Your debut novel Vesuvius immerses the reader in the ancient city of Pompeii and includes several nods to Roman history. What inspired you to base your story on Pompeii and ancient Roman history?

Like many neurodivergent kids, I grew up having historical disasters as special interests—starting with the Titanic. I was fascinated not just with the disaster itself but the story that unfolded around the disaster.

Pompeii has likewise fascinated me. Before the volcano erupted, petrifying the city in ash, what dramas and romances and politics affected its people? What parallel could I draw to the traumas surrounding me in modern day? What would it be like to stare down a smothering black wave, knowing you couldn’t stop what was coming? But what would it look like to try to change fate anyway?

What was your writing process for Vesuvius, and how did you balance working on it with the other obligations in your life?

Vesuvius was written as I was wrapping up my undergrad, working full time, and preparing to move to Wales to pursue my Master’s. I let it take over in a way that probably wasn’t very healthy, but it was all I wanted to do. I came to know myself as a writer through it. I learned to set boundaries, hold myself accountable, and when to step away from the manuscript to give it breathing room.

Vesuvius boasts two complex and genuine main characters—Felix and Loren—who you’ve lovingly referred to as your “volcano boys.” How did you approach their character creation and give them each a distinct voice?

I teach a course on developing compelling characters called “Wound, Want, Need.” By understanding what the character thinks will solve their problem, what trauma or flaw holds them back, and what lesson they need to learn to fix their life and self-actualize, the characters feel more authentic. When crafting dual POV especially, every character should have their own goal, history, and arc—and a distinct voice to match. Experiment with how their individual circumstances and backgrounds might influence how they speak, act, and think.

Felix and Loren experience their fair share of romantic ups and downs. What were the most challenging and rewarding aspects of creating their love story? Further, do you have any tips for authentically incorporating romance into a plot?

I’m a romantic at heart! When writing Felix and Loren’s dynamic, my goal was always—despite their different upbringings, privileges, and disagreements—to create a romance where both boys land on equal footing. I wanted the romance to feel authentically messy, because neither boy is perfect, and each have their own hurts to reckon with. But as they learn, grow, and come to understand one another, they use their individual strengths to support each other.

The story of Vesuvius erupts with humor. What advice do you have for writers who want to incorporate more authentic humor into their work?

Surround yourself with funny people—the kind you can fully be yourself around and whose humor doesn’t punch down. Never try to force a moment to be funny; let the humor evolve naturally.

The themes of mental health, identity, and trauma play a major role in your book. Was this something you planned or did these themes develop naturally?

Oh, they came completely out of nowhere because I didn’t think I had it in me to explore my own vulnerabilities on a page. Felix leapt nearly fully formed into my mind. A snarky, irreverent thief—he sounded fun. But the more I drafted, the more I realized I hadn’t given him a why. So, I started thinking, why am I irreverent? And the solution dawned on me: Felix was shaped to explore a certain trauma I share. Once I began to work that into the narrative, permitting myself that vulnerability instead of holding it at arm’s length, he finally came alive.

You have a Master of Library Science from Aberystwyth University in Wales. Could you share more about your choice to pursue this program and how it influenced Vesuvius?

Childhood literacy has been a driving passion of mine since I was in high school. I wanted to write for teens, and I wanted a career where I could get books in the hands of those who need them most.

Aberystwyth was a very intentional choice. Not just because it has deep connections with the National Library of Wales, but because the country has fascinated me since I fell in love with Welsh Arthurian legend as a teenager—maybe the topic for a future book? 

The publishing process can often feel daunting and intimidating to new writers. How did you keep your spirits high when querying Vesuvius and do you have any encouragement for writers who may be wrestling with self-doubt?

Self-doubt is the shadowy beast that haunts my footsteps, even (especially?) still. I don’t know that I’ll ever overcome it—but I’ve learned to accept that, and I’ve found tools to cope. To writers, I suggest finding a non-word related hobby (mine is sewing!), getting a great support system, and remembering your value as a person isn’t dependent on how quickly you get an agent.

Your second novel, Though This Be Madness, is slated for release in 2027. How did the overall publishing process differ between your two novels and what did you learn?

They couldn’t be more different. When I started Vesuvius, I was convinced I was a “pantser,” and only after struggling through the first draft without an outline did I realize absolutely nothing about it made sense. Since then, I’ve learned I’m definitely a “plotter.” Even though the time to finish a draft was roughly the same for both projects—about a year—I think having an outline from the beginning resulted in a much more polished first draft of Though This Be Madness.

Your latest novel, The Ancients, takes place in a post-apocalyptic world impacted by climate change. How did this setting come to fruition and what inspired you to tell this evocative story?

The Ancients was a wild ride. I knew I wanted to write the kind of novel I wasn’t finding on bookshelves, a book capable of holding the enormity of the climate crisis in the palm of one hand. The book grew to become the medicine I needed—and I hope it hits readers in that way too.

The writing process, though, was harrowing. The first three versions were set in the deep human past. The final two were set in the deep human future. I worked on the book for seven years and completed thirty-seven drafts of the fifth version. No doubt, I grew as a writer and a person during the process, just as the characters grow on the page.

In both The Ancients and Whiskey When We’re Dry, the setting plays a prominent role in the narrative. How do you approach the complexities of worldbuilding for your novels?

My books are often born from their places. To prepare to write a place, I prefer to spend time there. I try to experience the textures, smells, and other sensory elements from my characters’ vantage point. What will they be noticing about this landscape? How would they describe what they’re seeing to themselves? Once I feel grounded in the physicality of the setting, I’m ready to create the histories and cultural realities of that world.

The Ancients features three distinct sets of characters and Whiskey When We’re Dry includes a diverse cast of supporting characters. What do you like to focus on when creating your characters?

I don’t let myself think of them as characters. They are people, and as people they are torn and conflicted. They want two mutual, exclusive outcomes, and that tension comes through in their voice and their actions. They make mistakes. They regret their mistakes, even as they repeat them. Most importantly, my people are mysteries to themselves. We would never reduce a friend to the sum of their identity, and so we should never reduce the people on our pages to the sum of theirs. The best “characters” always defy classification.  

One of the aspects that drew me into The Ancients and Whiskey When We’re Dry was your vivid and lyrical writing style. Who are some of your biggest writing influences?

Such a long list! When I was finding my footing as a novelist, I was drawn to Michael Ondaatje, Toni Morrison, and Normal Maclean. I found these writers’ prose to be precise and rich with resonances that felt ineffable. Each time I reread one of their works, I saw the book and myself differently.

Your books incorporate several diverse themes. The Ancients focuses on hope, resilience, and stewardship whereas Whiskey When We’re Dry explores family, identity, and survival. How do you approach blending all these ideas into your narrative without letting them interfere with one another?

For me, theme arises organically or not at all. A novel’s themes are an extension of the concerns the novelist is obsessing over when they should be sleeping. Theme bubbles from the subconscious onto the page; calculation and craft would only taint this holy process.  

