Julia Liz Elliott

 

Julia Elliott’s writing has appeared in Tin House, The Georgia Review, Conjunctions, The New York Times, Granta, and other publications. She has won a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and her stories have been anthologized in Pushcart Prize: Best of the Small Presses and The Best American Short Stories. Her debut story collection, The Wilds, was chosen by Kirkus, BuzzFeed, Book Riot, and Electric Literature as one of the Best Books of 2014 and was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.

In a first for me I'm having another reviewer describe Julia's book. Why? Because her review is so damn good and spot on!

Review by Erin Butler-Mayes:

Julia Elliott’s rich storytelling sends the reader slipping through time into unsettling, yet familiar, lands. The weather and landscapes become characters themselves through Elliott’s vivid imagery. In the titular story, "Hellions," the sweltering, oppressive humidity of the South is just as unsettling as The Swamp Ape that the protagonist becomes fascinated with, and one can almost smell the damp air amid the forest in "Moon Witch, Moon Witch," a story that blends digital dating and communing with ancient lands. Unique, enthralling, and gorgeously woven, Hellions quietly urges the reader to reflect on their own lives throughout the engaging and vibrant collection.

Hellions lies between genres, and Elliott blends these seamlessly by drenching each in the keystones of Southern Gothic literature. These characters are alienated in their own right, and their tales blur the lines between reality and fantasy, the beautiful and the horrific. Elliott’s storytelling highlights the alienation many of us feel in the technologically-driven world today, one in which we are simultaneously more connected and more isolated than ever. This inherent contradiction is fitting for Elliott’s work of magical realism, one in which the world is both fantastical and unsettlingly real.

As I read, I found myself left with the bittersweet feeling of nostalgia for places I’ve never been, and I was itching to run into the knee-deep waters of the bayou and through the forest to find what wonders awaited me. Perhaps I felt this way because many of Elliott’s stories carry the thematic element of escape, both escaping from oneself and the world. Be it a medieval nun in the throes of a plague in her convent or a teenager in the 70s contending with her parents’ unhappy marriage, these characters long for freedom-and with it a spark of magic. They may find this spark in surreal lands, in their dreams, or in connection with a kindred spirit. Elliott paints the characters as deeply human-flawed, desiring, searching. Thus, in these slices of life, I found myself searching for the magical moments amid the horror of the mundane. As the last line of the book reads, “Come in,” I too found myself inviting something mystical to reignite the sense of wonder that I left behind some lost summer decades ago, forgotten along the banks of a creek in the Georgia woods.

Now back to me, Julia, tell us about your book. 

Here is the short description I wrote for Tin House to describe the book: 

"Hellions is a genre-bending collection that ranges like a feral dog from medieval Europe to the heart of the contemporary South and on into strange, tech-mediated futures. Often championing female power, these surreal stories jump from the occult to the comic, from the horrific to the wondrous, presenting earth-bound characters who long for the otherworldly." 

Now, tell us about where you live and why you love it so much. 

Marketers in Columbia, SC once tried to brand the city as “famously hot,” for when college kids leave in the spring, Columbia becomes a sweltering hellhole wherein people scurry like moles from one air-conditioned enclosure to another, complaining about the heat, swearing they’ll move North. 

But the psychedelic summers, loud with cicadas and almost supernaturally muggy, inspire some of my strangest writing. Some call Columbia “magnet city” because people who once lived here often circle back, making it uncanny in the Freudian sense. As part of a small, self-begotten subculture that revolved around the music scene in the 90s, I had the time of my life in college here. In the aughts, I returned to teach after getting grad degrees at Penn State and the University of Georgia. And I have met some of my weirdest and smartest friends in this city (some who still live here, others who don’t). Columbia is a blue city in a red state, which means that liberals, lefties, artists, and weirdos have become a close-knit community—some people call this phenomenon incestuous and dysfunctional; others call it familial. One friend of mine claims that there is a vortex near the Congaree River that channels odd cosmic energies. Do I believe that? Maybe. 

Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories? 

When I was seven years old, I lived in a small South Carolina town called Ninety Six.

My dad was the principal of Ninety Six Elementary, so all of my teachers were absurdly nice to me.

Because my family’s small ranch house was the first built in a developing neighborhood, we were surrounded by what seemed like a giant forest. My first memory in this house involves my younger brother Roddy clutching the bars of his crib and calling out to me in the night: “Witch-witch comin’.” Though he tried to scare me by threatening the impending arrival of a witch, I was thrilled by the idea of a magical woman fluttering through the sky and landing on our roof. My family was good friends with the school librarian, a fairy-godmother type who invited us to swim and fish at her house on Lake Greenwood every other weekend. 

I played with a neighbor girl there, and together we invented an entire mythology involving witches of the lake. There was no good/evil binary, just hosts of animistic witches that inhabited various parts of the ecology—sky witches and water witches and forest witches, witches that transformed into cats and fish and birds, witches that, every Saturday night, congregated out over the dark water, creating lightning-charged tempests, swirling wind and rain. The whole flock of them would take to the sky and fly around Ninety Six, landing on the roofs of various houses. 

Julia

Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?

Books are magical because they enable telepathic communication between two human beings—the writer and the reader. When you get absorbed by a good book, it’s like you’re possessed by another consciousness. Every good book, a successful possession, changes the way I look at life. 

Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so? 

When I was three, my father read the entire Narnia Chronicles to me, a series that I read by myself at age five.

While the book is supposed to be a Christian allegory, it actually introduced me to the magic of Greek and pagan mythology. My favorite characters were Mr. Tumnus, with his goat legs and cozy cottage,

  

and the White Witch, who was a great model for female power. I wanted to sit in her sleigh—warmed by luxurious furs, intoxicated by Turkish delight—and whip through the snowy forest at supernatural speeds. At the time, I had a great aunt and uncle who lived in an 18th century house that contained several 19th-century wardrobes. Needless to say, every time I visited, I always checked the wardrobes for portals to other worlds. 

What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?

This is not a story, but when I was around eight years old, my brothers, who were identical twins, started calling me “hag” as an insult. When I was about twelve years old, I had two “boyfriends” at summer camp. The three of us hung out together constantly. Because I had slightly bulging eyes and wore a Kelly-green plastic sun visor nonstop, they fondly called me “frog.” 

How did you meet your beloved? How did your first date go? 

We were in a band together at the University of South Carolina in the 90s. The band was called Spigot. We never went on dates. 

Julia with her husband Steve at his grandmother's house (both wearing her lipstick).

Is there a song, person, or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down? 

I love Broadcast. 

How are you different now than you were in your 20’s? 

Too many ways to explain, but I would like to tell my twenty-four-year-old self that she will recover from the linguistic disease she caught by reading too much Thomas Bernhard in conjunction with baroque literature from the English Renaissance, which made her writing incomprehensible nonsense for nine years. 

Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish they would? Something, perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about you?

Do you have a vestigial tail?

Yes, I do have a vestigial tail, or at least a hint of one. In the 90s, when a doctor gave me X-rays for a slipped disc, he informed me that one of my lower vertebrae has a piece of jutting bone that is basically a trace of vestigial tale. 

Can you remember a particular random act of kindness from a stranger? 

An old man in line at Whole Foods once insisted on paying for my watermelon. He told me he was about to get heart surgery, and he wanted to spread good energy around. 

What would you say is the biggest joy and hardest challenge in your life? 

Raising my daughter and writing are similarly difficult and joyous.  

Were there parts in your book that your editor cut that you hated to see go? If so, what were they? 

I’ve had three editors at Tin House (for books and magazine stories), and they are all brilliant. I almost always appreciate and agree with suggested cuts. In a previous draft of my story “All the Other Demons,” the narrator had “small, dark spastic” younger twin brothers while her best friend Squank had older twin sisters, “two tall girls as pale as the moon.” My editor was right when she said two sets of identical twins was a bit much, but this happened to be an autobiographical detail. I even have photographs to prove that my middle-school best friend Squank had twin sisters that were opposite in every way to my twin brothers—a real-life parallel that is too absurd for fiction. 

