Siel Ju

Category: Interviews

  • Chiara Barzini says fiction is your secret lover

    Chiara Barzini says fiction is your secret lover

    Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

    Coming-of-age stories set in Los Angeles: It’s a subgenre of sorts that’s growing in size, that holds within it wildly different books. I love these L.A. stories so much I wrote one myself — and read with a thrill Chiara Barzini’s volatile and beautiful novel Things That Happened Before the Earthquake too. (full review here)

    Chiara was born in Italy but spent some formative years in L.A. and other places in the U.S. before moving back to Italy. This novel’s actually Chiara’s second book; the first was a collection of short stories titled Sister Stop Breathing. But in addition to writing fiction, Chiara’s also a screenwriter and journalist, with work in publications ranging from Vice to Vogue.

    In this interview, Chiara talks about her choice to fictionalize memoir, L.A.’s transformation and stasis through the years, and daughters with artistic fathers.
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    Siel: On the LA Review of Books podcast, you mentioned that you first started writing your Things That Happened Before the Earthquake as a memoir. How did you realize it needed to be a novel?

    Chiara: I felt like I had more freedom when I didn’t feel blackmailed by the hard facts of life. I could break things apart and rebuild them again elsewhere on the page. It was very liberating.

    The girls in your novel are artistic, independent, and often lonely. They could be described as latchkey kids, with the freedom and daring to take incredible risks while their parents aren’t watching–yet the girls are also caged or trapped in many ways, often expected to serve their parents’ ambitions and desires instead of exploring their own. Is this just a basic feature of female adolescence, do you think, or a tension more specific to children of artist parents?

    I definitely think that the children of artists, on this regard I saw a great documentary about Julian Schnabel by an Italian director named Pappi Corsicato, are often bound to carry the weight of their parent’s creative field. This weight can go in different directions. It is electrifying and sublime to be close to the art of parents, but it can also be confusing in terms of your own independent creative identity. Daughters are often required to take on the weight of their father’s ambitions. Hard not to muddle them with their own, especially when you are young. Eugenia tries to break free from this pattern.

    You’re a filmmaker and journalist as well as a novelist. Do you find that you use the same creative energies in all these roles–with the passion for them coming from the same place–or does each one fulfill a completely different need?

    I am lucky to work in these three realms because they very much inform each other. Journalism gives me the thrill of discovering stories and doing research, which is to this day one of my favorite parts about the writing process in every field. Screenwriting holds the promise of visual satisfaction. Fiction is your secret lover.

    I love the nostalgic “Valley Girl” personal essay you wrote for Vogue, where you write your heart still aches for Southern California — especially the “wildness and violent winds” of Topanga and Malibu. I’m not sure how often you visited L.A. these days, but I know you did come through recently on book tour. In your view, has L.A. mostly changed or mostly stayed the same?

    Los Angeles has changed immensely since the 90’s, socially, culturally, and politically, but its nature, as we’ve seen, has not. It is still a land of terrifying fires and mud slides and quakes. Glued in front of the television watching the flames in the last weeks, I was reminded of how relentless the nature of the city can be, wild and completely unpredictable.

    What are you working on now?

    I am working on a very fun film project in Italy and starting research for the next book.

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    Enter to win a copy of Chiara Barzini’s  Things That Happened Before the Earthquake by signing up for my newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered. Good luck!

    Photo by Jeannette Montgomery Barron

  • David Rocklin on worthwhile risks and addictive highs

    David Rocklin on worthwhile risks and addictive highs

    Every month, I interview an author I admire on his literary firsts.

    If you’re plugged into the L.A. literary community, you know about Roar Shack, the eclectic monthly reading series in Echo Park with its impromptu live write competitions. And if you’ve been to Roar Shack, you know its host David Rocklin, the energetic writer who’s been putting the monthly series together for five years now.

    I first met David when I first read at Roar Shack in 2013 — after which, out of curiosity, I picked up David’s first novel The Luminist (Hawthorne, 2011), a historical novel inspired by the life of photographic pioneer Julia Margaret Cameron. Reading it, I got to enjoy a lyrical novel with feminist underpinnings and also learned a lot about the advent of photography —

    Julia Margaret Cameron has in fact inspired David’s second novel too. The Night Language, officially out from the local Los Angeles indie press Rare Bird Books Nov. 14, 2017, stars a fictionalized version of Prince Alamayou of Abyssinia (Ethiopia today), who in real life was photographed by Julia (full review of The Night Language here).

