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This week’s installment of Ten Questions features Shoshana von Blanckensee, whose debut novel, Girls Girls Girls, is retired contiguous from G.P. Putnam’s Sons. In the summertime of 1996, champion friends (and concealed girlfriends) Hannah and Sam are driving crossed the state from Long Beach, New York, to the legendary queer paradise of San Francisco, liberated from the judgement of their neighbors and the strict expectations of Hannah’s Orthodox Jewish mother. But erstwhile the fiscal pressures of the West Coast propulsion the girls to commencement stripping, Hannah feels trapped. Sam wants Hannah astatine the club, but Hannah hates stripping astir arsenic overmuch arsenic she hates disappointing Sam. Then Hannah meets Chris, an older butch lesbian, who is instantly taken with her. In an effort to enactment successful San Francisco and distant from the leering men astatine the club, Hannah proposes an escort arrangement. As Hannah falls into Chris’s satellite and Sam meets caller queer friends, region grows betwixt the young women. A piercing exploration of the choices we marque successful the thrilling and confounding hunt for ourselves and home, Girls Girls Girls is a vibrant caller astir archetypal love, heartache, and increasing up queer successful the nineties. Of the caller Catherine Newman wrote, “Girls Girls Girls floored me—the nostalgic angst and agony of it, the vigor and quality and tenderness. Shoshana von Blanckensee puts it each connected the leafage truthful viscerally: lust, hunger, death, sex, grief, love, and each different happening a quality assemblage is and does. It’s wholly extraordinary.” Shoshana von Blanckensee lives successful Berkeley, California, with her spouse and kids. She is an oncology caregiver by time and a writer by immoderate disposable moment.
1. How agelong did it instrumentality you to write Girls Girls Girls?
I began penning Girls Girls Girls astir 2005, initially successful the signifier of abbreviated nonfiction prose poems. Over the people of the past 20 years, I’d measurement distant from it, instrumentality to it, permission again retired of vexation oregon deficiency of time, past instrumentality again. Even without accordant effort, the sheer fig of hours implicit the years paid off. The prose poems started to acceptable unneurotic similar a jigsaw puzzle, and I began fictionalizing the enactment much and much to make a cohesive communicative with crippled and momentum. It wasn’t until the pandemic that I delved backmost successful with a committedness to myself that I’d instrumentality it retired until it was a completed draught of a full-length novel.
2. What was the astir challenging happening astir penning the book?
I was the astir challenging happening astir penning the book! I have, and person ever had, a loud, rude, and disruptive interior critic. I don’t deliberation I tin power however I feel, but I tin marque an intelligence determination to not fto cruel thoughts forestall maine from completing the work. When I promised myself I’d decorativeness the publication it was with 1 caveat: that it could beryllium the worst publication ever written. It didn’t person to beryllium good, it conscionable had to beryllium done. It’s astonishing however galore impossibly intimidating things you tin get yourself to do, if you’re consenting to beryllium an incompetent beginner astatine them. I anticipation to fto myself beryllium an incompetent beginner astatine penning nary substance however galore books I people successful my life. There’s truthful overmuch state successful that mindset.
3. Where, when, and however often do you write?
I’m an oncology caregiver and a genitor arsenic good arsenic a writer, truthful I person to beryllium originative and flexible with my penning time. Much of this caller was written successful one-hour increments during my luncheon breaks astatine work. I’d adjacent myself successful an bare exam country and propulsion up my Google doc. Now I’ve dropped my enactment hours a spot and I person Tuesdays and Fridays for writing. It feels luxurious to person hours astatine a time.
4. What are you speechmaking close now?
Loca (Simon & Schuster, 2025) by Alejandro Heredia, and I’m perfectly loving it.
5. Which author, successful your opinion, deserves wider recognition?
Miller Oberman. He’s a poet, and poesy wide doesn’t get the readership it deserves. I precocious work Miller’s book Impossible Things (Duke University Press, 2024), and I was floored by it. It’s a heart-aching exploration of fatherhood, manhood, kid loss, and grief.
6. What is the biggest impediment to your penning life?
This is astir apt a communal complaint, but I request much hours successful each day. I privation 4 hours of writing, a six-hour nursing shift, a two-hour locomotion successful the woods, 8 hours for friends and family, and 8 hours of sleep. Why is that excessively overmuch to inquire for?
7. What is 1 happening that your cause oregon exertion told you during the process of publishing this publication that stuck with you?
One of my editors is besides a writer and told maine the archetypal editorial missive would consciousness overwhelming, discouraging, and possibly impossible. She said it would instrumentality astatine slightest a week to process. She was truthful right! At archetypal I disquieted I didn’t person the accomplishment to instrumentality it, but aft a mates weeks I was capable to interruption the enactment up into incremental steps and acceptable a bid of goals. It took maine a mates months, and it was the hardest portion of this process, but besides the astir gratifying.
8. If you could spell backmost successful clip and speech to the earlier you, earlier you started Girls Girls Girls, what would you say?
I was truthful young and heavy successful endurance mode earlier I started Girls Girls Girls. I needed emotion much than penning advice, much than a committedness everything would extremity up large successful immoderate distant future. Honestly, I deliberation I’d conscionable hug her.
9. Outside of writing, what different forms of enactment were indispensable to the instauration of Girls Girls Girls?
You’re going to get a precise honorable reply here. I wouldn’t person felt close penning astir stripping if I hadn’t worked arsenic a stripper erstwhile I was young. There are truthful galore misconceptions astir enactment work, who chooses it and why, and it was important to maine to amusement thing different than the caricatures that are truthful prevalent. Stripping was hard, but it offered maine full fiscal autonomy erstwhile I was a young, depressed, queer idiosyncratic with a precocious schoolhouse diploma. It offered ample currency and ample clip to get my encephalon and bosom successful amended moving order. I person much regret astir a fewer of the minimum-wage jobs I suffered done than I bash astir stripping.
10. What’s the champion portion of penning proposal you’ve ever heard?
If you enactment the hours in, the enactment volition enactment itself out. I don’t constitute to a connection number oregon a acceptable fig of pages. I committedness myself a circumstantial fig of butt-in-chair hours per week. This method means you don’t person to consciousness atrocious if you rework a azygous paragraph for 4 hours straight. It’s conscionable enactment moving itself out.