How do you feel about “Independent Bookstores” and their role in your success? 

I don’t think I’d be publishing Hellions if it weren’t for independent bookstores like Avid, Malaprop's, Hub City, Quail Ridge Books, the Regulator, All Good Books, and others of their ilk. Booksellers at independent bookstores sincerely promoted my past books and hosted readings and events for me. Indie bookstores foster reading and writing communities and serve as hubs for literary culture. The relationships among indie publishers like Tin House, book reps, and indie bookstores are special and intimate, and I am lucky to be a part of this world. 

AND.......The famous Time Travel Question:

IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME

to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,

be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if appropriate to your choice,

actually, experience what it was like to live in that time, anywhere at all,

meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to them, be with them.

When would you go?

Where would you go?

Who would you want to meet?

And most importantly, why do you think you chose this time?

 

In this story, I am transported to Mexico City, 1945. Can you guess who I am with?

At a thrift store, I spot a glint of gold in a pile of broken Christmas ornaments. I pull a curious object from the mess—an old-fashioned hearing trumpet, the kind that curls like an elegant pipe. 

After paying three dollars for it, I rush out into the warm spring air, insert the small end of the instrument into my ear canal, and hear a tinkly flare of pentatonic music. When I open my mouth in surprise, a bee flies in, zipping down my throat and esophagus to dissolve in my stomach. Black winds blow, spinning me dizzy, and I find myself in a culinary laboratory where two women toil, adding an assortment of ingredients to a concoction bubbling in a tall brass pot. The women wear green velvet jumpsuits. The women have hives for heads. Insects—translucent, gelatinous creatures with gauzy wings—bustle in and out of their crania.

When the women turn from their pot and point at me, words buzz through my mind.

If you’d like to help, please siphon liquid from the center of that alligator melon, the taller woman tells me.

Use that crystal dropper, says the shorter woman, and drip the juice into that copper cup.

Just follow the instructions, and you’ll be fine.

They send me to a nook where the melon sits on a stone slab, half of its scaly rind removed, a round of purple fruit glimmering in the haze. I squint at the instructions, written in Egyptian hieroglyphs that I somehow manage to decode. As the women add ingredients to the pot, I insert the dropper into the fruit and suck glowing blue liquid from its central inner hollow—slowly filling my copper cup.

The women converse as they work, discussing how many larks’ tongues to add, how much bee hemolymph, which kind of bat milk best tempers the jar of moon dust and fermented mandrake they bought from the local bazaar. The taller one insists on adding powdered cheese from a silver packet. The shorter one counts as she plops thirty-six pomegranate seeds into the brew, and then each woman plucks a snake from a colander. Murmuring soothing words, massaging delicate serpent jaws with their fingers, they coax beads of yellow venom from ducts and shake the fluid into the broth.

Two small boys run through the kitchen, chasing a lactating hyena. A photographer yawns as she snaps pictures. A man in plaid pajamas sits at the table, reading a newspaper as he eats a boiled egg.

It’s time for the melon juice, the women cry.

Embarrassed, I offer my half-filled cup, but they nod in approval. The taller woman takes it carefully from my hands, humming as she pours the glowing nectar into the mix. The shorter woman ladles broth into small bowls. We drink.

As the room fills with blue light, the ceiling dissolves.

We all float up into the sky—into a dense golden cloud that fizzes with delicious electricity.

"You’ll have to go back now", the tall woman tells me.

"I don’t want to", I say.

"Sorry", says the shorter one. "You can come back on the Vernal Equinox. Just use the hearing trumpet".

Thank you Julia for a particularly fine interview and your wonderful time travel answer.

Readers, be sure to order Julia's newest book, Hellions, from your local independent bookstore.