Siel Ju

Tag: cake time

  • Cake Time gets a review in ZYZZYVA — Plus see you at six October events

    Siel Ju and Lisa Locascio, a few Halloweens ago

    One of my first fiction publications was in the west coast lit journal ZYZZYVA a few years ago. That story’s included in my novel-in-stories Cake Time published a few months ago, and a few days ago, ZZYZZYVA reviewed Cake Time so I feel like the world’s come full circle:

    For Siel Ju’s narrator, there are no easy answers or tidy morals to unpack after a relationship fizzles—that’s just life…. Cake Time is a great story collection for our present moment; an exploration of love, morality, and contentment that proves such concepts can be as murky and uncertain as a wisp of cigarette smoke outside a chic bar.

    I love this review partly because I love ZZYZZYVA but mostly because I’ve always wanted to be mentioned in the same piece as Lorrie Moore and Mary Gaitskill and now I have! Read the full review on ZYZZYVA.

    Then come hang with me in person this Halloween month. I’ll be in costume in some or all of the events and would love to see you there —

    First up, a reading for literary journal The Los Angeles Review, with John Brantingham, Brittany Ackerman, Emma Trelles, and L.A. Times book reporter Agatha French. I am told there will be free booze at this one —

    The Los Angeles Review Reading
    (Facebook event page)
    Friday, October 6, 2017, 7:30 pm
    The Last Bookstore, 453 S Spring St, Los Angeles.

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    Then celebrate National Reading Group Month with the L.A. chapter of Women’s National Book Association who’ll be hosting an author panel with me, plus Abbi Waxman (The Garden of Small Beginnings) and Gabrielle Zevin (Young Jane Young) — both of whom I’m excited to meet —

    National Reading Group Month Authors Panel
    (Facebook event page)
    Wednesday, October 11, 2017, 7:30 pm
    Skylight Books, 1818 N. Vermont Ave., Los Angeles

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    Mid-month, news site The LA Lit Review will host Indie Author Day with a host of local readers giving short readings. I’ll be one of them — plus there’ll be refreshments, a short film screening, a comedy skit, and an acoustic musical performance.

    Indie Author Day
    Saturday, October 14, 2017, 3 pm – 5 pm
    Junipero Serra branch library, 4607 S Main St, Los Angeles

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    Then I’ll be playing host myself, leading a discussion of The Handmaid’s Tale at Pen Center USA’s Edison Book Club. I first read the book back in college; I’m now in the middle of the Hulu series as part of my preparations for this evening. Come for the specialty cocktails!

    Pen Center USA’s Edison Book Club
    (I will host this month’s event; more about the book club here)
    Wednesday, October 18, 2017, 6 pm – 8pm
    The Edison, 108 W 2nd St, #101, Los Angeles

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    Near the end of the month, Lit Crawl LA will return to North Hollywood. I’ll be at a Red Hen reading event there — but the schedule still isn’t up so I don’t know when and where it’ll be! For now, just block out the night for the crawl —

    Lit Crawl L.A.
    Wednesday, October 25, 2017, time TBD
    NoHo Arts District, North Hollywood

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    And lastly, if you’ve ever wanted to attend a posh literary salon in a private home in North Hollywood, here’s your chance. I’ll be reading with Maggie Smith — Get in touch with me for a private invite.

    Los Angeles Review Salon
    (Private event — Email me for an invite)
    Sunday, October 29, 2017, 2 pm

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    It’ll be a busy month and I hope you’ll make time to see me! Come in costume or as yourself and if I don’t see you before then, happy Halloween —

  • 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!

  • Cake Time on Newport Mercury’s summer reading list

    Cake Time on Newport Mercury’s summer reading list

    It’s already summer — or at least it feels like it — and the summer reading lists are coming out! I’m overjoyed that Cake Time is on Newport Mercury’s list — Fictional encounters: 12 books to take you away this summer:

    Wendy Fontaine writes that “Ju’s writing is witty, blunt and entirely unsentimental, which makes this book a lot of fun to read.” Thanks Wendy! I’m honored to be in such great company — with Edan Lepucki (who blurbed Cake Time!), Elizabeth Strout, and George Saunders!

    If you add Cake Time to your own summer reading list, I’d love it if you reviewed it on Goodreads or on your own blog, like my friend Zandria did. Thanks Zandria!

    What else are you reading this summer?

  • Five Firsts: Me on voyeurism, desire, identity

    Five Firsts: Me on voyeurism, desire, identity

    Cake Time by Siel JuSo usually I post a monthly interview with an author I admire whose book I’m giving away.

    But since I’m giving away my own Cake Time this month to celebrate its publication, I’ll take this opportunity to link to interviews with me in other places and hope that you won’t think that’s too narcissistic!

    These are both amazing lit zines that deserve your time and attention. Thank you to the interviewers for featuring me and my work —

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    Michelle Ross at Fiction Writers Review: This sensation of watching one’s life from outside the self, like it’s a theatrical performance, is a running theme in your book. And I think it’s a sensation to which we can all relate to some extent or another. Would you talk a little bit about this in terms of your novel as a whole? Why does this topic interest you?

    Me: …. I think it’s because this sense of watching one’s life from outside the self seems very self-effacing — in a I-cannot-bear-to-be-truly-present-for-this-experience-type manner–yet simultaneously, very self-indulgent — in a I-like-to-spend-my-time-watching-film-clips-of-myself kind of way. It’s both an erasure of the self and an obsession with the self.

    More at Fiction Writers Review.
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    Shilpa Argawal at Angels Flight • literary west: The book has a voyeuristic feel; you invite us into very intimate moments, and you don’t sugarcoat them. You write, “I started really watching him, hard. And as I bore my eyes into him, I could sense a shift in him, too … I was frightening him.” Sexual encounters fade into a parody of themselves. Characters shift under the unflinching gaze of the protagonist, who misses nothing. Would you say this is the point of view of the book?

    Me: I love this question — it really points to the voyeuristic experience of reading for me, this desire as a reader to watch the characters go through the experiences of a story and feel a part of that experience by proxy. It makes me wonder if living is all that different from reading, especially when both modes can evoke the exact same thoughts and emotions.

    More at AFLW, where you can also read “The Robertson Case,” a story from Cake Time.

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    I’m currently in Portland on book tour — and will be at Powell’s on Hawthorne tonight, chatting with Kevin Sampsell! Then it’s off to Belligham, Seattle, after which I return to LA for more events. I hope to see you at one of them — Please come say hello!