Every writer’s journey is unique, but yours is particularly fascinating as you’ve mentioned you never set out to become a writer. What is something you’ve learned about the industry that writers should know?

Early in my writing life, I devoted a lot of time to reading interviews with agents and editors to learn to think like these literary gatekeepers. The lessons I learned helped expand my understanding of how fiction works beyond the critiques common in a classroom. But not until Whiskey When We’re Dry did I truly understand how novel writing is a team sport.

Novelists aren’t just trying to finish a long work of fiction. We’re trying to write a book that will move and inspire its readers so personally that they will call in favors and advocate for the novel in meetings and hallway conversations. A book’s team starts with the agent and editor but eventually includes booksellers, book clubs, and the most important teammates of all: everyday readers who share the novel with their friends.

Writers are often advised to read A TON to hone their craft. What book are you most looking forward to reading in 2025 and why? 

I’m loving Percival Everett’s James. Dark context, bright prose. That’s a magical combination that I hope to figure out someday.   

The publishing process can often feel daunting and intimidating. How did you keep your spirits high when querying your work and do you have any encouragement for writers wrestling with self-doubt?

“Success” (defined here, with hesitation, as publication) is comprised of three parts: talent, luck, and determination.

Talent barely matters, because with a wealth of determination, you can make up for a significant deficit of talent. Luck barely matters either, because luck is a function of time, and with enough determination you will still be playing when the lucky cards are finally dealt.

If writing is fun and meaningful for you—and you feel that writing improves your life—keep writing, keep striving, keep learning, and success will become inevitable.   

Do you have any new projects coming out soon or in progress?

I’m finishing up my next book now, Siren Country, and I’ve started writing the next one. That book is funny; the narrator is a surf bum with a prosperous brother who needs his help. I think readers—especially these days—want a good laugh.

They like to say they met at Bow Market. Theirs sounded like a sapphic romance: reaching for the same porcelain ring dish on a Small Business Saturday. One of them, to put their wedding band in, the other, to house their grandmother’s signet. The real story is more cliché: bartender at female-owned wine bar comps customer a few glasses of red on a Wednesday night and misses their shift the next day. In the end, they end up buying the ring holder from Bow after all, not for wedding bands, but instead, for discarded safety pins from running bibs. Scattered, silver, and winking.

“What clinched it for you?” they ask while walking the whippet or drinking Chardonnay distilled in steel.

“That you liked baroque rock.”

“That you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.”

“That you told me to come home.”

They slide past bitter things like divorce papers and the other dog that ended up with the ex. That is until one of them calls the whippet Rufus or worse, the other Emma. It’s in times like those that the what ifs come out and the do you still think about her and the silent but terrible is this the next passing thing?

What they both really want to know, even though they’re too afraid to ask: what is it that keeps you here? Perhaps their answers might have been the same: baroque rock, growing up, home. They continue to let that be their truth until, on the bartender’s professional Instagram, they see a comment at 3 a.m. from amylikescats that stops them cold:

Love your hair like that all scattered, silver, and winking.

The next morning, the customer-of-the-pair takes a cup of gunmetal earl grey and sits and stares at the ring holder until all those silver needles swim together. They sweep it up and dump it into the trash and realize for the first time since they got together, they can finally see the dish and it’s not like they remember. There’s an uneven crack, hairline fracture, along the blue tinted lip. Not broken yet but maybe, if they smashed it against the floor, they could piece it back together in kintsugi.

Now that they think about it, that old Japanese art was something they always wanted to learn, that— they believe without evidence— was kept from them by the whippet or the Chardonnay. They pick it up, feel the lack of its weight in their hand when the bartender-of-the-pair arrives. 

They stare at one another like two cowboys dueling at high noon, hands on pistols and slowly, slowly, the one with the ring holder bends down on one knee and offers it to the other.

“Can we start again for real this time?” They ask, and the bartender brushes her silver hair over her shoulder and meets her on the floor and closes her hand over the ring holder and their foreheads touch and they sit there, waiting, perhaps, for one of them to rise.

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of Foreign Fruit.

This title was released on May 8, 2025 by Canongate Books.

“History is too various to offer a single narrative. Life is composed of shards and glass, all slotted together to make a mosaic. No one is born complete.”

I’ve always struggled with my sense of belonging. Born in Ireland, but ethnically Asian—I was never going to fit in. Not among people who looked nothing like me, nor the diaspora I’ve failed to connect with. My parents did everything to ensure I didn’t stand out: packing me plain lunches, prioritizing Westernized cultural norms, raising me with a temperate accent. And while I’ll always be grateful for my upbringing, it feels like a part of me has been lost in that bid to acclimate. There are few words for that kind of existence; being on the very precipice of “belonging,” but always remaining stuck. After all, what is “belonging,” if not feeling at home?

Perhaps that’s why I was so drawn to Katie Goh’s memoir, Foreign Fruit. Reading its description, I immediately felt connected to Goh’s search for their heritage—tracing their lineage from Northern Ireland to Kuala Lumpur, like a long, ribboning peel. “Seen” doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt. I hoped Goh’s journey to pull back these ancestral segments, collating stories of a home they half-knew, would help me reckon with my own identity. Needless to say, it exceeded my expectations.

In her own review, Katherine May describes Foreign Fruit as “sharp-sweet”—and if you ask me, there’s no word more suitable. A mix of memoir and social history, Goh oscillates between sweet personal stories and the sourest parts of colonialism. She identifies her own mixed-race, queer identity with the orange, which, like herself, is a hybrid entity. Tracing her journey from past to present, she unravels the migratory origins of the titular “foreign fruit” as it travels through the Silk Roads towards its destiny of globalization.

Through parables, fables, and historical anecdotes, Goh peels back the orange’s rind in a poignant tell-all of its inner segments: how it became a symbol of divinity and fortune, but also death, destruction, and violent greed. Using this foundation, they confront the modern, post-COVID wave of anti-Asian hate, and the echoes of colonial history found within it. It’s during this wave that the memoir begins in medias res, the day after Goh hears of an anti-Asian hate crime:

“The morning after a white man murdered six Asian women, I ate five oranges. They were not dainty tangerines or pretty satsumas or festive clementines. These were unwieldy, bulging oranges, pock-marked and rind-covered fistfuls of flesh. I ate them all until my body ached.”

From this opener alone, this electrifying, utterly infuriating opener, I could tell Foreign Fruit and I would become fast friends. From Longyan to Kuala Lumpur, each chapter is named for a place visited in Goh’s lifetime. Some are set in the distant past, others in the near-present. Immediately, I was gripped by their vivid personal vignettes. I could feel the slick-sweat stickiness of leather seats in a cramped family van, hear the fussy clamoring of aunties and cousins. And most of all, I saw in myself the longing for connection with a culture that’s technically theirs, yet isn’t. This is one of Goh’s biggest strengths as a writer: the ability to place readers directly in their shoes. By drawing out their senses, the reader sees through their eyes, rather than the lens of an observer. All of this is done while never once forgetting they’re telling a story; much like their adult self, Goh doesn’t stay in one place. Their tale is at once one of anger, growth, uncertainty, and home. This eclectic mix is exactly what I seek in nonfiction—never skimping out on the rawest details, while moving along an engaging narrative trajectory. It’s delicious.

