Because I’m a compulsive confessor, I must say that sometimes, in the writing of this book, I experienced the interviewer as an amalgam of the sweet, attentive, and intelligent men who’ve passed through my life, a few having actually interviewed me for one journal or another, but the rest just good friends and collaborators. I hope you know who you are because, though I love you, I cannot possibly fill up the last page of my lesbian novel with your names.
A curated excerpt from My Lesbian Novel was published in The Paris Review’s summer issue (2024). Many thanks to Emily Stokes and Oriana Ullman for their insights and enthusiasm.
While otherwise not previously published, in February 2019 The Believer (Issue 123) published a conversation between the writer and translator Anna Moschovakis and me, where I discussed the writing of My Lesbian Novel (all twenty-six pages of it at the time) in detail. In fact, for many years, I believed that would be the only public life MLN would have. Many thanks to The Believer and most especially to my friend, Anna, whom I also sometimes see in I, the interviewer.
Also thank you to Joanna Ruocco for that beautifully expansive conversation we had about romances.
And thanks and love to the interlocutors and ted-talkers in my life: EJ Colon, Joanna Howard, John Cayley, Jessica Lanyadoo, Mary Ruefle, Kate Briggs, my sisters Vanessa and Gwen, and Amy Peterson.
And always to Danielle Dutton and Martin Riker of Dorothy.
And always always to Danielle Vogel.