Young writers are finding ways to speak out through character. Pulled from the news, fiction and fact condense into compelling personal accounts. But Naima Coster isn’t politicizing a message. Her work is far more reaching, more tender, and more carefully wrought. This Yale, Columbia, and Fordham graduate draws the straight line of success from classwork to her beliefs and book sales. Coster’s debut novel, Halsey Street, a Finalist for the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction, encompasses one family’s downward spiral while its dual perspectives expose a community’s erasure and rapidly changing identity. Coster’s lead woman, Penelope Grand, and her mother Mirella, emphasize their struggles and the importance of loyalty.

Penelope serves as Coster’s voice, allowing the author’s observations about race, class, and gender to proliferate the novel. In truth, Penelope is simply attempting to manage, make art, and embark on a relationship while juggling varied cultures. Coster understands balancing differing worlds and she cultivates a liminal place out of her own experience. Originally from Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood, she received a prized education in a prestigious all-girls Manhattan high school.

The navigation isn’t easy. Neither is writing a work called forth as a seminal representor of gentrification’s impact. But Coster gracefully moves through these pressures, citing an emphasis on self-care, time with friends, and a commitment to focused storytelling.

A lovely woman with a notable glimmer in her eyes, Naima Coster shares her eloquent thoughts and hearty laughs in a quiet Antioch University Los Angeles office where she is a guest mentor for the MFA creative writing program. Coster’s stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Paris Review, The Rumpus, Catapult, Arts’ Letters, Aster(ix), Kweli, and other publications. Other accolades include teaching writing in youth programs and to students in jail and at universities. Naima Coster tweets at @zafatista, writes the newsletter, Bloom How You Must, and lives with her family in Washington DC.

My experience in workshops have been very formative for me. They gave me a sense of what I needed to work on as a writer but even more importantly, in some ways, helped me understand popular sensibilities of other writers that I could then just keep in mind as I was working.

Andrea Auten: I loved reading Halsey Street. And I love how you personalized the breaking down of a neighborhood, and its changes, and its impermanence. The way it can be invaded and tenderly expressed, the same in the intimacies of a family. Could you tell me about the journey between the animate and the material in building Halsey Street?

Naima Coster: It’s a really interesting question. I think that interest in the material started for me probably with thinking about place, and the different ways that place can send us a message about who we are, or how we’re perceived, or can be something that people use to try to understand what’s going on in a neighborhood and a people. So, I thought mostly about the materiality of Brooklyn, and Bed-Stuy in particular, and how as it changed; the story of people in Brooklyn is changing. But I thought that that was also true of houses. Like how people craft their homes, and are able to care for them, or are not. It was especially relevant for Penelope, for someone who has a lot of trouble talking about her emotions or putting them into words and engages with the world mostly in physical ways. So, whether it’s the physical act of holding a paintbrush or running around the neighborhood and noticing what’s around her, it felt like a way to hold emotion, and psychological depth in the book when the characters couldn’t always.

AA: Yeah, right. I really did feel that.

NC: I’m glad that you did.

AA: I could get inside her, and I don’t think that was just because I’m an artist either. Are you an artist? Do you do any visual art?

NC: I don’t do any visual art, but I would’ve always liked to, and maybe I still will one day, although I feel daunted by it. Writing about a visual artist was a way to vicariously experience all of that. So, I did some research. I watched videos of people painting. I read art magazines. I just picked them up when I was in the bookstore, and went through them, and I had a friend who’s an artist read the book just to let me know what I’d gotten wrong.

AA: Had you gotten much wrong?

NC: Not from her reading of it, and I think part of that was because I was careful about what I elaborated on, and what I didn’t. She said that the art school experience that I described really resonated with her—which is interesting— because that was just an imaginative exercise, sort of thinking about and pulling from what I know about elite institutions, about artists, if not visual artists, but some of the ways artists can grandstand around each other. I was glad that it rang true with her.

AA: That leads me to my next question because I was taken with Penelope’s art, and it’s true that Halsey Street isn’t a book about art. It’s a book about an artist confronting these other issues and her response to the RISD crits (critical evaluations). You know, those Rhode Island School of Design students wear these shirts that say “Crit happens!”

NC: Oh! That’s Great!

AA: Yeah, right? Those crits are excruciating in the arts programs. Musical theatre boards can be like American Idol on steroids with that type of rigorous review. What do you think about artistic criticism for students studying the disciplines?

NC: My experience in workshops have been very formative for me. They gave me a sense of what I needed to work on as a writer but even more importantly, in some ways, helped me understand popular sensibilities of other writers that I could then just keep in mind as I was working. That didn’t mean I would write to that sensibility, but I could be aware of when I was doing something that might offend or unsettle or interest that sensibility. While I found them helpful, I think that something that can [get lost] in the room in the middle of a crit is how vulnerable all the people in the room are, and what they’re bringing with them into the room.

So, for someone like Penelope who’s bringing in already a sense of being alienated from her privileged peers—and there being no way that that’s meaningfully accounted for in the classroom—the crit is on her in this particular way. I think that’s true for everyone in a crit, or in a workshop. Everyone has a past, things that are going on in the present that affect how they hear feedback, and also how they give it to others. That’s not always an element that we wrestle with. We sort of just think of everyone as a writer because everyone is, and we can forget some of the more human feelings and fears that people bring with them into the room. And human prejudices, human—all of the things that are a part of us because we’re not just objective readers with good taste.

It’s difficult to figure out how to write a book that raises really provocative questions. It also makes some claims, I think, but making sure that it’s all subtle, and filtered through character in a work of fiction, but also making sure that the subtlety and the ambivalence aren’t so great that the book ends up saying nothing about gentrification, or about the theme.

AA: You were able to present gentrification without smacking the reader. I appreciate that. How did you dwell long term in a hard piece? It must have been really draining. What did you do to keep your energy up?

NC: Oh, that’s a good question. I think that’s something that always kept the book alive to me and kept the themes from feeling tired, was constantly uncovering new layers of character. So, I think I would’ve run out of steam if I just sort of fought through gentrification, and the book would’ve become too large and unwieldy because there are just too many things to say and explore, and my book couldn’t hold the pressure of telling some sort of authoritative account of gentrification in Brooklyn. But I was continually interested in what it meant for Penelope, and what it meant for her as she’s embarking on this relationship with her landlord, as she’s watching her father’s decline, as she’s meeting other artists. That kept it interesting and alive for me, following her character.

You ask how did I get inspired? Well, I didn’t work on it constantly for four years. There were ebbs and flows to my work on it, although it was more or less consistent, and I felt that the time that I was away from it made me sort of itch to get back to it and write. I ingested a fair amount of art during this time, so film and books, and that kept me really energized, and interested in things that I wanted to try on. Also, just having writing partners, and encouraging people, I found was really helpful when I didn’t always have the internal clarity about it. Meeting with other people who were spending their time in the same way, worrying about the same things was really affirming, and encouraging. Maybe not every writer needs that, but I certainly do.

In the beginning, I had an idea or a vision for the book, and then once I switched point of view, I thought that what the heart of the book was going to be was going to shift. It wasn’t just that the book would remain the same, but told through these two points of view. But what was ultimately at the center changed, which was challenging, but also really rich.

AA: Oh yes, because how did you keep from raging?

NC: Part of the fun of a novel is that the characters can have a range of responses and hold a range of emotions. There can be Ralph (Penelope’s father) in the book who’s sort of unapologetic in his lamentation of how the neighborhood has changed and his critique of gentrifiers, and then there’s Penelope who’s got this ambivalence and is in this in-between place. She gets to rage in the book which is different than the book raging. But I gave her permission to do it, and to do it without punishment. She’s not punished when she lashes out at her landlord and his friend who wants to buy in the neighborhood. Those moments, I thought, became really critical ways to suggest something about gentrification without making the book into a polemic. Even with her relationship with the Harpers, there are moments of tenderness and sweetness that I think keep the book from totally villainizing them. I would say that the book doesn’t totally condone their presence, their way of being, but kind of leaves that as an open question for the reader.

AA: There’s this moment with Mrs. Harper and I think Penelope is just using her observant power to figure some things out. Oh, this woman. How somewhat narcissistic in her needs; her problems are the largest in the room. How that was something Penelope had seen in other places, and I thought that was really… I don’t think tender is the word I want, but poignantly handled. It wasn’t this explosive point. It was just like, this is an observation. I thought that was really well handled. Not rage-y, really well handled.

NC: Thank you. It’s difficult to figure out how to write a book that raises really provocative questions. It also makes some claims, I think, but making sure that it’s all subtle, and filtered through character in a work of fiction, but also making sure that the subtlety and the ambivalence aren’t so great that the book ends up saying nothing about gentrification, or about the theme. Or that the book only says it’s complicated, rather than it’s complicated and this is true. Like, there’s a cost to displacement, so that was a delicate balance for me, and I imagine it’ll continue to be in my work.

AA: That struggle: in your LitHub article, “Who Gets to Write about Gentrification?” You say Penelope on her own might not be enough, and Mirella—the demanding character who stole more of your time-challenged expected behaviors. How did changing perspective impact your writing experience?