It’s also with this ability, however, that Goh excavates the bitter pith from humanity’s past. Woven between these personal vignettes are episodes of social and colonial history. It starts with the orange’s gentler beginnings as a signifier of luck and gradually exhumes its history as a vessel for violent colonialism. The bloody implications behind decadent Dutch still-lifes. The Indigenous blood spilled for California’s citrus trade. How the ethos behind tragedies like the 1877 Chinatown riots is influenced by this violence. How the echoes of Yellow Peril in modern anti-Asian hate have unearthed prejudices long thought to be gone. These accounts are written not to fascinate but to educate and enrage. And I will fully admit it’s uncomfortable to read. So uncomfortable, and I believe that’s the entire point. Goh doesn’t mince words in her portrayal of this ugly past; her ability to craft a scene forces the reader to confront this violence directly. It’s not subtle, and the tonal contrast with the softer personal memoirs is intentionally jarring. We are warned from the opener this is not a comfortable story. The once-blessed orange becomes complicit in colonial violence; a “harbinger of death.”

While Goh’s ability to set a scene is undeniable, I did sometimes find the novel grasped at its connections between historical and personal anecdotes. The style is rich and poignant, and I have no qualms with the tonal contrast; but the transitions between sections often felt disjointed, feeling more like sudden jumps. While the orange remains a grounding element, some parts would benefit from extra connective tissue, especially during the slower and heavier first half. “Southern California” utilizes this transitional element best, and I found myself wishing the first few chapters had the same smooth trajectory.

I sip at a lukewarm bottle of orange juice as I round up these thoughts. I think to myself: whose tired hands picked the fruit that made these? On what land was it grown? Foreign Fruit has given me much to contemplate over the origins of citrus, of people, of violence and compassion and family. Most of all, it helped me reckon with my own identity. As a diaspora child, I can’t claim the same experiences as mixed-race individuals; but I do know the struggle to “belong” is universal. The orange provides refuge from this ache, itself physically and symbolically “a hybrid creation.” By the end, Goh accepts she may never truly “belong”—and, bittersweet as it is, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I will proudly announce that the final chapters of my copy are stained with tears. Foreign Fruit was incredible, and this book will stay with me for a very long time.

Shanghailanders unfolds in reverse, starting in 2040 and ending in 2014. What challenges went into constructing this narrative? How did it shape your understanding of the characters?

began as character sketches of various unrelated people living in contemporary Shanghai. I tried to challenge myself to make these character more cohesive. That is how characters of different races and ages were developed into recurring members of a large family. Once the relationships were created, I considered the structuring of these episodes through time. I chose a reverse narrative because I wanted to end at the beginning, creating a sense of hope, circularity, and a challenge for the reader.

It feels as though the structure happened naturally over time, each step of the writing process posing a question that the evolving structure answered.

The reverse timeline creates a poignant effect. Was this emotional resonance something you consciously aimed for, or did it emerge organically?

The final chapter takes place on Leo and Eko’s wedding day after nearly three decades of conflict in their relationship. One of the big questions for me as I wrote the book, was: do they love each other, and why do they stay together? Marriage is a dinosaur of an institution, which has survived for many reasons. Weddings are antiquated, cliché, problematic rituals that are simultaneously full of beauty and hope. I love weddings; I love love! The conflicting and complicated views I harbor lead my wanting readers to leave with a sense of love’s complex nature and what “the end” can contain and mean.

How did your experiences living in Shanghai for nearly a decade influence the way you portrayed it in Shanghailanders? Were there particular moments or places that inspired key scenes?

At least three distinct inspirations from my time in Shanghai found their way into this novel:

2021: After the birth of my second child, I stayed for two weeks in a postpartum maternity care clinic in Shanghai. My room looked out onto the neighboring lot, which was cleared for construction. There was only an old house with a tree. The house had no windows, or lights, and only one man lived there. I often looked out onto the lot, watching the man who came and went on his scooter, who often rested on a hammock hung on the branches of his tree. A character like that shows up in “Born with a Broken Heart.”

2019: While interviewing nannies, one woman broke down into tears when telling me about the little girl she previously cared for. That outburst of love and sadness touched me deeply and inspired “The Girl of My Heart.”

2018: I befriended a European woman preparing for motherhood. She had followed her spouse to Shanghai. She confessed to looking forward to motherhood, giving her life a sense of purpose. Though I knew some women felt this way, the confession shocked me. My purpose had always been writing and working. My friend’s life in Shanghai, combined with her husband’s rugged, stern look, inspired Eko. In fact, Eko and Leo in “Lane Life” were originally a white expat couple from Europe!
 
The Yang family’s story is deeply personal and universal. How did you balance crafting intimate family dynamics while exploring broader themes like class, privilege, and cultural identity?

 There are universal human feelings and experiences—love, conflict, desire—that cross class, privilege, and cultural lines. At the same time, I hope the novel’s multi-POV structure highlights how every human being remains an unyielding mystery.
 
The Yang family’s multicultural background—Chinese, Japanese, French—adds complexity to their identities. How did you approach these cultural elements in the narrative?

I chose Chinese, Japanese, and French to reflect Shanghai’s historical reality. These communities have had significant influence on the city, and fluctuating degrees of power, privilege, and conflict. I wanted to represent the ever-shifting power dynamics of international Shanghai through a parallel microcosm of a family.

The novel introduces perspectives from characters who exist in the Yang family’s orbit, like the nanny and driver. What inspired you to explore these voices, and what did they allow you to reveal about the Yang’s that wouldn’t have surfaced otherwise

I hope these characters paint a full portrait of privilege: how it so often requires structural/cultural support and human labor. Human labor is often rendered invisible; I wanted to create deep and full emotional lives for these “minor” characters.

How did your editorial background aid in your publishing journey?

Working as an editor that publishes mostly unsolicited, read blind work is incredible practice in developing taste. As the fiction editor of The Shanghai Literary Review (TSLR), I had complete freedom opposed to school with curricula, or established magazines with solicited writing and style parameters. TSLR was my first experience wholly owning the critical and editorial experience.

I learned about my own taste and sharpened it through reading submissions and seeing how much talent exists in the world. It was always breathtakingly humbling, exciting, and encouraging.

You’ve studied Russian and comparative literature, earned an MFA in fiction, and were a founding editor for The Shanghai Literary Review. How did these experiences shape your path as a writer?

I have been shaped by my experiences but at the time they felt inevitable. Of course, having certain teachers who introduced me to certain texts at the right time and place helped.
  
Could you share a bit about your experience breaking into the publishing industry and navigating the path to getting Shanghailanders published? What advice would you offer to aspiring writers looking to break into the industry today?

