speaker-0: Hello, and welcome to Writing Forward, a conversation show featuring some of the best and brightest voices from across Wisconsin. I'm Jeff Aloisia, I'm a former editor at the New York Times, I'm a walkie suburbs native, and now I'm a freelance writer based in Madison. Each week I sit down with writers from and connected to my home state for candid, sometimes messy conversations about craft, identity, and what it means to build a writing life rooted at home and away from the traditional centers of the literary world. From fiction to nonfiction, poetry to journalism, we dig into what keeps Wisconsin writers moving forward. One word at a time. My guest today is Chloe Benjamin. Chloe is the author of three novels, including Understory, which will be published this September. Her debut novel, The Anatomy of Dreams, received the Edna Ferber Fiction Book Award. And if you're part of our Wisconsin writing community, you know how big of a deal that is. And her second novel, The Immortalist, was named one of the best books of 2018 by NPR, The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, and others. She writes about big, weighty subjects like time and fate and how we live knowing what's ahead, but always through the lens of close, complicated relationships. Chloe holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin and was a longtime fixture in Madison's writing scene. However, in 2025, after more than 10 years in Madison, She returned to her native San Francisco. We're lucky to have her with us today. Chloe Benjamin, welcome to Writing Forward.

speaker-1: Yeah. Thank you, Jeff. That was such a great introduction. I I love what you're doing here and you're such an important person in the Wisconsin writing world. So this is this is really a cool thing to offer to listeners.

speaker-0: Thank you. That's very sweet. You I should say you are already the second guest that I met by approaching at the Madison Coffee Shop Johnson Public House, which is apparently how I how I book guests on this show.

speaker-1: Which actually ⁓ makes an appearance in the excerpt that I'm going to read from someone else's work. So Johnson Public House is truly a cauldron of Wisconsin writing.

speaker-0: Well, I remember telling you then when I first met you how much I loved the Immortalist and The Anatomy of Dreams. So I'll just say now, I'm reading Understory, I'm almost finished with it, and I'm blown away. I have so much to ask you about. But first, as you alluded to, ⁓ we begin every episode of the show by asking our guests to share a brief passage from someone else's writing, be it a novel, poem, essay, or article, that for them evokes Wisconsin in some memorable way. Can you tell us what you chose and can you read it for us, please?

speaker-1: Yes. So I chose a book by Hannah Halperin called I Could Live Here Forever. Hannah was a ⁓ student in the MFA program in creative writing at the University of Wisconsin a few years after me, and that was what brought me to Wisconsin. And this book is a really fun one for any Wisconsin writer because it follows a student in the MFA program at the University of Wisconsin. And so it's full of kind of Touch points from that era, including Johnson Public House. So I'll just read from about a page toward the beginning of the book. I settled into my life in Madison. I made friends. I became closest with Vivian and Wilson, and I spent most of my weekends and free time with them. And we had so much free time. I wrote during the day and evenings, Vivian and Wilson and I would hang out in one of our apartments. Talking about books or what we were writing, the other people in the program, stories from our lives. There were also plenty of days I spent alone, taking long walks around the east side of Madison. Whole weekends working on stories in coffee shops. Johnson Public House, Mother Fool's, Collectivo, coming home reeking of coffee and whatever scent lived in the fibers of that particular shop. My apartment at Norris Court became cluttered with books and drafts and prints outs of stories. I'd bought furniture from Craigslist in Saint Vincent, the thrift store on Willie Street. I didn't buy a couch, but two massive armchairs that I put facing one another, one that was comfortable, and another one that sank so deep when you sat down you could feel the springs, but had only cost five dollars. The only thing I'd bought new was the rug. A plush blue and white floral patterned one from Target. Nothing matched. But it was the first time I'd lived alone, and I loved everything about my apartment. It had a working fireplace and built-in bookshelves and French doors that led into a tiny study with windows that overlooked a courtyard. Each time I walked through my front door, I felt peaceful. Like this was where I was supposed to be. I didn't have a car, so I walked everywhere. My apartment was two miles from campus. And though there was a bus, I preferred the walk, no matter how cold it got. Walking was when I would think about whatever story I was writing. Sometimes I'd write out entire scenes in my head so that by the time I'd reach campus, I was bursting with sentences and images, entire conversations between characters. I felt lonely in Madison, but that was normal for me.

