Poured Over: Lindsay Hunter and Roxane Gay on Hot Springs Drive

By Jenna Seery / December 7, 2023 at 6:00 am

Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter is a raw and visceral novel that explores primal desires, shocking secrets and the effects they have on those that uncover them. Hunter is joined by her publisher, Roxane Gay, a prolific author in her own right including her new collection, Opinions. The two join us to discuss collaboration and revision, writing the gritty details of life, advice for writers and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over. We end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Jamie.   

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Executive Producer Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.            

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.        

Featured Books (Episode):
Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter
Opinions by Roxane Gay
O Caledonia by Elspeth Barker
Empty Theatre by Jac Jemc
The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):
Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh
The Need by Helen Phillips

Full Episode Transcript

Miwa Messer

I’m Miwa Messer I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and Lindsay Hunter and Roxane Gay are both here for a couple of different reasons. We have some really great books to talk about today. But also Roxane is Lindsay’s publisher. In case you haven’t heard there is an imprint called Roxane Gay Books with Grove Atlantic here in New York. And Hot Springs Drive is the third book that Roxane has published this year under her imprint. And Lindsay, you have done some very, very cool stuff in this novel, it’s part thriller. It’s part domestic drama. It kept me on the edge of my seat. I actually read it in one go the first time and then of course, I go back to prep for the show and I’m picking it things with a pencil and destroying my galleys. I love doing this, but I am not kind to my galleys. But I’m gonna ask you to set it up for listeners, because we had a quick conversation about how we’re not going to do spoilers. No spoilers.

Lindsay Hunter

No spoilers. So this book is inspired by a real crime. It’s what I initially told Roxane was my quote unquote murder novel. There is a murder, you know about that in the first few pages, but it’s about friendship. It’s about womanhood, motherhood, it’s about bodies. It’s, you know, families, and, you know, just trying to unite the mind and the body in catastrophic ways. I think people have been calling it a literary thriller, which I really enjoy. I think that’s kind of what it is. I think it’s propulsive. It’s funny, sad and dark.

And as a reader, I’m gonna agree with all of that. Roxane, you know? Yes, you’re also a critic, as well. But I think this kind of falls under you know, when you see it, right. Like you knew immediately that you wanted to publish this. Now.

Roxane Gay

I did. I did. I’ve enjoyed, I’ve been a big fan, actually, of Lindsay’s work for many, many years, from Daddy to Eat When You’re Hungry, and I’m getting the title slightly wrong. And so when I asked her if she was working on anything interesting, she sent this along, and I read it in one sitting, it’s incredibly propulsive. And it’s just so interesting to read a sort of murder novel, a thriller, where you know, who did it. And the mystery is instead why, yeah, and that’s what drew me in. And also, each of these characters is so distinct. And the novel shifts point of view a great many times. And I love that because you don’t have to guess about what other people are thinking. I mean, there’s a lot of mystery to it still. But you get to sort of see this world through most of the character’s eyes and I love that.

I’m also going to point out that you do have a new book out, Opinions, which we are going to get to during the course of this interview. But okay, you’re writing for The Times, you’ve been writing for television, you’ve been writing for film, you’ve also written comics. And you’re now publishing books on top of it. So, we need to talk about sort of wearing all of these hats, and it is all of a piece, obviously, it’s words, stories, it’s communication, you know, it’s community, all of this kind of stuff. But okay, you know, when you see, it’s the third book of the three books that you’ve done in the first year over the life of the press, you know, Lindsay’s work before this, but also, I’m pretty sure you knew how this was going to connect with readers, right?

I did. I am absolutely a reader first. And, you know, I, each of the books I’ve chosen for my imprint thus far I’ve loved in some way. And with this book, I thought, oh, man, this is just exactly the kind of thing I love to read, and exactly the kind of thing I want to publish. And I think it’s going to find a very big audience. I’m really hoping that it does, it deserves a big audience. I think people are going to feel all kinds of ways. Always great when you have flawed characters because it gives them something to chew on. And there is a lot to chew on in Hot Springs Drive.

It’s so satisfying and surprising too I mean, I got a lot of really great sentences because I like great sentences. I don’t need to like my characters, but I need to be invested in the time that I’m spending with them. And you’ve given me some very creepy characters in this book, Lindsay, like straight up. You gave me a couple of, like, okay, I’m gonna stay but I do not like you. You are horrible. But I want to talk about the construction of this book, too, because you are you’re juggling POVs there’s sort of a timelessness to the storytelling to like the way you open and it’s like, well, here’s the house. We’re just gonna start with the house and walking around and sort of all of the things that we, as human beings will imprint on house, right, like the ideas that we’ll put onto a location and whatnot. And we start there. And I’m like, Okay, you have my attention. You have my attention, but this is you cover a lot. Yeah. It’s a political novel in thriller drag.