Shanghailanders is not the first book I wrote. My current agent is not my first agent. Sometimes things don’t work out; it’s disappointing and tough, but all you can do is start over from square one. Publishing books takes time and financial toughness, so take the time to pursue smaller wins. Whether that is publishing short form, contests, or nonfiction, keep your hope afloat. Keep challenging yourself to improve and learn. Finally: work a bit, travel a bit, and get yourself a job that allows you to save. All of these things help enable you to write.

For our readers familiar with the Shazam! movies, where is Billy Batson currently in the DC Comics universe? 

Billy Batson is a full hero, and a member of the Justice League. He also lives at home with his foster siblings, some who have recently regained their superpowers (Mary and Freddy) and others who have lost their powers (Darla, Pedro, and Eugene). As well, he is trying to balance his home life with his superhero life—especially as his foster parents are trying to adopt him!

Billy’s powers have also evolved past what we’ve seen in the movies—now he and the Captain (his superpowered persona) have slightly different personalities. This means the two can talk to each other and clash over their ideas on how to save the day—and boy, do they clash!

What is Billy Batson’s relationship with the immortal elders who grant him the power of SHAZAM! (Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury)? 

The gods are a gift and a curse! The gods have chosen Billy as their champion—both because Billy is determined and courageous, and because him being a foster kid resonates with them. After all, Zeus himself was a foster (in mythology he was fostered by the nymphs on Mount Ida), and the other gods have had struggles that allow them to relate to Billy’s struggles. The Gods often CAUSE Billy problems, especially when they meddle in mortal affairs, but ultimately, they have Billy’s back and see themselves in him.

How does Billy represent the concept of a parentified child—a child with adult responsibilities? 

Billy is the poster child for someone forced to grow up too fast, which is both a theme in my run and a large plot point for my first issues. Because he learned early on adults could not be relied upon, Billy’s taken on way more responsibility than he ever should have.

In my first issues, that is the BIG conflict between him and the grown-up Captain. The Captain begins hiding things from Billy to try and prevent him from getting hurt by the adults in his life and tries to shift that responsibility away from Billy. But while the Captain thinks he’s doing the kind thing, Billy sees it as another adult forcing him to do what THEY want, and not taking Billy’s own wants and desires into account. It’s a big issue between them, and one that will continually pop up in their relationship.

What balance does Billy’s foster family bring over Shazam!’s world of magic and myth? How does their human perspective help Billy in a way the immortal elders don’t?

Billy’s foster family absolutely grounds this world and gives it true stakes—fighting villains is one thing, but when fighting the bad guys forces you into conflict with those you love, and forces you to reflect on what family truly means to you, the stakes become so much higher. His foster family is the beating heart of Billy’s world and gives us an emotional center that colors every part of the comic.

They also support him in a way the Gods and his fellow heroes cannot. They love and support him—as well as call him out when he acts egotistical, or ignores other people’s ideas and wants, balancing his heroics with a teasing but kind family dynamic. His foster family inspires Billy to be a hero, giving him a unique POV on the world no other hero possesses. Billy knows what it’s like to be shuffled around from family to family, your whole life stuffed into a trash bag. That knowledge makes him even more determined to speak up for the helpless, the weak, and the downtrodden, becoming the champion of all who need a voice.

What other projects do you currently have coming out and where can our readers find you online?

Outside of “SHAZAM!,” I also write an original comic through Boom Studios. The comic is called “I Heart Skull-Crusher!” and the first volume is out in trade paperback now! As well, I am the Executive Producer for a new DC animated show called “Starfire!” following the titular character as she explores space with a crew of other new and returning DC superheroines. And you can find me online at @cozyjamble on X and at my website cozyjamble.com.

How did the idea for Woo Woo come to you? I mean this with all love, but it is such a deeply strange book, I would love to know how you conceived it.

I began writing Woo Woo while I was being stalked. Initially it was a letter back to my stalker, but after a while I realized a narrative had also emerged, which was to do with art making and womanhood and fury. I began to push the letter into the shape of a novel. I write instinctively and without outline, so it was four years of writing, and then another full year of editing. Woo Woo has been the most rewarding creative project I have ever worked on. I have loved every part of the process, and I can’t say that about anything else I have made. 

Woo Woo drew from many places, what were you inspired by as you were writing? Were there any art forms that informed the writing process?

All the artworks mentioned within the book were huge inspirations to me during the writing process. The artwork of Ana Mendieta and Carolee Schneemann was pivotal in understanding my protagonist. If I were ever unsure what she might do or think, I would scroll through their works and the answer would come. Both women were pioneers, and both had a deep, ongoing discourse with their own creativity. 

How did you pick the direct references going into the book? What was the process behind selecting each chapter title?

Using the works allowed me to create an atmosphere for each chapter. I used the works that had influenced the writing the most. There were plenty I couldn’t use due to copyright issues. I had a folder on my laptop with all the images and songs in it and I would just stare at them/ listen to them on repeat for many hours. I have been obsessed with every artwork mentioned, either because I love it or because I hate it, or it agitates me. They are all emotional trigger points for me. 

Woo Woo is incredibly timely. Was there anything about our current social media microcelebrity, internet-driven cultural landscape that informed the writing of the book?

In a way it is an ode to Julia Fox, and Tumblr, and the memes and vines and get- ready-with-me TikTok compilations and all the intimacy and distance the internet provides us. It is as if Belle Delphine and Tracy Emin had a baby. 

What does your writing process look like? Are you a planner, or do you just start writing? Do you have any rituals?

I sit down at the kitchen table with my laptop, will the muse to come to me, then type until I don’t feel emotional discomfort in my body. Then I put my computer away, continue to live a quiet and reasonable life, and begin the process the next day. Sometimes I take six months off to reset where I focus on reading or looking at art. I am a seasonal thinker, I do better and more work during winter. I am useless creatively in summer, there’s too much going on, the garden needs me, I’m busy.  

You have published one book, New Animal, before Woo Woo. How has your writing process evolved since then? Has it changed at all?

Yes, I know what to expect. With New Animal I just thought I would write a book, send it into the world and never think of it again. I now know that you wear your work forever. Books are like hats you cannot take off. I’m wearing two currently. I am unsure if I ever want to wear three. 

When did you realize you wanted to be a writer? From there, how did you at least initially conceive a plan for a professional career? And did it all go to plan?

I wanted to be an artist, not a writer, but my art was not successful. A gallerist once told me he would be able to sell my sculptures if I changed everything about them.  I do love writing, but the job of being a writer is quite isolated. It is a singular existence in many ways and sometimes I miss a more collaborative, creatively experimental approach.  Recently, I have been saying I will never write another book again, but my two closest friends reminded me I said this right before I wrote Woo Woo. 

What do you think young writers need to know about the publishing industry? 

In my experience, the publishing industry is made up of wildly intelligent, highly creative people who are paid very little. Young writers need to know that they, as well as these wildly intelligent people, are working as hard as they can to foster excellent work within a patriarchal and capitalist system that ultimately views art as a commodity. 

