Julia Fine, THE UPSTAIRS HOUSE
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[2:08]Julie, a fine is the author of the upstairs house, a novel.
[2:11]She is also the author of What Should Be Wild, which was shortlisted for the Bram Stoker's Superior First Novel Award
[2:17]and the Chicago Review of Books Award.
[2:19]Her second novel, The Upstairs House, it came out from Harper.
[2:22]She teaches writing in Chicago where she lives with her husband and children.
[2:26]Welcome, Julia.
[2:27]Thanks so much for coming.
[2:28]On moms don't have time to read books.
[2:30]Thanks so much for having me.
[2:31]It's my pleasure.
[2:32]Can you hold up a copy of your book?
[2:35]I can please the upstairs.
[2:36]It has beautiful.
[2:38]Can you tell listeners what the upstairs house is about and what inspired you to write it?
[2:43]Sure, The Upstairs House is about a new mom, like brand new mom, three days out of the hospital,
[2:50]who is either being haunted by the ghost of Margaret Wise Brown, the author of Goodnight Moon and Runaway Bunny,
[2:57]or experiencing postpartum psychosis.
[3:00]And throughout the book, Megan, the protagonist who is home by herself while her husband travels for work,
[3:07]caring for her brand new baby, and dealing with all of the varying things that come along with
[3:13]caring for a brand new baby, including what probably should have been diagnosed as postpartum depression right away.
[3:19]But people miss it in her life as I think happens in actual life.
[3:23]So she thinks she hears or actually hears it sort of up to the radar to decide a woman in her stairwell
[3:29]who turns out to be the author of these classic children's books and then gets involved in this sort of
[3:35]lover's quarrel that is based on the actual relationship between Margaret Wise Brown and her lover Michael Strange,
[3:41]who was a very forceful actress and poet in her day who sense people.
[3:46]People don't really know her anymore, maybe after this book they'll be more interested in her,
[3:51]but she was a really huge figure in Margaret Wise Brown's life.
[3:54]And they had a really tumultuous relationship.
[3:56]So Megan, the protagonist gets drawn into that and it ends up impacting her relationship with her new baby.
[4:01]Oh, and I was inspired to write it, I think because I had my first baby in 2017 and I was the first of my close friends and family to have a baby.
[4:12]And I felt just so totally blindsided by what caring for a newborn was actually like just in terms of the physical demands on your body and how mentally you end up having to shift from being who you were before the baby to becoming a parent.
[4:28]And I thought I knew what that meant, I really didn't know.
[4:31]So I knew once I had gotten through the thick of it that I wanted to write about it and write the kind of book that would have,
[4:38]I thought would have been a little bit more honest about what that experience would be like and might have prepared me a little bit.
[4:44]And at the same time I was thinking as a novelist that postpartum period where you're the only one awake looking at your window at weird hours and you're not sure like why is my hair falling out is this normal is normal that my baby's doing this.
[4:57]Like it just is so ripe for psychological horror and so I wanted, I wanted that.
[5:02]And then as soon as I sort of after reading Goodnight Moon for the million time to my kid when I was like, I wonder what the author's like, I, I read about her and I just is like this has to sort of somehow, you know, have to combine these somehow into a book.
[5:14]Wow.
[5:15]Well, it was so interesting the way you did it and I love how Megan basically takes all of her PhD research.
[5:22]So in the book you have it so that she is getting a PhD about Margaret Wise Brown and literature and all this other stuff.
[5:28]And so you kind of interspersed the parts about that it could be taken from the dissertation, isn't it?
[5:35]Yeah.
[5:35]Yeah.
[5:36]And so you see it going back and forth.
[5:37]So there's a reason like it's not just from Goodnight Moon.
[5:40]But there's a reason why she's not just a tired mom reading exactly has the information.
[5:45]Yes.
[5:46]And some of the scenes were so chilling.
[5:48]Like I couldn't believe, I mean, I don't want to give anything away.
[5:51]But the one when she first goes out for the first night and leaves the child with the babysitter and how does she feel about it and then what happens when she gets home and sort of this gradual unraveling of her sense of what she believes and normalcy and then you see in the book, the people around her starting to catch on to her, you know, psychosis or the reality of her situation.
