving not one flying fuck.

Elizabeth Greenwood: I summon my inner mediocre white man.