Do you have any anticipated releases for 2025?

Emotionally, I hope to release all burdens. Professionally, I am focused on writing for television. There are two major projects in the works, but they haven’t been announced publicly yet. 

As writers, one of the most difficult tasks we face is plotting. We may have story ideas but wrangling them into something resembling a cohesive plot often seems a gargantuan task. In our time of need, we often turn to methods like the hero’s journey, Dan Harmon’s plot embryo, or the three-act structure. These methods are helpful, but can still feel broad and overwhelming, asking for more information than you have at the conception of your story.

Speaking as a neurodivergent individual (ND), conventional plotting methods have rarely been helpful to me, and I believe this is because NDs are often bottom-up thinkers. We are detailed oriented; we see the trees for the forest. Before we’ve imagined a plot from beginning to end, we know the intimate emotions of our characters, the flora and fauna of our world, the powers of our magic users, etc. We are engaged by and care most about creating our little guys and our intricate worlds, whereas plotting can feel technical, distant, methodical—not as exciting. Whether you’re neurodivergent or not, this may describe how you approach stories, and why you’ve struggled in the past with popular plotting methods that require linearity and causality.  

But never fear! My “anti-plotting” methods ask you not to create a timeline or to inflict events upon your characters but encourage building on your strengths. If you love creating characters and themes, a question you can ask is, “What is the emotional core of the story?” (This is different from the premise, or even the theme. It is the simplest, rawest, emotional hook that ignites the story.) If you love creating worlds, you can consider what elements of worldbuilding you want to highlight the most, and derive a plot from the concepts, complications, and conflicts that naturally exist in a well-fleshed out world. I believe that within these two elements, the detail-oriented writer has already planted the seeds of the stories they want to tell.

Emotional Core

The emotional core of a story is centered around an emotion you feel strongly about, a massive, reactor-esque generator of power that gives your story life and gives you the energy and enthusiasm to write it. Let’s take The Mandalorian to use as an example. Star Wars is a broad, complicated universe, but The Mandalorian has a painfully simple core. It doesn’t matter the obstacles Din Djarin faces, or the missions he must complete, he desires one thing: to be a good dad to his adopted kid. That desire, and the way it makes us feel, carries the show, and makes it compelling when you first tune into it. And not only is this emotional core moving and relatable to the audience, it’s undoubtedly easy for a writer to care deeply about it too. So, what moves you?

Knowing yourself and what motivates your writing is an important aspect of finding this emotional core: are you interested in stories of political justice like the Hunger Games? Are you deeply moved by father and son dynamics like in God of War? Does it light you up to write about the sacrificial power of love like in The Locked Tomb Series?

Once you’ve discovered the emotional core that moves you, you expound on that core by asking how it can be challenged, explored, and ultimately realized. You likely have the answers to these questions already because of your intimate knowledge of your characters! For instance, we know that Din Djarin’s motivations stem from the Mandalorian code. But we also know his values include being a good parent—the core of the story. Within the first season of the show, the writers ensure these desires are not compatible. They most likely asked themselves: how does Din Djarin reconcile these conflicts? What are the consequences of breaking the code? Why is he willing to prioritize the child over his desire to be loyal to his people’s principles? The answers to these questions create The Mandalorian’s plot as we know it, and they are guided by the characterization of Din. Similarly, the questions you ask about your character’s deepest drives can reveal your way forward and placing obstacles in the way of your emotional core will motivate you to continue writing around or through them.

Worldbuilding

If you’re not sure what your emotional core is, worldbuilding is an excellent alternative starting point. When you approach plotting via worldbuilding, you want to find what the most important and invigorating concepts of your universe are, the sparks that spawned the rest of your creation. Let’s think of worldbuilding as charting a course or navigating the stars. There are a million different beginnings, but you want to find your true North: the elements that, like the emotional core, hook in your guts and won’t stop pulling. We can start by listing elements of worldbuilding, and then determining which are most important to this story. A good way to approach this is by asking what kind of stories you are drawn to reading, and why? Or, by examining what has inspired you in the past, tracking where you began your brainstorming, and noting when the ideas started flowing. Let’s say this is our in-exhaustive list:

• Setting or Maps — If you pay special attention to settings and desire a wide world that will be well-travelled, this is a good place to begin. Let’s take the famous The Lord of the Rings. J.R.R. Tolkien was a linguist first, and not a practiced cartographer. But he once commented, “I wisely started with a map, and made the story fit” (Letter 144, 1954). Without his maps to guide him, the journeys of his characters would have been nearly impossible to follow, for himself and the reader.

• Magic Systems or Powers — In Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, there is a heavy focus on Allomancy, a magic system that gives powers to its practitioners through the consumption and “burning” of rare metals. Sanderson’s plot is heavily tied to his protagonist’s ability to master her Allomancy and use these powers to defeat the despotic villain. If you find yourself excited by the creation of complex and compelling magical systems, growing your story alongside those abilities could be key.

• Religions — Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series is all about gods, baby. Percy’s interactions with the gods and his navigation of their expectations is vital to the accomplishment of his mission. If you spend hours at a time constructing the personalities of gods, intricate rituals of worship, or complex beliefs and morals that deeply influence your world’s society and your characters’ decisions, religion may your key element.

• Fauna or Flora — Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy is known for its weird ecology and the ways in which it steps in for the typical horror monster: an “entity” that is wild and unknown, threatening our climate-controlled, comfortable cityscapes or suburban bubbles. Are you drawn towards predatory plants or “living” landscapes? Trees that whisper secrets or marshes that swallow victims whole? Basing your plot around your ecology may seem unusual, but it’s certainly worked for VanderMeer!

• Communication — Samuel R. Delaney’s Babel-17 is a sterling example of communication as an essential element to plot. The premise can’t really operate without the author’s understanding of the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis, as the conlang of the book, Babel-17, is weaponized to influence thought and to give its users strange powers. If you find yourself drawn to the “peculiarities of language, how conditions of life shape the formation of words and meaning, and how words themselves can shape the actions of people” this may be your ideal approach to generating a plot.

• Government — Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury portrays a conflicted “fireman” who finds an outlawed book and takes it home instead of burning it. As he reads, he fights against what he’s been taught by his oppressive government and struggles to keep the books he rescues safe. If a plot centered on government and its use and abuse of power is a driving force of your book, this element may suit you best. Revolution, rebellion, protests, and political commentary at its most poignant and devastating spring from novels such as this.

• Culture— If you find yourself exploring the stories society tells us, the power they have over our lives, and the influence of tradition, propriety, or familial responsibility, you might be interested in approaching plot through the lens of culture. The Traitor Baru Cormorant is a book that explores the influence of stories within a culture: how a person is allowed to exist, how one should behave, who should hold power, and who should not. What stories does your society tell? How do they influence your characters’ fate? These answers may provide exactly the plot you need.