speaker-0: I love that. I love hearing it in your voice too. I think like there's something sort of symbiotic about hearing a Wisconsin writer reading another Wisconsin writer's work. ⁓ also mentioned that I lived in those Norris Court apartments. Of course. When I when I when I first moved back to Madison, I didn't know that they had this sort of pedigree as being like a a place for MFA students and PhD students to live. And so I think Hannah's book was like one of three or four that I read my first year back that mentioned Norris Court in some way. So

speaker-1: ⁓ so funny. I actually never lived there myself. But the thing about Norris Court was that, you know, it was at the time it it was I we looking back, we would say it was really affordable. It was like nine hundred dollars a month for rent and there were two bedrooms. So like a lot of times people would share and they would each have a study in addition to the two bedrooms. So there were I mean, there was a lot of space and

speaker-0: And we should we should say for people who don't know, Norris Court apartments are these sort of like a series of low slung brick buildings on Mattis' near east side. And they're very charming. They have a lot of sort of like ⁓ wood details and trim and and each place is a fireplace, which I was told I couldn't use, but then people told me that they were using there. So anyway, it sort of has its place in in Wisconsin lore. Yes. one thing that stands out to me about York books, I was thinking about this as I was reading Understory. I think with literary fiction sometimes when people ask writers to describe the novel they're working on or what their book is about, you know, you start to and the person's eyes start to glaze over, or they can't quite get their head around it in the way that like maybe ⁓ if you asked a mystery writer or a thriller writer, but your novels are what I I would sort of consider like literary high concept. So they're, you know, they're deeply character driven, but they also have these really compelling, almost pitchable premises, which is pretty rare. Since we have you early in the life cycle of understory, maybe we can use this as practice. what's your sort of elevator pitch for this book? Yeah.

speaker-1: Ha ha ha ha. Well, I actually think this is the hardest one to pitch because there's so much that I don't want to spoil for the reader. So I agree with you and I I love that idea of sort of high concept literary ⁓ work. That's definitely what I hope to write. And I think immortalists had a really tight nutshell that was easy to deliver in a sentence and for understory. My dream for the book. Which my publicist was like, absolutely not, was like, nothing on the jacket, no detail, just like go into the rabbit hole. Just open the first page and start reading. And of course, like, you know, that's not going to work in in our landscape. But anyway, the nutshell that we did come up with was basically an estranged couple unwillingly reunited. on a research base in Antarctica discover a parallel universe that moves backward in time. Even that gives away too much, but I don't know. Do you have a better one? If you do have a better one, I would love to hear it.

speaker-0: I don't know that I do, I just love this idea. I can sort of see your team listening to you pitch a a sort of synopsis cover and and just you know, nodding along very nicely and being like, Okay, that's that's an interesting idea.

speaker-1: You're like messaging each other in the slack, like absolutely not.

speaker-0: I think it is a really difficult book to ⁓ hint at without giving much away. Certainly the setting is evocative and we should say there is plenty of Wisconsin in this book, but also ⁓ yeah, it takes place on a research base in Antarctica. As you're starting to think about press and touring, how do you feel about the press side of publishing, just sort of doing interviews, events, all of that? Is that something that you enjoy?

speaker-1: It is something that I enjoy and I feel lucky in that sense because I I know it is very difficult for a lot of writers who are uncomfortable with that more public-facing side. And I I grew up really in love with many forms of the arts. I was a pretty serious dancer and I also did some acting. And I don't do those things anymore. But I think the promotional side allows me to tap into that a little bit. If I'm giving a reading, there's a performative quality to it. And I find it really fulfilling to be able to talk with readers and hear how the book is landing for people, especially because I work on a pretty long timeline. So this book I began in 2020 and it's coming out, you know, in late 2026. So by the time the book comes out, it's like I'm I'm excited to be able to be in that space more. But I also have really struggled from a health perspective with the demands of being a kind of a public face for the book. My first novel, The Anatomy of Dreams, was what we call in the industry a quiet publication, which is a nice way of saying it did not sell many copies. And so my second book was I was lucky to have a publisher that was really excited about it, and I felt like this is my chance because I I hadn't established myself. more widely with the first book. And so I kind of said yes to everything and struggled with establishing boundaries when I was having more and more health impacts, which for me took the form of chronic migraine. And it took a long time to crawl out of that. So I guess it's kind of a weird combination in me in that I really do enjoy this part, but also I can push myself to the point where I'm I'm not doing it sustainably. And so I'm hoping to find that balance better with this publication.

