I smile into the mirror. There is lipstick on my front teeth. I don’t rub it off.

I have trouble sleeping in open spaces, I tell Saul. There is a blanket on the floor of my closet.

I remember Ian saying I was not a novelist and I think, as much as it pained me at the time to hear this, he was correct.

You interviewing me for Hobart is pretty much the peak of my hustle. Maybe this is me selling out. Maybe this is growing up. 

Eventually, I turned to memoir because I wanted to stay in scene. I craved space. I believe in the connection between poetry and memoir. It’s no coincidence that some of our best memoirs have come from poets: Mary Karr, Nick Flynn, Lucy Grealy, Mark Doty, Maggie Nelson, and Sarah Manguso—that list could go on-and-on.

According to my parents, I was obedient from birth—I emerged in silence and then slept through the night. I was just never interested in rebelling—even as a “punk,” I got good grades and was always home by curfew.

Are you Beyoncé? My daughter says.

I am holding a pair of Nike kneepads in my hand.

No, I say.

I am not Beyoncé, I say.

My new friend interrupted me to say, “You seem like you live like a real artist.”
My new friend had already been twice published by The New Yorker.
I thought maybe she had confused me with herself.

I hadn’t had any alcohol to drink in forty-two days.
I had told myself I wouldn’t drink for thirty but once you stop doing something it’s hard to start doing it again.

Tanja and I were competing to see who had moved the most as a child.
“I know of at least fourteen places we lived before I was eighteen,” I said.
Tanja started naming places she had lived. She kept naming her grandma’s house over and over, between every place.

I can only remember smoking weed with Steve once.
It was either right before or right after I married my daughter’s father.

“God, dating Drake would be like dating a submissive,” my daughter said.

Nicki Minaj just said, “all my independent women make some noise.”
I didn’t know if she meant me.

Another night we got so high I broke into our next-door neighbor’s house and stole their television so we could watch The Simpsons. I asked Loretta where I should put it. She said on top of the TV, which is how we discovered that we already had a TV.

let’s start with my most pressing question, one you haven’t answered IRL: WHY DID YOU TURN DOWN BRAD LISTI?

To be honest, there were other books that had as great an impact on me, but I don’t have access to those authors (Bret Easton Ellis – Lunar Park, Elizabeth Wurtzel – More, Now, Again, W. Somerset Maugham – Of Human Bondage)..

I sat and bawled for half an hour after finishing Hill William in one swift read through this morning, beginning to end in an hour. 

on page 97, between sections that detail time Paul and Erin spend in Ohio with “Calvin” and “Maggie” (Jordan Castro and Mallory Whitten), I wrote: Manson Family, in large black letters.

Elizabeth Ellen looks back at Tao Lin's "The Novelist" from Hobart, Aug./Sept. '04.

Julia Wertz's first two books are called Fart Party, a great, attention-grabbing title. I remember grabbing the book off the shelf at the comic bookstore, poking my boyfriend and laughing