LGBTQ Authors On Their Latest Books (Part 2 – Adult Memoir, Fiction And Romance)

Below is part two of my Pride month interviews with 10 LGBTQ authors of adult memoir, fiction and romance about the inspiration behind their latest book, their intended audience, their learning process and what they hope readers take away. See part 1 with young adult and middle grade authors here.

Jenn Shapland, My Autobiography of Carson McCullers: A Memoir (Tin House Books, February 4, memoir)

What was the inspiration for your book?

Well, basically: the systemic erasure of lesbians from history and from the present. I was working in an archive and found love letters between the writer Carson McCullers and a woman named Annemarie Schwarzenbach, but then I couldn’t find any official record of their relationship. At the same time, I was in a closeted relationship with a woman and trying to navigate my own coming out, but not entirely sure of my own identity. The quest to understand Carson’s identity—from the archive in Austin to living in her childhood home in Georgia for a month to Yaddo, her beloved writing residency—turned out to be a quest to find myself.

Who is your intended audience for the book?

You are. Anyone who is unaware of the existence of lesbian lives throughout history, or who has struggled with their own identity or sexuality, or who has felt their existence erased or marginalized—I hope they can feel seen by this book.

What did you learn about yourself while writing it?

For starters, I’m super gay. And so many well-known writers and artists in the 1940s, who ran in Carson’s circle, were queer and were fairly out and open about it. I learned how important it was for me to feel represented by their histories.

What do you hope readers take away from it?

That lesbians exist, and that some of the books you treasure and the art you love may have been produced by lesbians or queer people without your ever knowing it. And that it’s important to recognize and celebrate queer love and queer communities throughout history and in the present. And that anyone can be a lesbian!

Meredith Talusan, Fairest: A Memoir (Viking, May 26, memoir)

What was the inspiration for your book?

Fairest has many inspirations, though what’s fresh in my mind right now is the way marginalized authors who preceded me have forged paths toward a better understanding of people like them through their writing. A short list of my own inspirations include Jamaica Kincaid, Paul Monette, James Baldwin, Dorothy Allison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Jennifer Finney Boylan, Janet Mock, Lidia Yuknavich, and Kiese Laymon.

Who is your intended audience for the book?

While I was writing the book, I was most focused on making sense of my life for myself so that I can communicate its complexity to whoever reads it without needing to reduce or simplify my narrative. Since Fairest came out, it’s been heartening to hear from so many different people with similarly complex stories who have been touched by the book, as well as people who’ve gained a better understanding of what it’s like for those of us who lead intersectional lives.

What did you learn about yourself while writing it?

I learned too many things to name, but the most important lesson for me is that the truth really does set you free.

What do you hope readers take away from it?

Most of all I hope readers can understand that there’s no one way to be trans, just as there’s no one way to be human.

Matt Ortile, The Groom Will Keep His Name: And Other Vows I’ve Made About Race, Resistance, and Romance (Bold Type Books, June 2, memoir)

What was the inspiration for your book? 

The book came out of a desire to write about desire—specifically mine as a gay Filipino immigrant living in New York. However, as the book evolved and as I more deeply investigated my personal and cultural histories, the drive of the book became a desire to understand my internalized colonialism and racism, how it manifested in my relationships—with myself and with other men, how it informed how I moved through the United States, a nation built on white supremacy, as a queer brown foreigner. 

Who is your intended audience for the book? 

I wrote the book as a roadmap of my unlearning, of my decolonization. Ideally, it could offer that same function for a reader, as a blueprint for doing that same work, or maybe acting as a mirror to help recognize the racism and anti-Blackness that we’ve been taught as Americans. Naturally, just because of how we read these days, I’m sure folks who are Asian American or queer or extremely online (or all of the above) will more quickly find kinship with the book. But I hope too that it can reach across differences and offer an edifying and entertaining reading experience. It’s always nice when that happens.

What did you learn about yourself while writing it? 

I talk a lot about “unlearning” in this book and one thing that the project itself taught me is that: This unlearning is ongoing work. It’s continuous, eternal. There’s no one perfect moment where you’re suddenly anti-racist, or you’re magically freed of a colonial mentality, or all your internalized homophobia and femmephobia is gone in a puff of rainbow smoke. It takes constant effort to show up for yourself and for others, those like you and unlike you, as well as the support of friends and chosen family—people you also support in return.