speaker-0: That's interesting. I I knew that about you that and you've been open about sort of your struggles with migraines. It seems like things have gotten better. I I think I didn't realize until recently that that sort of was born out of touring the immortalists. Are you are you approaching you know touring differently given that that experience last time? I'm I'm sure you have sort of coping mechanisms that you've developed over the over the last several years.

speaker-1: Yeah, it's a number of different things. I finally found a treatment that that worked for me after many years of not having anything that did. And so that is really my foundation. And if there's anyone who has chronic pain who's listening to this, Lynn Health, L-I-N Health is the program that I did. It's kind of a cognitive behavioral approach to chronic pain that completely changed my life. So I want to mention that if it could be useful to anyone else. But also Yes, I I had plans to sort of work with my publisher to find ways of touring that were more sustainable for me. But also it's been really interesting to realize how much the industry has changed since 2018 when Immortalist came out. There's so much less touring happening. And it's not as though social media didn't exist and we only had IRL experiences and touring was the only way to publicize a book. But now I think it's much more the case that marketing and publicity are putting their focus on digital opportunities. So my my publishers' hopes for my tour are much more limited. And that was kind of an interesting thing to discover. And I think I spent so much time sort of afraid of like, okay, how am I going to set boundaries this time and say no to things? And then it turned out that That's not going to be necessary because I'm going to be doing a much more limited tour. And I should say I was incredibly lucky to have the opportunities that I did for a mortalist. It was, it was a dream come true in so many ways. And the chance to meet that many independent booksellers, connect with bookstores, like that's something that I think laid the foundation for my career. And I'm so thankful that I, you know, had the publisher support to do that kind of. Travel at the time.

speaker-0: Yeah, I know you won't say it. I'll say, you know, I think a lot of readers don't sort of realize like what a sort of dog and pony show it is. If you're lucky enough to have, you know, a great book that that reaches a lot of people, like it can be pretty grueling, it seems, to ⁓ to be put on that kind of tour. I know that you approach it with the utmost of professionalism though. And I know another thing I should say about this book is like, again, I was blown away within 20 pages about how sort of lived in the world felt. I don't think that you have been a researcher in Antarctica. In my mind, the fanciest thing about you is not that you're a best selling author. I I think it's like you had a research assistant for this book.

speaker-1: That's such a like writer core. Yes, I know. It was the first time I had a research assistant. It is so fancy. I was like, this is this is a privilege, you know? And like, thank you, Imortalist, for giving me the ability to hire someone. So yeah, shout out to my research assistant, Alyssa Adams, Dr. Alyssa Adams. They are absolutely phenomenal. And Yeah, I have not been a researcher in Antarctica. The research for this book was so much fun and so absorbing, and I'm really thrilled that it felt lived in because that's exactly what I wanted. I love books that feel incredibly immersive and transportive, and that is something that I wanted to offer the reader in terms of the world building. ⁓ the true VIP for the Antarctic research is someone named Brian Belazel. And Brian, if you ever hear this and I've mispronounced your last name, I'm so sorry because I realize that I've only seen it in writing. But I contacted the National Science Foundation, which runs the US research base in Antarctica called McMurdo, and I asked if they could connect me to someone who would be willing to talk with me about that experience. And I should say that no one can visit Antarctica unless they are working on a research base. So you can go on a cruise, but I don't know that you can make landfall, but it's you know, it's not a place that that anyone can visit. And I could afford a research assistant, but not a cruise. So they connected me with Brian, who had been a steward in Antarctica. And what that means is you work in the kitchen, which is the same thing that my character does. And I sent him a bunch of questions. And Brian sent back a writer's dream, which was like over 30 single space pages of information about what it was like to live on base. And He wound up being an amazing source throughout the project. ⁓ I spoke with a few other people who had lived on base. I spoke with the dive supervisor, so the person who runs the dive program at McMurdo, which, you know, if you're I you've gotten to that that part, so you'll know kind of how pivotal that was. And it was funny because this won't necessarily make sense unless people have read the book, but I don't think it's a spoiler either. He was the one who told me like it would actually be really easy for people to sneak off. And do a dive because we leave the key in the ignition and the dive lockers unlocked. And so, you know, things like that that if I had written it, people might have thought, ⁓ that can't possibly be true. She's being lazy. And I'm like, well, listen, Rob Robbins told me of McMurdo's dive truck.

