All language subtitles for Copia de captions Unforgettable Characters

Hello and welcome everyone. Thank you so much
for tuning in to the fourth annual Bronx Book

Festival. I am so excited for this virtual edition
and even more excited to get to introduce this

wonderful fiction panel Unforgettable Characters.
My name is Saraciea Fennell and I'm the founder

of the Bronx Book Festival and the first panelist
that I will be introducing today is Naima Coster.

She is the author of Halsey Street, a finalist
for the 2018 Kirkus Prize for Fiction. In 2020,

Naima was selected by Tahari Jones for the
National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35 honor. It's

amazing. Her stories and essays have appeared in
the New York Times, Kweli, The Paris Review Daily,

Catapult, The Rumpus and elsewhere. She holds an
MFA in creative writing from Columbia University

as well as degrees from Fordham University
and Yale. She has taught writing for a decade,

for over a decade, in community
settings, youth programs, and university.

She lives in Brooklyn with her family. Her
new novel, What's Mine and Yours, will be

released by Grand Central, well it has already
been released by Grand Central. It's available

now wherever books are sold, so make sure you
purchase a copy. Next we have Tracy O'Neill.

She is the author of The Hopeful, one of
Electric Literature's Best Novels of 2015,

and Quotients, a New York Times New & Noteworthy
Book, TOR Editor's Choice, & Literary Hub

Favorite Book of 2020. In 2015, she was named
a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree.

Congratulations, that's amazing, uh--long-listed
for the Flaherty-Dunnan Prize, and was a Narrative

Under 30 finalist. in 2012, she was awarded the
Center for Fiction's Emerging Writers Fellowship.

Her short fiction was distinguished in
the Best American Short Stories 2016

and earned a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2017.
Her writing has appeared in Granta, Rolling Stone,

The Atlantic, the New Yorker, LitHub, BOMB,
Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Believer, The Literarian,

the Austin Chronicle, New World Writing,
Narrative, Scoundrel Time, Guernica, Bookforum,

Electric Literature, and so many countless others.
Such a mouthful. I love it. She holds an MFA

program from the City College of New York; and an
MA, an MPhil, and a PhD from Columbia University.

While editor-in-chief of the literary journal
Epiphany, she established the Breakout 8 Writers

Prize with the Authors Guild. She currently
teaches at Vassar College. Welcome Tracy.

Next we have Elizabeth Gonzalez James. Her
short fiction and essays have appeared in

The Idaho Review, The Rumpus, Barrelhouse, PANK,
and elsewhere, and have received numerous Pushcart

Prize and Best of the Net nominations. She is
a regular contributor to Ploughshares Blog.

Her first novel, Mona at Sea, was a finalist in
the 2019 SFWP Literary Awards judged by Carmen

Maria Machado, and is forthcoming this June 2021,
so be sure to look for that, from Santa Fe Writers

Project. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth
now lives with her family in Oakland, California.

Welcome Elizabeth. Next but not least
we have Megha Majumdar. She was born

and raised in Kolkata, India. She moved
to the United States to attend college at

Harvard University, followed by graduate school
in social anthropo anthropologies, excuse me,

at Johns Hopkins University. She works as an
editor at Catapult, and lives in New York City.

A Burning is her first book. Follow her on Twitter
@MeghaMaj and Instagram @megha.maj. Um sorry you

all might also hear my dog running back and
forth. I'll be sure to not pick him up and

have him say hello, but he gets needy
sometimes, um. Anyway, thank you so much for

for coming together virtually so that we can
talk about crafting unforgettable characters.

So to kick things off, I would like each of you
to sort of give us a one sentence, two sentence

if you need it, pitch about your book before
we dive into the craft. So let's start with you

Tracy. Hi, thanks for having me, um. So
um I I have two novels. The first one is

called The Hopeful and that one um is told
by a narrator named Ali who is a young woman

who's struggling to find a sense of purpose um
after she has an injury that changes her body

and therefore her relationship with um her
dreams and sort of her raison d'être, which

happened to have been figure skating, um. And my
second book is called Quotients and it is about

a young family um and uh they are
under surveillance as we all are,

um and I think you said a sentence
so I'll just stop there. (laughter)

That is the perfect way to stop. We are all
under surveillance, very true. Megha, can I

have you go next? Sure um, hi everyone. My name is
Megha Majumdar. I wrote a book called A Burning.

It's a novel which is about three
people who are chasing big dreams

while the society around them makes this
dangerous turn toward right-wing nationalism.

I love the one sentence pitch. You got this
down, wow. Elizabeth, can I have you go next?

Hi everybody, my name is Elizabeth Gonzalez
James and my book is Mona at Sea and it's

about a young woman, Mona, who graduates college
during the Great Recession and loses her her job

on Wall Street and has to figure out um what
she's going to do with the rest of her life,

so yeah. Amazing, you also have your
pitch down. All right Naima take us home.