NC: Well, I think changing perspectives challenged my sense of what the book was about. In the beginning, I had an idea or a vision for the book, and then once I switched point of view, I thought that what the heart of the book was going to be was going to shift. It wasn’t just that the book would remain the same, but told through these two points of view. But what was ultimately at the center changed, which was challenging, but also really rich. I also thought it was good to get away from some things that were easy for me to default to. It was so easy to default to writing about someone with a similar educational trajectory to me. I didn’t drop out of art school, but someone who had a higher education. Penelope and I are not the same age, but someone who’s roughly in my age range.

So, it really helped challenge my sense of who I could write about, who was interesting to me, who I could follow, and also points of connection between the characters because there are as many points of connection between me and Penelope as there are between me and Mirella. Also, with some of the other characters, even if they’re not as fully formed, and I find that they’re pieces of me. Whether that’s questions, experiences, emotions, in all of the characters, even the ones who seem really biographically different.

AA: You had mentioned something about having found out your book was described as quiet and having some ambivalence about finding that out. I’d love to hear more about that if you could share.

NC: Yeah, so I’ll clarify that I heard it in two different ways. I heard it in a wonderful review from Kirkus Reviews that I loved, and I loved the use of it there because it didn’t seem like a condemnation, and it wasn’t cited as a flaw of the book. I thought that was just a really insightful, encouraging review. But I did hear it in other places as a critique. So, quiet. I wasn’t really sure what was meant by it, but what I think it means is that it’s about the internal world of these two women, and their thoughts and feelings and impressions. That, I thought, shouldn’t be a reason for critique at all. In large part because so much great fiction is about the internal world of characters, but perhaps characters who we have minds that are interesting, or energetic, and I think these women are actually quite loud in their convictions and beliefs. So it felt gendered…as much as it felt about some…I guess publishing world sensibility about what people read. Sort of like the minds of great men aren’t called quiet, but I might be wrong about that. But that’s my sense.

AA: There’s a lot to be learned right in the comments you’ve just made. Also, in this more tumultuous place, a white woman loved a book you were reading, and said, “Oh, I love that book. It’s about race without being about race.” I thought that was awful, truly awful. You state quite clearly that your book is about race. In this moment, I wonder about white fragility, and what’s appropriate to even ask you? So, I thought I’d be upfront about where I am with that.

I believe in educating myself, a big follower of bell hooks. I believe in doing the work, researching, reading, using books, such as yours, to increase my understanding. I do the best I can to not bring my questions or guilt or shame or grief caused by my people to people of color in my scope. I also believe in growing this sense with other white people in my scope. So, with that in mind and with regards to white fragility, how might your book work best? If we can talk about that. Or if you don’t even want to talk in that regard, I mean, I do want that question answered, but I go back to the first point of what’s appropriate to ask you?

NC: That’s an interesting question. I think that it’s great that you’ve brought up white fragility and race because I think they do shape readerly responses to literature just like they shape our lives at all kinds of levels: political level, at the level of the neighborhood; but we’re not always transparent about how that affects the assessment of a work of art, or whether a reader says something like I didn’t relate to this book. Or I was offended by this book. Or I just couldn’t get into it. Sometimes those responses can be totally shaped by race and racism, by white fragility.

So because I can’t control what is in a reader, nor would I want to, I do think that the reception of my book is beyond my control, and that readers will bring what they bring to the text, and I can only really think about how I craft the text itself. I saw some of this play out when I was reading online reviews of my book, sort of reader reviews, and then I stopped. Just because every writer I knew told me that was a bad idea, and I don’t regret stopping, but it was interesting to see how much racial politics were informing people’s view of the book in a range of ways. From deeming it important and urgent, to deeming it highly relatable, and including experiences that they had gone through in their neighborhood, people thanking me for the portraits of Brooklyn, to people deeming the book racist, or the characters unrelatable, or the use of Spanish alienating and frustrating, [or] not worth the money paid for the book. So, all those responses had nothing to do…or were not inevitable responses to my book, but were coming out of whatever the reader brought to the text. I am not going to change what I want to write in order to be palatable to any reader, or certainly not a reader who’s bringing white fragility to the text. But, you know, knowing that those responses are shaped by
so many other factors has been really helpful.

AA: Thank you, because it leaves me with: How do we all talk to one another, especially in this current political climate?

NC: Yeah, and I think that there has to be room for readers, classmates, teachers, to do some self-reflection about what they’re bringing to their assessments of texts, of other people, of art, and to think about how internalized oppression is shaping the way we interact with each other, and with creative work. Whether that’s sexism or racism or transphobia, whatever it may be, knowing that those things can’t be a part of us, and a part of our culture without affecting the way we talk about books and art and artists.

AA: Right, right, and the canon that has been given to us with our Eurocentric education. Looking at your teacher and how old your teacher is, and assuming how that person was educated and what they had to unlock. If we’re going to try not to bring how we were educated into the next generation, we have to unlock what was given to us.

NC: Yeah, and it shapes not just how we respond as readers, but also what we create as writers. I’m always struck by how beautiful a lot of the characters in fiction are, how conventionally beautiful, and thin. That’s another way that our ideas about who’s worth following shaped the work because it certainly doesn’t reflect the world we live in, that everyone is slender, and long- haired.

I think a lot just about how I have been given, and I’ve taken the time and space to really value my own mind, which I think a writer has to do, and I don’t think it’s something that women of color are always encouraged to do. I think in some ways my education gave me some sense that what I have to say and what I think matters and is valuable and might be useful to someone else. That has been no small thing.

AA: I invited one of our BA creative writing students from [the Antioch program] to hear you read. She had just attended Michelle Obama speaking in LA on the Becoming tour and was so thrilled. She’s an older student, a person of color, and an emerging writer. What would you like her, and others like her, to know?

NC: So many things. I would highlight the importance of finding a supportive community. Whether that’s a community that you can retreat to, to talk about some awful feedback you got, whether it’s in class, or from an editor, and just to have people who believe you. People who will believe you—and believe your assessment if you feel it’s something that was happening was because of who you are—and not just because of the work, just to have a community of people who will believe you, and encourage you, I think is really critical.

Also, there are a lot of people of color in the publishing world who are looking out for each other, who are amplifying each other’s work. Whether on Twitter, or through inviting people to speak, or buying their books, sharing resources. It’s very encouraging that there are sites of power that people are creating and sharing with one another. I would tell her that it’s important to keep going, and it’s a simple thing. I had a professor who said it all the time to us, and it really frustrated us—those of us who were his students—because we thought: can you just introduce us to an agent? Or tell us how to make it better? But he would always encourage us to keep going. Once I was out of the structure of school and working on a novel myself, I realized how much that had to become a mantra for myself when it really wasn’t easy to keep going. So, I would tell her to keep going, and that a supportive community will help with that, and to give herself whatever else she needs to keep going as best she can.

AA: In the college world, have you been confronted with surprising messages? How are students gaining a better understanding, coming together, listening, trying to make room for marginalized voices to speak?

NC: Yeah, I’m really cautious about constructing any sort of overarching narrative that explains America today. Something like students are taking charge and resisting more and more, or things are getting worse and worse. I always resist those overarching narratives. In part because I don’t feel qualified to construct them, but also because I am skeptical about how they often seem a-historical or just to erase complexity. What I do know is that both resistance and awareness, as well as ignorance and hatefulness, are consistent.

AA: Your education was a powerful driver for your parents, and then clearly, you continued it. How do higher academics empower women? And did your degree work push you away from anyone?

NC: Push me away from anyone? That’s a good question. I think that it’s always difficult when one has experiences that really differentiate them from their community or their family. Whether that’s having a different language and culture to claim than the generation before or educational level, it can create rifts and difficulties as well as new possibilities, but I wouldn’t say that it pushed me away from anyone. But it certainly established some differences between me and people in my community, and me and my family. But also lots of points of connection and similarity. It’s not all rifts. But in terms of how my education has empowered me, I think a lot just about how I have been given, and I’ve taken the time and space to really value my own mind, which I think a writer has to do, and I don’t think it’s something that women of color are always encouraged to do. I think in some ways my education gave me some sense that what I have to say and what I think matters and is valuable and might be useful to someone else. That has been no small thing.

AA: In the Kenyon Review, you mentioned once feeling anxiety, doubt, and a sense of failure when creating your art. Other times, you bring up hard times with the body. But when I read the powerful Paris Review piece, “Who Gets to Be Brooklyn Born?” or this beautiful piece about a wedding on the train tracks, I don’t find the lingering wisps of doubting your professional ability. Oh, that piece on your wedding! There was something about those two pieces right there, and I just was hit with your power.

NC: Oh, thank you!

AA: How are you handling your power these days?

NC: Yeah, I think I’m still learning to recognize my power, and to handle it. I have moments where I’m more in touch with it than others, and publishing a book has not changed that in terms of when I feel connected and empowered, and when I don’t. I do think that writing is a place for me where I feel most powerful and in touch with it. That’s probably why I started writing, honestly, as a child, because it felt like a way to establish my own authority, and my own version of things, and again, to value my mind. And so I think I’m still learning how to hold on to a sense of my power, and not forget about it, and then remember it, and forget about it. I think that the writing helps me to remember.