    In this interview, David gives advice to second-time authors, reveals the benefits of working with a local press, and describes the addictive high of a literary reading series.
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    Siel: This is your second novel with an indie press — but your first with a local indie press! Did it make a difference in the publication process, working with a press based in Los Angeles?

    David: It’s made a huge and wonderful difference that coincides with the difference in my position as a writer this 2nd time around.

    The first time, I was fortunate enough to be acquired by a wonderful lit press that wasn’t located here in my hometown. They were good to work with and did their best, but I wasn’t ever quite a fit with them to begin with (they tended toward edgy material, and my first novel, The Luminist, was period lit fiction set at the beginning of photography), and I didn’t have roots in their venue. On top of that, I didn’t come from an MFA program and didn’t know anyone in that lit community, or any other one.

    Since then, and as a result of touring for that novel, I’ve developed relationships with authors all across the country, and especially here at home. So now comes The Night Language and everything is here in L.A. The community of writers that I belong to has been just astonishing in their support and enthusiasm (present company included!). The publisher feels like a friend around the corner. We know the same people and places, and they’ve embraced the novel and what it stands for. There’s a platform beneath me, which is a wonderfully supportive feeling as this odd publishing journey begins for the second time.

    We hear a lot of advice aimed at first time authors, but not as much for those on the second go around. What words of encouragement or advice would you offer to those seeking to write and publish a second book? I’m really just asking for me —

    Like you need it, successful Cake Time author extraordinaire!

    I guess I would say this: if you’re fortunate enough, like me (and holy shit, am I lucky) to be traditionally published twice, you obviously intend to make this your work (and supporting your ability to do that work, and do it the way you want/need to, is a whole other topic that I’m more than happy to expound on), so do yourself the favor of treating it like the profession it is.

    Be aware of what your contracts (publishing and agent, if you have one – and if you don’t have one, think seriously about getting one) provide for. Become a collaborative partner with your publisher on everything from cover design to reading locations to promotion (as in, how much and via what mediums). Understand that your art is paramount, but sales do matter because your publisher, or perhaps your next publisher, will look to the numbers you moved in deciding whether your next book is a worthwhile risk to undertake.

    Network with your lit community, with bookstores and libraries, as you would in any other field of endeavor – making those contacts means that they’ll remember you when it comes time to support you with word of mouth.

    Protect your writing time. There are lots of distractions in life, but if you think about that other job you hold, you’d never let yourself clean your office or work space rather than help a customer. Don’t do it with your writing, or else you’re guilty of the very thing we all hate when we hear it from friends or family who don’t get it: you’re treating your writing as a hobby that can always be interrupted for something else.

    Both your novels were inspired by photography. Has visual art always been an inspiration for your writing?

    Everything I write seems to begin with a visual prompt – an image of a moment – but not alone. It needs something hard to strike against and spark up, and that hard thing is always a stray fact that, when coupled with the image, starts my wheels turning.

    With The Luminist, it was one of Julia Margaret Cameron’s images coupled with the fact that she’d lost a child at birth. From that came the story of a woman obsessively determined never to lose someone to the frailties of memory again; photography would forever hold them still.

    With The Night Language, it was another of Ms. Cameron’s images, one of the actual prince Alamayou as a boy, coupled with the fact that he died so young in life (I won’t tell you how it turns out in the novel). The spark that struck was this: I wanted to write a life for Alamayou that he never actually got to live in reality. That became a love story, because of course.

    Your monthly reading series Roar Shack is a beloved part of the Los Angeles literary scene. What inspired you to start this series — and what keeps you motivated to keep doing it now, years later?

    It grew out of the book tour I did for The Luminist. All along the way I was exposed to one community of writers after another, and when it was over, I really found myself pining for that sense of belonging that I’d experienced reading alongside other remarkable and accomplished artists. I’d been exposed to so many amazing series and venues, and one in particular, up in San Francisco, really made an impression and inspired me to try to create a series here in LA.

