One time years ago, a friend threw herself a birthday party and bought her own birthday cake, which I found surprising. She said, of course I bought my own cake. Who else was going to do it? I think it’s the same with book promotion. You have to buy your own cake, and make an event of it.

What author’s (dead or alive) persona is aspirational? 
Maybe Joan Didion, the super thin wrists, the iconic image on a tote bag. I just want to keep on writing books. 

I think a lot about Annie Ernaux saying that she writes like she's going to die afterward. The principle works for all kinds of writing, not just autofiction—it's an urgency that makes the voice more electric, that drives you to completion, that's more honest because it has no concern for consequences.

I guess there is a measure of wish fulfillment in the detail of my description of Anna and Tom’s apartment. Sometimes I ask myself if this makes the arc of the novel a kind of revenge fantasy.

With Soft Core the whole book poured out of me in a weird ecstatic gush; I like to mindlessly word-vomit first, take a break and drink some kratom, then return to the word doc and start editing in a slower, more thoughtful way, so that it kind of feels like sculpting.

What author’s (dead or alive) persona is aspirational?
I have never found any authors to be aspirational.

I think sometimes what people mean by “likable” as opposed to sympathetic or goodhearted is “conforming to my idea of what behavior I should aspire to.”

I think outside of drinking himself to death, Fitzgerald had a pretty fantastic life.

I’m somewhat like that, but more of a junkballer, a term better known for baseball pitchers: someone who gets by with unexpected spins and slices and wiliness due to a deficit of conventional talent.

Can you each pick two words to describe your book? 

Laura: Escapist fantasy

Eve: The first thing that came to mind for me was: “Oh, god.”

The black Mr. Sketch marker, Cucumber JUUL pods, Dr Pepper Lip Smacker, spirit duplicator, soggy sugary cereal milk mush, pink rubber pencil shavings, burning toast stroke, pumpkin spice scented hand sanitizer. 

I eat a big salad and watch Kim and Kourtney eat big salads on a ten-year-old episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

Marissa:
I try very hard to be polite and normal, like manners are weirdly important to me given I'm a huge fuckup generally but my inner world is probably a less palatable version of Helen’s 💀💀

Anna:
You’re out here trying to be a good happy girl 

            i think the other end of seinfeldian is like
            tiny things really sharply observed

Rebecca K. Reilly’s debut novel Greta & Valdin was a bestseller in her home country of New Zealand in 2021, and today it’s being released in the US and the UK. Pitched as Schitt’s Creek meets

Australian author Lexi Freiman’s second novel, The Book of Ayn, is the funniest book of the year. In it, a writer named Anna struggles to find meaning after being canceled for her “classist” book. To

Internet celebrity Melissa Broder’s third novel is what one Goodreads user accurately deemed an “existential horny cactus western.”

Definitely one poet holdover is just being a magpie for weird

Ruth Madievsky’s debut novel All-Night Pharmacy has everything I want from a book: a toxic sister relationship, countless nights at a seedy LA nightclub, and an unexpected sapphic romance. After her

like HFCA is kind of artless manipulation 
it’s not subtle
 

I guess my approach is not to take myself too seriously, which sounds kind of dumb and obvious, and just to write the sort of book I most like to read, which is usually something heavy but also light on its feet, fast-paced and horny, and generally not too full of itself.

writing fiction in which people google things,
suffering in a very abstract way
trying very hard to shut the fuck up & failing