Hi my name is Naima. I'm the author of two novels.
My debut, Halsey Street, is about an estranged

mother and daughter trying to find their way back
to each other and it moves between the Dominican

Republic and gentrifying Bedstuy, Brooklyn. And my
second novel, What's Mine and Yours, is about two

families that are brought together when a public
high school in North Carolina becomes integrated.

I feel like all of your one-sentence stories, if
you put that into one book, it would be amazing,

mind-blowing. Um so all of you have crafted
unforgettable characters, the name of our panel.

So I would like for you to sort of discuss how
a character first appears to you. I've heard

writers talk about how they come and invade their
their consciousness. Others they work really hard

to craft these characters and might take a
little bit of pieces of people that they know

and weave them into one character. So can you
talk a little bit about like the first spark

that usually comes to you when you're building
your characters? We'll start with you Elizabeth.

Yeah um I think for me that the first thing that
usually appears is not the character. It's usually

the situation. But the character has to evolve
from that situation, right, so if the situation

that appears to me is um for instance like like
in my book um somebody going through a long

period of unemployment, then I start asking myself
um why why are they going through this long period

of unemployment? Well, she lost her job uh during
the Great Recession, why, and she's really angry.

Why is she angry? She's angry um because she did
everything right that that she was told to do

and the circumstances uh made it such that she uh
still failed to to uh live out the dream that she

had for herself. And so the character for me sort
of comes about in that way uh. It's a process of

being um pressed into who they are by the world
around them um I if I understood like like rocks,

I I feel like that's also how rocks are made,
right? Like like it's it's stuff that's compacted

um and then like uh like you get a diamond,
I don't know. I I never studied geology,

but. I love that. I love that. So the situation
comes to you first. That's awesome, um. Naima,

can we have you go next? Yes I mean Elizabeth
said a lot of what speaks to my process so thank

you for that. I also start with the situation um,
a difficult condition that my characters are in

for What's Mine and Yours, I have two mothers
at the center of the book and one of them is a

woman I wanted to write about who's struggling
to raise three girls on her own because her

husband is in and out of her life. And then the
other woman is one who suffered a terrible loss

and who isn't really interested in
the role of mothering, but now has to

mother alone without her partner. And so those
conditions interested me. But the consciousness

of a character takes quite a long time for me to
uncover and is what ultimately keeps me interested

in the fiction um and so to uncover that I also
asked myself a lot of different questions. I

asked myself about a character's vulnerabilities
and also their desires um and from there the the

person really begins to take shape. I love that.
I love that, um. Tracy, can we have you go next?

Sure um you know, I think that I I know when I
have a character um, when I figure out their sort

of central paradox, their central psychological
paradox, so um in quotients um it really began

with Jeremy, who's one of the main characters,
um and so his paradox is that um the way that he

tries to make himself and all, and later, his
family safe, is through engaging in the behaviors,

specifically the behaviors that make all
of us unsafe, um, and um and therefore

him and his family unsafe, um. And
with The Hopeful um you know for Ali,

it was that she is incredibly invested in
the notion that you can earn your destiny

and also earn love in some way. And so,
but the way that she tries to do that is

through her body which can never really fully be
something that she controls or has uh or can use

to earn because there are intrinsic intrinsic
qualities to how she was born and who she is.

Um and so um yeah I think I think it really just
comes down to these central paradoxes for me.

That's amazing, oh my brain is turning here.
So Megha, let's let's have you go next.

Um well I really like what you just said,
Tracy, about the central paradox and I think my

approach for A Burning was perhaps a little closer
to what you both said, Elizabeth and Naima, when

you spoke about the conditions. I was thinking
about, you know, what is the driving question

for my book and how can I break it down into
manageable pieces of that question. And then

once I have those questions, it felt like I
broke down the big question into three questions.

And those three questions kind of became the three
characters, um. They were people who could help me

ask that question most forcefully, which I
think is is another way of talking about those

conditions. Yeah that's that's awesome um,
so you're starting with questions and you're

beginning to build build the world, right?
You've built the situation out, you started

to build the character, um so now I want to
talk a little bit about how how you decide,

this is going to be a female presenting
character or a male presenting character

or a queer presenting character. Like
how do you begin to build their identity,

right? Because you have the situation, you're
asking yourself all these other questions,

how do you add in the other things that
actually make the the character sort of 3d

right? Um like this this real tangible thing that
readers get to experience, um. So let's start

with you first Elizabeth. Yeah um I think for me
it's still it still goes back to the situation

because I think that in order to understand a
character's personality, I have to understand

how they respond when they bump up against
different circumstances. And so um I think I asked