Yeah, I think I think it’s interesting how you notice how much is covered. Because when I was originally writing the novel, I was thinking of it as my crazy quilt novel, I had just written a novel before that, that I was thinking of as my collage novel, which I was layering time on top of itself, I feel as a parent, time is always happening all these different times in your life is always happening. So that was my collage novel. And when I approached this, when I first heard about this crime, and I knew that I had to write it, in some way to understand it, I was thinking about how what was interesting to me, was the why of it, versus the who, and sort of thinking about these characters, in terms of what you know, what came next. And I was thinking about how what I love about good true crime and good crime is that it’s that it is kind of like a crazy quilt or, or I’ve more recently been thinking of it as like a shattered windshield shards, these pieces, that you can put it together, and you can kind of see the whole, but it maybe doesn’t make sense as the whole. And so you have to kind of look closer. And so that honestly was what I was going for, when I was drafting it, you know, I would think I need to show Jackie, in a way that like a stranger would see her because I can’t, you know, I’m going to show her the way her kids see her in this other section or her, you know, lover or whatever, but I’m not, I want to see her completely objectively, the way a stranger would see her. So I’m gonna write this from the realtor. And that’s gonna get them into the neighborhood, too. And so, you know, that’s kind of how I was approaching it. And it moved around in time a lot in the original draft, it was, you know, you would kind of see the aftermath. And then you would see, you know, like, 20 years in the past, through revising, with Roxane, which I would love to talk about that because, yes, please, God bless her. I kind of let myself understand that it was okay, when you have such an explosive crime, like an explosive action, that is sort of the kernel of the book that it’s okay to let everything else sort of happen chronologically, which is such a funny realization for a writer to come to, like, it’s okay for it to happen in order that it happens. But I was really holding on to this feeling of being able to present the whole even as it was in pieces, all at once. And so that was, you know, through working with Roxane and, you know, her very clear and direct understanding of, of me as a writer, I, you know, that’s something I knew I could trust her with. She and I have been friends, she and I have been mutual fans of each other. She knows my writing; she’s published me before in various endeavors. I could trust, she was going to be truthful with me. And I could trust her vision because she was observing what she loved about what I was creating.

You also did surprise me towards the end, there’s some stuff that you do with time and some characters. And I was really pleased, because, you know, I was kind of like, Alright, let’s see how we pull this together. At the end, and yeah, you did some very cool stuff. And there is a little bit of a shift in time. But it’s, yeah, I’m really trying not to give anything away.

I think I can talk a little bit to that without spoiling it. I think that’s also related to Roxane’s feedback, you know, I sent it to her, it wasn’t finished. It wasn’t a finished draft, it was, you know, almost a finished draft, but it wasn’t. And so there was like, a mutual trust between us. So I feel like she trusted that I was going to bring it to a place that she could work with. She also knew, you know, as a reader, I’m looking at this. And I, it’s not that it’s bad to have questions, because I do want my readers to leave with questions and to keep thinking about it as it goes, because that’s kind of how I feel about the crime itself and that’s what’s meaningful to me about it. But are we cheating the readers out of something that would make it even more meaningful? And so, you know, she kind of laid out for me, like, these are questions people are going to have, and these are questions that matter. And, you know, it takes an editor to see that, I think, you know, I think, you know, like, I get so into the making of it, that I need someone to remember, you know, remind me of creating space for a reader to inhabit that world as well.

I do want to talk about collaboration for a second because I think it’s always fascinating to me, as a reader to know sort of what that looks like. There’s this idea right that a writer is sitting in their garrote of choice, right or a room with no windows, etc? or what have you working away working away working away? And I do think like this idea that you’re creating in a vacuum is not necessarily well accurate to start with. But can we just talk about how the changes come about? And what that sort of exchange of ideas look like?

Yeah, I think I do actually write in a vacuum, I don’t tend to show my stuff to let me just refute your entire question that…

I’m not the writer, I’m just the bookseller.

But no, you’re correct. And that a lot of writers do have readers that they turn to and reading, etc. But I don’t tend to do that. Initially, I what I usually do is assault my poor agent and just say, what I did, what do you think? And he’s very gracious. But in this case, you know, I was still deep in the process of working on it when Roxane asked me to see it, and I think if it was anyone else I would have been, you know, like, I need, you know, another year before I show this to you, but because, you know, and I would have these, like these thoughts and these doubts throughout as I was editing. And I would suddenly come to and think like Roxane’s not gonna lie to you, like Roxane’s gonna be truthful, and she’s, she’s just, she’s a natural editor, even as she’s such an amazing writer. She’s just, she just gets it. And she’s able to just say it. And so, you know, I think, for me, it really was even more of a collaboration than I’ve ever experienced in my previous books, because I felt like Roxane, Roxane and I were bringing it to its completion together.

Okay, Roxanne, I know, the new book is op eds and essay pieces, mostly written in response to the news cycle. Right, Opinions. I mean, I think that’s fair, the first two thirds feel like it’s all sort of in conversation with current events. And then there’s some…

I mean, I think it’s in part, not only responding to current events, but just trying to make sense of them. Because so much of what we’ve been dealing with, particularly over the past decade, and of course, this is not new history is cyclical. But we’ve been dealing with some really terrible, terrible things, some like, fundamentally, existential crises. And I think a lot of us need to think through what it all means and our place in it, and what we can do as individuals to try and create change or to say, we are not okay with this. And then the other part of the book is cultural criticism. That’s more book reviews, profiles, the kinds of work that I get to do is interesting, and that I really enjoy and that engages with the culture that we consume, not only the culture that we’re living in.