    In the best “hey kids, let’s put on a show” tradition, I honestly was too clueless to comprehend how hard it would be to create a reading series out of nothing and build a following, but I reached out to LA-based writers anyway. What I found was what I continue to experience each and every time I interact with our lit community. Inclusiveness, support, enthusiasm, and love for each other and for each other’s work. It’s inspiring to me, and now I can proudly say I count some of the most amazing writers as friends. That’s an incredible feeling for me, as is the awe that comes over me when someone I’m not familiar with, or someone thoroughly unknown, comes out of nowhere and kills it at Roar Shack. It’s an addictive high, to see a writer reach for something they might never have thought themselves capable of, and the audience respond. That keeps me going. It’s a joy.

    What are you working on now?

    I’m at work on my new novel, The Electric Love Song of Fleischl Berger. It’s a love story across time, and it’s also about the accidental discovery of the electroencephalograph. I’ll pause while you take that in.

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    Enter to win a copy of David Rocklin’s  The Night Language by signing up for my newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered — but you can get a second entry into the drawing by leaving a comment on the giveaway post with the name of your favorite language. Good luck!

  • Amelia Gray on emotions, odalisque sentences, and a cold Italian beach

    Amelia Gray on emotions, odalisque sentences, and a cold Italian beach

    Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

    I first discovered Amelia Gray’s writing through Gutshot, her collection of sharp, macabre short stories that took me through all sorts of emotions: fear, discomfort, anxiety — and almost always, surprise. So when I picked up her latest novel, Isadora, I was expecting something similar — and was surprised again.

    This historical novel is much more lyric in style, dissolutely sad and languorous — Fittingly so, since it’s based on the modern dancer Isadora Duncan’s life, taking us through the years right after Isadora’s children’s untimely deaths.

    Besides Gutshot and Isadora, Amelia’s the author of three additional books, THREATS, Museum of the Weird, and AM/PM. I’m now curious to read those, to see how different they are from the ones I read —

    In this interview, Amelia talks about the energy in grief, the odalisque quality of sentences, and the Italian vacation she took in the name of research.

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    Siel: This is your fifth book — but your first work of historical fiction, I believe! In a previous interview, I read you took a couple classes at Duncan Dancing in San Francisco as part of your research for Isadora. What other fun things did you do in the name of research? Did you eat blackberries in Paris? Sunbathe in Corfu?

    Amelia: I made it to Viareggio, on the Italian coast, for a week of off-season wave-watching. I’m glad I did, too; that sense of a shuttered beach community off-season was exactly the feeling I was going for with the book, and getting to spend a few days walking cold sand was important to the whole. I was writing this book while working a full-time job, so I didn’t get to take as many trips as I might have liked.

    I think most people know you for your dark, tight, jewel-like short stories in Gutshot. How did your writing process change for Isadora?

    I wanted lines that suited the character, and in reading about Isadora and looking at pictures of her, I came to understand her as a languid woman of great and enduring passion. The sentences naturally needed to have this odalisque quality, a confidence, a patience about them. The sentences would go on for pages and pages in the first draft. The word count probably stayed about the same from first to last draft but the number of sentences quadrupled.

    The novel’s told from four perspectives — Isadora herself, her lover Paris, her sister, and her sister’s lover. All are relatable, with their little selfishnesses and self-loathing — and hateable too, for the same reasons. Is there one character you most related to personally?

    I couldn’t sustain a novel’s worth of work if I didn’t related to the characters personally. In Isadora I see vanity and self-interest, in Elizabeth my fear and practical sense, in Paris my mysticism and idea of country. Max is a bit of a scapegoat as he represents a few different things, I’d answer your question by flipping it and saying I least related to Max, though of course there’s plenty of me in there.

    The overarching mood in Isadora is that of grief. What was the experience like, day in and day out, writing a book-length work on such a heavy topic? I ask mainly because the mood of whatever I’m writing does tend to affect me, even if what’s happening in my own life has nothing to do with what’s happening on the page.