speaker-0: There you go. I mean, if nothing else, it gives you the peace of mind, you know, because people probably aren't having those thoughts, but you you can you can be rest assured. I had assumed McMurdo was a a sort of made up name for a research facility.

speaker-1: No, yeah. And the the scientific teams that I write about, Anita and Ice Cube, both of which are doing experiments with neutrinos, are real programs but totally fictionalized within the novel.

speaker-0: I feel like readers have such a fixation too on like what's real, what's sort of taken from especially when it comes to writing about real places. There's so much science in this book. There also was in your first book, and in in in some ways in the immortalist, were you a science kid growing up? Like where does this sort of come from?

speaker-1: So no, I was not a science kid, and it's really a baffling thing to me that I've been so drawn to it in adulthood. I think I'm just fascinated by the world at the risk of sounding kind of basic. and I'm fascinated by the line between what we know and what we don't. And so things like magic and spirituality and science all feel like different ways of approaching the question of the unknown. And so I think that's why I often write about those subjects and this kinds of science that I think I tend to write about are kind of ⁓ areas that look at existential questions or, you know, there's there's something kind of philosophically interesting about it to me, whether that's dreams in my first book or longevity, you know, human aging in immortalists, or in this book kind of. cosmology and the question of what might be beyond our world. So I think I come at it from a humanities angle, but then I'm also very obsessive about wanting the world to feel real. And so then I kind of set myself the assignment of trying to ground it in real science as much as possible so that it f does feel really plausible. And I don't know why I feel the need to do that. I feel like If people want to skim, they can, but I want to write for the reader who wants it all in the way that I do. I could see this book being written in a way where where you take a lot of that out, but it wouldn't be written by me.

speaker-0: Yeah. Is it fair to say you love a challenge too?

speaker-1: ⁓ for sure. Yeah. I mean, I think if if I'm not if I feel confident that I can pull a book off when I start, I'm not interested enough to keep going for the, you know, five plus years that it's going to take me. So I do want to be working at the edge of my ability and sort of even though it's it can be stressful and I have had a book that I set aside because lo and behold, I couldn't pull it off. It still feels like the place that I want to be working in.

speaker-0: I think we're doing a good job of talking about this without spoiling things. I will continue to continue to try to do that. ⁓ you know, without getting into spoilers. It's fair to say, I think, that the book deals with the idea of sort of wanting to undo or revisit the past in some way. I'm curious if you could return to a moment in your own life, what would that be and why?

speaker-1: My gosh, I'm gonna get this question so much. I just realized. Not that it's not original or a good question, but for with immortalists, it was like That's fine. You still get the credit. With immortalists, you know, the question was if you could know the date of your death, would you, would you want to? Right. ⁓ gosh. So to change it or just to like re-experience it?

speaker-0: We'll be the first. E either, I think. Yeah.

speaker-1: I mean the first thing that comes to mind is is to be with my grandmother who i it really inspired the character of Gloria and ⁓ she died in twenty nineteen very you know shortly before I started this book and I think the character of Gloria was an attempt at preserving her. So I mean I'm lucky not to have like a terrible regret in my life that I would want to go back and change. So I think it would be more about like pleasure, you know, being with someone.

speaker-0: You know, it's funny that you said I understand why you were getting that question about the immortalists. It's sort of like a a tagline for the book almost, but as a reader, I'm reading it, I'm thinking this is a person who thinks a lot about aging. Mm thinks a lot about the span of our lives. Where where does that come from?