[6:18]And so it's very, you know, engrossing and then your mind is also trying to catch up to the whole time right like is what's going on.
[6:26]Anyway, it's very cool.
[6:27]Thank you.
[6:28]You're welcome.
[6:29]So I am particularly impressed by the fact that you were the tired mom reading Goodnight Moon, especially one of the first of your friends to have kids.
[6:38]I was also one of the first of my friends to have kids and I remember like going to dinner with my girls group.
[6:44]To dinner like every couple months and I was like, don't worry, I'm not going to change like nothing's going to change.
[6:49]Nothing's going to change.
[6:50]We're still doing these dinners all the time.
[6:52]Yeah.
[6:53]Anyway, but how you must have found the time in your own state of craziness to produce this book.
[7:01]So tell me about that.
[7:02]Yeah, it's funny because I now have had my second daughter, my first daughter second child was born six months ago and I sort of anticipated that the experience.
[7:12]I knew the postpartum experience would be kind of different, but I didn't realize how different it was because with her it felt.
[7:17]I'm not sure if you've experienced this when you just add another kid.
[7:19]You're just like, okay, well, it's a little bit more hectic and I'm sleeping significantly less, but I know sort of what's happening.
[7:24]But with my son, I couldn't even really read books, which I've always been able to read books.
[7:28]You know, I had a really like my brain just wasn't working.
[7:32]And so once I could read again, I was like, oh my gosh, I just want to read.
[7:35]I want to write. I want to get back into it.
[7:37]Probably he was maybe like six months old or so when he really started having a more regular sleep schedule and I could sort of carve out some time and my brain was back.
[7:47]And so as soon as that happened.
[7:49]And then first I could read then I could write.
[7:51]So I started reading and I read these biographies of Margaret Wise Brown and I was just.
[7:55]She's just fascinating.
[7:56]I was so fascinated by her.
[7:57]And then as soon as I think he maybe when he was one, I started using nap time and just saying to myself, okay, I'm just going to go.
[8:05]The second he goes down, go in, like sit at the computer, force myself to do it.
[8:10]I know he's going to wake up any minute and so it sort of was like a push to write faster.
[8:15]And of course I'm very, very lucky to have a supportive spouse who was like, take the weekend, take this, you know, like all use my day off to let you do your work.
[8:22]I think I can't even imagine how a new mother who doesn't have sort of child care.
[8:29]Anyway, it all doesn't have a supportive partner or is working. I also am lucky because I was teaching. I had been teaching writing at the Paul University and I basically stopped when my son was born.
[8:40]So I was mostly I was just parenting and writing.
[8:43]So that also allowed me to do it if I'd had a full time job. I think we'd be having this conversation like five years from now.
[8:50]And again, the fact that you were sort of in it as you're writing, I think lent a bit of, you know, legitimacy or immediacy really into the emotion behind it.
[9:03]I was really interested. So I, when he was born, like I said, I hadn't had a lot of friends who had been super candid about what it feels like.
[9:12]or emotionally, and I would have these moments which I now realize everybody has these moments of like just stop crying. I'm just going to throw you out the window. I want to.
[9:21]What if I just leave you here and like go for a run and maybe you'll be fine when I come back into those moments and they're just like sleeping moments that I think are so common.
[9:29]Because newborns are really, really hard. And I was thinking, well, what if, what if I had that feeling, and instead of like three minutes later thinking, oh, I'm so sorry, I had that feeling, you sweet little baby, what if it just stayed, you know, what if, like what would it be like to explore that more fully.
[9:42]And I think fiction is a really great place to say like here's this fleeting thing that crossed my mind.
[9:48]I want to dive in and it's sort of it's almost therapeutic. I hate to say like writing is therapy because only therapy is actually therapy, but it's therapeutic in a way to not push it aside.
[10:00]Say, oh, I'm a terrible mother because I wanted to like leave my baby here so that I could like go to the bathroom or take a shower, you know, but to say like, okay, this is a natural feeling, but maybe instead of indulging this feeling by actually leaving my baby here to go take a shower while they're wailing.
[10:15]I can save what this feels like move past it and then like write about it later so that it's not just bottling it down if that makes sense.