    It’s a grief-driven book but I wonder if it might not be quite right to say that the overarching feeling of it is sadness. I found myself energized by writing it, but there’s a lot of energy in grief, power in passion that maybe lives under cover of ordinary life. Writing about grief is an opportunity to live in one of the more dynamic emotions we get. I’ve had a much harder time writing from the perspective of someone losing their own life.

    Though your writing’s often described as dark, I think of you as a pretty cheery and funny person, having seen you ham it up as a Literary Death Match judge! You were hilarious in the LDM Book Report too (below). I mention this because I’ve been thinking a lot about what a writer’s writing actually says — if anything — about the writer herself. Do you think the former offers any sort of window to the latter?

    Oh, thank you. My hammy stage nature is perpetually mortifying to me, but I can’t help myself. There’s something way over my pay grade about the relationship between humor and the abject. I can only speak to the feeling of this constant search for balance. I don’t think I’d last too long writing death novels and no jokes.

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    Enter to win a copy of Amelia Gray’s  Isadora by signing up for my newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered — but you can get a second entry into the drawing by leaving a comment on the giveaway post with the title of the last historical novel you’ve read. Good luck!

    Photo by Matt Chamberlain

  • Five firsts: Gina Sorell on switching careers, swapping agents, and making money

    Five firsts: Gina Sorell on switching careers, swapping agents, and making money

    Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

    Gina Sorell’s made a lot of bold choices in her life, switching creative careers, swapping literary agents, and shaking up her life to move across  countries and continents.

    Her debut novel, Mothers and Other Strangers, is equally bold. Part psychological thriller, part coming-of-age story, and part redemption narrative, the story follows Elsie, a thirty-something woman in Los Angeles who learns her estranged mother — a beautiful, self-absorbed, and secretive parent — has died. So Elsie goes on a journey to discover the true story of her mother — a story that takes her all over the world, from Los Angeles to Toronto to Paris to Cape Town. (full review here)

    So I was happy to get a chance to ask Gina for tips and advice on making bold choices, writerly and otherwise!

    In this interview, Gina talks about who inspired her writing, why it’s important to have a job, and what caffeine-filled snack got her through her writing days in L.A.

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    Siel: I really admired the ambitious scope of Mothers and Other Strangers. The novel takes us to four wildly different cities on three continents, straddles several different literary genres, and tackles heavy themes ranging from creative ambition to apartheid to mental breakdowns. All this made me curious about the books you yourself love. What novels would you say served as inspiration for your own?

    Gina: First of all thank you. And thank you for having me here! That’s a great question. I think I was more inspired by the writing styles of other writers, rather than a particular work.

    For example, I love how Caroline Leavitt (Cruel Beautiful World) is able to take her readers on a whirlwind ride, vividly creating the world that her complicated characters inhabit. I’m always swept away in her novels. Robert Eversz (Killing Paparazzi) expertly pushes his stories and plot forward with a ticking clock that keeps the reader turning the pages. I do love a big bold family Saga, and adored Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible.

    At the time I was writing, I don’t think I was really aware that my own novel was ambitious! It was just the story I needed to tell and the only way I could tell it.

    From an essay in The Millions, I learned you were compelled to switched literary agents while working on this book — a bold move for an unpublished author. What tips do you have for writers for recognizing when a relationship isn’t working — and letting it go despite fear and uncertainty?

    Oh that was a hard one. My first agent for this book was a terrific agent and powerful. The decision to leave wasn’t an easy one. But after a very, very long time working together, we lost momentum and then clarity. And it became clear that we wanted different things for this book. So after a couple of years I thought, well I’ve waited this long I can wait a little longer to get it right.

    The advice I’d give, is to do everything you can to make the relationship work, and then at the end of the day, remember that you really do just get one shot at being a debut author, it’s actually what this former agent told me, so you have to know that it’s the book you want and the relationship you want, because it’s a career you’re building and if you’re lucky it starts with that first book. And then hopefully you and your agent can work together on your next one.

    Before turning your focus to writing, you were an actor for two decades! Do you have tips for other creative types who seek to completely change careers to become writers?