um, you know, if this goes back into backstory and
who they are personally, but also like how do they

deal with conflict? How do they
interact with their family? How do they

uh, what are their hopes and dreams and all that
kind of stuff? Um so I think it still goes back to

kind of understanding the context that that
I've set them in. And then um also like

like um Tracy and others said, understanding what
the central uh paradox is. What is what is their

deep psychic wound that they can't um address
or can't um or or can't name or can't fix. Um

yeah. So I think it's I don't know it it's it's
hard for me to put it into words because it feels

kind of nebulous, but it still goes back I think
to to the the situation like um what is the what

is the box that I put them in. Yeah that makes
sense. I think for a lot of writers out there,

it's really hard to build fully formed characters,
so um and then weaving in other other parts of

their identity, right, because the way human
beings navigate the world. So like a Black woman

or an Asian woman is going to navigate a little
bit different than like, how a white person would,

so I'm just curious to see if those type of
identities, as you're weaving your character

into the situations, if the perspective, if
there's a certain perspective you're going

after to sort of narrow it in um. So Naima,
let's let's hear from you next. Yeah it's an

interesting question. I mean, I'm very invested
in questions of race and identity in my fiction,

so um my character's backgrounds are in part
informed by what it is I want to look at in a book

um. So in Halsey Street, I wrote about a young
woman with an African-American father and with a

Dominican mother, in part because I was interested
in connections, tensions, points of solidarity

um between African-American and Latinx communities
in Brooklyn, especially in the context of incoming

white folks with gentrification. So that was
a part of my thinking about the book from the

beginning and also in What's Mine and Yours, I
knew that I wanted to write about that again,

like intersections um and distinctions
between Black and Latinx communities

and then also what it's like for people of
color to navigate predominantly white spaces

in this integrating high school. How it's
different for different people of color

based on how they present and how they identify.
So there is a level of intention that goes into

it, but I'll also say that I think the backgrounds
of my characters reflect my investments and also

the limitations of my imagination. I feel very
aware of that. That's something that I reconsider

as I begin to plan books, you know, even if it's
something like, why is everyone in this scene

slender and tall? Look, what is that, you
know, what is that reproducing about what I've

internalized of who's worthy of attention in
fiction? So, you know, I think that there is

um work that I'm hoping to do with my fiction and
ideas that I'm hoping to explore that require I'm

really intentional about the backgrounds of my
characters, but I also think that this is a realm

for me where instinct and norms can also populate
the fiction and I try to be mindful of that.

Yeah, that's amazing. Tracy, what what about you?

Oh wait, Tracy, you're muted still. I think
I maybe don't understand the question.

So you you have a character, right,
but then you're thinking about race,

you're thinking about is this person going to be
neural diverse. So I'm wondering like, as you're

building your character, you have your situation,
you're thinking about all of these other things,

but how do they come begin to become fully formed,
right? Like you can't just have a name like a name

for a character and and don't describe like
their skin color, though some writers do that,

or pronouns. Like I'm wondering how do you make
them three-dimensional, right, so like Naima

just mentioned, she's interrogating something,
you know, and and using the characters to look

through a certain lens um and so I'm wondering
if, you know, are those things that you do

when you're crafting your character, or is it
just we have the situation, the race, you know,

gender identity or whatever doesn't really um come
to you. Or maybe it does. Maybe it comes later.

Maybe it's not something you're actively thinking
about, um. So that's that's sort of the question,

like how do you make them fully formed? So
if we took your character out of the story,

out of your story, like what are readers going
to walk away with? Are they going to say that was

a very strong queer character or a strong, you
know, Black Latinx, whatever type of character.

Because characters I feel like are usually
what stay with us outside of the story,

right, um especially if they're unforgettable
characters. So what makes them unforgettable?

It's not just the situation that
they're in, but it's sort of like,

the reactions that they're they're making
to the situation. Do you do you understand

now? Is that helpful? Or if not we can just we
can skip you and go to another another. Yeah I

mean I guess that the way you said it, right, it
sort of presumes that the charac- that you can

separate the character from these identity car-
uh categories. And that one precedes the other.

So I don't I don't think that I operate that way.
So I don't think it's like that I have a character

and they're like, there's some sort of
like shadow of a character who doesn't have

um those things yet, um. I I think that it they
sort of um emerge um simultaneous to each other

um and so, you know, I think for me like,
I um I take very seriously the notion

that um people's um psychological
structures are um, you know, at least

partially um embedded and then um, you know, sort
of either compounded by other experiences or not,

um but but are grounded in their socio-historical
circumstances um. So like, I can't really have

a character who like before I have sort of these
things about where they stand in a social milieu.

So it's sort of um it's more a contemporaneous
um sort of emergence that happens for me.

Awesome, how about you, Megha?