So part of that though, part of that work, right comes back to what you were doing with Lindsay. Yeah, because Lindsay is novel is not without its own cultural criticism. I mean, certainly the way women move in our bodies and how people see our bodies, everyone has opinions about our bodies, and sometimes we internalize those opinions as well. And it is the same set of muscles, though, pardon the metaphor, right? When you’re when you’re flipping from writing these pieces that are in conversation with the moment and then being able to step back and say, Hey, Lindsay, let’s sit down and work on an edit on your novel that is essentially coming back to a lot of this from a side point, right?

Yes, you know, with Lindsay’s novel, so much of it is about desire. And I mean, some people will say all fiction is about desire, but this one in particular is about want. And Jackie has this naked, unapologetic want. She wants food, she wants love, she wants sex, she wants peace from her children. And, you know, I wanted to make sure that we could bring that out and show that so many women deal with wanting things for themselves and being told that they have to deny it, being told that they have to subsume themselves in service of their partners in service of their children in the service of their jobs and service of society. And so to see a story about a woman who knows that and for a time does that and then decides she’s had enough, is great, because there’s a liberating sense of wow, this is what happens for better or worse, when someone decides to abandon the cultural expectations for how she should deal with her appetites.

And that’s why I love this book so much. I really do. It turns everything inside out. It turns everything on its head and that’s what makes it fun for at least what made it so fun for me to read even though there are moments where I was like, well, that’s kind of gross.

You know, it’s funny, you should bring up the grossness though I thought that was so awesome because and this is not a spoiler, but there’s some sex in the book and some body stuff. And it’s just real bodies take up space, and they have smells, and you know, sometimes in the throes of passion, you’re doing things where you kind of look at each other, like what is happening here? Oh, my God. Let’s do it again, and never speak of it.

And kudos to Roxane, I can remember that was one of your suggestions. Roxanne was like this more of this. Because it was so good. Yeah, it was one of the grossest most like, we’re using sex as a weapon scenes. And there was a lot of energy behind that. And Roxane just knew, like, that’s part that’s part of the story that we’re telling here.

It’s really subversive. It’s really subversive and smart. And just undoes right, it undoes this narrative that even you know, some books feed into I’m, I’m a bookseller, I’ve been doing this for more than a minute. We’ve seen some stuff come around more than once. We’re like, Okay, that’s great. There’s an audience for I genuinely believe there’s a book for everyone out there. That’s right. But to have something like Hot Springs Drive sort of appear magically and start reading and like, oh, okay, okay. And let’s, let’s see what happens. But it is, I think, Jackie and Teresa, especially Jackie, but there’s so much desire and tension and want, and just this idea that you don’t necessarily have to wait for something to be handed to you. And I think that is really, it’s a challenging idea for some people. And I loved it.

I think happily, in the beginning, when Grove was sort of talking about who they were going to market it to. And it was, you know, we’re going to try to, like, get the crime audience I was, I was nervous about that. Because to me, I wasn’t writing a crime novel. And I know that that’s such a dedicated, and I’m part of that fandom. It made me nervous. But I think what I’m seeing is a lot of people having the same reaction as you, me what, which is like, oh, this is not what I was expecting at all, but a good way. And that’s been really exciting for me. Yes, there’s crime, yes, there’s murder, there’s sex and desire. And but there’s this other thing that’s happening that, you know, it’s just exciting. It’s just exciting to see people react like that.

Part of it, too, is watching these characters move through this world you’ve created for them. And every single one of them is uncomfortable. Every single one of these characters is just like, What? What have you done? And I just want to talk about the cast for a second because I’m guessing you sort of had Theresa and Jackie earlier, like, you kind of had those voices very quickly. But you know, their families aren’t perfectly aligned. You know, Jackie certainly has more children and, and Teresa’s kid is who she is, as well, but you’re playing generationally, too.

I think Teresa’s voice in revisiting revisions became stronger than it was, she was definitely there. But she wasn’t as present as she became, which was, you know, just important in terms of it not being yet another story of this poor angelic victim. You know, like what, you know, happening to her, I wanted her to be a full person. And I, you know, you talked about how things move quickly. I mean, I think I give you all of Teresa’s life, and, you know, two or three pages, which I think draws on my, like, my short story, my flash fiction backgrounds, you know, a way to get things very immediately and resonantly, sometimes even more resonantly than you can in a full blown chapter. Jackie was there from the very beginning. I think Roxane can speak to this too. She was vicious. I mean, she’s vicious. But in the first draft that Roxane saw that we worked on together, she was just hate. Okay. It was it was tough. It was dark. It was a lot.