    Yes, always have a job! That sounds so practical I know. But writing won’t necessarily pay the bills, and stressing over how to pay them isn’t inspiring, at least not for me. So if you can keep your career and change it in a way that let’s you work on your writing until you are ready or able to write full time, then do that. Or if you need to let go of your career, so you can claim your new one as a writer, which I needed to do, then do so and find something else that makes you money and doesn’t leave you too exhausted to write.

    I’m also the Creative Director of a branding firm, Eat My Words, and I love my job and my boss. But before I had this job, I did a lot of freelance copywriting for ad agencies, because it was short term work that paid well. And I made and sold my own jewelry, which was really great, because it was tactile and the rewards were immediate.

    If you were to go through the entire first book process again, from acceptance to publication, is there anything you might do differently?

    You ask the best questions! Yes. I’d tell myself, it is going to take 10 years. And then 7 years wouldn’t feel so long! I’d also revise more in entirety and less in chunks. Part of what happens when you have an editor an agent involved, is you work on a section, then they read it and like it, then you work on another one, and eventually it becomes hard to see the work clearly for both of you. So I’d also allow myself months per revision and save certain readers to the very end, so that they would have fresh eyes.

    Elsie, the protagonist of your novel, isn’t such a huge fan of Los Angeles — complaining even about its optimism! She cracked me up — and also made me wonder what your own thoughts were about this place. What do you miss most about Los Angeles, now that you don’t live here anymore?

    L.A. was hard for me to love for the first two years. I’m an East Coast girl, I walk everywhere or take transit, driving is terrible for me, and I have the worst sense of direction. Before Google Maps I was always lost, even with GPS! But then I heard this great radio show on NPR about how L.A. was a city of neighborhoods, pockets waiting for you, making you discover them, and that shifted things for me. I lived in a ton of neighborhoods in L.A.: Mount Washington, SilverLake, Korea Town/Hancock Park, Beverly LaBrea, Studio City and Magnolia Park in Burbank. Eventually I loved L.A.

    And what I miss is the optimism! And the belief in oneself that we are capable of trying anything, doing anything, succeeding at anything we really believe in, work hard at, and put our minds too. I would not have my career as a Creative Director or as a Novelist, had I not lived in L.A. And it has such a great literary scene! And the food, the farmer’s markets, the friendliness of people saying hello to one another, the weather, and let’s face it, Trader Joe’s. My grocery bill is three times what it was in L.A. Trader Joe’s is the first place I go when I return to L.A., their chocolate covered espresso beans have gotten me through many long writing days at my desk!

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    Enter to win a copy of Gina Sorell’s Mothers and Other Strangers by signing up for my newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered — but you can get a second entry into the drawing by leaving a comment on the giveaway post with your mother’s name. Good luck!

  • Five firsts: Dana Johnson on identity, code switching, and erasure

    Five firsts: Dana Johnson on identity, code switching, and erasure

    Every month, I interview an author I admire on her literary firsts.

    July’s featured writer is Dana Johnson, author of Break Any Woman Down.

    This award-winning short story collection is complex and provocative, often starring characters in the margins of society.  A black stripper tries to figure out what she wants in her relationship with a controlling white porn star. A woman defiantly goes to bars alone, over her daughter’s protests. They’re stories of power and acquiescence, stubbornness and change — all cutting across lines of race, class, and gender.

    Dana took a couple stories from Break Any Woman Down and expanded them into a novel, called Elsewhere, California. More recently, she published a short story collection about downtown L.A. — and its gentrification — called In the Not Quite Dark. She teaches at my grad school alma mater, USC.

    In this interview, Dana talks about code switching, reveals which dunzo DTLA restaurant she misses the most, and gets Libran about identity.

    Sign up with your email to be entered to win a copy of Break Any Woman Down  — and to get notified of future interviews!

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    Siel: Some of my favorite parts in your stories have to do with language. In Break Any Woman Down, there’s a little girl originally from South LA who starts speaking in the standard English taught at her suburban school — a change that allows her academic growth and entree into new segments of society — but also creates a rift between her and her brother, their shared cultural history. Is this bittersweet aspect of language — its ability to both open up new possibilities but close off others — something you think about a lot while writing?