Um I think it might be helpful to maybe think
about one specific aspect. For instance,

in A Burning I was thinking very much about class
and class mobility. So, you know, it it really can

rise, I think um if if a writer watching is having
trouble kind of conceiving of it in the abstract,

it can really rise from specific events um.
For instance, one character in A Burning

um is is quite poor and that means that she
has experiences where her father is injured

in an act of police brutality during the
demolition of the slum that they live in.

Then when they go to the doctor, the doctor
doesn't really take their pain seriously because

they are perceived to be people who don't have
very much education and don't have very much power

to advocate for themselves. So those are the ways
in which belonging to a certain class affects her

life. And even though the narrative that she might
tell about it later is a particular narrative,

the state can impose a narrative on her saying
that because she has suffered in these ways,

she she is anti-national in certain ways because
she has suffered because of of the society and the

structures around her. So maybe it helps to think
about, you know, specific events and and um again

situations and structures that that the character
lives within and for example you know you're

asking about gender. Like one character, um the
reason he acts a certain way is because he feels

rejected um by a student of his. This character is
a gym teacher who feels rejected by the student.

And then later goes on to work against her and
work against justice for her. And that initial

feeling that, how dare this little kid not be
grateful to me? How dare she not express gratitude

for all the things that I'm doing for her? I think
that for me as I was thinking through it was very

much tied to this male expectation that you know
um you know this kind of toxic masculinity of,

you know, expectations that you will be
in the position of the giver and you will

receive gratitude for that, um. Yeah so those
were some of the things I was thinking about.

Yes exactly that exactly that. I think that's
amazing because then you're adding tension,

right, and also playing around with power
dynamics. So that's that's also something I

would like for each of you to talk about um in
in your in your world, right, in your fiction,

how do you decide um you know who's
going to have more power than who,

right? I know that there's a situation, but we
all we all as human beings have our own power,

have our own privilege, right? So what are you
thinking about um when you're crafting your

stories about which character is going to have
a particular privilege or a particular power

um dynamic and are you interrogating something
with that? Like are you asking yourself a question

and you're working it out through
through your writing? Um how do

you how do you play around with with stuff
like that? Uh we can start with you Megha.

Um that is such a great question. I think
it is linked to the ambition of the book.

For me the ambition of the book was very
much about seeing who can move forward

and who can dream of something bigger than
survival within this structure of a society that

does not serve anybody other than the very
rich. And so in that case I had to see

how the world acts upon these people. There
are certain ways in which they are very limited

and then there are certain ways in which they
push back and that is where their power lies,

right? So for instance, one of the characters who
is um shamed for being who she is still dreams

of being a movie star and her way of pushing
back against all the people who laugh at her

is to put their shame back on them, you know.
She teases people, she jokes with people,

she wields her power in humor and that was really
interesting to me um. You might have a character,

you know, this this other character who finds
herself in prison. It's her voice against the

state's voice and she knows that, you know, public
opinion means so much. So for her, her power is in

going to the media with her story and getting her
story out and telling the truth of her story to

counter the state's narrative. So that is one way
in which she wields her power. So thinking about

these specific ways in which people not only, you
know, have power in a passive way, but wield it,

use it, discover it. That was really interesting.
That's amazing, um. Elizabeth, can I have you go

next? Yeah um that's that is a really interesting
question um. So in my book um my character Mona is

um she's like me, she's um bi-ethnic, half Mexican
American and half white. And um that is uh being

bi-ethnic is a question that um preoccupies me a
lot. I can't stop writing about it and it's it um

it comes from uh growing up and where I grew up
in south Texas. I lived in Laredo and it was like

96% uh Mexican-American or people who had had
previously lived in Mexico and come to the U.S.

and so um I always felt like an outsider um.
And then uh, so that it comes up a lot in in um

my writing again and again, these characters
who feel dislocated, um. But then there's also

uh a privilege that comes from that as well from
from uh appearing white, um. And that's definitely

something that that I did uh address head-on
in the book, um. And in the in the novel Mona

has a brother named Danny and she has this um uh
kind of scene where where she's talking about how

uh she looks white, but Danny has darker skin. He
looks like their dad, she looks like the mom. And

she says they look like they independently
budded off of their parents like hydra.

And um but, she she is a little resentful of
her brother um, his skin matching his last name

and his ethnic identity, because in that way
he's always taken for who he is. Whereas she's

straddling two worlds and never really feels
comfortable or a part of or even wanted

in either world, um. And so yeah, it was it
was definitely something that I wanted to

interrogate in the book and and uh have
a character who is a a white presenting

uh Latina kind of moving through the world
and and not feeling comfortable, um yeah.

That's awesome, yeah, that sounds like a
really great way to talk about privilege,

too, because you have two characters
who belong to the same family and like,

you know, a direct comparing um contrast
um. Tracy, can we have you go next?

