TBR [to be read] is a semi-regular, invitation-only interview series with authors of newly released/forthcoming, interesting books who will tell us about their new work as well as offer tips on writing, stories about the publishing biz, and from time to time, a recipe.
Give us your elevator pitch: what’s your book about in 2-3 sentences?
My mother died unexpectedly of breast cancer when I was nine
years old. But it was only after traveling to the Las Vegas Strip obsessively when
I was in my late 20s that I began to understand my grief surrounding that loss
and what it’s meant to turn away from it for so long. This is the experience
that I unpack in Souvenirs from Paradise, a collection of essays that
use the tropes of the Strip—the themed mega-casinos, the impersonator shows,
the Mafia history—to unearth the buried emotions that were driving my
attraction to this strange place all along.
Which essay did you most enjoy writing? Why? And, which
essay gave you the most trouble, and why?
An essay called “The Tourist Guide” was the most fun and
also one that I struggled with writing. It plays with the language and style of
travel guides, particularly the New York Times “36 Hours” column. People
often ask me for travel advice when going to Vegas, so some of the inspiration
came from that—but also from asking myself, what would a travel guide look like
if I were to write it for this particular book?
Travel guides often write from a removed voice in the second
person and purport to reveal some kind of insider knowledge, even though they
often recommend well-treaded activities and places. My challenge was to find a
way to use that language and voice to understand my own “sightseeing” path while
avoiding cliched writing on Las Vegas, which I did by considering the details
of particular casinos that held meaning for me. I also pushed myself to
interrogate how my grief made its way into my experiences with those details.
Ultimately, I asked myself, what can “sightseeing” itself can really mean—how
can it help us understand not just a place, but ourselves.
Tell us a bit about the highs and lows of your book’s
road to publication.
I knew from the beginning that the path to publication would be long because I
was working on a collection of essays—I had many people warn me that essay
collections are difficult to sell. But this is the writing form I most connect
with, and so I committed to it with that reality in mind. A long process is
fortunate in that it led me to connect with many people in the writing
community over the years—our local writing center in Seattle Hugo House,
various summer writing workshops that I participated in around the country, a
writing group that formed out of one of those workshops in 2015 and continues
today. I began reaching out to some agents in 2018 and did some substantial
revisions after a few read the full manuscript but declined representation.
I tried reaching out to agents again in 2019, but once the
pandemic hit in 2020 and everything felt so chaotic, I struggled to communicate
the urgency of a book in query letters. So, I started turning more towards
small presses that didn’t require agents. I submitted to some contests, and was
once the runner-up, which was a disappointment since only the winner received
publication. But it did encourage me to keep submitting, and I was eventually fortunate
to have the manuscript selected for Zone 3 Press’s 2021 Creative Nonfiction
Book Award by judge Wendy S. Walters.
What’s your favorite piece of writing advice?
I once heard Zadie Smith speak about the way she avoids
social media and instead uses those precious minutes when people often scroll
through their phones to instead write. While I don’t succeed as often as I’d
like, it’s something I strive towards when I find a few idle moments.
My favorite writing advice is “write until something
surprises you.” What surprised you in the writing of this book?
When I began writing this book, I thought it was about an
obsession with Las Vegas. I didn’t think it was about grief, and vehemently
denied that it was for about a year, until I realized that the threads about
that aspect of myself were the ones my readers were connecting with most.
How did you find the title of your book?
The title was originally an essay title that changed during
the revision process (now called “The Rat Pack Casino”). The cohesion of the collection was important
to me, so when I was organizing the book, I went back to an idea I had very
early on, when I thought about anchoring each essay in an aspect of the Strip
that people often associate with Las Vegas. Once time had allowed me to
distance myself from the material, I recognized I had just turned those Vegas
tropes on their heads in ways that had been unrecognizable while I was mining
my experiences with grief. They had there been with me all along, and so I
retitled all of the essays in order to surface the tropes more clearly for the
reader—“The Mirage”, “The Bachelorette Party”, and so on. “Souvenirs from
Paradise” was a title I hated to give up. But, I considered how the tropes became
my own “souvenirs” of both my time in Vegas and the writing process. It felt
like this idea could be applied to the whole collection.
“Paradise” also felt right for its meanings, as an abstract
concept that can transform into different places at different points in our
lives. But it also very concretely references the Strip’s location, which is
technically in Paradise, Nevada.
Inquiring foodies and hungry book clubs want to know: Any
food/s associated with your book?
The buffet is one of the most quintessential experiences on
the Strip, in my opinion. My favorite is
the Bacchanal
Buffet at Caesars Palace.
*****
READ MORE ABOUT THIS AUTHOR: www.erinlangner.com
ORDER THIS BOOK FOR YOUR OWN TBR STACK: https://epay.apsu.edu/C20023_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCTID=940
READ AN EXCERPT, “Souvenirs from Paradise”: https://www.zone3press.com/books/view/souvenirs-from-paradise