AA: And it seems like it’s growing with you. Even just reading the Cobain piece—

NC: You read so widely, thank you!

AA: I really enjoyed it too. What do you say to women who are feeling meek, beaten down, or worn out?

NC: Oof. Yeah. I guess I would say I’ve been there. And so have many of us. It’s a difficult experience, but not one in which you’re alone. Something that I think a lot about is how to honor my feelings, but also push myself beyond them in terms of action. Sometimes feeling meek, but doing the brave thing anyway is helpful. So, I try to do that a lot, to not always act out of my feeling. I’ve acknowledged the feeling, but sometimes you do the things anyway. I had a woman give me the advice where she was like, “sometimes you just put on a dress and sit at the grownup’s table.” I was talking to her about feeling sort of meek, and she’s much older than I am and further along in her career, but she said that there were times when she had to do that, as well. I think that that can be really helpful and can be a way of shifting feelings. Not always full, but introducing new feelings, too.

AA: I like it. The dress could be Doc Martens and jeans. What’s next, Naima?

NC: Yeah. I have two books in the works. One that I’m working on much more actively right now. That one is set in North Carolina, and it’s similar to Halsey Street in the sense that it’s about how place shapes people, how things that are happening in a community reverberate throughout, and it’s about two families. It’s a family drama with all of the themes that really interest me, so the interior lives of women, relationships across lines of difference, intergenerational trauma. It’s thematically really similar, but a whole different set of characters, a different place, and was formed by my time in North Carolina, which was really precious to me.

And then the other book is sort of a quest story that I started as a challenge for myself as a writer. That also has a lot of the same themes, but it’s about a young woman who has to go on a journey, and not just a figurative one, a literal journey to protect her family. It’s a different kind of book for me, but out of the same sort of questions. And the question of that book, I’ve shared this elsewhere, but I’l share it with you anyway—the question of that book is, how do you learn to be tender when life has required that you be hard? That’s the question that I’m kicking around throughout the book while this woman is on an adventure. I often start writing with a question in mind.

AA: Thank you, so much, Naima. This was really fun.

NC: Thank you for your thoughtful questions.

Andrea Auten is a writer and a visual and performing artist. A writing specialist for Antioch University Los Angeles, she is the community outreach, social media associate managing editor, and youth content coordinator for Lunch Ticket. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and lives with her husband, sons, and beloved writing partner, Dusky, the family cat. Find her at andreaauten.com.

Photo Credit: Casey Curry

Natashia Deón is the acclaimed author of Grace (Counterpoint Press, 2016), a Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, a New York Times Top Book 2016, an Entropy Magazine Best Book of 2016, and winner of the American Library Association Black Caucus 2017 First Novel Prize, among other honors. Deón is a graduate of the University of California Riverside-Palm Desert MFA program in creative writing and the creator of Dirty Laundry Lit. She is the recipient of a host of prestigious fellowships and residencies, including PEN America Emerging Voices, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and Yale. In addition to being a writer, she is a practicing attorney and a law professor. Deón is the author of the forthcoming novel The Perishing, due out in 2020.

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Within moments of meeting Natashia Deόn the evening before our interview, I know what type of person she is—she’s the type of person that people want to be their guru. And understandably so. She is both confident and humble, sharing as openly about her failings as she does her success. She speaks with the ease and authority of someone who is firmly grounded, someone who has gone deep within herself and emerged feeling at peace. That’s no small feat. It’s how I imagine Oprah would be if I met her, how I imagine we all would be after decades of meditation, self-reflection, and hanging out with Deepak Chopra.

But what Natashia Deόn is grounded in is her faith in God, and she speaks of it freely, reverently, without fanaticism and mostly without any self-consciousness. After sharing her belief that the story for her novel Grace was given to her by God, she says, “That’s how I feel about it, however that comes out or however that sounds.” As a woman of faith myself, it sounds reasonable to me, but that is not always the case with industry decision makers who often are concerned with more earthly matters. Despite that moment of self-consciousness, Natashia’s identity and her process as a writer are rooted in her faith, and her adherence to it in the face of opposition is the secret to her success.

We discussed this and other topics when I interviewed Deón on December 18, 2018 at the Antioch University Los Angeles campus. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

A.D. Lowman: I’ve got some prepared questions, but I’m totally open to wherever this goes. What I was thinking about as I prepared for this interview is that we read Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer last term, and she says something that I totally agree with, which is that we do students of writing a disservice by not exposing them to the drafts of finished works. We study all of these finished works, but we never really see the process to get there. And so we end up comparing our works in progress to these finished works, and we’re expected to get there without fully seeing the process.

I wrote my questions for you with that in mind, and knowing that we’re all very interested in the circuitous, messy, sometimes depressing process that we hope will lead to an acclaimed work at the end. A lot of the interviews I’ve read that you’ve done have been about the content of the book; I want to be able to do something a little bit different.

Natashia Deón: Great!

ADL: Your novel Grace engrossed me from the very first page and has received almost universal critical acclaim. Did you have a sense as you were writing it, or once you completed it, that you had created something so resonant?

ND: I felt like, if I’m going to be completely honest, I felt like it was a big book. I felt it because I felt that it was given to me. As a writer, I see…myself as a servant first of words, and I think my story came from God. That’s how I feel about it, however that comes out or however that sounds. So I knew that if I could carry it to this imaginary finish line, that He would be there. Because He wouldn’t give me something to fail or not show up at the end. And that’s what kept me writing it, so I knew that it was going to be big. I didn’t know that I was the writer to do it, but I knew that I was going to be obedient and I knew He was going to show up. So it wasn’t really like a confidence in me, like, “Oh, I’m so great that everybody’s going to love what I write.” It was my confidence in Him, that He would come through for me. And so in the middle of the night I’d wake up with these dreams of how to change something, or with these visions [of] “Oh, I didn’t think of that!” It was kind of like [God] was my editor. I just trusted that, so that’s what I always knew is that He would show up.

There was one point in the book where I had a vision of all these slaves standing on the battlefield and they were all frozen and they weren’t moving. It was like it was a photograph and I’m walking through them.

ADL: In an interview with the LA Times, you talked about the powerful vision you had that gave you the setting, story, and opening scene of Grace. How did you get such a firm grasp on both the geographic and historical settings for the novel?

ND: My family is from Alabama. My mom and dad were the first to leave a very small town in Alabama called East Tallassee, Alabama, since the end of American slavery. Pretty much everyone else [in my family] stayed there, or the farthest they’ve gone is Atlanta. But pretty much everyone is still there. They were the first to leave, but in the summers, I used to go there and spend time there, so I knew the setting from when I was young, even though I was born in LA. And I would read a lot, so I was researching, but it was really based on my childhood memories of the place, and it doesn’t look anything like that now. And I didn’t want to go back to it because I didn’t want anything to change in my memory. And I don’t want to correct anything. Anything that I got wrong, I didn’t want to see it differently. And I used to ATV around the woods and stuff, you know? I wanted to remember that and honor that.

There was one point in the book where I had a vision of all these slaves standing on the battlefield and they were all frozen and they weren’t moving. It was like it was a photograph and I’m walking through them. And it was after my book was already being edited and [I] was like, “I’m missing something, I’m missing something.” And I’m on this battlefield and all these slaves are just frozen there. And it just answered the question that I had which was—because people kept saying, “Well, why isn’t the Emancipation Proclamation this moment of happiness for slaves?”— and it was because obviously they weren’t free, number one, and two, they were released in the middle of the Civil War. So there was nowhere for them to go, they were standing there like, “We can’t go.” They’re literally standing on the battlefield like, “I’m not going to cross the battlefield. I need to stay where I am. It’s safer here.” And it answered that question for me. So a lot of the details that I saw in that vision [answered] questions like, “Why didn’t my family leave?” They were freed, but why did they all stay where they were slaves at one time? So details like that, God just showed up for me.

ADL: Critical acclaim of Grace hails it as “flawlessly constructed,” and I would agree. Can you talk about how you created such a strong backbone for the novel?

ND: You know, I didn’t have a backbone [at first]. My novel just went linearly, and I remember finishing it thinking…it’s not moving. I get it, but it’s not moving the way that I want it to. I always had the opening, because I had that from the beginning. I didn’t want her to go through her life, then die, and then it starts the story of her daughter. And I went to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts to do a fellowship. For two weeks I’m there. They give you a studio to write in and an apartment, and you just sort of do the work. And I didn’t write a single word. They feed you, I went to the gym and I was like, “This was a waste of my time. Two weeks, it’s too quiet! There’s horses…” But the day that I got home to LA, and I woke up the next morning, I knew the structure of it. I knew it was going to go back and forth in time. So that’s sort of how I got the structure. And I thought about death and how people have near-death experiences, so I wanted to do it like that. Because my question is, “What scenes do we see?” Do we get to see this one right now, us sitting in this room? Like, why would we or would we not? So I was always interested in that, and I thought I could tell the story like that, and it worked.