Yeah I, you know, I think that hearing Megha talk
about the way that um humor is used um as a way to

wield power, I sort of realized for the first
time that um maybe all of my characters have

are like working from a limited repertoire and
like I think their repertoire might be secrets,

you know, um. So um yeah I think I think a
lot of my characters derive a sense of power

um from from secrets. I mean, there's a more
obvious case for that um in Quotients because um

the book is is taking on the surveillance state um
and so um that's a sort of uh obvious move there,

but I think it's also true in The Hopeful um, you
know, in that book um the the narrator Ali um is

adopted um and her parents are white and she
is not um and I think that there's sort of um a

like a narrative going on or a backstory um in
which um there's something um about uh about the

secret that to her is um is sort of um a way of
not having to um sort of like um give up um or um,

you know, and give up in a way that I think
is um connected sort of to to race, right. So

she does-, I think she doesn't have to give up on
what people are telling her about her body, um so

um and it's it's like a delusion in the book
and it's very much set up as a delusion um what

her secret is and sort of how she pursues
it. But um but yeah I guess they're all

just um they all just have their secrets. That's
all they got. That's amazing though because um

you know, secrets are powerful because
it's like who gets to know the secret

right? So that's that's really cool. Uh Naima, can
we have you uh go next? Yes um I was thinking as I

was listening to everyone speak about um feelings
of powerlessness and the ways that they can shape

intimate relationships um and the kinds of
dynamics that we see between characters in

a novel um, I think that many of my characters
are grappling with feelings of powerlessness.

Um and part of what both novels chart is what
people do with those feelings and how that affects

the way they connect to the people closest to
them. So in my first novel Halsey Street um

there is a character Ralph who loses his record
store. It's replaced by a health food store and

he's just devastated by the gentrification
that he feels powerless in the face of. And

he is consumed by his grief and his loss in a
way that prevents him from being able to see

the need that his adult daughter Penelope has
for him, um and to reckon with their difficult

past and fractured family history. And in
my second novel, What's Mine and Yours,

the two mothers at the center of the book are
women who feel that they have thwarted potential,

that they could have gone further in life if they
weren't consumed with the business of survival. So

they have this feeling of powerlessness for real
reasons, but have this tremendous power as mothers

over the lives of their children um and one of
the costs of their attempts to gain power is that

they um focus so much on the futures of their
children, one mother opposing the integration,

one mother supporting the integration, that they
miss giving those children space to make choices

for themselves. To choose the people that they
love. And then of course they're the children

who have that difficult position of being a young
person and being dependent on their families and

I think that I'm interested in charting young
people's journey toward power in my second novel.

But it's not always what one might expect. I think
sometimes a journey towards power sounds like

a triumphant thing necessarily and we can
think about all kinds of victory narratives

that we have for marginalized people or for
young people um and I'm interested in the

unexpected ways that particular characters
um attain power on their own terms.

I love that, um. So each of you seems to
have a different type of writing process,

um. So I'm wondering if you can talk a little
bit about that, um. Do you usually feel like

you can sit and just write a book in a month, in
in six months? Is it, is it something where the

story takes you a little bit longer to pull the
threads together to have a complete manuscript,

or is it a situation where you're on deadline
with your publisher because you have a two book,

you know, a two book contract and they're like,
hey we need we need that next book from you?

So this time we'll start with Elizabeth. If you
could walk us through what your process is like.

Yeah um so I've written two books, one um uh Mona
at Sea and then I have another one which um is

out on submission now. And the process was really
different for both of them, uh. For Mona at Sea, I

started writing it in 2011. I was um staying home
taking care of my daughter when she was a baby

and um I literally wrote the rough draft like
during her nap time. Sometimes she would be

asleep on my shoulder and I'd be like typing with
one hand um trying to to keep her asleep and um

and I just um had this fire lit under me. I was
like, I have to have a rough draft in six months.

And um I mean that was just my own deadline and
I I did it. I I I finished a rough draft and then

um and then I was like, okay now what? I didn't
know anything. I I I don't have an MFA. I'm

really self-taught and so um I didn't
know how to revise or anything like that,

so that was like a multi-year process of
trying to figure out like how do I take this

like not great rough draft and turn it into a
completed novel, um. The second time around,

it was uh it was really different. The second book
is, incredibly it has a very intricate plot and um

I spent two and a half years just trying to get
the rough draft down. I would um I would outline

it um and then I'd start writing and then I'd get
a couple hundred pages in and realize it wasn't

working so then I'd have to start over again
and I I did that for like two and a half years

um and then finally I got a rough draft um
and then after that, the subsequent drafts,

I did three on that one um it was just a process
of of honing it um and just making it better

because with that one once I had the rough draft
finally it was pretty close to exactly where

I wanted it just because I had done so much
work um just trying to get to that point um

and yeah for for future books, I don't know, I
hopefully I'll figure out how to do it the easy

way, but I haven't figured that out yet. I don't
know if there is an easy way, but but yeah. Wow,

what a drastic difference um between you know
the two books. Tracy, can I have you go next?