For this story, let’s say you’ve imagined a beautiful, secretive forest and have researched druidic lore and their rites. In this instance, we might choose Flora as our primary focus, and Religion as our secondary. Perhaps, specifically, we are interested in how these rites allow our druids to communicate with one another, so we add Communication as a tertiary focus. We would now consider how these elements might interact within the ideas we already have. Our starting concept could be “druids using a mycelium network to secretly communicate.”

Now, we want to draw out of these elements questions that support, guide, or complicate the plot. For example: Why do the druids need to communicate in secret? How did they learn to communicate via the mycelium? Perhaps we can introduce an obstacle to challenge this concept. Maybe the druids’ enemies are wizards who can control fire and are seeking to burn down large swathes of forest to destroy the communication system. This gives you more questions: Why do the fire wizards want to stop the druids from communicating? Why can’t they use the mycelium system to communicate themselves?

If you struggle with coming up with such questions, there are many online resources that can help you glean what is important about your world, and how to expand it into plot. Furthermore, don’t underestimate how helpful it can be to share your worldbuilding with a person you trust! Their new perspective and natural curiosity can reveal story threads already woven into the tapestry: ones you can follow and weave further.

Conclusion

There’s an old piece of writing advice that says, “write what you know,” and it is a valuable piece of advice. But I would take it a step further and ask you to write what you love. You can always gain more knowledge, but you can’t fake joy. That’s what these “anti-plotting” methods are asking of you—how is your writing making you feel? Are you having fun? Do you hate this process? Or do you wake up and want to do nothing but sit down and write?

I’m not a believer in the idea that artists must suffer, and I think all creators should be able to enjoy and trust their process. If you love every bit of the story you are building, from its tiniest seedling to its greatest, towering city, you will want to play in this sandbox. You will return, time and time again, to tell stories in this universe, no matter the obstacles—frustration, boredom, an alien invasion. Once you have a plotting approach that feels like an act of discovery, you may find you don’t hate plotting after all.

Published on September 24, 2024 by June Road Press.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started Songs for the Land-Bound, but I certainly didn’t anticipate connecting so deeply to this poetry collection. In her debut, Violeta Garcia-Mendoza constructs a portrait of life the way she experiences it. In this collection, she explores the ambivalence of joy and anxiety through nature, family, and all modern life has to offer.

Through many of the poems, we discover what family means to Garcia-Mendoza, along with the many definitions of family she juggles. The past and present occasionally blur as the poet reflects on her own parents and childhood while considering her current situation as a parent. One poem, titled “A Dozen New Collective Nouns for Fathers,” expands on this theme in a wonderful and thought-evoking way by giving fathers names such as “a stable a stumble a stubble/an ambition.”

Although I am not a mother like Garcia-Mendoza, I see myself in poems that touch on being a woman poet with responsibilities. Yes, I want to say to her poems, I get it. I’ve been there. Many a day, I have found myself in front of the sink, elbow-deep in dishes, wondering if I’ll ever amount to anything, as in “Instructions for the At-Home Poet.” I’ve been the one shutting doors around the house when expecting visitors, because, really, I’m not about to put effort into cleaning the laundry room to be conceived as presentable, as Garcia-Mendoza phrases more skillfully in “Housekeeping Secrets.” “In the past sixty minutes,” Garcia-Mendoza writes, “the mother-poet/has not written a dozen lines.” Yes. Yes, to writing about the self-doubt and monotonous chores that otherwise might be brushed off or even looked down upon. Invisible burdens like these are not always taken seriously or discussed so to read great poetry that reveal and revel in these moments feels validating.

Nature is another important theme in this collection. It is intricately interlaced with other topics and subjects, and appears, in some way, in nearly every poem. Even in a poem about type 1 diabetes, nature is weaved in beautifully: “Let the pancreas’s beta cells pinecone//and crumble. Chronic the clouds. Let the blood/sugar fluctuate a flock of blackbirds.” As a suburban wildlife photographer and someone who finds comfort and awe in the natural world, Garcia-Mendoza pays close attention to flora and fauna in her work. She also gives a lot of respect to the animals she writes about. In “Frog Song,” which she dedicates to the resilience of frogs, she writes “Never mind the mud, the pondweed;/don’t apologize. Propel yourself/mouth-first into your appetites—//your every move a swish, your every cell a song swell.”

In a very human way, Garcia-Mendoza is anxious in this collection. Anxious about not being enough of a poet, mother, or wife, about the unstoppable rush of time, and that unexplained, hanging dread, among everything else there is to worry about. When she puts the baby to bed, “instead of sleeping:/set up a Google alert for how to survive a flood/and let your phone mislead you all the way/to Venice, acqua alta and a headline you misread/as A Survivor’s Guide.”  But the poems do not steep in the anxiety or ignore it. Instead, there is a natural push and pull between the anxiety that comes with living, and the undeniable joy of it. As she writes, “you can’t resist/a little still life lit with grief & wonder.” Garcia-Mendoza manages to achieve an imperfect and human balance between the two without falling into one or the other.

I also loved the honesty of modern-day living in Songs for the Land-Bound. The poem, “Lockdown Minecraft” about Garcia-Mendoza son’s Minecraft village is an excellent example of this. The poem reveals a truth about the small, everyday things we do without thinking. “My son builds himself a fortress, hunkers down, forgets/the days. He asks: How strong is concrete versus clay?/What we all want to know: what barriers will keep us safe.”  Her choice to confront these modern phenomena is something admirable. It feels important because poetry is meant to refashion the way we see the world, yet we don’t often find the larger digital world we interact with represented in poetry.

The use of images in Garcia-Mendoza’s poetry is something else I keep coming back to. Many of her poems host surprising, beautiful visuals that I want to shut my eyes and imagine when I stumble upon them. Who wouldn’t linger when told about a “ghost stitch sewn/illuminant over the scar,” or take a moment to fully believe “the body is a mansion meant for pacing,” or want to listen to the “dose/of ocean moving through these woods.” Her clever use of language and construction of imagery will encourage you to listen attentively, because you don’t want to miss any of it.

Though the collection is divided into six sections, with each portion focusing on a few different subjects or themes, it does not feel at all divided. The poems work cohesively together, and the major themes and ideas of the collection carry from beginning to end. Keeping this in mind, it’s worth noting the first section doesn’t stand out as much as the others. Although it functions well as an introduction, the wandering of the poems isn’t quite as effective since there isn’t any immediate connection between the individual poems. Once we move on from the section, that feeling fades away. Since the other sections allow us to learn more about who the poet is and what her life feels like with added context to some of the recurring themes and narratives, this understanding deepens as we read on. Garcia-Mendoza’s Songs for the Land-Bound was a treat to read. It covers a wide lens of subjects and themes but manages to feel concise and deliberate in the stories it tells. Nature, family, and modern life, and the anxiety and joy they stir up, take the main stage in this collection, but subtler themes complicate and broaden the reach of the poems. This is an incredible debut that poetry-lovers should be on the lookout for.