speaker-1: That's a great question. I don't entirely know. I think at the risk of sounding precious, there is something about artists that i that is very sensitive to to look to life itself, I guess. I mean, my mom describes like even as a baby, you know, the the kind of hypersensitivity that I had. And I think I've just always been v unable to shut out the absurdity of life, which is that we are supposed to continue on and make plans for the future without having any sense of whether, you know, we'll be there to see it or when our lives will end. It's kind of this insane contract that nobody agrees to sign and yet we all come into the world, you know, and must abide by it. And I'm lucky that ⁓ you know, both my mom and my my dad are are doing okay at the moment, but they both have cancer. I I lost my stepmom about a year ago to a difficult dementia. ⁓ and so, you know, I think when you have people in your immediate family who are navigating health issues, that's that's tough. And also probably the migraines. I mean, they really came to a a head at a totally different level of severity after immortalists, but I've had them since I was about thirteen. And the loss of time. that you experience when you have a a, you know, chronic condition is really devastating. I mean, just whole days of incapacitation. So I think that made me very anxious about how much time I have, how much time I have feeling good. But then it's like, did I have that physical manifestation? Because I've been a warrior about those things since, you know what I mean? Like it's it's hard to know how it all connects. Sometimes I wish I was able to not think about those things more and I guess at least I have writing to process them.

speaker-0: Yeah. I mean that's my thought is like what a gift it is to have fiction as a tool to sort of work these things out and to play in the world of metaphor.

speaker-1: Yes, yes. Just before we got on this call, I was working on my newsletter and I was ⁓ I'm writing a bit about an exhibit I saw at the Tate Britain when I was in London of Lee Miller's work. Are you familiar with Lee Miller? I'll make this quick because I know this is not our subject. And she's not a Wisconsin artist. ⁓ she's actually born in Poughkeepsie, which is really funny because I went to college at Vassar in Poughkeepsie. But anyway, she had a

speaker-0: No, I'm not.

speaker-1: fascinating life. She began as a fashion model and then went behind the lens and became a surrealist photographer in the 30s, working with people like Man Ray. And then she became a war photographer during the 40s, photographed the war in Britain, and ultimately concentration camps when the prisoners were freed. And she after ⁓ after experiencing that horror, She basically lost her passion for photography. And it was kind of like her own relationship to her art or her ability to find respite in it was what she sacrificed. You know, that was like the cost of seeing what she did. And it made me feel so sad because obviously the greater tragedy in this story is World War II itself and what happened in the camps. But there's also this personal tragedy of She was then without the thing that at least in my life has brought me comfort in my most difficult periods. I just found that so impactful. And actually, she she never wanted her work to get out there. ⁓ nobody really knew who she was. And then after she died, her son found all these negatives. It it just made me think about how how important my art has been as an outlet. And you sort of realize, like, well, you know, yeah, if I were a few clicks, you know. more one one way, like I I could really struggle in the way of some other artists, ⁓ kind of d mentally to handle the world.

speaker-0: I wanna switch gears a little bit and and move away from understory ⁓ and talk to you about living in Madison. So you moved to Madison for your MFA. What were your first impressions of the place?

speaker-1: Ugh, well, partly you're getting me a year after moving away, so I'm probably gonna be really seeing things through rose-colored glasses because I, you know, I'm still processing my my move, but also it is just a freaking wonderful place to live. You know, I moved there after straight from college and I assumed I would just do my two years ⁓ and then, you know, head either back to San Francisco or maybe to New York because I was interested in the publishing world. And I just fell in love with it. I think, you know, the slower pace of life there was really good for me as an ambitious person who can kind of overwork myself. I think I just felt there was a real like small city warmth and vibrancy. The bit that I read of Hannah's book is very reminiscent of my own MFA experience. You know, there's Yeah, I mean there's these beautiful lakes and coffee shops and fried cheese curds and, you know, this like kind of thriving university culture. And it's not to say that Madison doesn't have, you know, its own hypocrisies and issues, but I found it a really like soft place to land at that point in my life.