[10:24]Yes, totally makes sense. How did you end up as a writing teacher like, how did you get started with your own writing and teaching and all of that.
[10:33]So actually, I worked after college. I worked in sales and PR and I just hated it. I hated it so much and I.
[10:42]One day I was I was either going to go to law school or I was going to be a writer and obviously everyone said, Oh, maybe go to law school because that seems a lot more
[10:52]Bible and I one day just quit my job. I said, I think I'm going to apply to get an MSA and Manny for a while. So I may need for about a year and a half full time while writing and then I may need all through grad school. So again, like my kid experience. It's just insane that I wasn't
[11:06]More ready for this. But I so I got my MSA at Columbia College Chicago and I taught there while I was getting my degree and while I was writing and my first novel actually was my thesis at Columbia.
[11:20]And so after that, around the time that was publishing I was adjuncting at the Paul. I've taught a few different like through classes through catapult has a really great online system.
[11:30]I'm actually on the faculty at story studio Chicago, which is sort of the equivalent of grump straight or catapult or something in Chicago.
[11:38]And it's great because these are things that I can do while also full time parenting during a pandemic do is a relative term. But it definitely has allowed me to sort of have the balance that if I had gone to law school, I knew I was never going to get if I also wanted a family.
[11:55]It's amazing how many full time jobs we can all have.
[11:59]I mean, we just don't sleep. I just don't.
[12:02]Okay, people say, are you watching the bachelor? Like, are you kidding me? Am I watching the bachelor this year? No, no, what would I have time for like seven hours of TV a week?
[12:10]Years I'll catch out. It would have to be just on while life was going on. Right. The background noise.
[12:16]Oh, seriously, instead of, you know, the crazyness of the world.
[12:20]Wow, that's amazing. So tell me about your first. Tell me about your thesis project and your first.
[12:24]Oh, yeah. So my first book is called What Should Be Wild. And it is, it's also sort of speculative feminist horror fiction.
[12:31]It's about a girl who is born with the power to kill and revive with the touch of her skin. So people touch her, like her dad, the first time he touches her dies, but then touches her, like, she touches him again and he gets brought back to life.
[12:43]And so she, it's about how she sort of experiences the world and her dad goes missing and she goes out into the world for the first time.
[12:52]And it's also about sort of the women in her family, going back hundreds and thousands of years who sort of have led up to this moment of her being born like this.
[13:00]And I was interested in looking at the way female sexuality, especially sort of budding female sexuality is both this like sexy exotic thing.
[13:10]And also we're told, you know, like, cover up shame on you, you know, and so the life death dichotomy was a way that I got into that conversation and explored it.
[13:20]And so it's funny, it's also a book about sort of female desire and shame and the way we sort of have to navigate socially and also reckon with what we actually want.
[13:30]So talking to you, you seem like this young, beautiful, peppy.
[13:35]Oh, thank you for positive, cheerful, you know, woman, young women and yet your books have this dark side to them, right? They both, they're definitely talking.
[13:45]Yeah, read the first one, but the second one for sure has this like alarming even alternate reality darkness where is this coming from like, do you know where it comes from?
[13:56]We're psyche like to do yeah, I so I think that it's sort of like what I was saying about those feelings of like resentment or frustration during motherhood and like how do you, what do you do with them?
[14:08]I think and perhaps if I wasn't a writer, I would sit in them more and I would let them sort of absorb me and that would be what I was thinking about them, but the really lovely thing about being a writer and specifically being a writer in the way that I have decided to be a writer, which is sort of writing more about ideas.
[14:26]Like I think some people are inspired and are like, what is this great plot and I wish I could write that kind of book because I think that's what most people want to read, but I'm more inspired by sort of the idea of like what if you were haunted by who you could have been if you had it had a kid, you know, or what if, you know, you weren't just sort of somebody who like, oh, you were asking for it because you were wearing that, but you were also asking for it because you have this weird power, you know, things like that.
[14:51]So I think that those let me instead of sitting again in sort of a feeling and letting it become part of me, it becomes part of the writing.
[15:00]And again, I want to urge like I've heard so many people say, Oh, like writing this book was therapy and it's like, I really don't think so.
[15:07]I think, you know, they're two separate things.
