The Lit Hub Author Questionnaire is a monthly interview featuring seven questions for five authors with new books. This month we talk to: * Javier Fuentes ( Countries of Origin ) Derek Owusu ( That Reminds Me ) Helen Schulman ( Lucky Dogs ) Keziah Weir ( The Mythmakers ) Jenny Xie ( Holding Pattern ) * Without summarizing it in any way, what would you say your book is about? Jenny Xie : The taut love between mothers and daughters, immigration and assimilation, tech and its colonization of the Bay Area, professional cuddling. Touch, intimacy, connection, realization. Helen Schulman : Seduction and betrayal. Javier Fuentes : Chocolate. The color of your passport. Steamy rooftop nights. Queer love. Unrequited love. Flâneurs. Finding your place in the world. Liminal space. Class conflict. Sandy beaches. Ashes. Derek Owusu : Undiagnosed mental health disorders, Ghana, displacement, family, language, the limits of language, faith, the working class, borderline personality disorder, repressed sexuality, music, film, TV, love, hope, and overcoming. Keziah Weir : Creative success and failure, complicated love, telling stories about other people, telling stories about oneself. Long, hot bus rides. The distance of the moon. * Without explaining why and without naming other authors or books, can you discuss the various influences on your book? Derek Owusu : My mental health collapse. Boredom. The nature of language and all its flexibility and trickery. The desire to control language, beat it into submission. The need to control emotions and render them into language. Keziah Weir : Being young and delusional in New York City and the Hudson Valley, homesickness for San Francisco, the deaths of loved ones, Great American Novelists, stargazing, and Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 15 (no. 3 in G minor). Helen Schulman : Hollywood. Civil War. The Siege of Sarajevo. The Mossad. Florida. The forces of evil that pit one woman against another woman. Jake LaMotta. Javier Fuentes : 19th- and 20th-century immigrant novels. Sugar. Post-Franco Spain. Jetlag. The INS. 1990s East Village. Perfume Genius. Sandbars. Jenny Xie : My family and the Chinese diaspora. Oral narratives. Yellow light licking the Oakland […]
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