Alexandra Tanner on Vulnerability, Making Money as a Writer, and Taking Literary Shortcuts

I met Allie Tanner in November of 2016 at the Brooklyn reading series Franklin Park. The first words she ever said to me were “Are you okay?” (I was. I used to call the raffle at Franklin Park, and felt that microphones were for cowards, so I did not use them.) We’ve been together for seven years now, and it has been one of the true blessings of my lifetime to write beside her day in and day out. Of course we were going to talk about her debut novel, Worry , together. Worry is a funny, tender, gross, and wild book about having a sister, being alive, being alone, how work is and has always been bullshit, and a three-legged dog named Amy Klobuchar. It’s a book about how we aren’t always good people, and if we spent a little more time laughing at that, most of us would be a lot better off. A thing I think about a lot with Worry is the version of the word where a thing is worn away, that you can worry something down to the bone. Its tenderness will suddenly take you by surprise. Ahead of its release this spring, we spoke over email about craft, love, money, and the joys and hardships of building twinned careers around different goals. – Sasha Fletcher * Sasha Fletcher : While we talk every day all the time about our art, every conversation has to start somewhere, so: You watched me go through the whole process of publishing a first novel two years ago. What has the process been like for you? Alexandra Tanner : I think you were a lot more normal about publishing Be Here to Love Me at the End of the World —you had this deep trust that it would find its readers: this even, quiet confidence about it. I expected I’d feel that, too, but I’ve been really all over the place. I hate periods of waiting, as you know. Sharing your work comes with so many little humiliations and demands and contortions. It’s a big competition for […]

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