![]() ![]() I began the year in a big-time depression because my other book was not working. ![]() I wrote All This Could Be Different primarily in 2020. I wrote it when I was 29, and I am 31 now. And yet you ended up publishing your first novel when you were how old? You’d had this timeline in your mind of writing at night and having a day job and maybe publishing a novel in your 40s. I almost didn’t apply to Iowa - I guess I was hell-bent on rejecting myself from the institution - but I got in, and it was fully funded so I went. ![]() After a long-ass circular conversation, my partner was like, “I think you want to be a writer, so be a writer.” I decided to at least apply for M.F.A. And I was in the process of discussing what to do next, what job. I worked in progressive politics at a public-affairs firm. Looking back, I realize that book taught me how to write by failing. After the day job, I would write, most often at night. It was my writing true north for a while. I worked on it when I had a very demanding day job. And I worked on it for years before the M.F.A. Sarah Thankam Mathews: I worked on another book for seven years before All This Could Be Different, and I threw it away. It made me feel so grateful not to be in my 20s, or in Milwaukee, though actually Milkwaukee seemed interesting. ![]() It’s such a perfect evocation of being in your early 20s, having a terrible job, not knowing who your friends are or who you are. Emily Gould: Tell me about how you ended up writing All This Could Be Different, which I loved so much, by the way. ![]()
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