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of What It’s Like In Words.

This title will be released on December 3, 2025 by Henry Holt & Co.

I finished Eliza Moss’s debut novel, What It’s Like in Words, on the same day I realized I needed to break up with my situationship. They were sweet, sexy, and spoiled me rotten, and I had to fight against every dysfunctional people-pleasing instinct in my body to even identify I wanted to leave them. But being afraid to leave–or of being left–is not the same thing as wanting to stick around. 

This is familiar emotional territory for the novel’s main character, Enola, on both sides of the equation. What It’s Like in Words explores the murky waters of love, self-doubt, manipulation, and abuse as Enola struggles to finish her novel while navigating her anonymous boyfriend’s turbulent temper. A couple’s trip to Kenya begins to unravel Enola’s long-held narratives about her own life as childhood memories resurface, making it more difficult than ever to maintain the fragile illusion of being the Cool Girl. Enola is forced to confront what happened to her father many years ago, finally facing all she has inherited from her past and gaining the strength to carve a new path. 

What It’s Like in Words fills the void left when Phoebe Waller Bridge said “no” to Fleabag Season 3–Enola is unlucky in love, low on self-worth, and full of feminist guilt. She works at a cafe in London, formerly with her best friend named Ruth–or “Roo” to Fleabag’s “Boo.” The similarities are no accident–Moss lists Fleabag as the first comptitle in the book description. 

Where Fleabag toys with the fourth wall by addressing the camera directly, Moss employs a similar method of unreliable narration, occasionally pulling back and rewriting details of the scene as if Enola had remembered them wrong. As Enola represses and curates pieces of herself, her memories are subject to alteration. The “real” scenes are often less picturesque than Enola’s first attempt at relaying the memory. The novel employs a braided narrative, switching between the past and the present day, and many scenes feel intentionally distanced; quotation marks are omitted, giving conversations a glaze of ambiguity, open to reader interpretation. These Fleabaggian nods to the audience give Moss the opportunity to play with the unreliable narrator, but they disappear for most of the middle of the book and rarely go all the way–except for a shocking split timeline near the end of the novel. 

While they share a sort of British familial frigidness, what sets this novel apart from Fleabag is its unsparing portrayal of emotional abuse. The efficiency with which the boyfriend twists innocent comments, volleys justified criticisms, and escalates minor inconveniences left me feeling as vulnerable to his manipulations as Enola. His narcissism is unpleasantly visceral, from his constant negging to his spite at the success of other writers, and I found myself wanting to argue with this fictional man. In that sense, the novel succeeded by subjecting readers to the emotional erosion of gaslighting. Enola’s self-doubt, amplified by the novel’s ambiguous style of narration, leave a vacuum of certainty that this master manipulator is more than eager to fill. 

While Enola is a relatable and sympathetic narrator, there is nothing good about her anonymous boyfriend to justify her frenzied love for him. From his introduction, he is spewing insults, negging Enola, and dropping red flags like breadcrumbs. Aside from Enola telling readers he is sexy and funny, there’s not much evidence to endear readers to him or lend credibility to her obsession with him. He starts out pretty darn awful and only gets worse. In a culture rife with victim-blaming, it’s hard to write about the senselessness of emotional abuse without making the victim seem senseless herself, for still going home with the guy holding the bright red “Abuser” sign–not to mention, all of her best friend’s unheeded warnings. The first inklings of his abusive nature could have been woven into the story with more subtlety, so that readers initially resonate with Enola’s love for him.

The anonymous boyfriend overshadows Enola’s second partner in the novel, a lawyer named Virinder–the “nice guy” to his “bad boy.” While Virinder is sweet, doting, and capable of making Enola orgasm, there’s nuance to his style of entitlement and manipulation. Moss takes her time to render both men as flawed, nuanced characters rather than archetypes. However, the “bad boy” gets disproportionately more attention, and Virinder’s storyline feels slightly truncated by the novel’s multiple timelines.

Interestingly, What It’s Like in Words takes place against the backdrop of the 2016 United States presidential election cycle, despite being a story that revolves around Londoners. Echoes of Trump’s campaign and various misogynistic scandals are peppered throughout the book while Enola contorts herself to appease mediocre men. Sexism, of all the -isms, is most lethal inside the privacy of an intimate partnership, but the reverberations of state-sanctioned misogyny ring clear across the Atlantic Ocean. The women of this novel feel the threat of misogyny, but they feel the weight of their own reactions in the face of misogyny even more. 

Enola hates both men in What It’s Like in Words yet returns to them when they dangle the carrot of emotional security over her head. She takes stuttering steps towards independence, but it’s not until she fully understands she must choose her own peace that she can leave both of them. The same people-pleasing tendencies keep her trapped with the “nice guy” just as much as with the abuser. It takes courage to realize someone being “the better option” doesn’t mean they are the one. Enola discovers the power in rewriting the narrative of her own life, of evolving from a passive character to an agent in relationships who can revoke consent when she wants to. What It’s Like in Words is the story of the self–the whole self, the uncurated self–overpowering the fear of being left behind.

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of Apastoral: A Mistopia.

Published on July 15, 2024 by corona/samizdat.

Apastoral: A Mistopia by Lee Thompson is hilarious and horrifying from stem to stern, a wildly imaginative meditation on the absurd nature of incarceration. As stark as that may sound, Thompson subverts the subject matter with magical scenarios and rhythmic language that resolves like a fable. Apastoral is gritty and harsh, at its heart is a violent crime and a very violent State, but it also contains love, loyalty, and the innocence of friendship. Thompson weaves impressionistic prose into the narrative, creating an existential point of view for a pantheon of characters. The result is a story that feels lived, rather than recorded.

In Apastoral, particularly pernicious criminals, are no longer locked in small concrete cells. State authorities have decided that the most dangerous among us are better relegated to the bodies of livestock, literally. The Constock Program (convict + livestock) transplants the eyes and brains of unlucky defendants into pigs, cows, goats, and chickens. Rather than wallow in grey dungeons, convicts roam vast, fortified farmlands—trapped still, but placated by their docile existence and environment.

The casual cruelty of the Constock program is buttressed by absurd bureaucracy and mad, giggling bureaucrats. Far from any innocent intent, the program has evolved and is fitted with uproarious live broadcast show trials, elaborate psychoanalysis/change-of-life counseling, and a civilian population making bets on convict fates—hungry for the grim entertainment of it all.

It is within this context that we are introduced to Apastoral’s protagonist, Bones, whose participation in a badly botched jewel heist has damned him to life as a wooly sheep. “You’re a wobbly table in a pub, Bones, accept it.” This observation from Bones’ Constock program psychologist represents the State’s attempt to help Bones (and society as a whole) reckon with what they plan to do to him. The extreme psychological and medical conditioning, the experimental surgery, and trapping a human mind in a farm animal are all warranted—excused—because Bones is hopeless.