 ADL: What was that interaction like with an editor? Is that something you did before it went to that process?

 ND: Yeah, but I talked to other editors who didn’t want that. What happens after you get your agent [is] you send it out and your agent will put you in touch with editors who are interested in buying it. So then you have this editorial call with them to see what their vision is because you want to make sure your editor sees what you see. Because Grace was 600 pages, and I had to cut it. So I’m like, “What do you want to cut? Do you want to cut the structure?” Things that you don’t think about as a writer.

Like to get into a book club, usually their page count is limited to 150. If your book is over 150 pages, the big ones like Well-Read Black Girl [look for] those books…to read on the big circuit. You know you’re not thinking about that as a writer, this is a 300-page book. It still made it to book club. I’m just saying…if that’s your eye for people to talk about it in book clubs, stuff like that is what [editors are] thinking of.

So I’m talking to my editor like, “I don’t think we’re going to go from 600 pages to 150 and still preserve this product.” He says, “We can still do it. How do you feel about the time jumps? Can we make the Emancipation Proclamation a happy day?” And I say, “No, it doesn’t make sense.” But there were other editors who were like, “We need to change it so it revolves around one day: the Emancipation Proclamation.” And I’m like, “No, that’s not how the story goes.” Or we need to leave out all the extra characters who aren’t black, and I said that’s not how the story goes. So you have to pass on big houses and it hurts. But at the end of the day, I felt like I wanted the book that God gave me and entrusted me with. Who am I going to give this baby to? So that became my decision instead of a financial one, but I think it worked out because I got the best team.

ADL: Your novel has also been praised for having the “propulsive plotting of a suspense novel,” and “sustain[ing] a murder ballad’s intensity for hundreds of pages.” How did you keep the literary and suspense aspects of your novel in balance? How did you keep one from overtaking the other? The phrase that has been used [at the ongoing MFA residency] is the “contract with the reader.” The opening tells them whether to expect literary, suspense, etc., so how did you handle that?

 ND: I had ten days to edit Grace by the time it got—because there’s such a thing as trends. Because Underground was coming out, Yaa Gyasi’s book [Homegoing] was coming out, all these books. And my editor came to me in November, and my book wasn’t supposed to come out until the fall of the next year and the distributor PGW—which is the largest producer next to Simon & Schuster which does all the small presses—they were like, “If your book doesn’t go now, it may not go. So we need you to edit it and have it ready for Winter Institute.” So this is the first week of December. [They said], “We need to have it ready to be printed, galleyed, so you can be in this thing called ‘Winter Institute’ in January.” So we have ten days, and it was over Christmas and everything.

So we had to have it printed and I remember I was like, “Okay, Dan, I can do this, but I need a week after we edit it. You have to promise me that you’re going to give it back to me, no matter what we do…” And he’s like, “Okay, we gotta send it to the copy editor.” And what you get in a galley is usually not copy edited. So as I was reading through it, there were three chapters at the beginning that slowed it down. So if I’m in this rush, am I still wanting to turn the page, or am I slowing down? And so I had to cut, and I said, “Dan, I need to see it! You promised me a week!” He said, “You got three days!” So I read my book in three days and I just chopped Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, and it just went. And then I added some stuff, changed some stuff. And then it made sense to me, and that’s how it went.

[You and I] talked about this “writer instinct” because you know that something’s missing, so as much as you love it, you want a reason for the reader to turn the next page. There’s no reason, so you have to give them a reason, so that’s what I intentionally did.

ADL: Wow, I don’t even know what to write from that. I’m just going to have to take that from the recording!

ND: Just trust your instincts! Don’t let anybody else tell you, you know already, you know already. It’s just how to do it. Your only question as a writer is, “How do I do it?” I know there’s a problem here, and I know I’m trying to fake it and do all this stuff. Maybe nobody will notice, they’ll appreciate the literary, but they don’t. That’s the reality. And I knew because I was under that gun. I [loved] this character because there was a friendship—a best friendship—I said, but I had to lose her because audiences will close the book.

ADL: You said in the LA Times interview that it took you seven years to write Grace. You also mention in your acknowledgments about it starting out as a screenplay. What did that seven years entail? Are there any lessons you learned during that time that aspiring authors could benefit from?

ND: You know it’s funny…so the screenplay is different than the novel because it’s a different art form, right? But when I got that vision in the beginning, I had never written a novel. I didn’t know how to write a novel. But I had written screenplays for like MTV, so I like knew that form. So when I had that vision and wrote that opening page, I was like, I felt like it was supposed to be a novel, but I was like, “I can’t write a novel! I’m not a novelist. I’ll write it as a screenplay!” So I wrote it as a screenplay in six months. It was done and it was sent out to film festivals where it was winning screenplay [awards]: Charleston, London, Beverly Hills, it was winning all these awards everywhere.

Always trust your writerly instinct. Never take a note that doesn’t resonate with you. There are notes that people could give you that are right, but right now you’re not at a place where you could receive that note.

It won eight awards, and then I went to an option meeting. And I’m sitting at the table with all these famous, powerful people and they’re talking about the book like, “Well, Cynthia, we’re not going to make her Jewish. We’re going to make her this other kind of character. We’ll make her like biracial. She’s not a prostitute because you can’t be Jewish and a prostitute.” I was like, “What are we doing? This is not how the story goes! This is not how it goes!” And then when it was time to sign, I said, “I can’t sign. I need to write this book so that at least it’ll be the story that I was given before you make it the story that you want it to be.”

So I enrolled in Novel Writing I at UCLA Extension Program. And then I just started learning how to write a novel. The rest didn’t come inspired like my opening, but I put in the work to learn the craft of it. And that’s how it became what it is. And it’s plotted differently, but I learned dialogue. Because you learn how all dialogue has to reveal character, reveal emotional state, move the story forward, so it helped me with that.

The first two years was this screenwriting thing because I thought it was going to be a movie. And then I was in an MFA program. So after I finished, I was a PEN Emerging Voices Fellow for a year, so that’s like three years now and two years is in the MFA program. So now we’re talking five years because you’re not really writing. At least in my MFA program, you’re reading other people’s stuff, you’re not working specifically [on your own writing]. So it really took two years in earnest but I had all that pre-time to think about sort of what I wanted to do and learn the craft. So it took about two years to write it and sell it and for it to come out. So seven years is not really [accurate].

ADL: In that process, was there any point where you felt delayed or discouraged, or did you feel—because in what I’m hearing, at least, there is a lot of purposefulness and intention behind the decisions you’re making and what you’re accepting and what you’re not accepting for your story. So I guess I’m just curious what advice can you give to writers in that process?

 ND: It’s to always trust your writerly instinct. Never take a note that doesn’t resonate with you. There are notes that people could give you that are right, but right now you’re not at a place where you could receive that note. And it could be three years from now that you’re like, “Oh! That’s why!” But if you take a note because that’s the consensus to make this change, and you do it but your heart is not in it, you won’t see it as an artist, and you’ll end up writing something that you don’t like, that you don’t love and was never supposed to be in there at that moment. It could be a future revision, so you just hold onto it, put a pin in it. Reject notes that you don’t understand or that don’t feel right to you. They could be right but they’re not right for you right then. It’s all a journey.

There’s one scene that’s not in the book that I held onto for a very long time, till the very end. People were like, “You can’t do this, people will close the book.” I was like, “Nope.” Because this was reality, this was how it happened in my life. I was using a real-life experience, and I’m putting it in there. And even the rape scene that’s in the book, I had to pare it down, but I wouldn’t. I was like, “Nope.” Because I want people to understand that rape is not only date rape. I need people to really understand this thing. And then finally I was like, in those ten days of editing, my editor was like, “Natashia, it’s too much for some people,” but I was like, “This is real! This is real life!” This was my client, somebody who was torn from one end to the other. I was like, people should see what we talk about when we talk about rape. It’s not just a word people throw around, you know? There’s violence. He was like, “I just think it’s too much. We need to pare it down.” I was like, “Alright.” So I pared it down, and he was right. But I had to understand it at that moment, but it didn’t resonate with me until right then that it didn’t have to be that harsh. And people still complain about that scene.

ADL: After sitting with your novel for that long, what was it like when it was finally published?

ND: It was great! You know, it happened so fast. You know how people say that? It literally [did]. December we’re editing and January I’m at Winter Institute and they hand me my galley while I’m sitting with booksellers at a table before we go in and I’m just crying. So this is like January 13^th and remember December 27^th [I was] editing this thing. And they’re like, you need to go in this hall with all these writers around this huge hall in this hotel. And people are coming and asking me to sign it, and I’m like, “What?” So I’m signing books, and there’s a huge long line of people and it just doesn’t make sense to me, but I’m just like, “Okay!” And then they sold out within the month.

