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:

Grace Krilanovich (Acid Green Velvet)
Emily Ogden (Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe)
Paisley Rekdal (Heritance)
Jim Shepard (The Queen of Bad Influences)
Ankur Thakkar (Blow Yourself Up)

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

Grace Krilanovich: Freedom, mobility; who gets to be an artist; style, ornamentation, artifice; work, leisure; the counterculture; the denigration of femininity; West Coast oddballism.

Emily Ogden: Guilt, mortality, and how literature helps us live with both.

Paisley Rekdal: The Four D’s: Death, dads, dubious decision-making, and the (mostly hopeful) delusions provided by art.

Jim Shepard: That gap between who we are at our best and who we are most of the time. Passivity. Complicity. The problematic comforts of having meant well. The awesome implacability of the natural world. The endless forms of privilege and injustice.

Ankur Thakkar: First loves, The Diaspora™, the elasticity of time, turning any ringtone into a Midwest emo riff, second chances.

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

Emily Ogden: The dreams of people long dead. Certain dreams of my own. The idea of a group biography of one person. A book that begins anew with every chapter. French decadence, magical realism, nineteenth-century sensational fiction. Hearts under floorboards.

Paisley Rekdal: Dorothea Lange; George Stubbs; my erstwhile drawing habit; Thucydides; bad marriage counseling; and the oral history archive that the American West Center, which I direct, has produced.

Jim Shepard: A lifetime of movies good and bad. Both kids’ and adults’ books on natural science. Peanuts. Catholicism. The arcana of monsters. The kind of weird minutiae that only nerds pull out of old archives.

Ankur Thakkar: Snow falling upwards, a B-side to the self, two lovers in a one-shot take, that pause before the final chorus.

Grace Krilanovich: Communes, occupations, encampments: OWL Farm, Occupy Wall Street, the Human Be-In, the biker invasion of Hollister, the Manson Family takeover of Dennis Wilson’s house. Central Coast landscapes: San Benito County rolling hills, the Forest of Nisene Marks, Elkhorn Slough. The excessiveness of Ken Russell, Joe Coleman, Tasha Tudor, clowns, migraines, Priscilla Presley, and the Winchester Mystery House. The male protagonists are case studies from the Lou Reed song “The Blue Mask.”

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

Paisley Rekdal: Utter chaos on every level, thanks.

Jim Shepard: Retirement and the liberation of time and focus that comes with it. Two dogs dying and two being rescued. Travel. More teaching, but of private workshops. And—finally!—almost enough time to read.

Ankur Thakkar: Reading widely, form rejections, moving cities, kettlebells, Vine, fashioning a mask of my smiling face and forgetting how to take it off.

Grace Krilanovich: Started in 2007. Living solo in the cat condo. Nocturnal. Swimming in the ocean. Estate sales. Working at the Los Angeles Times. Art openings and weird one-off events. Late nights at Suehiro, Original Pantry, Canter’s, Burrito King. Shows! Spaceland, the Smell, Safari Sam’s, Glass House, Mr. T’s Bowl. Babies, toddlers, little kids. Reading aloud from board books, then picture books. Following a toddler around a playground. Living next door to the big thrift store. Accumulating niche dishware, old phones and records. Up to three hours of childcare per week, then none. Zoom school. Folding small clothes; washing little faces; sunscreen; a million snacks. School’s back. Keeping track of masks. Alone all day! Writing all day! Naps. Finished June 2023.

Emily Ogden: Raccoon attacks.

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

Jim Shepard: Jeez. Now I’m depressed.

Ankur Thakkar: Someone who once managed call center workers told me this isn’t how Indian people are lol.

Grace Krilanovich: Surreal. Stream of consciousness. Automatic writing. Vomiting on the page. Turning on the tap. Veiled autobiography.

Emily Ogden: Pass! It’s hard to describe a book. I’m not going to quibble with anyone who’s been generous enough to describe one of mine.

Paisley Rekdal: “Too pretty.” “Intense.” “Long.” That said, I do write some pretty intense long poems.

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

Ankur Thakkar: Chef. I would give anything to write with the patience and trust I bring to a dish I’ve never made before.

Grace Krilanovich: Painting and drawing. Culinary historian. Designer of housewares à la Taylor & Ng.

Emily Ogden: Wildlife veterinarian.

Paisley Rekdal: Photography. Also, I’d like to go back to being a medievalist.

Jim Shepard: Veterinarian. Paleontologist. Film director.

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

Emily Ogden: I’m prone to surprising turns of thought and less prone to hierarchical arguments. I suppose you could call those tendencies a strength and a weakness, respectively, but I don’t think of writing in those terms. A style is not a collection of attributes and flaws any more than a body is. I do try to get better at writing, but not by maximizing every quality. I try to become more fully who I am.

Ankur Thakkar: Narrative voice and tone come to me more naturally; plot less so.

Paisley Rekdal: A strong command of syntax; also, a deep attachment to narrative. My weakness is a lack of brevity. Also, perhaps, my deep attachment to narrative.

Grace Krilanovich: Strong suit, I guess, would be language, sensory details, evocative sentences that build momentum. I’d like to get better at basic plot construction. I would love to be able to write something that’s actually scary.

Jim Shepard: In terms of narrative modes, I tend toward action and exposition and dialogue. When it comes to character description, though, the cupboard is often bare. I also think I do endings well and middles not so well.

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

Jim Shepard: I try to remind myself that mostly what I’m doing when composing is play. I tell my students if you come across a kid in a sandbox and ask her what she’s doing and she says she doesn’t know, you don’t then tell her to get the hell out of the sandbox.

Paisley Rekdal: I write poetry, so I already know no one has any interest in what I have to say.

Grace Krilanovich: I spent fifteen years mulling this. The book is the way it is because no one cared whether or not I worked on it. That freed me. Years ago I decided I would treat the novel as a place to put stuff I personally found amusing (as listed above). Maybe readers will be curious to know what decades of percolation time does to a novel?

Ankur Thakkar: Every novel is a gift. I want to read what you have to say.

Emily Ogden: Do they not? Should they not? Addressing other people is allowed. One isn’t assuming they’ll be interested. One is simply asking them to be.