What do you hope readers take away from it?

After someone reads The Groom Will Keep His Name, I hope they’re compelled to do some of the same self-interrogation that I write about. We’re in the middle of a great societal reckoning, I think. It’s important to hold ourselves accountable, to criticize and do away with the ways we’ve been silent—which, in effect, is complicity—in this country as it thrives on anti-Blackness, imperialism, and violence. It’s a tall order and it should be. And it very often starts with how we see ourselves, how we see the people that we say we love, the people that we desire. 

Zaina Arafat, You Exist Too Much (Catapult, June 9, fiction)

What was the inspiration for your book?

A student of philosophy, much of my inspiration for this book came from 19th century existentialism, and ideas about authenticity, despair, freedom, choice. It was also inspired by a desire to see a queer Arab Muslim woman reflected on the page. Finally, it was inspired by a question: What kind of person sets their sites on the unattainable, and longs for things in the distance rather than what’s in front of them? 

Who is your intended audience for the book?

My intended audience is anyone for whom the phrase in the title, “you exist too much,” resonates, anyone who’s been made to feel that they take up too much space, or loves too much, and who feels like they need to somehow reduce their existence, as this narrator does. 

What did you learn about yourself while writing it?

I learned that love matters to me above most else. I also learned that when I take into account a person’s history, experiences and traumas, I can almost always arrive at compassion for that person, even when they’ve hurt me in some way.

What do you hope readers take away from it?

I hope readers come away with a three dimensionalized view of Arabs, Muslims and queer people, one that challenges the dominant images and reductive narratives that we often encounter, and allows for a deeper, more nuanced understanding.

Morgan Miller, All the Paths to You (Bold Strokes Books, June 16, romance)

What was the inspiration for your book?

I’m a sucker for nostalgia and coming of age stories. I started writing a story in high school about two former friends from two vastly different social cliques falling in love. Except the early drafts were a completely different story centered around a boy and a girl. It wasn’t until my early twenties when I started learning about myself and my sexuality when I decided to scrap that story and restart it, this time focusing on two girls and their journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance, something that paralleled what I was experiencing at the same time. I was also a competitive swimmer for 12 years and always wanted to write a story that centered around a swimmer, and All the Worlds Between Us was born. The sequel, All the Paths to You, still ties in the nostalgia, finding your place in the world after college, and overcoming anxiety and depression.

Who is your intended audience for the book? 

First, a special shoutout to the readers who read All the Worlds Between Us a year ago and had to wait that long with that cliffhanger. All the Paths to You would also appease any swimming/Olympic fans, suckers of friends-to-lovers and second chance romance, and those who struggle with depression and anxiety.

What did you learn about yourself while writing it?

Most of the story focuses on mental health, and as someone who’s struggled with anxiety and depression throughout my whole life, I was able to channel my own experiences through the main character, Quinn. Although I relate to Quinn in that aspect, when I was writing her love interest, Kennedy, it offered me a different perspective—that of a loved one on the outside looking in. How we see ourselves is usually not at all how others see us, and the phrase “you are your own worst critic” actually settled in me for the first time. Quinn sees herself as a failure (even though winning Olympic medals is anything but a failure), and she can’t seem to get out of her head. Writing the story was a bit cathartic for me, trying to explain anxiety and depression even though at times it doesn’t even make sense to her (and sometimes it doesn’t make sense to me either).

What do you hope readers take away from it?

I hope the biggest takeaway from the story is the complexities of mental health and erasing the stigma around it, especially relating to athletes. I wasn’t anywhere near Quinn’s level of swimming, but even before I fully understood my anxiety and depression, I was told by multiple people during my swimming years that I wasn’t trying or I was slacking, but that wasn’t true at all. It was the anxiety and the self-doubt that held me back. I still find myself thinking the same thoughts when it comes to my professional and personal life. Sports is a whole different world, and although I wasn’t fully enveloped in the world like Quinn, there’s still very much a stigma outside the sports world that needs to be normalized and understood.

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