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| photo: Saja Montague | |
Juliet Escoria is the author of the poetry collection Witch Hunt and the story collection Black Cloud. She lives in West Virginia with her husband, the writer Scott McClanahan. Her new novel, Juliet the Maniac, was just published by Melville House.
On your nightstand now:
The Bible and The Kingdom by Emmanuel Carrère.
I was raised without religion. Last year, I decided I wanted to read the Bible because it seemed negligent to be a writer and an English teacher and to not have read what is possibly the most influential book of all time. I am following a year-long Bible reading plan with some friends. Because I am incapable of having a normal degree of interest in things, I also decided that I needed "supplemental" biblical-themed readings, hence the Carrère book. It's fu*king great.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Dangerous Angels series by Francesca Lia Block. Witch Baby is my idol.
Your top five authors:
So many ways to answer this question. I'll go with the canned answer that helps explain my own work:
Mary Gaitskill
Denis Johnson
Lucia Berlin
Sylvia Plath
Joan Didion
Book you've faked reading:
Maybe this is one of the positive things about getting your GED? I don't feel the need to do this because I can always blame it on the gaps in my education instead.
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Sarah Book by Scott McClanahan
Person/A by Elizabeth Ellen
Cherry by Nico Walker
Liveblog by Megan Boyle
Bipolar Cowboy by Noah Cicero
All of these books are completely uncompromising in portraying emotional truth, which should be the highest goal of literature (or art in general).
Book you've bought for the cover:
Young God by Katherine Faw Morris. The book is just as good as the cover.
Book you hid from your parents:
I stole a water-themed erotica anthology from Barnes & Noble that was printed on waterproof paper so you could take it in the bathtub. That book lived under my bed for years.
Books that changed your life:
I read Cruddy by Lynda Barry, Geek Love by Katherine Dunn and The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things by JT LeRoy around the same time--I was maybe 18--and it made me really want to write weird, beautiful, troublesome fiction.
Favorite line from a book:
"...and the dogs licked up his blood while the harlots bathed" --I Kings 22:38
Five books you'll never part with:
Signed galley copy of Hill William by Scott McClanahan (my husband--he gave it to me before we were even dating).
Rock Dreams by Nik Cohn, which is out of print and was given to me by my beloved dead uncle.
I'll leave it at that. All the others are replaceable.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
My Ántonia by Willa Cather. That was the dream reading experience--I laughed, I cried, I envied the beauty of the writing, I couldn't put it down.
Other 2019 books that you're excited about:
Sugar Run by Mesha Maren
Essays & Fictions by Brad Phillips
The New Me by Halle Butler
Biloxi by Mary Miller
Meander Belt by M. Randal O'Wain
The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter
Teenager by Bud Smith
Hard Mouth by Amanda Goldblatt