Edan Lepucki with Rachel Fershleiser at Books Are Magic
Allow me to set last night’s scene: Rachel was beautiful in blue and asked the best questions about Edan’s new novel, Woman No. 17. In addition to being charming and witty, Edan looked super hot in some sort of jungle jumpsuit and heels. Books Are Magic has only existed for one month and it’s already hosting my favorite book events—thank you Emma Straub!
On motherhood and writing:
Becoming a mother makes you think about your own parents and their lives before you came along. I was interested in the question of what makes a good mom, interested in people who have a history of trauma and carry that dysfunction with them.
My bad parenting days coincide with my bad writing days.
On the lit scene in Los Angeles:Â
There’s a very supportive writing community, but being a novelist in LA is like being the lone physicist at an MFA party full of fiction writers. You stand out because you’re doing something different.Â
The best way to find your people is to go to your local bookstore and attend their events.
The Hills are really mysterious and gross.Â
Edan’s past as a performance artist:
“Teen Dance” was a parody of a performance piece. I’d strip down to a flesh-colored suit, find the shyest person in the room and scream at them, “Are you staring at my camel toe?!”Â
Woman No. 17 research and inspiration:
I took a speech therapist out for coffee to research Seth’s character (Seth is mute), but that’s it. If I know too much it inhibits my imagination.
When my first child was 14 months old he hadn’t talked yet. I didn’t know enough not to freak out and wondered what it would be like if he never spoke.
On technology in contemporary fiction:Â
One of my goals was to make this book as contemporary as possible and to show the ways women constantly shit on themselves. I wanted to reverse the gaze.Â
But how can a writer create a mysterious plot when everything today is so find-out-able (yesss, Rachel) thanks to technology? Lots of books right now are set in the 1980s and 90s to avoid the modern technology issue.Â
Everyone’s not really themselves in Woman No. 17 and Twitter is another place where we’re not ourselves.
Edan’s writing process:
I’m a methodical writer—I write scenes in the order I think they’ll be read. When I hit page 100 I stop and read the manuscript to figure out what it’s trying to say.
When I’m writing a scene, I let the characters go at it (sometimes literally). Then I go to my notebook and trace what happened in the scene, and write down what questions the scene brought up.
She probably won’t write a story collection:
I find short stories painful to write. I can’t end them; you have to stick the landing with a story. Plus they’re hard to sell.
On the inclusion of animals in the books (Jaime Green asked a great question but I couldn’t write fast enough to get it down!):
I’m interested in vulnerable creatures. [Edan also said something smart about writing purposeful echoes between animals and characters in the book, but again, I wrote too slowly. Basically, the animals in the book are important!]
Edan’s current obsessions:Â
Home decorating (because she’s moving); schoolhouse electric lighting; and venerable LA writer Carolyn See because California was compared to See’s novel, Golden Days.Â
Edan’s book recommendations:
All of Emma Straub’s books; Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi; The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (I always recommend it even though it’s everywhere now); Marlena by Julie Buntin
The amazing Instagram project & NYT article inspired by the novel:
Mothers Before on Instagram is a photo collection of mothers before they became mothers.Â
Edan wrote a New York Times op-ed about the project: “Our Mothers as We Never Saw Them.”
s-u-f-j-a-n-s-t-e-v-e-n-s
jimmyeatworldofficial
theartofmadeline
dailybridgerton
discoholicmusic
2087