Um yeah I mean if I could write a
book in six months then I'd have

lots of books written by now, um. Yeah I
don't know, I mean I I work pretty slowly um

so um, you know, what I end up doing most days
is reading what I already have um and sort of

waiting for the um like fingernail the fingernails
with more that I can sort of push it forward um

and so um, you know, I I can't even really
tell you in some ways like I'm I'm almost

so slow that um I can't even explain to
you like how it works, you know. It's like

I don't know suddenly it's just four
years later and I'm like well now I have

a little bit of something or whatever you know
but um but yeah um it's it's for me a lot about

hearing um the language um in my mind and um so I
think that is one reason that I'm so slow because

I don't really write um towards semantics alone.
It's like I really have to sort of get um get the

sound and then um when I have the sound it's
like uh working, you know, with and against it

um to create um you know patterns and anomalies.
Um and uh yeah that's that's pretty much it. I

love that, I love that. Before I jump to the next
person I actually have a follow-up question for

you then. Is it a similar process for you when
you're revising? Does it, are you also a slow

reviser or do you feel like-- Oh yeah no I'm
slow at everything. Okay Megha, can we have

you go next? Um it's such a relief to hear you
speak about writing slowly, Tracy, because um I

think I'm the same way and part of it is that I
have a full-time job and so my writing gets done

in really tiny chunks, um. For my first book,
I would write for maybe about 45 minutes before

I had to go into the office every morning um and
yeah it's just extremely slow. It's learning to,

you know, maybe there's a first layer of telling
the story to myself where the writing is really

clumsy, very stiff, very wooden. I'm just trying
to figure out what the story is. And then it's

kind of going back and trying to see the scenes
more fully, trying to see nuances better, trying

to punch depths into the kind of stiff things that
I've written um. And then maybe as as I progress,

I think more about, you know, how how is there
movement within this chapter for instance.

What happens such that this chapter can be its own
chapter? And then I move on to the next chapter

you know. What am I doing with the blank space
between one chapter and the next. So just kind of,

those questions where I'm really trying to
be tough on the book and ask it, well if

if I'm really bored and I pick up this book, am
I going to read it or am I going to put it down

and you know scroll on Twitter for two hours?
So you know, just kind of trying to be really

really hard on it in the later stages to make sure
that the book is able to hold space for a reader.

I love that, I love that. Naima, what
about for you? I think that something

that's critical to my process is having a lot of
non-writing thinking time. I tend to think about

my projects a long time before I begin writing
in earnest. For Halsey Street, it was probably

the story that I wanted to tell for something
like seven years before I really started it.

And then for What's Mine and Yours, I thought
about it for three or four years before I really

started it. And so that time was partially
writing little scraps and having notes,

but also just turning over a set of questions
and characters and possibilities in my mind.

So I like to think that I'm fast, but I'm not. I
think I spend a lot of time before I begin a draft

and then I spend quite a lot of time actively
planning, like thinking about all of the scraps

and possibilities I've collected and then
outlining and writing character sketches. Just

like documents upon documents. And I do that I
think mostly because it gives me courage to start.

Because novels are so large and hopefully
deep that I know I cannot hold it all

in my mind when I sit down to write so I deposit
it in documents then I can reference so part of it

I don't know how helpful it is to me beyond
that it gives me courage and that's enough and

then I try to sort of plow through a draft quite
quickly so that I don't lose my nerve. And then

revision is a really long process for me um and,
you know, a friend of mine read What's Mine and

Yours and was sharing with me some of his favorite
scenes and he said, I just they're beautiful I

can't imagine the novel without them. And I said
to him well I could imagine the novel without

these scenes. Because they weren't in the first
draft and they weren't in the second and they only

occurred to me in the sort of very final stages
um because I cannot rush insight um or nuance.

But I do try to write quite quickly, if only as
a way of managing my own anxiety about how much I

don't know and how much is missing. Because once
I have a draft then I say to myself, okay like

now I can work to fill in those gaps. So
it's mostly an emotional management strategy.