So February I was in my second printing. That same month, Amazon and Blackstone went into a competition for the audio rights, and then Blackstone blocked Amazon. And I’m like, “What?!” So all my advance and everything is paid off before I even start. So I don’t have to pay any money [back]. So I make money with the first book. And then Lisa Renee Pitts—[the movie] Straight Outta Compton had just come out—she was Dr. Dre’s momma, and she’s the actress they choose to voice it. So now we’re only in February/March and then it was in the fifth printing by August and I’m traveling the twenty-two cities. So there was never a time where I got to sit and [contemplate]. And at my book release, all my friends came out and it was exciting. But I didn’t feel like it happened. I’m signing books like, “What is this thing that they’ve given me?” So that’s how fast it happened.

ADL: In addition to being a writer, you’re a practicing attorney, law professor, wife, and mother. Do you have any advice for those of us writers who also balance families and/or alternate careers about how to keep the plates spinning?

ND: First of all, you just have to give up hope that you’re going to have time to just sit down… especially if you’re a mother. You’re not going to have the time that single people have, so stop comparing yourself to single people or people who don’t have children because your life will look nothing like that. Be with [other] people who are moms, who are even spouses, because you’re responsible for taking care of other people, and [being a spouse is] like taking care of a child or someone else, and your schedule is not based on what you want to do. It’s based on working [around] everybody else who affects you. So if you’re moms, specifically, don’t compare yourself to people who are single. And it’s hard to do. You have to…look straight ahead in your own lane.

[Just] give up hope that you’ll have time. But schedule time, even if you have to do a little writing retreat. Save money, or take your tax money or whatever, [and] make your own retreat. Because you know, you miss deadlines, because the deadlines are like nine months for all the good retreats, so you forget them. Just set up to go to another city in a hotel and just write. Make your own retreat. And also write whenever you can. Whenever you have an idea, put it in the notes section of your phone. Just put it in there. I wrote most of Grace in the notes section of my phone waiting for my children to get out of school. You have to trick yourself. Even if it’s one scene, I just want to write the conversation with Cynthia and Naomi. Any way that you can move forward.

Every day you should try to move forward, even if it’s a bad sentence. Like, for instance, in the book I just sold. The last thing I wrote before I sent it to my agent was something that came to me when I was walking and it was, “I’m a fragile instrument” [and] something about being used by God. And that was it. And it ended up being the opening. I redid the opening and made that the opening line, sent it to my agent, and that’s the one that they bought. So even if it was a weak sentence, you never know. Just write it. You make your own schedule. You’re your own boss.

ADL: When people are asked to reflect on their lives, a lot of times they’ll say that good or bad, they wouldn’t change a thing. I completely disagree with that, and there are many things I would edit in my life story, given the chance! What about you? Is there anything you would change on your writer’s journey if you could?

ND: Yeah. Real talk? I would change being upset when things didn’t happen for me that I thought that I deserved, and doing it publicly. I had this moment, this very embarrassing moment where Grace, it was requested by a prominent magazine that I love. And I didn’t win, let’s be real. [She laughs] But I knew—or I felt, true or not—that my book was stronger than this other book that did win. And I [said it] was just because this person’s popular, just because they’re a male, all those other excuses that could be true or not. And I went to social media and I said something about it. It was up for maybe five minutes and then I took it down, but enough people saw it. And two years later I went to a conference, and someone says, “Can you believe someone would do that?” as she’s looking at me. And I had to tell her, “I did that.” Because I thought at the time that it was true, but you know what? It doesn’t matter.

I wrote most of Grace in the notes section of my phone waiting for my children to get out of school.

And I know that more now because I’m a judge for the LA Times Book Prize. I have 275 books to read. If those first few pages aren’t good, I’m like “Thank God, I’m moving on to the next book.” And that’s what life is like. And I know a lot of the people in my pile. And I feel horrible because a lot of these people are my friends and I’m not choosing [their] book and that hurts. So there’s a lot of things that come into play. Is this book too big? Like you have Bill Clinton’s book, and he’s doing first fiction (one of the Book Prize categories). You have so many things that go into play and you can’t worry about contests. You just have to worry about writing the best book that you can write. Because 100 years from now, somebody will open up the pages of your book and be like, “Who is this person? When did she live? Is she still here?” That’s all you have to worry about. Did you write the best book that you could write right then? And don’t worry about what other people are doing. And then learn how to applaud when other people get [recognition]. And if it’s not natural, just start practicing. Just say, “Good job!” until it becomes who you are. So that’s what I had to do, and I have a whole different attitude toward it, but I had to make that mistake to learn it, fully.

ADL: Do you have any ongoing or upcoming projects you’d be willing to share with our readers?

ND: The book that I just sold is called The Perishing, it comes out in 2020. And it’s about a black woman…in 1930s Los Angeles, [who] basically becomes aware that she may be immortal just as she finds a love in a city worth dying for. So it’s all about the 1930s, between the two World Wars here in LA, and it’s not about Hollywood. I mean, there’s parts that reflect [that], but it’s about the people who lived here and what they went through.

ADL: Are you still working on Dirty Laundry Lit and some of the other projects that launched you?

ND: Well Dirty Laundry Lit is on a long hiatus because I wanted to focus [on something else]. I have a commitment to mentoring and bringing up the next generation of writers. Like, there was nobody for me saying, “Come on, Natashia,” so there was a lot of floundering, figuring things out, getting it wrong, offending people. “Should I be mad at this, should I not?” There was no sounding board, so I’m trying now to make myself available for other people and give them a platform.

And I’m redefining friendship in my life. You know, I’m at an age where I want friends not just to commiserate with me and say, “Oh, look how terrible it is,” but people around me who can help, who can do something about it. Because they want to, because they can. Because I’m a giving person anyway, and I’ll show up for people, so now I’m asking people to show up for me. So let’s be friends, but I have people to commiserate with. I need this kind of person, now I’m hiring!

You have so many things that go into play and you can’t worry about contests. You just have to worry about writing the best book that you can write.

I also want to be able to help people who are coming up. I’m not like Toni Morrison or somebody like that, but I have something and I want to share this one little piece with somebody else. So I started The Table Reading Series, which is at Hollywood Hotel because they called me and told me they wanted to host Dirty Laundry, so I said how about I do a new reading series and I bring in up-and-coming producing groups to produce their own readings. So I have my black women writers, then I have the LGBT, the ex-prisoners, we have all these different groups to come [to The Table]. I show them how to contact their readers, how you make an invitation and all the bits and pieces of how to do it, so they can create their own, so hopefully they’ll be able to multiply that way.

ADL: So what are you reading these days?

 ND: Everything! I told you I’m doing the LA Times Book Prize! The books I’m reading for the LA Times are all books that were published in 2018. The books I chose for my [MFA mentoring] group are books that I think are really well-done but reflect something different:

• The Road by Cormac McCarthy because of its strong setting.
• How Are You Going to Save Yourself? by J.M. Holmes because of the difficult racial issues it raises. (“Writers are the conscience of the nation.”)

*     *     *

I close our interview by asking Natashia if there’s anything I didn’t ask that she wished I had. She turns the question back on me and tells me she wants me to ask her if she thinks I can become the writer I think I can. It makes me blush a little, but I ask her. In response, she feeds back to me the qualities that she’s picked up about me in the short time since we met as evidence that I have what it takes to succeed as a writer. It’s when she starts talking about the sacrifice I’m making as a mother to pursue my writing career—a sacrifice with which she is intimately familiar—that I start to tear up.

This probably wasn’t the most auspicious way to end my first author interview…but guess who just found their new writing guru?

A.D. Lowman is a management professional, consultant, and community leader. Her leadership and career advice has been featured in Essence, Money, and Diversity Woman magazines. She is pursuing her MFA in creative writing at Antioch University Los Angeles where she serves as a blogger, interviewer, and assistant web team manager for Lunch Ticket.

Vandana Khanna has published two full-length collections of poetry, Train to Agra and Afternoon Masala, as well as her most recent chapbook The Goddess Monologues. Among her achievements are notable features in the New England Review, The Missouri Review, 32 Poems, Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace, Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation, and Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry, as well as the Crab Orchard Review First Book Prize, The Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize, the Diode Editions Chapbook Competition, the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, and five Pushcart Prize nominations.

She has taught English and creative writing at Indiana University, Pitzer College, Whittier College and the University of Southern California, among other colleges, and is the co-poetry editor of the Los Angeles Review. Vandana and I conducted the following interview in person in early December 2018. This interview has been edited for clarity.

Amanda Lopez: We’ll start with this: When and what experiences urged you to begin writing poetry?

Vandana Khanna: I first started writing when I was really young, like I was nine years old and I tried to write my first novel. But I came to poetry more in middle school and high school. It seemed understandable why I would be gravitating toward something I thought was really intense, which was poetry. So, I pretty much started writing poetry in middle school and high school. And then from there, I was able to go into my undergrad program and work with the most amazing teachers ever. From my undergrad on, I took a poetry workshop every semester I was able to, which was all of them. I was really lucky because my first teachers were Rita Dove, Charles Wright, and Greg Ore, who were these like luminaries in the poetry world. I feel like I learned from the best early on. I was pretty lucky in that way.

AL: Do you think that their work has remained influential to your work, or has it shifted?

VK: Absolutely. I definitely learned so much from them and I feel especially with Rita Dove and somewhat with Greg Ore. I was really so enamored with their poetry it really influenced the way I wrote and what I still do in my poetry, and try to remember what I learned from them at such an early age.

