Claire Vaye Watkins on Grief in the Desert ‹ Literary Hub
This is Thresholds, a series of conversations with writers about experiences that completely turned them upside down, disoriented them in their lives, changed them, and changed how and why they wanted to write. Hosted by Jordan Kisner, author of the essay collection Thin Places. Thresholds is a co-production between Black Mountain Institute and Literary Hub
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“I was taking a postpartum questionnaire as part of my postpartum medical treatment and I was confronted with how inadequate the discipline of medicine was to addressing what was happening to me. Like: Something is really happening to me. I wouldn’t say I’m having postpartum depression, I would say that I’m like … having visions. Or that my true self is exploding forward.”
Jordan sits down with Claire Vaye Watkins to talk about how the grief over her mother’s death diffused into a homesickness for the landscape of the Mojave Desert, where she grew up, and the way that that singular landscape then formed her own writing style, which the New Yorker dubbed “Nevada Gothic.” They also talk about postpartum depression, Watkins’ autofiction novel I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness, and hauntings.
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Claire Vaye Watkins was one of the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” and one of Granta’s “Best Young American Novelists.” She is the author of I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness, Gold Fame Citrus and Battleborn, wh
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For more Thresholds, visit us at thisisthresholds.com. Original music by Lora-Faye Åshuvud.
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