Elizabeth Gonzalez James
Author Interview - Elizabeth Gonzalez James
Author of Mona at Sea
MONA AT SEA is a dark comedy set during the Great Recession, and features Mona Mireles, a young Latina who loses her plum job on Wall Street and must figure out what she's going to do with the rest of her life. Despite her potential, and her top-of-her-class college degree, Mona finds herself unemployed, living with her parents, and adrift in life and love. On her tragicomic journey through late-stage capitalism, Mona is ultimately able to learn what it is she finds meaningful in life. The question is: Will she be brave enough to go after it?
Author Interview - Elizabeth Gonzalez James
Author I draw inspiration from: I draw a lot of inspiration from Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders. They both write about strange people who do strange things or find themselves in strange situations, and they often can't cope, or at least can't cope in a way that we would label successful. There's a lot of sadness in their work, but also a lot of humor and, most importantly to me, empathy. They both have such deep love and sympathy for their characters, and that's what I really want to be able to affect in my work. I want my work to be strange, maybe even goofy, but always full of empathy and love.
Author Interview - Elizabeth Gonzalez James
Favorite place to read a book: Well, my favorite place that exists is my living room couch, when everyone's gone or outside, so it's super quiet. My favorite place in my fantasies is some English country manor on a rainy day, beside a crackling fire, with a glass of brandy next to me.
Book character I’d like to be stuck in an elevator with: I would love to be stuck in an elevator with Noemi Taboada from Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. First of all, she'll have cigarettes, and as a former and somewhat unrepentant smoker, I'm always happy to sneak an illicit cigarette! Secondly, she's smart and hilarious, and strong as hell. If anyone could figure out a way out of a stuck elevator, and have me laughing the whole time, it'll be her.
Author Interview - Elizabeth Gonzalez James
The moment I knew I wanted to become an author: There wasn't an aha moment in my case, but more of an accumulation of desire and circumstance. But I knew that I wanted to create stories all the way back in undergrad when I was an art history major. Instead of paying attention to dates and painting techniques during lectures, I'd stare at the paintings and dream up stories either about the people in the scenes, or about the artists themselves - what caused them to choose that subject, what was going on around them as they painted, and how they hoped the painting to be received. I was daydreaming so much that it occurred to me that maybe I ought to one day write these ideas down.
Hardback, paperback, ebook or audiobook: I read them all, and they all serve their purpose. Hardbacks feel prestigious, and paperbacks feel cozy. I like to read e-books on my phone while I pace around my house and get some extra steps in - I walked several miles while reading The Tiger Mom's Tale by Lyn Liao Butler! And I love audiobooks, especially for classics. I never would have made it through Ulysses in paperback, but read aloud in a thick Irish brogue it was very entertaining.
The last book I read: Real Life by Brandon Taylor (and I LOVED it!)
Author Interview - Elizabeth Gonzalez James
Pen & paper or computer: Computer all the way. If I'm working with pen and paper, it's because I need to draw a diagram or a map or something and it probably means I am very much in the weeds! I use Word or Google Docs for short pieces and Scrivener for novels. Scrivener is amazing for organizing research and notes and fragments and all that. My next novel is historical fiction and I quite literally could not have written it without Scrivener.
Book character I think I’d be best friends with: So this is a very meta answer, but I'd love to be friends with Duchess Goldblatt, the fictional online personality who authored the outstanding memoir, Becoming Duchess Goldblatt. Her Grace and I would drink Chardonnay together on a sunlit porch in Crooked Path, New York and crack jokes about all the stupid things in the world. It would be glorious.
Author Interview - Elizabeth Gonzalez James
If I weren’t an author, I’d be a: small business owner. I studied business after I studied art history, and I've always wanted to run my own business. I thought about opening a Pita Pit franchise for a while. Another time I wanted to sell up-cycled furniture. Another time I wanted to make sports fan apparel for women. Now I'm super into perfume, and I think that might be something I pursue once my life quiets down a little.
Favorite decade in fashion history: Oooh! This is a tough one because there are so many amazing looks. I love the dropped waist dresses from the 1920s and 30s, and I love Dior's New Look fashions from the 1950s, but I'm going to have to say the 1960s. I love all the a-line dresses and bold prints from that time, as well as the flat shoes, the Peter-Pan collars, the Brigette Bardot eyes, the bouffant hair -- I love it all!
Place I’d most like to travel: I desperately want to go to Japan. I've been listening to Japanese pop music for over 20 years, first starting with Pizzicato Five, and then branching out into a genre called City Pop, which is this very sleek, upbeat music from the 1980s. I'd love to walk the cities and experience the places that inspired the songs I love so much. I also love Japanese fashion. Yohji Yamamoto and Rei Kawakubo have always fascinated me with their outsize proportions. I love the way both designers really want their designs and their customers to take up more and more space. I'd love to see Japanese street fashions, see how the young people are dressing as well as the older women. And then the films! I love Osamu Tezuka and Hayao Miyazaki and the characters they created. Again, it's all about wanting to walk around in that space and see the country that birthed all these things I love.
My signature drink: I will never turn down an Old Fashioned.
Favorite artist: Hieronymus Bosch is my all-time favorite. He's so delightfully weird, but with very strict intentions. He was highly intelligent and devoutly religious, and his paintings combine his love of chemistry -- at the time, what we'd call alchemy -- with his religious beliefs. The result is almost unintelligible to us, but to him it was a whole coded language that could only be understood by people who shared his interests. It's endlessly fascinating to me to try and decode what he's saying in his work.
Number one on my bucket list: I really want to meet Gritty, the mascot of the Philadelphia Flyers.
Anything else you'd like to add: Shop local! Shop independent!
Find more from the author:
https://www.instagram.com/unefemmejames/
https://twitter.com/unefemmejames
https://www.facebook.com/elizabethgonzalezjames
Author Bio: Before becoming a writer Elizabeth was a waitress, a pollster, an Avon lady, and an opera singer. Her stories and essays have appeared in The Idaho Review, The Rumpus, StorySouth, PANK, and elsewhere, and have received numerous Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations. In 2021 she is a regular contributor to Ploughshares Blog. Her first novel, MONA AT SEA, was a finalist in the 2019 SFWP Literary Awards judged by Carmen Maria Machado, and is forthcoming, June 2021. Originally from South Texas, Elizabeth now lives with her family in Oakland, California.