AL: How did growing up as an immigrant influence The Goddess Monologues?

VK: Well, my first two books were really heavily about the immigrant experience. Primarily because it was such a shaping factor in my own life. With The Goddess Monologues, it just hit me that I am an immigrant, I’m raising biracial children, who are Americans, but I wanted them to still be connected to my culture and what I grew up with.

One of the things I did was read this picture book to my son, who’s now way older,—laughs—but when he was little, it was really important that if we read picture books they would be about Hindu mythology. Even while reading those picture books, I’d have to edit out some of the story—and this was really before he could even read, he was like three or four—because mythology, whether it’s Hindu mythology or Greek mythology or whatever, it’s pretty violent. Gods and goddesses are at war and they get kidnapped and their heads get cut off. While I was reading them, I’d have to edit them on the go. But it did strike me that they were all really about the gods. I was like huh, these goddesses have just become devices for these men, but in actual Hinduism, the goddesses get prayed to a lot; they become the god or goddess of the household, and you pray to a particular goddess. In actual practice, the goddess is beloved and prayed to and worshipped, but I also wanted to think about how they were being worshipped because they followed certain rules of conduct. I was kind of thinking Well what happens when you really strip away at it? You have these goddesses, young girls, or young women, and maybe they didn’t choose to be a goddess, and it was just their “destiny” or whatever. I thought about how it would feel to be a young woman on the precipice of being great or Holy, and what does that even mean, in very human terms. And it plays into the immigrant thing with the themes of my childhood being a good Indian girl and following certain rules.

Ultimately as a writer, you do have to be true to yourself. There are going to be editors and people who you won’t be able to please. There will be people who will be like Why don’t you write more about your ethnicity and growing up? and We don’t see enough of that in your writing.

These poems are also somewhat a reaction to growing up in that culture, which I think a lot of people can probably relate to. It doesn’t have to do with one particular culture. It’s the culture of our household or your family and what’s expected of you as a young woman.

AL: That kind of takes us to my next question: I’m a third generation Mexican-American, and although my grandma planted strong roots in our Mexican heritage, sometimes I have trouble navigating my work as a biracial writer when I’m so far removed from my immigrant ancestors. What advice would you give to a bi-cultural writer?

VK: It’s gonna sound a little hokey, but you have to stay true to who you are and the complexities of who you are. One of the things I really remember from growing up was that is it was really hard to navigate the space I found myself in, partly because there were only a handful of people I felt like who were having the same experience as I was. But as we move forward as a world and as people who intermarry more and have more multicultural children or multiracial children, there will be more people who will experience that complexity and multiplicity.

There are lots more role models now than when I was growing up. Like I wasn’t taught much about Asian-American writers until I went to college and I took one of these writing classes. Then I was finally reading not only Asian-American poets but Indian-American poets, you know, that I never read growing up. Ultimately as a writer, you do have to be true to yourself. There are going to be editors and people who you won’t be able to please. There will be people who will be like Why don’t you write more about your ethnicity and growing up? and We don’t see enough of that in your writing. And then there will be people like, Why are you always writing about x, y, and z? I don’t think you can please everybody; you should just please yourself as a writer, no matter what you write about or how you choose to write it.

But I think we’re in a space now that as we have more and more writers of color becoming editors and positioning themselves in situations that allow them to have more power, they can assess this work based on the complexities of who they are and what they’re bringing to the table, and not like I don’t understand that word or Gosh, that looks like an Indian word or a Spanish word, and I don’t feel like looking it up. I’m hopeful of writers of color being editors or judges of contests, that they bring all that experience with them. And that’s a good thing. Not to say that the status quo hasn’t helped certain people, but in general, if you have a diverse population, it should be reflected in leadership positions. And once you have that, it allows writers to just be writers, and not to have to carry all the other labels on them, and let society stew.

AL: How would you describe your creative process or writing ritual?

VK: It has stayed consistent for a number of years. Life kinda gets in the way sometimes. For me, when I’m not teaching or editing a lot, I try to write every day if I can. And if I can’t, if there are other work obligations or life obligations, I try to write once a week. I feel like if I don’t stay in touch with that part of myself on an almost constant basis, I’m a terrible person to be with. I’m a terrible friend, a terrible teacher. I’m terrible at all those other things because being a writer is so much a part of my identity at this point that if I don’t do it, I feel like I’m a sham.

I try to write if given the chance, every day. If not, I kinda look at my week and say On Friday I have like two or three hours, I’m just gonna dedicate it to writing. For me, it takes a little while to disconnect from the world. I have to incorporate that disconnect time into my writing time as well. So I try to write every day.

I want these girls and young women to be complex, I do want them to fail. I want people to acknowledge their pain without considering them to be victims.

I primarily have to write in my house because I get distracted very easily. I can’t write in a cafe—It sounds so romantic, like how you see people and you think, Ooh, I wish I could do that with my latte, but I just get too distracted. I like my house, I like to have a computer and a printer. I used to hand print everything, so I have several journals which were my first and second books. With the third book, I was composing on the laptop, which I’ve never really done. I used to compose by hand, then go to the laptop, then print that out and do this whole thing. Now I’m just composing on the laptop, and I like it.

I think once you’ve established a process and another emerges, you kind of just have to go with it, you have to do it. Because I will do anything to trick my mind into writing. I do have to write at home, partly because of the quiet, and partly because I tend to wear really ugly, comfortable clothing and I don’t think people want to see that in the world.—laughs—So for me, it’s quiet, comfortable, and then I usually start by reading something. I read a lot of contemporary poetry, so I will go to any lit mag’s website and start reading a current issue online and see what sparks me. Or if I’m on social media and one of my writer friends posts like Oh, I just got published in this literary magazine, here’s my poem I often will save those posts of theirs and I’ll sit down and read the poems in hopes that something will inspire me. I have to write a lot and often to feel I have even a little bit of material I like.

AL: Do you sense there’s a difference between writing manually and typing?

VK: I have to say because I made a shift between the second and third book, that the first two are very narrative, and this third book is narrative but it’s slightly more lyric than those. What I tried to do with this one is replace straight narrative with mood. It kind of worked really well, because in my mind the book was, rather than individual poems, it was like this big book of mood—laughs—It was easy to put it right on the computer, because even if I just came up with one line here or there, I could go back to that one line and connect it up to another one-liner. And that’s kind of how I built some of those poems because I was more concerned with that idea of mood than telling like a straight narrative of somebody, or one of the goddesses. I was more concerned with their emotions. If I was in a mood myself while I was writing, sometimes there were angry poems, sometimes they were sad or melancholy. I would just sit and write those and when I went back, I would try to put those lines together that were sort of similar moods. The book turned into a sequence of poems rather than broken up into individual stories.

AL: Are there any misconceptions or things readers tend to miss while analyzing The Goddess Monologues?

VK: I think some things people are going to miss because they’re not gonna look up, like these goddesses. And I’m okay with that because, again, what I want to get across is the feel of it, the feel of these women and these girls. And whether or not they understand the full scope of a particular story, I don’t mind that. In fact, I encourage people to just read the book. I have a whole notes section in the back, knowing some people will want to look at the notes and some people won’t. The poems should just stand on their own. You can just pick it up and get some sense of what’s going on, and what the implications are. But I don’t know, I’d have to see what people really feel about it. A lot of my titles have “girl” in it; when people come to a page and they see a title like that I wonder what their assumptions are, what they bring with them when they see “girl.” I’m not sure how people receive that, but I am sure it’s interesting.

AL: That is interesting! What is your intention behind “girl?”

VK: So much of our world ignores girls, and ignores their power and their pain. Or the flipside is true; we say women are all powerful and they’re not allowed to falter and they’re not allowed to fail. We’ve reversed this pendulum, which can be a good thing, but there’s also then this ultimate pressure of like, what if you fail? So I have poems in the book where the goddesses do fail. They fail these tasks, these certain moments, tests. I want these girls and young women to be complex; I do want them to fail. I want people to acknowledge their pain without considering them to be victims. Women are portrayed as all-powerful or victims, nothing in between. There’s no transition between the two modes. I hope these poems show that women and girls and even goddesses are complex and they do fail and sometimes they do get hurt but that they can move beyond that hurt—or they hold onto that hurt and it fuels them.

I do feel like a lot of my work questions assumptions we make about religion, about being holy, about gods, all of it, that expectation of what a holy person or what holy women should be like.

AL: And that complexity shows up in your titles like “The Goddess Shows Up Late to the End-of-the-World Party” which is so humanizing for these women, these goddesses.

Do you see writing poetry as a spiritual practice? A political act? Can it be both?

VK: I think they’re both in the sense that from a very early age when I first started writing poetry, and my first couple of books, I really am preoccupied with this idea of God and religion and how women navigate that space. Especially because I grew up Hindu, but I also went to Catholic school, so a lot of my early work is grappling with this idea of being between two religions. And now with the goddesses, I can’t seem to get rid of that idea. But I do feel like a lot of my work questions assumptions we make about religion, about being holy, about gods, all of it, that expectation of what a holy person or what holy women should be like.