I love the variety here for uh the
writing process, it's amazing, um. So

we spoke a lot about how you build your
unforgettable characters. Are there any

writers or any books in particular where
you felt um, you know, the story was great,

but the character kind of stuck with you,
um when you when you finished the novel,

um. Naima, you're shaking your head. I think
you I think you already have something,

so if you want to go ahead and go first and and
then the rest of you can just feel free, if the

book comes to mind after she goes, feel free. Sure
I love the novel Cantoras by Carolina de Robertis

about five queer women living in Uruguay under
the dictatorship who escape to this remote

beach town as often as they can to be with one
another and it's about friendship and love and

the desire to be free. And I love this book for
many reasons, um but one of the things that I

adore about it is that it's about these five
individual women but it's also about the web

of relationships that exists between them. Aand
I often think about character as being made up

by a range of relationships. Rather than say an
innate sense of like an innate set of qualities

I think that a character can be made
up by how someone feels and relates to

their mother, their cousin, their brother, their
half brother, their neighbor, their teacher.

Um like who we are is all of those dynamics
together and I think that it's a book that

explores how each of those women relate to one
another, relates to their partners, their families

of origin. And it's part of what makes the book
feel so rich and so alive and multi-dimensional.

I love that insight, Naima. I feel like
I'm learning hearing you speak, um.

I can go next. I read this book recently which I
have right here, actually. It's called Open Water

by Caleb Azumah Nelson and um I really loved the
two characters here. It's a it's a love story

set in England. It's about these two Black British
artists, and what I loved is that they are so

gentle with each other. There is such a space
of softness in them. They they live in the real

world, you know, they they live in a world of
racism and violence, but they are so, there's

something so beautiful in how they are very soft
characters and very gentle characters and I really

admired that. Sounds amazing uh Tracy, Elizabeth
with would either of you like to go next?

Um yeah, I I'm also Naima, still chewing over
what you said that uh that a character um is

informed by a range of of other characters.
That's so fascinating, um. One, a book that

I recently read that um I just fell in love with
the protagonist was Mexican Gothic by uh Sylvia

Moreno Garcia. The character Noemi in that
book um is this uh Mexico City socialite and

um her her life when the novel starts is kind of
shallow, um it's just parties and boyfriends and

she's kind of bored and and she gets um dispatched
by her father um to go kind of rescue her husband

who's I mean sorry, she's been dispatched by her
father to rescue her cousin who's been dispatched

who's been kind of kidnapped by her British
husband and is living in this like creepy British

manner out some weird part of the country. Anyway
um but she just is a person that I think the world

and her father had kind of like written off
as like this you know ditzy socialite girl.

And she just proves again and again in
the book just how much um intelligence

and tenacity and fierceness and and and uh all of
that um again and again and again. And she just is

is one of the most likable and um I mean I know
like like there's the whole likable unlikable

character thing, I don't want to get into that.
But she just was somebody I fell in love with um

after like the second page and um yeah I just
I cannot recommend that book highly enough.

Amazing. Take us home, Tracy, take us
home, um. Yeah so the character that

I thought of was um the narrator of Sorry
to Disrupt the Peace by Patrick Cottrell

um and um so this is a narrator um
who is um sort of deeply um deeply

illogical in a lot of ways, um but um sets out
in a way as a sort of existential detective of

sorts. So the character's brother um has committed
suicide and this character wants to sort of um go

on a sort of um forensic um quest right to
find out um, you know, why this has happened,

um and um but this is not a character who um, you
know, embarks on this journey necessarily with

even a very strong sense of connection to their
own grief. Um and um and I was um really taken

with the voice of this character and um surprised
um I think that one of the things for me um as

a reader, is that when a character's logic can
surprise me um that is often when I think like,

okay like, I'm all in so um yeah Sorry to Disrupt
the Peace. Definitely read it. I love that,

I love that, um. So we're coming up on on the last
minutes of the panel. So we talked about a lot of

different things, but I would love to know what
is your guilty pleasure. It could be a certain

genre of books that you read. It could be, you
know, your favorite ice cream. Like what is what

has been your guilty pleasure for the last year as
we've all been living in this lovely pandemic um?

Tracy, do you want to go first? Sure well I mean
I don't even know if this is a guilty pleasure

because I don't feel like guilty about it, but
and also everybody knows this about me I think

or a lot of people do, but um I like basically
live on Popeye's um. I love it. Yeah I eat the

spicy chicken sandwich like multiple times a week.
I love it so much. Amazing, have you tried it with

the um their sweet heat sauce? Okay I'm I might
be getting into my guilty pleasure. (laughter)

It's so good. I have it I haven't gotten
it with the sweet heat, just like how it

like normally comes. I'm just like,
okay I'll take it. Like I don't care.

And of course it's terrible because it's like
um I'm always looking at it and being like,

oh my gosh, like the whole vegetable
here is two slices of pickle. (laughter)

But um but it's so good. Definitely true,
uh. Elizabeth, can I have you go next

um? I'm trying to decide if it's if I should
do the food one or the really bad TV one

um. I'll I'll say Takis. I discovered
Takis. I mean, I had have had them before,

but um during the beginning part of the pandemic
I was going through like a lot of Takis, um

and to the point where I was like starting to
have stomach pains and I was like oh my god the

whatever makes them bright red is like really bad
for you I think and you should not eat them in

massive quantities. (laughter) Oh my
gosh yes yes Takis oh yeah oh yeah um.