    Dana: I do think about language quite a lot, how powerful it is, how one is read depending on how one uses language. In both that short story and my novel, Elsewhere, California, which is based on the opening and closing stories of the collection, I was thinking about assimilation, race and class, the ability to code switch or the choice not to.

    I love how your characters change so much in your stories. I especially noticed this in your novel Elsewhere, California, where through her education and friendships and personal choices, the protagonist moves over the course of her life to a very different, much wealthier social class. Though this character stays in California — albeit moving to very different neighborhoods — in a way her trajectory has a lot in common with many immigration stories.

    All that is kind of an odd, loose intro for my actual question, which is this: Do you think we as people really change a lot, or do we ultimately more or less remain the same?

    I’m going to be very Libran and answer yes to both questions. We change and we don’t change. It’s undeniable that movement of any kind has the effect of opening up one’s life, expanding it. For me, I feel as though, as you note in your question, the people I’ve met, my education, the various milieus I’ve been exposed to complicate identity. On the other hand, though, there’s something about being born African-American, in the city of Los Angeles, to my parents who are working class people born and raised in the South that has stayed with me my whole life and given me a particular world view so that no matter where my life takes me, I feel rooted in those beginnings.

    Your latest book, In the Not Quite Dark, is fiction yet also seeks to document downtown LA in a way — capturing its history, showing its diversity, noting the effects of gentrification. I know you’ve lived in downtown LA for a long time yourself. Do you like the place better the way it is now, or do you miss the way it was when you first moved there?

    I miss the downtown of 2005, which is when I first moved from Echo Park to Main Street. Back then, it felt very small. I saw the same people day after day. It felt like an intimate community. We had more or less one restaurant, which was Pete’s, now Ledlow, and an amazing video store, Old Bank DVD, which is no longer. I would meet so many people in the neighborhood and talk movies there. There was a café, Banquette, which is now Bäco Mercat, but when it was Banquette, I wrote there almost every day and that’s how I finished my novel. And don’t get me started on Grand Central Market. Gourmet cheeses, wine bar, etc. My 83 year-old father and I experienced more or less the same Grand Central Market throughout the various decades, but in the last year or two it’s gone through a huge change. It’s so bougie now. I know. I sound so old person cranky. Get off my lawn!

    What is the once-there-now-gone spot in downtown LA that you most miss?

    That’s a tough question because I deeply miss all the places I’ve mentioned, but I’d have to say Pete’s. It was warm and welcoming and the center of the historic core. Pete’s interior had a lot of photos of how downtown looked years and years ago and you could feel the history in the place. Now the space is stark white inside, photos gone. No sense of history at all. It just feels like another restaurant. But that’s part of change I guess, that kind of erasure.

    At a recent Story+Soul salon, you mentioned that you were working on a new book — one that aims to get at the core of the issues of race around the last election, specifically the disconnect between white liberals who were shocked and surprised that Trump got elected and many people of color who were not surprised at all. I can’t wait for this book to come out. How is it coming along? No pressure –

    As always, working slowly but surely. That’s all I will say, because I believe in jinxes.

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    Purchase a copy of Break Any Woman Down now, or enter to win one by signing up for the newsletter. Already joined up? Then you’re already entered!

    Photograph of Dana Johnson by Ellie Partovi

  • Cake Time interview with The Rumpus

    Cake Time interview with The Rumpus

    Thank you to The Rumpus for interviewing me about Cake Time and writing! Here’s a quick excerpt from A Funny Inevitability: In Conversation with Siel Ju:

    Rumpus: You ended the novel on this note of uncertainty with the character in this common adult situation, with someone who doesn’t want to define the relationship. And your main character is suppressing an urge to laugh at life’s absurdity. How did you decide that was where you wanted to end the novel?

    Ju: I think I wanted to leave it like a continuing journey, because real life doesn’t have neat tied up ends. Chick lit generally ends with a happy ending of the girl gets the guy, so I wanted this book to be somewhat in contrast to that. I wanted the sense that she had learned something, but that there are other things that are not learnable in a way, because life isn’t over.

    Read the whole thing over at The Rumpus. Talking to Stephanie Siu was a blast — I wish I could have hung out with her while I was in New York last month. Follow her on Twitter at @openstephanie!