I also think it’s political in the sense of just really always being interested in writing about girls and women, and even by putting “girl” in the title, by having people focus on it is a political act in its own way. I don’t think you can separate that. I do think sometimes my poems are probably subtly political and sometimes they’re more overtly political. But I don’t think you can separate that.

AL: Concerning your process again, do you ever throw poems away? Or do you like to keep the rejects?

VK: I have written whole poems, obviously, a lot of them that I don’t ever end up doing anything with. They don’t get published or get put in a book, and they’re just sort of there. And that’s okay because I needed to write those poems to get to the poem that I really wanted to write. I don’t throw them away, but they’re probably tucked in a file somewhere on the computer. But for sure there are, in every collection or book, there are some poems that never make it into that book because it’s a process. When I’m first writing, I don’t really want to assess right away if what I’m writing is worthwhile, because it’s important to just sit and write first, before bringing in the critic. If you sit down with the critic on your shoulder already, you’re never gonna write. After some distance, I assess what I have.

AL: The Goddess Monologues take place in an ethereal setting; if you had to place where the majority of the poems take place in the physical world, what kind of landscape would your characters, the goddesses, reside in?

VK: I think they would reside where we leave them, on the edge of a forest. That’s where I see them. And I think that’s where they will always go back to.

AL: Finally, if there’s one or a couple of things you want your work to be remembered for, what would you choose it/them to be?

VK: Oh my gosh… Well, I think I do pay a lot of attention to language and imagery. When I first learned to write, that’s what my teachers imparted to me, that people might not remember the story of your poem, or remember the narrative or that stuff, but you want them to leave reading your work with one image or one moment in that poem. So that’s what I hope, that people will at least leave thinking about that one moment, whatever it is for them. It’ll hopefully be different for all different readers, but that’s what I hope.

AL: Thank you so much for talking with me!

VK: Sure! Thank you!

Amanda Lopez is a poet studying for her MFA at Antioch University Los Angeles (AULA), where she serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the student-run literary magazine Lunch Ticket. She has served as a management assistant for Write Bloody Publishing and read on the literary journal The Redlands Review as Poetry Editor during her undergraduate years at the University of Redlands. Amanda is a Los Angeles native working on a collection of poetry about navigating relationships through mental illness. When Amanda is not writing, she finds passion in alternative and rock music and being a makeup and special effects artist.

Rodolfo Montalvo is a Los Angeles-based children’s book illustrator with work published in both traditional print and digital media. His illustrated books include The Contagious Colors of Mumpley Middle School and The Amazing Wilmer Dooley (both written by Fowler Dewitt), and the picture book Dear Dragon by Josh Funk. Bye Land, Bye Sea will be his author-illustrator picture book debut. It was co-written with his wife and will be published by Roaring Brook Press in the winter of 2021. For more about him or his work, go to  www.rodolfomontalvo.com or find him on Instagram @rodolfomon3.

As a picture book author-illustrator, Rodolfo Montalvo crafts his work with an eye for adventure and a natural sense of diversity. He uses art as a means of self-exploration, working to connect with his Mexican heritage, while at the same time emphasizing the importance of reaching out to other artists, sometimes across oceans. Taking inspiration from art, nature, and conversation, Montalvo strikes a balance between his personal art and his life as a working writer.

I interviewed him at Antioch University Los Angeles on December 13, 2018.

Adrien Kade Sdao: What inspires you? Are there any particular people who inspired you to illustrate or write children’s books in particular?

Rodolfo Montalvo: Not really. I think it took me a long time to find picture books as the work I wanted to do. Early on, I wanted to go into animation, and that was the plan for a long time. And then in college, by then—it’s a long story—at that time, computers were starting to take over animation. I prefer to work traditionally if I can. And so, as I saw the industry shifting to 3-D, I knew I didn’t want to work with computers a whole lot, so that kind of shifted me over to like, “Oh, I guess I could probably still paint backgrounds.” And so that was the idea, painting backgrounds for animation and illustration, but it wasn’t until the end of my college undergrad that I started meeting actual illustrators or people from the industry. Children’s book people didn’t come in until after college. That’s when I started going to SCBWI [Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators]. So, it took a long time to figure out in my mind what an illustrator was, even though I met some here and there. The idea of what it looked like or finding mentors in that specific field took forever.

I love to draw, and I was able to stick with it. That was probably the most amazing thing that has influenced my path, is somehow I just loved it enough to keep going with it

Growing up, or being an artist kid, was not super deep defined. I wish I had children’s book people, or “my uncle was a picture book artist.” That might have defined my decision to go into children’s books earlier. It could have been easier, not that I wanted an easy path, but had I known children’s books are the thing for me earlier on, maybe it would have been a quicker path, like I could have found my voice as a children’s book author and illustrator sooner.

And as far as inspiration, I’m a ’90s kid so there’s cartoons and robots and Ninja Turtles. All those classics. ThunderCats. I feel like I skipped over reading as a kid. I wasn’t much of a reader for sure. So, I missed out on a lot of picture books. Frog and Toad, that’s one of the only ones I remember, and John Scieszka’s [The True Story of the Three Little Pigs], that’s the other one. That was the one book where I read it, and I saw the pictures, and those were the first images where I thought to myself, “Oh, these are good drawings; I like looking at these.”

AKS: Is that Lane Smith who illustrated those?

RM: Yeah. Those were the only ones I remember looking at, but the cool thing now is that as an adult and someone working in children’s books, I get to read a bunch of the classics for the first time. After learning about children’s book illustration, after trying to write my own, everything looks different, right?

AKS: What other illustrators’ works do you like in particular?

RM: Carson Ellis. John Hendrix, who uses those letter forms as part of his composition. Comic book artists like Paul Pope; he’s amazing. Sydney Smith right now is doing amazing work; he’s cranking out book after book after book. But there’s a ton of people inside children’s books—and everywhere really. I love mid-century modern design, so like houses, chairs, whatever. It’s all like space and shapes and colors, right? Photography. I like black and white photography, a lot of things like that. But I didn’t grow up with artists in the family. So, somehow, I love to draw, and I was able to stick with it. That was probably the most amazing thing that has influenced my path, is somehow I just loved it enough to keep going with it.

AKS: It’s your passion. So, when you’re creating—you’re writing with your wife, you said—how do you get your ideas? What inspires your stories?

RM: A lot of them come out from sketchbooks. I love doing character designs. Ideally, I would start my days doing character designs. I need to get back to that, I haven’t done that in a while, but ideally that would be my perfect warm-up, like I’m just going to draw a character, monsters and whatever. I don’t even have to have a story for them yet, but I’m just gonna draw them.

AKS: So, the characters are the seed for you?

RM: Kind of. Sometimes. Or it can just be anything else. The story that we have on submission now was during a hike on this mountain by the beach. So there were these two things happening at the same time. Land and water.

AKS: What’s it called?

RM: Bye Land, Bye Sea. We were out on a hike, and as soon as I thought of it, I had to write it down. And I sat it down for a while because we were working on the [book] with the pig, but eventually we picked it up, and this year was the year that we kind of worked on it.

AKS: You have a lot of ideas but not all of them come to fruition, I’m sure.

RM: But I think if you write them down and you actually try them out, give them a shot, that’s the important thing. And the ones that are kind of working, y’know, you have to take them all the way.

AKS: Are there any adult books you’re reading right now?

RM: Right now, mostly I’m reading writing stuff, like scriptwriting stuff. I do read some novels here and there, like adventure or… In high school, even though I was not a reader, I read a lot of mystery novels. It was either art or “I’m gonna be an FBI agent!”

AKS: Both very worthy careers.

RM: Once I even got to meet an FBI agent. I had an interview by the door of their office because we weren’t allowed to go inside.

AKS: Wow, that’s a little scary.

RM: But, oh, so I’m back in school, and last semester I took a scriptwriting class on novel adaptations, and we read The Giver. And that was the first time I read it, probably because I missed out on all these books as a kid. And I’m like, “Oh, my god, this thing is amazing!” I love that book. I had never read something where it literally took me back to my childhood. It was amazing.

AKS: She’s a great author, Lois Lowry. I feel like with books that have some sort of message, the story always comes first but then you always have that underlying theme.

RM: So, there’s a ton of stuff that I didn’t catch up with.

AKS: I wanted to ask you about diversity and social justice aspects in your work. I know that at least with Dear Dragon, the main character is not white, he’s a little boy who’s a person of color. Do you think it’s important to include diversity or social justice aspects? How does that inform your work?

RM: That’s something that I’m just starting to consider more, to bring out in my work. Even though we’ve been writing for nearly ten years, trying out different picture books, social issues haven’t been ones that were our main topics or the type of story that we’re telling. Adventure is kind of my default; adventures and kids doing fun stuff like that.

AKS: We need those stories that are great adventures and great fun, just with different kinds of people.

RM: Yeah. I’m trying to figure out how to bring that into my work or my voice as an illustrator, as a writer. I still haven’t figured it out completely, but Bye Land, Bye Sea is kind of a little bit of that. I guess it indirectly speaks to some social issues.

