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| photo: J. Aharonov | |
Joss Lake is a novelist and educator living in New York. He runs a literary sauna series called Trans at Rest. His debut novel is Future Feeling (Soft Skull Press, June 1, 2021), about a hex gone awry and trans self-actualization.
On your nightstand now:
Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa and N.K. Jemisin's How Long 'Til Black Future Month? I've been on a quest to figure out how to write a "contemplative novel," and Trungpa Rinpoche's spiritual work and writings have influenced many people I admire, including Pema Chödrön. I'm a big fan of N.K. Jemisin's sprawling, speculative worlds, and it's interesting to see how she plays around with the seeds for these worlds in her short stories.
Favorite book when you were a child:
Without question, Madeleine L'Engle's A Wrinkle in Time. That book opened a portal for me.
Your top five authors:
Angela Carter
Renee Gladman
Tommy Pico
Marcel Proust
Virginia Woolf
(The list is representative of a much larger one.)
Book you've faked reading:
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. My high school English teacher was so sure that I would love it, but the title, and related content, did not appeal to me.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren. We all need to spend some time inside this strange, breathing, apocalyptic queer city.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Olio by Tyehimba Jess. While experiencing sensory overload at the Brooklyn Book Festival, I was drawn to the simplicity of this cover, which has, like all Wave Books, black text on a cream background. (There are many better reasons to read this book of poetry.)
Book you hid from your parents:
Kathy Acker's Pussy, King of the Pirates. I couldn't believe they sold it in a suburban St. Louis Borders. I had a lofted bed, so my reading material was quite private (until I went to college and my Lesbian Sex book was discovered).
Book that changed your life:
Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi. I had reservations about writing a book about mental health and translating certain experiences into lyrical prose, and then I saw how Emezi completely altered the landscape for talking about interiority.
Favorite line from a book:
"It is enough for us to state the simple fact; Orlando was a man till the age of 30; when he became a woman and has remained so ever since." --Orlando by Virginia Woolf
The authority of this line, the unwavering declaration, undid me when I first read this in college. I've never really recovered.
Five books you'll never part with:
Burn Your Boats by Angela Carter
Blow-Up and Other Stories by Julio Cortázar
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor
St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves by Karen Russell
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino. I was so charmed and delighted by the "serious play" of this book and the way it expanded my sense of the possible.
A book that makes you ridiculously happy:
Remarkable Trees of the World by Thomas Pakenham. The book came into my life under strange circumstances, after I delivered cookies to a well-known horror writer and was thanked with a pile of books, including this one.