Don't Judge, Read: Tour Stop: SILVER GIRL by Leslie Pietrzyk - Interview

Title: SILVER GIRL

Author: Leslie Pietrzyk

Pub. Date: February 27, 2018

Publisher: Unnamed Press

Pages: 272

Formats: Paperback, eBook

Find it: Amazon, B&N, TBD, iBooks, Goodreads

It's the early 1980s. Ronald Reagan's economy will trickle down any day now, and Chicago's Tylenol Killer has struck: an unknown person is stuffing cyanide into capsules, then returning them to drugstore shelves.

Against the backdrop of this rampant anxiety, one young woman, desperate to escape the unspoken secrets of her Midwestern family, bluffs her way into the fancy "school by the lake" in Chicago. There she meets Jess, charismatic and rich and needy, and the two form an insular, competitive friendship. Jess' family appears perfect to the narrator's wishful eye, and she longs to fit into their world, even viewing herself as a potentially better daughter than the unappreciative Jess. But the uneven power dynamic chafes the narrator, along with lingering guilt about the sister she left behind. Her behavior becomes increasingly risky - and after Jess' sister dies in murky circumstances and the Tylenol killer exposes the intricate double life of Jess' father, she finds herself scrambling for footing. Nothing is as it seems, and the randomness of life feels cruel, whether one's fate is swallowing a poisoned Tylenol or being born into a damaged and damaging family.

SILVER GIRL is a cousin to Emma Cline's The Girls and Emily Gould's Friendship in its nuanced exploration of female friendship, with the longing of Stephanie Danler's Sweetbitter.

Leslie Pietrzyk | lesliepietrzyk@gmail.com | www.lesliepietryk.com

Let’s start with, how are you this fine day?

I just came back from getting a fabulous haircut, so I guess I feel kind of pretty(ish). And blonder!

Where do you get your information or ideas for your books?

My books typically contain both tidbits and chunks from my own life and observations. But I definitely make up a lot of things, mostly because that makes for more interesting books. Using SILVER GIRL as an example, like the book’s narrator, I grew up in Iowa and went to a fancy college outside of Chicago, and I had a complicated female friendship while I was there…but I took those real-life elements and added many more layers and challenges to create a story with deeper, tougher conflicts. Often tiny details are accurate to my life: I packed up my college stuff in a horrible cardboard trunk just like the narrator does.

When did you write your first book and how old were you?

I always loved reading and writing, and the very first “book” I wrote—AND illustrated—was called Seagull and was about two orphans sailing the ocean who meet a magical seagull. Three whole pages!

What do you like to do when you're not writing?

Cook! I love to cook and think about food and read about food and eat food. I also love to write about food. None of my characters goes hungry. People in my stories and books are always eating.

What does your family think of your writing?

Being related to a writer must be hard, never knowing what that writer will write about next. I think my family is cautious about my writing—but in the end, they’re very supportive, which I’m grateful for. (If you have a friend/relative who is thinking about becoming a writer, might I suggest that you be very, very, VERY nice to them starting now!)

What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your books?

I learned that it’s okay not to know the ending before you start writing. Sometimes it’s hard to be patient and do the work to let that ending eventually emerge—and to trust that it will show up—and it was surprising to me that I could learn to be patient in this way since I’m very impatient in every other conceivable way.

How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?

I have published four books: three novels, and one book of short stories. Can they each be my favorite for different reasons? (Does everyone say that?) PEARS ON A WILLOW TREE is the first book I got published, so that’s always going to be special, and I love that research included listening to stories from my Polish relatives. A YEAR AND A DAY takes place in Iowa and including some details from my growing up in Iowa, like detasseling corn and the trauma of not getting the part of Emily in my high school’s production of “Our Town.” THIS ANGEL ON MY CHEST is the book of short stories, each about my first husband who died too young, so I appreciate that this book honors his memory. And SILVER GIRL is my favorite right now because I enjoyed writing about the 80s and because it was such a challenge piecing the story together since it follows a non-chronological timeline.

Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?

I get emails and I hear from readers on Facebook. So far, they’ve said (mostly) nice things. Sometimes I hear from students who are writing papers (due the next day), asking me what the “symbols” are in my book. I nicely suggest that their teachers would rather hear what they think. Every now and then I get an email from someone who thinks they might be related to me because our last name is so unusual.

Have you even been sent fan art?

Oh, this sounds interesting! I’ve got room on my wall. Just saying….

What do you think makes a good story?

A good story is one in which I care about the characters and I’m worried about what’s going to happen next. There is a lot of conflict and tension as the beloved characters work things out, and the writing is so good along the way that I trust that the ending will be exactly right, and maybe make me just a little bit teary as I close the cover and sigh, sad the book is over.

As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?

Writer. And actor. In college, I immediately realized I was nowhere near good enough for the actor part, so happily I could focus on writing pretty quickly.

What is that one weird quirk about yourself that no one else knows?

I can’t parallel park. Also, I love brownie corners!

If you had your time back what would you tell yourself about writing?

Relax! The writing life is about the journey, not only the destination of the published book. Don’t forget that at its core, writing is FUN.

Last but not least,

What advice would you give aspiring writers?

Read a lot, all sorts of books, and while you read, try to put yourself in the writer’s head: How did the writer put the book together? What worked and what didn’t work? Learn to read like a writer, not just a reader.

Thank you for answers my questions

These were great questions…thank YOU so much! xoxox

Leslie Pietrzyk is the author of two novels, Pears on a Willow Tree and A Year and a Day. This Angel on My Chest, her collection of linked short stories, won the 2015 Drue Heinz Literature Prize and was published by the University of Pittsburgh Press in October 2015. Kirkus Reviews named it one of the 16 best story collections of the year.

A new novel, Silver Girl, is forthcoming from Unnamed Press in February 2018. Her short fiction and essays have appeared/are forthcoming in many publications, including Hudson Review, Southern Review, Arts & Letters, Gettysburg Review, The Sun, Shenandoah, River Styx, Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, New England Review, Salon, Washingtonian, and the Washington Post Magazine.

She has received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Pietrzyk is a member of the core fiction faculty at the Converse low-residency MFA program and often teaches in the MA Program in Writing at Johns Hopkins University. Raised in Iowa, she now lives in Alexandria, Virginia.