I actually liked dark fiction, and I have no problem with like unlikable, odious characters. But it felt like it that reduced or took away some of the complexity of what’s actually going on with Jackie. She’s human. She makes some terrible decisions. She’s a mess. And at times, she’s cruel. But that’s not the whole of who she is. She has lots and lots of other qualities, many of them good. And so and I think that’s the truth about most of us. I think we all have those dark things inside of us and then we have our better selves. And I wanted to be able, I wanted Lindsay to be able to show us both Jackie’s best and worst parts. And she, when you give a writer or an edited manuscript, you never know what’s going to come back. Sometimes they’re going to ignore all of your suggestions. And I always tell writers, you can, it’s your book, you know what’s best. But she did probably the best revision I’ve ever seen from a writer. She really rethought everything. And it was just incredible, because the difference between the first version I saw and the version that you see, is remarkable. It’s the same book, the same energy, the same, like excellence, but truly, she reimagined it. And I mean, it’s it was just a masterclass in revision.

When you’re working on your own stuff, Roxane, whether it’s fiction or non, I mean, obviously, when you’re writing for The Times, there’s a whole process in place with your editor and everything else. But what’s the revision process like for you, when you’re on the other side of things, when it’s you handing over the revisions?

You know, I tend to go through and it takes me a while to edit. I’m a slow editor. I’m a fast writer, but I’m a slow editor, especially for other people. Because I go like line by line, word by word, sentence by sentence, like I do it all. I do line editing, and I do developmental editing. I can’t not do line editing. It’s a really bad habit, but it is what it is. Like, if that word doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. And I’m going to tell you about it. And so I just go all the way through and I just put in like my real reaction comments like, this doesn’t work. This is incredible.

I’m laughing because Roxane, some of the most terrifying comments, and I think I’ve said this to you before, would just be a string of like, five question marks. And I would be like, Oh, my God, she’s right. She nailed it.

But people forget writing a book is not coal mining, but it is hard work, right. And to sustain a narrative, whether it’s fiction or nonfiction for hundreds of pages, not every sentence is going to be golden. During the first draft, you know, there are going to be times when you’re like, it’s midnight, and I’ve been working all day, but I have to get out this manuscript, you’re not going to write your best sentences, perhaps they’re going to be there. And it’s just clay to be molded later. And we all have them in our manuscripts. It’s totally normal and natural. And when I encounter something where I’m just like, I just sometimes just put question marks was like, I don’t even know what to say. It’s just some something’s not working here.

I even have that when I’m writing copy on and you know, obviously writing copy, not the same thing. But I do have an editor that I will turn to and be like, I can’t put my finger, something’s really wrong. I don’t know what I did. But we can’t send this out. And so and it could be four sentences. But I would like those four sentences to be the best four sentences they can be and having an editor lean on. I mean, we have an editor for the show, too, he fixes lots of stuff for me, I would like to not go it alone, as it were. It’s just also really helpful to have that added perspective. I mean, the energy of a narrative arc, whether it’s fiction, or nonfiction, whether it’s an essay collection, or poetry, or a novel or short story collection, like there is still an arc within the pieces, right? Like you want the stories to have an arc within the collection, you want the essays to have an arc within the book itself. I mean, certainly a novel has an arc like this, these are the things that you don’t necessarily think about when you’re reading, but if they’re not there, you know, it’s like hitting a wall. And just like what is happening? Absolutely.

You know, and I think that we should give — readers in general are very sophisticated. They know when something is off, you cannot fool readers when something isn’t working, it’s not working. And that’s why I actually do enjoy hearing from readers because most, I’m not talking about good reads, I do not get into all of that. But in general readers just know what they like, and they know what they don’t like they know what works and what doesn’t work. And is it subjective? 100% But I think it’s an excellent barometer of you know, whether or not you’ve nailed a narrative arc or the substance of something. And I appreciate that feedback once I get through my feelings.

You know, it’s voice right, like narrative arc is essentially a fancy way of saying voice and whether you know, that’s a close third person or it’s first, I really want to hand myself over to voice that’s really what I want more than anything. It’s just to say, tell me a story and I will follow you. And if I get cool stuff that I hadn’t thought about before. If I get to be poked in a new direction, that’s a bonus, I would prefer to read something that is going to push me to think, in a way that I wasn’t expecting to do. So I want to just talk about influences for a second. I know you guys have known each other for a million years, and obviously your work has influenced each other. But let’s talk about other influences. Because this is an excuse for me, Lindsay, when I saw that you were a fan of Elspeth Barker, and O Caledonia, Roxanne, have you read O Caledonia?

If I did, I was very young. And I don’t remember it.

I’m bringing you a copy when I see you in a couple of weeks, I’m bringing you a copy because you will groove on this book. You will groove on this so much. And actually, Maggie O’Farrell turned me on to this book, which was not expecting. And it’s great. But Lindsay, I need to you said this book helped you with a problem. This novel this tiny, tiny, tiny, slim Gothic Scottish novel helped you with a problem with Hot Springs Drive.