[15:09]It is sort of cathartic to sort of write out these feelings.
[15:12]I wouldn't say, you know, like if you're having postpart, if you have postpartum depression or psychosis, like just write it down, you know, that's ridiculous.
[15:18]But I do think that if you're somebody who like I was postpartum who is just sort of confused about it and feels like the world is telling you that this is what early motherhood looks like, but your actual lived experience of it is so different.
[15:30]Writing about it helps like talking to friends about it helps. And so I think I'm able to like be slightly more optimistic today, January, whatever it is 2021.
[15:41]Because I should have that other outlet.
[15:45]It's good to have a venue. I mean, the truth is, no matter what you think about motherhood until it happens. You really have no idea.
[15:53]Nobody's life looks like Instagram or TV or whatever the depiction you think it is. It is not.
[16:01]That's the only thing you totally know. So are you still writing? Like are you working on another book now? Tell me about that.
[16:08]I'm trying very, very slowly to sort of piece together what the next project is going to be. And I'm also, again, two kids pandemic.
[16:18]No pressure.
[16:19]You know, I'm trying, I'm trying to give myself like this book releasing trying to also teach trying to also sort of do other work.
[16:25]So I'm trying to just give myself more space more time. I felt a lot of pressure with this particular book with the upstairs house.
[16:31]I felt a lot of pressure there to sort of establish a career and get my foot in the door.
[16:36]Just because I had a kid didn't mean that I wasn't going to keep producing.
[16:39]So that I have two kids and be have two books. I think I'm trying. I'm trying to be more gentle on myself.
[16:46]And less stressed about the fact that I'm not already in a third project.
[16:50]And I didn't mean to add to the stress, but not at all.
[16:53]Because if I had something, I would want to really be talking about it. I just, I think, had, you know, this past calendar year looked different. Maybe I'd have more, but I'm trying to say, you know, I have two kids and I'm healthy.
[17:05]And, you know, it all, it all, the writing will come back. So Margaret Wise Brown in the book is like a major character in historical fiction, if you will.
[17:15]And her relationship with Michael Strange, she's actually a woman, which I had to like keep rereading to make sure I got that right.
[17:20]If there's something that listeners didn't know about Margaret Wise Brown that they could take away just from this conversation and then go back to reading Goodnight Moon time.
[17:29]What would what would you want to tell them like what would those nuggets be.
[17:33]Well, I think, so you think you read Goodnight Moon, you think like, oh, she's the old lady in the rocking chair, you know, and that is just so far from the truth. She actually died at 42 of like sort of a botched appendicitis surgery.
[17:46]It's really quite sad.
[17:48]She was always young. And she was a rabbit hunter. She famously gave an interview where she said, Oh, I don't much care for children. She was bisexual. She sort of lived this really, I don't know if I don't guard as the right word, but very sort of bohemian.
[18:02]But with money life, she also came from money and so she was never one to be like, I'm starving on the streets, but she was one to be like, Oh, I forgot to pay my electric bill.
[18:10]She was just fascinating. And I think in knowing these things about her to like, Oh, she wrote runaway Bonnie, but she was like an avid. She would go beggling. She was a member of this beggling club and like would hunt rabbits and that was like one of her favorite hobbies.
[18:26]And yet she wrote this book. It just gives it adds so much complexity to these children's books. So I definitely encourage people not only to read and to read my book, but then to go reread her work with sort of that lens and see what they take out of it.
[18:42]I can't really look at goodnight moon and say, Oh, this is kind of boring. Once you know that about her in the same way that you might be able to. If you're like, this is somebody's grandma, you know, did she do you know more about that particular book.
[18:56]Yeah. So that book, she wrote, I mean, there's, so there's sort of like the story that gets told is, Oh, when she was a little girl, she would go around her rooms and goodnight to all of her different things. And I think like there's probably some truth.
[19:10]To that, but in reality, she was just a really prolific writer who she was, she had worked for this. It's actually still a school in New York, the bank straight school for children, which started as the Bureau of educational experiments.
[19:23]And so it was sort of at the forefront of progressive early childhood education. And one of their projects was writing books.
[19:30]At the time, there were sort of fairy tales and there were books for sort of like elementary readers, but nobody had really said like, Oh, what if we give like 18 month old babies books, what if we give three year olds books that are like for them.
