SmokeLong Quarterly

I often see the meme that says Judy Blume should have written a novel to prepare us for menopause. Sounds like maybe she did with Summer Sisters! What did Blume mean to you growing up?

It should come as no surprise to anyone who has read this piece that I highly recommend Summer Sisters. The writing is raw and blunt and honest. I’d never read a book that spanned the life of a friendship from girlhood through adulthood—from sixth grade through becoming a grownup. I was just about Vix and Caitlin’s age at the start of the novel when I read it for the first time, and now I’m as old as they are at the ending. (I’m not sure how this happened nor will I be taking questions at this time.) I grew up with this book. It shaped me. Every time I reread it, I learn something new about friendship, about family, and about love and loss.

Maybe Judy Blume didn’t prepare me for what to do when I’m accidentally caught in the middle of a major weather event, but she did prepare me for a lot and give me Summer Sisters, which feels like a childhood home I can always return to.

Is there any aspect of Blume’s writing that influences your own?

Absolutely. I’m always writing about friendship and girlhood and coming of age. I like to think that my writing, if I’m lucky, is in conversation with Judy Blume’s writing in some way. Growing up is awkward. Having a body is unruly and embarrassing. Friends are family and family is complicated. Real life usually doesn’t turn out like you thought it would.

Summer Sisters is also the first book I’ve ever read that includes interstitials, or a different point of view from different characters, at the end of each chapter. I didn’t know you could do that. Now I often explore multiple points of view when I’m drafting because I love getting into the heads of other characters, especially when writing about family and friendship. It’s interesting to see how different characters react to the same situation.

What was actually going on with this weather event you describe? Sounds pretty major.

It was major! I got on a bus to go home from the gym in normal weather and got off the bus into the terrifying storm that is the reason this piece exists today. The storms in D.C. this summer, and the past several summers, feel more and more apocalyptic. That day I was hiding in the bus garage, the streets were flooding. I’d never been so close to thunder and lightning. The sky really did turn green! I started thinking about the heat waves Judy Blume wrote about in Summer Sisters decades earlier, and although I wouldn’t have dared take out my phone, I was personally confronted with the quote I’ve seen around social media a lot lately: “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you’re the one filming it.”

Was I going to die in that storm? Probably not. I was just panicking—which was honestly a completely fair reaction. But it was one of the first times I had to confront the reality and risks of living in our climate-changed world.

What does the nonfiction prize of A SmokeLong Summer mean for you, and what are you working on now?

I was so surprised to win the nonfiction prize of A SmokeLong Summer 25! I scribbled this story into a notebook after getting safely back into my house to help dissipate the very justified terror I was feeling. I’d planned to fictionalize it later. I’d been writing a series of stories as part of A SmokeLong Summer about characters who survive an apocalypse. The world as they know it ends, and they keep on trying to cling to their normal lives anyways. I meant to use the storm as inspiration. I was in the middle of my annual Summer Sisters reread, and my brain started weaving the two together. Once I thought of the title, the rest of the story came together easily.

I like to alternate between writing novels, short stories, and flash fiction. I like to work on multiple projects at once. Is this efficient? No, it’s not! But this way I’m never bored and always have something I could be working on. Lately, I’ve been writing a ton of flash and having so much fun with it. I recently put together a flash fiction collection I’ve been sending out, so fingers crossed that finds a home!

If you were to write a literary work as personally influential to so many people as Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret, what topic would you cover?

I love writing about girlhood and characters whose lives are shaped by how the world views their bodies. All I really want is to write something that means as much to others as Summer Sisters means to me. A story that sticks with someone enough that they come back to it over and over.