It did. So it was right around the time, when I had gotten the edits back from Roxane. I was traveling with my family. And I was having a hard time. Because since I had written Hot Springs Drive, I had embarked on another novel, I was writing another novel. So I was in that headspace. And I was having a hard time getting a foothold back into that world. And I just thought, you know, like I wrote it during the pandemic, what had changed since then I was like, am I even this, I started getting all these doubts in my head. And I knew that it was going to be a very large undertaking a very large rewrite, to bring it from this sort of like rough draft to what I wanted to present to the world and what Roxane was seeing in it. And I couldn’t find my way in and I would embark on these little exercises, you know, like letting myself write like a paragraph of some scene to try to get myself back in the world. And we went to the bookstore, we were traveling, we went to the bookstore, and they had, we went to Barnes and Noble, what am I saying? Not the bookstore, we went to Barnes and Noble in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Yes. I used to work at Barnes and Noble, we can talk about that later. I love it so much. They had O Caledonia on a special display table. And I had remembered, I believe it was my friend, Meghan Phillips, who had mentioned that she loved it. And we have the same taste in books. So I thought, Okay, I’m just, I need an easy win. You know, I’m gonna go for this book. And the opening chapter, where you see her, you see her dead body, the bottom of the stairs. And it’s just, it’s beautifully written, the light is there and the textures, and it’s shocking. And you’re immediately present. I thought I can do this, now I remember. Now I remember what I was writing. And I sat down and I wrote the opening. Not this not the opening scene now. But it was, you know, when you see Teresa in the garage, similar to what happens in the beginning of O Caledonia. And then I want to shout out also I read around the same time I read Jac Jemc’s Empty Theatre, which is her most recent novel, and it was, you know, years of research at one point, I think it was like 250,000 words, beast of a book that she whittled down, I think to about 100,000 words, and it’s alternating viewpoints between Queen Sisi and King Ludwig. And based on real people, and but she had, so it’s just clear, she had so much fun with it. And I thought, you know, these are also kind of real people that I’m writing. And it’s offering me a way in or like an ownership that I needed to remind myself of a confidence that I needed to remind myself of that authenticity, I think that you were touching on earlier about voice and narrative, reminding me of the rules of the world that I was existing in. So those two I think were huge in terms of getting me in. And I was taking what Roxane had sent me and reforming it into you know what I was going to send back to her. Those were I think specifically what influenced Hot Springs Drive.

Okay, Roxane, let’s go a little bigger with you. I mean, obviously Opinions pulls from lots of different places. But I want to talk about some of the writers who made the Roxane Gay that we know, you know, between the story collections and the opinion work and maybe even the advice column? I do. I do like writing your advice.

I like writing my advice column. When I was growing up, I was in Omaha, Nebraska a lot. And I had immigrant parents so I didn’t really and they you know, they were readers but they did not really know much about young people’s literature. So I got to read whatever I wanted. And they just assumed if it was in a book, it was fine. So I read a lot of like, Clan of the Cave Bear and I mean at a wildly inappropriate age. I think it was eight or nine. So I read a lot of these big sweeping James Michener, right? I’ve read everything he’s written James Cavell, Clive Cussler, Tom Clancy, I read a lot of genre work growing up. And that really made me appreciate story, right and fast paced sort of narrative arcs where there’s a rise and fall and a rise and fall, where there’s some resolution along the way for each of the crises. And then there’s like the big resolution. And so there was a lot of that Little House on the Prairie, problematic we know, but many girls like me, were, I think the first book I remember reading was Little House on the Prairie, Little House in the Big Woods. And I just loved that you could write about ordinary girls and ordinary places and make it seem extraordinary. And then, of course, as I got older and got into high school and college, I started to have a more sophisticated reading palette, and more importantly, a more diverse reading palette, right. And that’s when I was first introduced to things like Black writers. And it’s sad to say that I didn’t really read Black writers until high school. But that’s kind of what happens when you grow up in predominantly white communities, especially 40 years ago, it was a very different landscape. But I was introduced to Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison. And they were absolutely fundamental in making me the writer I am today in terms of both my fiction and my nonfiction, just beautiful sentences and important ideas. And that’s certainly what I aspire to in my own work.

Yeah, it’s funny when I think about some of the stuff I mean, I was more Plum Creek, little house. I really I wanted to sod house so badly my parents off you may not. And I was like, I have a shovel. I can go to this.

Have you read the book? I can’t remember her name. I think she’s actually based in Chicago. And she’s a lovely person. I’ve met her a few times.

Wendy McClure Yes, yes. I love her book. And the title is falling out of my head. But she basically went and did all of the things as like an actual adult. In the 21st century, she went and did the little house thing. It’s great. And you know,

She made a balloon out of pig bladder.

I will get that title. And I will drop it in the show notes. Because it is it’s a very, very fun book. And Wendy is terrific. Yes. And it is one of those moments where like, what but also, you know, I read a lot of Cheever and a lot of Updike. And a lot of all of the things you know that some of it is aged really well. And some of it you’re kind of like, okay, I’m glad I read that. But I don’t need to go back. And it’s, you know, for the longest time I had a choice between Maxine Hong Kingston, and you know, Farewell to Manzanar, and there was kind of like point A and point B.