Can I say Instagram? Although I don't even know
if it's like actually a source of pleasure.

It might just be like a guilty
habit, obsession, fixation,

you know, maybe. I actually don't think
it deserves to be called a pleasure

in the way that like a Popeye's chicken sandwich
does, sort of ,but yeah I'll say that. Okay okay.

Zoom just closed. That's okay. If we're living in
a virtual world, these weird tech glitches happen,

um or like Tracy said they're they're they're
listening to us, they're watching us, so

um. What is your guilty pleasure that
you've been doing over the last year?

Hmm guilty pleasure? I don't know
that I think of any pleasures as

guilty. I feel like I I try to read really
widely um. I um started reading kind of

outside what I typically read, which is a lot
of non-fiction and literary fiction. And I read

Jeff Vandermeer for the first time. Which was
really fun and it was just nice to be exposed to

just a different kind of storytelling.
And I really want to read

more, you know, speculative, fantasy, sci-fi, and
see how those other kinds of storytelling work.

I love that. You're in for a real
treat. There's a huge cannon. (laughter)

I don't even know where to
tell you to start, to be honest

um the the last two things is, I would love for
you all to go around and we'll start with Naima

and then Tracy, then Elizabeth, and Megha. If
you could let everyone know what's next for you,

um if it's okay with your publisher if you
mention what's next. I know some of them like

to keep things under wraps. And then if you can
also let um all of our viewers know where they can

find you on social, your website, wherever
you're hanging out virtually these days.

Well What's Mine and Yours continues to be
what's next for me. My book came out in March,

so it's still very much at the forefront of my
mind and where a lot of my energies are going. I'm

doing virtual visits to book clubs, so if anyone's
interested in reading What's Mine and Yours,

through my website, the publisher's website, you
can uh enter to win a drop-in visit with me to

your book club, which is exciting, um. So that's
a big part of my life right now. I'm supporting

this book um. I hope to start working on my
third novel this summer which will be about new

motherhood, female friendship, and class mobility.
Will be the story of three three different women

um. And people can connect with me at my website
www.naimacoster.com on Instagram at @naimacoster

and on Twitter at @zafatista and all that's linked
on the contact page on my website.

Awesome. Tracy, you want to go next? Sure um yeah
so I guess in the most immediate future I've been

working on um a short piece of journalism, like a
feature, um that is about veterans disability um.

And so um that will be coming out at some point
soon, um. And in uh, let's see is it August 31st,

um my paperback is out of Quotients, so um I think
there maybe is gonna be a new book cover for it. So

um I don't know there's that, um. And I've been
working on um a memoir project actually um

so um but it's, you know, I'm still living my life,
so I guess we'll have to see how it turns out.

I love that. And and where can they find you?

Oh right, yeah um so I am on Instagram and
Twitter um and my handles are @tracysoneill so at

t-r-a-c-y-s, "s" as in soccer, o'neill o-n-e-i-l-l.
Awesome. Elizabeth, can we have you go next?

Yeah um so Mona at Sea comes out June 30th um and
so I'm very much uh in full like book promo mode

right now. That's pretty much the only thing I'm
doing um and it's available for pre-order and the

audiobook is is also going to come out, so you
can get it in either format. And my website is

www.elizabethgonzalezjames.com um and then
I'm on Twitter and Instagram at @unefemmejames,

u n e f e m m e j a m e s. It's the same
handle for both. And I'm also on Facebook

for anybody who still uses Facebook so um.
Yeah. I love that. Megha, bring us home. (laughter)

Um well can I just take a second to say I've loved
Naima's and Tracy's books and I'm so excited to

read yours, Elizabeth. So I encourage everybody
watching to read these beautiful books, um. I,

so my paperback also comes out soon. It
comes out at the end of June. June 29th.

So that will be exciting. And I'm working
very slowly on a new novel um I found that

not saying anything about my project worked
really well for me the first time so I'm

going to continue doing that um and I am I have
a website which I desperately need to update um

meghamajumdar.com and I'm on Twitter
at @MeghaMaj and Instagram @megha.maj.

Amazing. Well thank you so much for for
joining us virtually. It's very exciting,

a possible new cover for a paperback, a debut
writer's book coming out at the end of the month,

um, you know, Naima doing more promo,
drop-in book clubs, that's amazing.

Megha's paperback coming at the end of June. So
many amazing things. Be sure to check out all

of these lovely authors' books. Thank you so much
for your time. And that is all from me, folks. Enjoy.

Thank you for moderating so beautifully. Thank you. Thank you.