The Lit Hub Author Questionnaire is a monthly interview featuring seven questions for five authors with new books. This month we talk to:
Grace Krilanovich (Acid Green Velvet)
Emily Ogden (Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe)
Paisley Rekdal (Heritance)
Jim Shepard (The Queen of Bad Influences)
Ankur Thakkar (Blow Yourself Up)
*
Without summarizing it in any way, what would you say your book is about?
Grace Krilanovich: Freedom and movement; who gets to be an artist; style, adornment, craftiness; labor versus leisure; the counterculture; the contempt for femininity; the eccentric vibe of the West Coast.
Emily Ogden: Guilt, mortality, and how literature can help us dwell with both.
Paisley Rekdal: The Four D’s: Death, fathers, questionable choices, and the largely hopeful delusions that art provides.
Jim Shepard: The distance between our best moments and our ordinary ones. Passivity. Complicity. The comforting yet flawed notion of having meant well. The inexorable force of the natural world. The myriad ways privilege and injustice persist.
Ankur Thakkar: First loves, The Diaspora, the pliancy of time, turning any ringtone into a Midwest emo riff, second chances.
*
Without explaining why and without naming other authors or books, can you discuss the various influences on your book?
Emily Ogden: The dreams of those long gone. A few of my own dreams. The idea of assembling a group biography around a single figure. A book that restarts with every chapter. French decadence, magical realism, nineteenth‑century sensational fiction. Hearts beneath the floorboards.
Paisley Rekdal: Dorothea Lange; George Stubbs; my former drawing habit; Thucydides; unsatisfying marriage counseling; and the oral history archives produced by the American West Center, which I direct.
Jim Shepard: A lifetime of cinema, good and bad. Both children’s and adults’ science books. Peanuts. Catholicism. The arcana of monsters. The sort of minute, nerdy details that only show up when you pore through old archives.
Ankur Thakkar: Snow falling upward, the other side of self, two lovers captured in a single take, that moment of pause before the final chorus.
Grace Krilanovich: Communes, occupations, encampments: OWL Farm, Occupy Wall Street, the Human Be-In, the Hollister biker invasion, the Manson Family’s presence in Dennis Wilson’s home. The Central Coast’s landscapes—San Benito County’s rolling hills, the Forest of Nisene Marks, Elkhorn Slough. The excesses of Ken Russell, Joe Coleman, Tasha Tudor, clowns, migraines, Priscilla Presley, the Winchester Mystery House. The male leads function as case studies drawn from Lou Reed’s “The Blue Mask.”
*
Without using complete sentences, can you describe what was going on in your life as you wrote this book?
Paisley Rekdal: Utter chaos on every level, to be honest.
Jim Shepard: Retirement brings freedom of time and attention. Two dogs died and two were rescued. Travel. More teaching, though in private workshops. And—finally!—almost enough time to read.
Ankur Thakkar: Reading widely, enduring rejection letters, changing cities, kettlebells, Vine, crafting a mask of my own smiling face and forgetting how to remove it.
Grace Krilanovich: It began in 2007. Living solo in a cat-filled apartment. Nocturnal habits. Ocean swimming. Estate sales. Working at the Los Angeles Times. Attending art openings and quirky one-off events. Late nights at Suehiro, Original Pantry, Canter’s, Burrito King. Attending shows—Spaceland, the Smell, Safari Sam’s, Glass House, Mr. T’s Bowl. Babies and toddlers and little kids. Reading aloud from board books and picture books. Chasing a toddler around a playground. Living next door to a large thrift store. Collecting niche dishware, old phones, and records. Up to three hours of childcare per week, then none. Zoom schooling. Folding tiny clothes; washing little faces; sunscreen; a million snacks. School returns. Tracking masks. Alone all day. Writing all day. Napping. Finished June 2023.
Emily Ogden: Raccoon attacks.
*
What are some words you despise that have been used to describe your writing by readers and/or reviewers?
Jim Shepard: Oh, geez. That makes me feel down.
Ankur Thakkar: Someone who once supervised call-center workers told me this isn’t how Indian people are, lol.
Grace Krilanovich: Surreal. Stream of consciousness. Automatic writing. Vomiting on the page. Turning on the tap. Veiled autobiography.
Emily Ogden: Pass. It’s hard to label a book. I won’t quarrel with anyone who’s been kind enough to describe one of mine.
Paisley Rekdal: “Too pretty.” “Intense.” “Long.” That said, I do compose some pretty intense long poems.
*
If you could choose a career besides writing (irrespective of schooling requirements and/or talent), what would it be?
Ankur Thakkar: A chef. I’d trade anything to write with the patience and trust I bring to a dish I’ve never prepared.
Grace Krilanovich: Painting and drawing. Culinary historian. Designer of housewares in the vein of Taylor & Ng.
Emily Ogden: A wildlife veterinarian.
Paisley Rekdal: Photography. I’d also like to return to being a medievalist.
Jim Shepard: A veterinarian. A paleontologist. A film director.
*
What craft elements do you think are your strong suit, and what would you like to be better at?
Emily Ogden: I tend to pivot toward surprising turns of thought and away from hierarchical arguments. I wouldn’t label those as strengths or weaknesses; I see a style as something as holistic as a body, not a tally of traits. I work toward improvement, but not by maximizing every quality. I aim to become more fully who I am.
Ankur Thakkar: Narrative voice and tonal control come more naturally to me; plotting does not.
Paisley Rekdal: A solid grasp of syntax; a deep commitment to storytelling. My weakness is a tendency toward lack of brevity, and perhaps an overattachment to narrative.
Grace Krilanovich: My strong suit lies in language, sensory detail, and sentences that carry momentum. I’d like to improve at basic plotting. I’d love to write something genuinely frightening.
Jim Shepard: I lean toward action, exposition, and dialogue in my storytelling. Yet, when it comes to describing characters, I often fall short. I also think I handle endings well, but the middle sections can be weaker.
*
How do you contend with the hubris of thinking anyone has or should have any interest in what you have to say about anything?
Jim Shepard: I remind myself that writing is largely play. If you meet a kid in a sandbox who says they don’t know what they’re doing, you don’t tell them to leave the sandbox in that moment.
Paisley Rekdal: I write poetry, so I already accept that most people aren’t interested in what I have to say.
Grace Krilanovich: I spent fifteen years thinking about this. The book ends up as it is even if no one cares about it; that realization freed me. Years ago I decided to treat the novel as a space to stash things I personally found entertaining (as noted above). Perhaps readers will wonder what decades of simmering does to a work?
Ankur Thakkar: Every novel is a gift. I’m eager to read whatever you have to say.
Emily Ogden: Do people care? Should they? Engaging with others is permissible. One isn’t assuming they’ll be interested; one is simply inviting them to be.