And it’s always interesting, especially for those of us who were people of color, make, the choices were so limited, and there could be only one, there really could be only one for so many years. Actually, the only two Asian writers I knew of were Maxine Hong Kingston, and Amy Tan, right. And I mean, great writers. Yeah, absolutely, you know, great writers, but they were not at all the only two Asian women writing. And then you know, now finally, we’ve recognized that Asian identity contains multitudes and that there are all kinds of ethnicities within that. And we’re starting to recognize that those writers are out there and putting amazing work in the world. But my goodness, we’ve come a long way, even though it feels like we haven’t.

There’s progress. I mean, I’ll take the progress. And part of that progress, too, is sort of across the board. Like again, you know, Lindsay is writing about bodies and women’s desires and women’s rage. Like right, rage is still that thing where theoretically, I guess we’re not supposed to get angry. We’re not supposed to. We’re not supposed to have rage. We’re not supposed to wait for it to have opinions, which I mean, that was a factory preset on me from a tiny, tiny age. Right. Didn’t get that memo. Yeah, same thing. But I mean, I think all of us grew up in spaces where it was like, Well, hi, I’m a tiny person in a pinafore and Mary Jane’s and guess what? I have many opinions and you’re going to hear all of them.

I still struggle with that. Okay, Roxane. I think it’s so beautiful how in the beginning of Opinions you talk about watching your mother have opinions? Not your father, your mother. Yeah. And how she just she said she had things to say. And she said them, and you know, I know from your Twitter that she’s still like that, which is still…

And she’s coming to Chicago.

Oh my gosh. Can she come on stage with us?

I will do my very best. You know, it’s funny because both of my parents are opinionated. But many, even though every culture is patriarchal, Haitian culture is in its own way very matriarchal. And the men think they run the show, and then there are the women actually running the show. And in my household, like, there was never any question about like, who the boss was. Even when my dad gave us permission to do something. We had to go and ask our mom, like have a real permission. Like he doesn’t really give us permission. I mean, we respected him. But we also understood that until my mom also gave us her blessing, nothing was really going to happen. And she was so opinionated and not shy about it. And for a black woman, an immigrant in 1980s, late 1970s, Omaha, Nebraska, to do that the level of courage it took, that I now understand, like, what it must have been like for my parents in this place that was so inhospitable to them. And that she still stood her ground whenever it mattered, really was an amazing model for me.

I had a similar situation. I mean, my tiny mother from Tokyo, but same. Yeah. She had, she had many, many, many and tiny immigrant mom, too. And she was like…

I mean, right. Look what they did for us. It’s incredible.

It’s fabulous. But Lindsay, you grew up in Florida? Okay, and now you’re based in the Midwest.

I’m in Chicago. My family was Mormon. My parents met at BYU. Talk about patriarchal culture, but we actually were excommunicated from the Mormon church when I was around three or four. And then we moved to Florida and embarked on our Presbyterian life. And I came to Chicago for what I thought was just two years to go to grad school at the Art Institute of Chicago. And they were the only school that let me in, I was rejected. I was rejected by eight, I believe, eight schools, they didn’t care about your GRE scores, and they didn’t care what you wrote, you didn’t have to say, Oh, I’m a poet, or I’m a fiction lender, they just, they wanted to see if you had something behind what you wrote. And so I got in, thankfully, and I thought, okay, you know, I’ll be here for two years, and I’ll go back home because my whole family was there. My nephews and everything. I’ve never gone. I’ve been in Chicago for 18 years now. And I have kids of my own and it is the best place to raise a family aside from being too expensive. It is. They are so lucky. They don’t even know how lucky they are.

It’s wild to hear you mentioned the Art Institute of Chicago, Gabriel Bump finished his undergrad there, The New Naturalsis so good. And if either of you have a free moment, it is so so good. It’s not quite about starting a commune. But it’s a bunch of folks who get a little fed up with the world and decide, well, hey, maybe we can dig into a mountain and make a thing. And it’s the voice is great. He does dialogue, man. He just, there’s this. It’s not dissimilar to what you’re doing in Hot Springs Drive in terms of the forward momentum of this, like you’re just always moving forward. And he’ll talk about sort of these tiny set pieces where not a lot happens. And I’m like, No, dude, actually a lot happens, it’s like watching these tiny plays. And stuff happens. And I do feel like you were doing a lot of that in Hot Spring Drive, that this constant back and forth with the dialogue, just always moving forward as well, which I really appreciate. I mean, like I said, I was deep in the story. I did not want to put this book down at any point. And I do have the luxury of being able to read stuff straight through when I feel like it the dialogue though. Where does that come from? Are you? Are you watching a lot of theater? Are you watching a lot of television? What’s going on here? Because the dialogue is really, the dialogue in this book is terrific.