I’m trying to discover or learn about Mexican culture through looking at Mexican folk art. I’m doing that because I feel disconnected [from] the Mexican culture because I grew up here, Mexican American, and so even though there’s this big culture in my veins, literally, there’s a disconnect.

AKS: So, it’s an ongoing process for you.

RM: Yeah, for sure. I mean I’ve never been super political or… really opinionated, obviously. I’ve always been the quiet guy in the room.

AKS: I can tell!

RM: So, I keep those things to myself mostly. It’s kind of growing out of myself, right? For example, some of the collage stuff that I’m doing now, I’m trying to make it more personal. I’m trying to discover or learn about Mexican culture through looking at Mexican folk art. I’m doing that because I feel disconnected [from] the Mexican culture because I grew up here, Mexican American, and so even though there’s this big culture in my veins, literally, there’s a disconnect. And so, I’m getting towards speaking about social issues. It feels like, for me, that’s like a big jump to make—to make big, bold statements—because I can barely say something about myself. And so, it’s a big jump for my comfort, I guess. But, y’know, I keep up with the news and things like that, what’s going on, and it’s hard to listen to. Maybe working on my sketchbook or talking with my wife, we’ll stumble upon something. It’ll be right there, and it’ll spark something, it’ll be bold and scary, maybe. I don’t know. We’ll see.

AKS: You definitely want it to come naturally.

RM: Yeah, if I were to say, “I’m going to write a political book, it’s about this,” it wouldn’t be honest.

AKS: We already talked a little bit about your creative process, but I wanted to get more into that. You said you like to work in the mornings. Do you have a certain time to write, or how do you find the time—to write or illustrate—and what’s your schedule like for that? And you’re in an MFA program too, so how does that all work?

If I’m not sketching on something, either notes or drawing, I’m not doing my job. It’s hard to keep it up. It’s discipline.

RM: Right now, it’s the MFA and writing and being on submission, hoping it works out so we can have the next project lined up. But as a freelancer, it’s tough. It’s up and down, up and down, project after project. And with school, it’s pretty busy. That’s a lot of work.

AKS: Do you have a set time every day that you just have for your own work?

RM: Well, right now, with being on submission, everything’s kind of at a halt a little bit. But if it weren’t, we’d be working on some dummies, working on revisions, and it would revolve around the school schedule. My wife, she’s the one who has the structured job, the nine-to-five, so when we work together on stories, it revolves around working on nights and weekends together. When we were in dummy mode—because we can’t get there all the time—but if we have a story we’re talking about, and we’re trying to get it to a certain point, then we’re definitely working nights and weekends. If we can, we take a whole weekend and go somewhere.

But you know, if I’m not sketching on something, either notes or drawing, I’m not doing my job. It’s hard to keep it up. It’s discipline. But right now, with MFA, almost everything is going through that. Although, the only reason we’re on submission now is because of that second semester, I dedicated some of the schoolwork to developing Bye Land, Bye Sea. So that helped us get that dummy done faster. But now this semester, my third semester, I’m kind of shifting things to a different place, so picture book stuff is gonna be definitely more on our own, and there’s other more experimental things for the MFA.

AKS: Can I ask what you’re gonna be working on?

RM: For MFA? I kind of mentioned a little bit, it’s an exploration of Mexican folklore. So ideally if Bye Land, Bye Sea happens, that’ll be work at home since it’s a picture book, and then school is this other body of work that’s different. Even though it’s actually filtering through my picture book point of view, because it is, I’m doing these drawings, these collages of woodcut—those figurines, those really colorful ones—there’s a big sense of wonder to them.

They can be very childlike. So, it’s kind of its own thing, but because I write children’s books, and it’s what I’m going to keep doing, whatever I do is kind of filtering through that point of view, which is cool. I like that.

AKS: Are there any picture book authors who are Mexican or Mexican American that you particularly admire? You had Yuyi Morales, one of her books. Anyone else?

RM: Yeah, she’s one. [John Parra] also does very Mexican themed books, like Frida Kahlo and Her Animalitos. I met him, he’s pretty cool. His stuff is amazing, and it’s all traditional. He tapes off every shape and paints it, and tapes off another piece and paints it, and it’s really tedious. And there’s another guy, Duncan Tonatiuh. He’s doing some cool stuff, too. He’s way more in touch with the Mexican culture than anything I do. So, I look at people like all three of them and say, “How can I shape myself in that direction and make it also mine?”

AKS: I love his illustrations. They’re amazing. And I know that he does some like general picture books and some that are more like folktales. Would you ever do a folktale picture book?

RM: Yeah, I guess it depends on the story, but sure. A lot of the ideas that rise up are from René.

AKS: Have you ever had writer’s block or artist’s block? How did you deal with it?

RM: Yeah, that probably happens all the time, but I guess if you want to call yourself a professional, you have to just get over it and start putting your pen to the paper. I don’t know, I guess I don’t think it ever happened like, “Aah, I can’t do anything,” and a whole week goes by. Well, no, that’s not true, that’s happened. I mean sometimes you get, especially as a freelancer, when you’re at home all the time.

AKS: Discipline, like you said.

RM: Yeah, you always have to go back to discipline. “Ok, you’re not doing your job, what’s going on?”

AKS: Right, because it is your job, even though you’re at home, this is your job.

RM: It happens, and you have to get out of it and just find something. Maybe that’s part of why I’m back in school. I’ve always been good with structure, so being back in school gives me a certain amount of structure. Aside from all the other stuff, getting feedback. I essentially doubled the amount of people who get to see my work, and we get to bounce ideas off each other, and all that stuff, right? But there’s a space that, y’know, it’s a job too. Deadlines, things like that. Which is good, I mean, I like it.

AKS: I’ve found the structure really helpful too.

RM: If you wanna keep doing the things you like, well, I guess school is a place where you can keep doing the things you like.

AKS: I did have one more question, which was: do you have any more advice for working writers? I know you said discipline, but is there anything else?

RM: Meeting with people and finding that group or groups that can help you along. School’s this place where you get to do what you like. Deadlines work. You can give each other deadlines. It’s another space where you keep going, meeting people, finding mentors, reaching out to professionals, and saying, “Hey, can I talk to you about this.” Or do interviews. You’re in school right now, so am I. I mean, I’ve actually talked to Marla Frazee, and I see her at the conferences, and she’s around our circles, so I see her often, but I wanted to do a more formal interview and talk to her and share dummies with her, and get her feedback. So, we’ve been emailing, but she’s always busy.

AKS: She’s a big name.

RM: She’s always busy, and so I think it’ll happen eventually, but I think it’s a good idea to reach out to people even if they’re big names like Marla Frazee. Just say, “Hey, I’m in school, I’m doing this project, I’m working on this. Can I talk to you for like 15 minutes?” An illustrator, Lisbeth Zwerger—do you know her? She’s Austrian or German, and she just illustrated one of J.K. Rowling’s newest books. She’s huge, she won the Hans Christien Anderson Award. Well, when I was in my undergrad, we had to interview someone, and my wife knows that I liked her work a lot, and she was like, “You should just call her!” I was like “Okay! Sure.” And she gets on the computer, and she finds a phone number for [Zwerger’s] house, maybe, or her studio, I don’t know, and I punch it in. My wife speaks a little German, and she says, “Tell her this, do you speak English?” I said it in German, and she was like, “Yes.” And it was her. It was Lisbeth Zwerger, and I got to talk to her. She couldn’t talk that very moment. I told her I was doing an interview for school. “I’m way in California, I love your work. Can I talk to you for like ten minutes?” And she’s like, “Not today, but let’s set it up some other time.” And yeah, I got to talk to her. It was amazing. It was really cool.

AKS: So, you’ve reached out and made a lot of good connections.

RM: In children’s books, almost everyone you meet is amazing or fantastic and caring and fabulous.

AKS: Yes, that’s been my experience too.

RM: So, you can reach out. I have another person who I wanted to reach out to, but then they happened to win the Caldecott. It’s like, “Oh, no!”

AKS: You’re never gonna get to talk to them.

RM: It’s going to be a year or two before I can have him for ten minutes. And it was actually for another school project. It was a professional artist skills class, and we had to do an interview. He was on my list, and he was the one I was gonna reach out to, and then the week after that was when they announced the awards. If I had sent my email before that week or something, maybe I could’ve still gotten him. And I still could’ve tried even after they announced that he won, but…

AKS: He was probably getting a lot of those emails.

RM: He didn’t need some illustrator student following him around. He just got this award. I’m sure it gets pretty nuts after that.

AKS: I can’t even imagine. Well, hopefully one day you’ll know how it feels to win the Caldecott. That’s the dream.

RM: That would be nice, but how about let’s build a career first and stay there for a bit. Let’s make Bye Land, Bye Sea happen first.

Adrien Kade Sdao writes young adult fiction and works in a children’s bookstore in Los Angeles. They are an MFA candidate at Antioch University Los Angeles, and they are the lead editor for the Young Adult genre at Lunch Ticket. Their work has appeared in Lunch Ticket and Womanpause. They live in North Hollywood with their cat, Shelly.