[19:43]And so bank street had the physical laboratory where Margaret was part of a group of writers who would write something who would bring it in, read it to the kids, the kids would say that's not what a car sounds like or, you know, oh, that's yuck, you know, whatever it is that kids say and then they would edit it.
[20:00]just it until it became a book that really resonated with the age group that they were going for.
[20:05]And so I, most of Margaret's books were sort of written in that experimental way.
[20:11]And so my, my, my thought is good night moon is lost about, oh, this memory of childhood saying
[20:16]good night to things and more about like what do children need in the moment of going to sleep
[20:20]in terms of familiarity and routine. And then what I love about the book is she's like,
[20:26]let's just break that routine and say, good night, nobody. Let's go out to the stars.
[20:30]Let's do this, which is very in character for her to sort of not be able to stick to this strict
[20:35]script. But yeah, she wrote it. So she wrote it with Clement Herd, who also illustrated Renee
[20:39]Bunny and another sort of reason that she seems to have been very focused on this particular book
[20:45]as he was just back from World War Two and he was sort of at odds. And she's like, here's a project for
[20:49]you, my friend, you know, come. She said, stay at my writing hat like my, she had the some writing
[20:54]studio on the upper east side that was this weird little house behind tenements. She is, she is
[20:58]just such a weirdo. I love her. But she said, you know, come stay at my house, come illustrate my
[21:03]book. And so it also is there's a lot of love there in terms of trying to sort of help her friend
[21:08]who'd just been through this hair only experience and was trying to get his feet back on the ground.
[21:12]Very cool. I feel like there should be a movie about her. Is there? I haven't, you know, I'm,
[21:17]not on wood. No, I, I was shocked that there hasn't been more to exploration in film or
[21:25]television or other novels of her life. She's so fascinating. There's so much there. So, I mean,
[21:31]my, my door is open if anyone wants to work with me. So there you go. Awesome. Do you have any advice
[21:38]for aspiring authors or maybe a snippet or two of what you teach to your students? Yeah. Okay,
[21:44]so I would say for aspiring authors, my biggest piece of advice, which is also the thing that's
[21:49]like the hardest to take is if you are working on a draft of a novel, just keep pushing ahead until
[21:54]you have that full book. What you've probably heard from other writers before, it's so easy to sort of
[21:59]write the first chapter a million times until it's absolutely perfect. But you might get to the end
[22:04]of a draft and realize that first chapter is totally wrong and has to go. And you've sort of spent
[22:09]all this time on something that isn't going to bear fruit necessarily. So I would say just keep
[22:14]pushing forward and sort of living in the moment. And if you can set up for your writing practice,
[22:19]like a particular candle that you like that gets you into that mindset, a poem that you read,
[22:24]a picture that you have by your computer, like anything that can sort of pop you back into that
[22:28]space as quickly as possible. That was something that sort of during my nap time writing practice
[22:33]was really key to sort of have to jump back in right away. And also like just don't, I think every
[22:39]writer goes through moments where you absolutely hate what you're working on and think this is
[22:43]the worst thing ever. How could I be doing it? And you just have to push past that because you
[22:47]might wake up the next day and say, I'm totally brilliant. It's just part of the process.
[22:51]So mostly, I guess, don't give up in so many words. That is the best advice that there is.
[22:58]To give up, there's definitely not going to be a great book. Yes, you're done.
[23:02]Well, thank you, Julia. Thank you for your book that like literally kept me, you know,
[23:07]pinned to my couch, like reading it, like, do, do, do, do on my iPad. I like was inhaling this
[23:12]book as, oh, okay. I read it everything's giving or I don't know. There was some holiday in my
[23:17]in-laws. We're all like, everybody was starting to eat dinner and it was getting dark. And I was like,
[23:21]no, no, no, I'm good. I'm going to sit right. So thank you. That's the highest praise. No, that's true.
[23:28]That's exactly what happens. So anyway, thank you for that. And maybe we'll see your depiction of
[23:33]Margaret Baez Brown on the screen sometime. That would be very cool. We'll see. Thank you so much for having me.
[23:39]All right. Thanks. Bye bye.
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