I can think of two reasons. So I do have a theater background, I studied the method at the Lee Strasberg theatre Institute in New York for a little bit before I realized what I actually wanted to do was create emotions in people, which I thought I could do with acting, but which I was felt like I was more adept at doing with writing, which I had been doing my whole life. So you know, the other thing is that in my house growing up, we were just obsessed with how people spoke, with vernacular with I mean, we had Raising Arizona memorized way too early of an age and parents had certain VHS recordings of different movies and they would just let us watch them Roxane, you were talking about how your, your parents just let you read whatever. You know, I was reading VC Andrews as a kid, and I was watching these movies, and I probably wouldn’t let my own kid watch at that age. But we just had an ear I can remember you know, imitating my parents, my sister doing it to each other cracking each other up and just like unique turns a phrase or the way someone would describe something and just this whole new way we would just obsess over that. And I think you know, I was a huge eavesdropper. I still am you know, I just I think it just comes from like looking, mining my surroundings for new ways of expressing something, I never want to use dialogue as filler. I always want it to matter. That doesn’t sound revolutionary. You know, like, I know, every writer feels the same way. But I, you know, I really want it to be an opportunity not only to say something, but how you’re saying it means something as well. So I think, you know, that’s how I approach dialogue. And I think also like, it’s a way as a writer to sort of show what people allow out and what they hide at the same time that they don’t even know what they’re allowing out, right.

There’s a lot that happens in the silences. In Hot Spring Drive you do a lot with I’m just gonna let it hang in the air for a second. And everyone kind of stands around and does this. Roxane you’ve been writing across genres for a really long time, whether it’s literally short stories, novels, teleplays. Do we call them screenplays? Now, I don’t even know what we call things, streamers. But you’ve also written comic books. I mean, dialogue is clearly something you do incredibly well, as well. But you also write very tightly. And when you’re writing these opinion pieces, you’re coming in at 1200 words, which is like,

Especially because I love to write long, but you wouldn’t know it.

Yeah. All right. But switching gears, when you’re bouncing between all of these different pieces. I mean, it’s been a minute, since we’ve had a full essay collection from you. Yeah, like Opinions. I mean, when was Bad Feminist?

2014. So it’s been nine years, okay.

And I mean, I see your byline everywhere. Because I read it whenever I say. It’s a lot of work, though. It’s a lot of switching gears. And again, writing? Yes, it is. It is a great set of muscles. And you can take it wherever you want. But not everyone can do that kind of switching it up.

Yeah, I think of it as cross training, even though I hate cross training. But reading, writing, like all of these things are our ways of sort of strengthening the writing muscle. And when I write across genres, I feel like I’m gaining new skills that are applicable to almost everything that I do, right. And I love the challenge of it, too. It’s not that it’s easy to work across genres, it’s actually that it’s challenging. And that keeps me really engaged and excited. And like, oh, wow, I have to write a comic book. Well, how do I do that, right. And then I sort of muddle through until I get better. And the same with screenplays, which it seems easy. And people will tell you, it’s easy to write a screenplay. And in some ways it is the writing generally comes very fast, but it’s really hard to write a good screenplay that will get made. So I’m really enjoying that transition. And it’s very humbling. And I’m working on getting better. And I just know that I’m getting things there and in like writing comics that I can bring to my fiction to make it you know, I think more vibrant, more cinematic, still literary. And I can also bring it to my nonfiction to create a stronger sense of the moment. And so it’s all of a piece for me. Right?

How does it feel having Opinions back in the world again, because you’ve been doing so many other different kinds of things. And, you know, people are gonna respond to you, as they do readers bring half of their world with them do anything they’re doing, but how is it? How’s it been? I mean, the books been out in the world for what, a couple weeks.

It came out, came out on October 10, which was, it is what it is. And so it’s been interesting to see the book in people’s hands. You know, the thing with this particular book is that it’s a collection of previously published work. So many of the pieces may be familiar, but I don’t know that there are many people that have read all of the pieces, except maybe my wife. And so it’s just interesting to see people react to the light hearted pieces, as well as the more serious pieces. know, some people like it’s kind of repetitive and like, yeah, racism is repetitive. So yeah, you know, sorry that I had to write about yet another police shooting. It’s just really interesting. There’s a range of responses, as there always isn’t, as there always should be. But people have been really enjoying it. And I’ve been meeting some really interesting readers that they would not have guessed were my readers. So that’s been nice as well.

Oh, that’s fun.

Are you talking about men?

No, never. You know, there are about 20 men in the world that read my work and 17 of them are gay. Which, God bless them. I love them, my compatriots in the alphabet life. But yeah, a couple of men like I met a man yesterday. I was at a library fundraiser here in Charlotte, they’re building a new library, and they need $100 million, which I guess they don’t have lying around. And I’m sorry. So it’s just interesting to then meet a man who’s like a straight, heterosexual, very like man who works in finance of all things at a bank. And it’s like, I read your work every week. And I’m like, really? Okay. And then it just, it’s a reminder, whenever that happens, like, don’t assume who your audience actually is. Sometimes your work does seep into corners of the world where you never thought it would be. And actually, I liked that. And the other type of guy I tend to encounter is the guy who’s like, I don’t agree with you on anything, but I like your work. Thank you. Just lead with the second part, but okay. A lot of times men want to tell me, they don’t agree with me, they want me to know, upfront. They’re not having it. And that’s okay. Because I don’t agree with them either.