Thompson roundly calls out all sides of the conflict; the brutal system’s hypocrisy and depravity are laid bare for the reader, and society’s passive and active participation in the farcical show makes the madness even more realistic—some froth at the mouth for news of the next convict transplant, while others vow to burn the whole horrifying system down. PETABBY, an ineffectual anti-Constock resistance group, provides a flawed but ethical reckoning for the program with direct action in the form of clumsy prisoner rescues.

Through PETABBY and characters imprisoned by the Constock program, Thompson illustrates the tragedy of resistance against overwhelming forces, namely that if good people/animals allow it, resistance will become the monster it sought to destroy. “…activists, they’re boring. They just spew what everyone’s been telling them. They’re no different from the lawyers and bankers and cops they make fun of.” The inmates and society as a whole are formed and affected by the Constock program: the inmates parrot the authoritarianism that imprisoned them by devolving into petty dictatorships, and the free citizenry gleefully take up their charge as deputized guards and judges.

There are no sedentary characters in Apastoral; human and post-human-livestock alike are vibrant, even when their time in focus is short. The present and recent past are skillfully intertwined throughout the tale, expanding the world and conflict without blurting out the important parts prematurely. When the reader finally gets a peek at the cause of all the trouble (Bones’ life, friends, and especially his crime), it lands as a gift, necessary at just that moment. The book’s excellent pacing is to blame.

Simply calling Apastoral dystopian is lazy. It is dystopian, of course, but it also reflects a dire reality: plenty of people already live in an absurd carceral system. You may even recognize a few elements of Constock that feel close to home. These systems vary widely at every border but are unfailingly designed to pick up certain people and leave the really big criminals for public office. Within Apastoral’s blooming myriad of moral quandaries, it murmurs from the rafters, be on guard, the absurd becomes the maniacal with a slip of the pen.

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of Play|House.

Published April 2024 by Northwestern University Press.

To say that Jorrell Watkins’ debut poetry collection Play|House contends with the troubling reality of being black in America would be an understatement that doesn’t do his work justice. Not only does Watkins unpack what it means for black boyhood and black psyche to succumb to drugs, guns, invisibility, and other intimate brutalities fostered by the U.S.—he also cultivates a curation where the poetry and music he cites are in conversation with one another. The music introduces figures such as John Coltrane, Ruth Brown, Nas, and Migos as another avenue Watkins simultaneously projects and confronts his boyhood and manhood while he addresses the historical and current injustices haunting black living. “I’ll play songs for you, something you can get with / we don’t have to talk, let music restore what we built” offers the first poem, “Brotha Speaks.” With language, rhythm, and structure that challenge traditional poetics as much as he challenges readers to bear witness to what he has witnessed, Watkins demonstrates his fearlessness to go for the gut when highlighting the hurt. Amidst his prowess, Watkins refuses to surrender to the violences perpetrated upon black living in America and, instead, celebrates the triumphs that originate from black joy.

With his ambitiousness, Watkins doesn’t ask readers to be patient when interacting with his unique dialect—he dares them to step into the cadence he knows and loves dearly. In “Acquisition: Mothership,” inspired by Parliament-Funkadelic’s “Mothership Connection,” Watkins riffs out, “Under the groove our steps collate minds / Maggot brain culture we kilowatt the bots / Overcharged, bail out systemic headlock / Bypass the rulers, circuit trip this business / One hundred and fifteen claps per minute.” Such language demands a reread, but this is not a criticism of the language itself. Rather, subsequent examinations of passages like this allow for a greater appreciation of Watkins’ deftness as he merges poetic and musical meters with commentary on America’s broken systems and how they’re broken. Watkins strikes just as hard with more conventional storytelling when a memory calls for it. In the poem “Up a Notch,” which follows him and his brother cooking a meal as a metaphor for pain birthed from creation, Watkins writes, “Concoctions made, teaspoons drawn, / which taste bombards the palate? / Jody’s nose bleeds, my throat peels. / [again] Emeril’s jazz band muses / his Cajun creation. Jody froths chili-mucus, / I hack heavy metal.”

Speaking of heavy metal, musical genre dictates both the poems and the three sections they are organized under, “House Below the Heavens,” “Halfway Blues House,” and “TrapHouse.” “House Below the Heavens” pays tribute to the hip-hop album Below the Heavens by Blu & Exile and situates readers within Watkins’ own house below the heavens—namely, insights into his childhood, adolescence, family, and reaching beyond cycles of harm to find black joy in a world that constantly takes it away. Meanwhile, “Halfway Blues House” borrows terminology from a living space known as a halfway house, a living environment that serves as the transition stage between incarceration, drug rehab, or mental health treatment and complete reintegration into independent living in society. The mixing of blues’ melancholy with the concept of the halfway house further juxtaposes Watkins and black living with the liminality imposed upon them. This leaves Watkins to question whether full healing is possible as joy and cycles of harm carry over from the first section. Finally, “TrapHouse” is directly modeled after its namesake, where illicit drugs are sold and used or where clay targets are released for skeet shooting. Here, everything Watkins tackles in previous sections culminates where he most explicitly confronts drug use, gun violence, and oblivion. One of the last poems, “Brotha Moves,” is a no-holding-back rhetoric on trauma sustained from police violence. Watkins recalls the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and contemplates how he could just as easily be at the other end of an officer’s bullet.

Watkins’ amalgamation of “play” and “house” embodies poetic and personal maturity that not many debut writers can boast they have, especially considering the gravity of the issues and topics he faces. We see this playfulness intertwined with house in every sense of what a house can entail in “Up a Notch.” Similarly, to start “In the House,” Watkins writes, “Welcome to the most dreaded edifice of the living realm / where haunts whelm flesh into gastric muck and vultures / slurp the gutsy gunk. Watch your step.” Phrases like “gastric muck” and “slurp the gutsy gunk” showcase Watkins’ mastery of playing with poetic language while “Watch your step” and other horror-like descriptions like jet bats, a silkworm, and mercury bile paint a picture where escape is desired. In another poem titled “Mean what I say,” Watkins admits, “There’s three-fourths gallon pecan streusel bread / pudding on second shelf right door garage fridge. / Don’t know if nuts are too much, but it’s from / brotha-owned shop cross town.” From streusel bread to the literal haunting of a house, the oscillation between play and house makes the physical and emotional weight of being so close to these contrasting states of existence tangible as Watkins commands our attention from start to finish.

Play|House utilizes poetics and frames music as a muse to conjure a landscape where joy can be power in the face of America’s familiar obsession with cultures of drugs, guns, and invisibilities. This is not to say that joy is an absolute cure. Instead, Watkins poses moments of black joy that can build upon each other as growing triumphs amidst a reality that demands his people’s blood, sweat, and tears. Thus, joy is ultimately one form of survival, and Watkins shows no signs of slowing down in his disruption of hauntings, histories, and hellish systems. He issues his own challenge in “Brotha Moves” when he writes, “I’m not trying to be one seen on dark-mode dusked screens. Yo what Tupac say? I aint one to push but if pushed, watch how far I go.”