Yeah, that’s the beauty of the written word, that man Oh, it’s so great, so much stuff and have all of the feelings, we can have all of the feelings. I was talking to a young writer about this the other day, I was like, listen, writing exists. So you can be in your field. It’s like, just do the work. I see the work, live the life, do the work. But if you’re not talking about the emotion behind it, like you’re kind of missing the point. Like, it’s not enough to just have pretty sentences like something has to change. And that’s really the place you start. Right. So Lindsay, what’s next for you? I mean, you have written across like, there is some stuff that readers from the earlier work will see in Hot Springs Drive, certainly some just some general sort of, I don’t want to call them themes, but I’m afraid I’m going to do that. But it seems like you found kind of a sweet spot with this book.

I you know, I will say I am what I am in terms of my themes. And I will set out you know, I thought when I wrote Eat Only When You’re Hungry that I was writing a really like funny book. And it’s an extremely sad book, it turns out, it’s very, very sad. Yeah, but it has occurred to me that rhyme offers a way in plot wise, that I can then explore in a literary way. But having said that, I mean, anytime I set out to write a certain thing, what it ends up being is very different from my intentions. So you know, I have embarked on a couple new things. One of them is based not on a real crime, but it does it does have crime in it. And the other thing is, I kind of want to write a fictional take on Patricia Buckley, who was William F. Buckley, Jr’s wife.

I know exactly who you’re talking about. And all I can say is please do I would like to read that.

She is a hot mess, amazing woman and, you know, I’ve collected some tales about her and, you know, listened to her son’s memoir about her and William F. Buckley Jr’s death and but she just had the sharpest tongue. She, she’s, she’s kind of my next white whale, I would guess.

Please, please, please. I like your whale.

I think we’re ready for this book.

I think so too. It’s going be great. All right, Roxane. You’re on tour, obviously, for Opinions. There’s all sorts of work going on in the background that I know you’re not supposed to talk about. So we won’t talk about that. But book wise, what’s next for you? Are you working on another novel, or we’re gonna see more stories? I mean, you’ve even edited like the Best American Short Stories, I have that moment.

I am working on a YA novel which should be out next year. And I am also working on a book that I’ve been trying to write for several years now called How to be Heard. It’s a book of writing advice. And that will hopefully be out in 2025. I’m sorry. The Year I Learned Everything. Yes. And then How to be Heard. And then I’m writing a romance novel with Channing Tatum. That will be out. And yeah, I know.

I love this idea so much. I’m not the biggest romance reader but this idea alone…

You’re gonna read this one, it’s gonna be — this one will be out on Valentine’s week 2025.

Can we talk about the research you and Channing have been doing for that.

We have been doing very vigorous research and collaboration.

I love all of this. I mean, we get to do such amazing things with books I really like, it’s wild, the cool things that get to happen.

If you had ever told me I would be doing some of the projects that I’m working on right now, I would have just said, I’m sorry, I’m living on planet Earth. And I don’t know where you are, but that’s not this planet.

50:17

Okay, so before I let you guys get, because I knew this is gonna happen, we’re totally bumping up against time. Any advice for writers who are starting out? Either of you, because I mean, Lindsay, you’ve been doing this for more than a minute, like you have really done the work. And Roxane, you just said it like, if anyone had told me, this would be the thing.

The couple things come to mind. Number one is, you know, between the moment that I said, I’m going to focus on writing, this is going to be the thing that I do, I’m going to endeavor to be a writer, to the time that my first book came out on a very micro small press was a decade. And I think if someone said to me that day that I wanted to start being a writer, it’s going to be 10 years, before anything happens, really, I would have said, Oh, my God, you know, it would have really discouraged me. But instead, it was a series of steps I took toward a thing, community that I built, and you know, you just keep taking the next step, you just take the next step, and then the next step, and sometimes it’s a big step. Sometimes it’s a very small step. And then the other thing that I always tell my students, that shouldn’t be a revelation, but can sometimes feel like a revelation is, how would you write your book? Not how would Roxane Gay write a book? Not how would Lindsay Hunter write a book? How do you think you would write it? Because I always think of the story Linda Barry told of when she was going to write comedy. If I was going to write a novel, I would paint it first. And then she finally realized, Oh, I am writing the novel. So I will paint it first. And then she wrote it from there. So how would you do it and do it that way? There’s no wrong answer.

I would say I agree with both of those things. And I would also suggest, and I do not mean this in a woowoo cheesy way, you have to take yourself seriously, as a writer. Even when you doubt yourself, even when you want to give up you have to take yourself seriously, because for many, many years, no one else will. Or maybe like two other people will. And they’re like legally obligated to so part of that means when you tell yourself I’m going to write this weekend, you have to follow through because otherwise, you’re never ever going to like finish something to send into the world. You have to write in order to be a writer, and you have to write in order to achieve all of the milestones that you are imagining for yourself. More often than not when someone asks me, for example, how do I get an agent? How do I break in what connections do I need? My very first question is always have you written a book? And I would say 80% of the time the answer is well, not yet. I just want to be prepared, like the preparation is on the page. And so just take yourself seriously as a writer.

I love that. I love you both. This was amazing. Thank you so much. Lindsay Hunter Hot Springs Drive is out. Now Roxane Gay. Of course, it’s always good to see you Opinions also out now. Plenty of backlist between the two of them too. So when you’re done with those books, we have more. Thanks so much.