speaker-0: You've written now sort of two books that are set in some way in Madison. So you you know, your debut you wrote about Madison. I think it's again not a spoiler to say there's some Madison in this book as well. I find that totally fascinating. You know, when I first started writing fiction, I was living in New York and then in in North Carolina, and I was writing mostly about Wisconsin. And I think that's fairly common for people to sort of write about the place that they call home. But, you know, for you to be sort of a transplant and and clearly it left enough of a a sort of impression on you to to turn it into fiction, like what is it about this place do you think that made it feel like fertile ground for that kind of storytelling?

speaker-1: First of all, when I go when I encounter somewhere new, it's kind of like all your senses are turned on and you see things in a fresh way that it can be harder to do with the place that you come from. So, you know, little details like on the east side, you know, ⁓ I would say 70% of people had a couch on their front porch. You know, it's like, why? And and so they're they're just things that that I kind of noticed in a way that I might not if I'd come from that place. And I think that that's a big part of the reason that I wrote about Madison initially is just that kind of absorption. ⁓ but I also think it's a really interesting place because it's obviously a very purple state and you have the tension between Madison itself and Milwaukee as these progressive hubs. And then you have a much more rural and to some extent conservative leaning populace in the rest of the state. You have an agricultural history, an environmentalist history, but also a real like activist history through the UW. So it's not just one thing. I think there's a lot of different threads that wind through Wisconsin that sort of echo the larger complexity and history of the country.

speaker-0: You do something really cool too, which is that you pick out real houses that would belong to your characters. I I think that's so interesting. Can you talk about that and why it's part of your process? Yeah.

speaker-1: That ⁓ I love that you found that. So for when I was writing Anatomy Dreams, ⁓ which is about a a couple that is doing dream research under a charismatic but ethically questionable professor, I was riding the bus back from campus to the east side, the same kind of walking route that Hannah talks about in the excerpt that I read. And I was thinking about this novel and I forgot to get off. I didn't get off at my stop. And so I had to stay on the bus for it to go all the way to the, you know, turnaround point and come back around. And so only because that happened did we pass these two houses that I wound up putting my characters in. And then in understory, there is also, yeah, a specific house. That is because the the protagonist in understory, whose name is Laurel, grows up on an orchard. And that orchard is based on a place called Door Creek Orchard, which is, I think technically in Cottage Grove, where I had picked apples for 10 plus years before the thought of putting it into a novel ever occurred to me. And they have this wonderful old farmhouse that the family has lived in with all kinds of quirks. And so when I started interviewing the Griffith family, who own and founded the orchard. about their lives and they told me about the farmhouse, I was like, ⁓ my gosh, this is so good. I suppose I there's something I like about the overlap of fiction and real life. Like for me, in the same way that I want to create an immersive experience for the reader, I love to have an immersive experience as the writer. So for this book, I did a lot of hands-on research. I went to Minnesota to shadow scientists in caves. I followed a fungi lab on a foraging expedition. I went to a women's mushroom conference in Governor Dodge State Park. It's almost like I like to trick myself into believing that the boundaries between what I'm imagining and what really is are permeable. And so I think that's probably why I do so much scientific research. And that's probably also why I like to identify real landmarks and then kind of give them a s a second life.

speaker-0: I love too sort of the idea in fiction of creating worlds within a world and your own sort of place that's specific to your novel. But sometimes you need real places to ground that work and make it real for you too. Finally, I think for people who might not know, because you spent so much time here and I think you did some great things to create community here, what would you want people to sort of understand about the writing scene here in Madison and in Wisconsin at large?

speaker-1: I mean, just that it's so rich and vibrant. I am very passionate about setting people straight when they make dismissive comments about the Midwest or about flyover states, because there are so many incredibly interesting people who who live in those states. It really changed me to move away from the coast with all of its glamour and excitement, but also it can be kind of narrow in its way. And to get to know different kinds of people. I mean, there's just a an incredibly I keep using the word vibrant, but vibrant writing scene in Madison. There's reading series, there's wonderful independent bookstores. As we've talked about, there's great coffee shops. And I think all of that just creates a really fertile exciting and community driven writing world.

speaker-0: I want to steal from you. I've been trying to sort of end these episodes with a quick speed round. And I I went to a reading, a sort of book launch event for Christina Clancy that you had moderated and you did a series of either or questions. I'd like I'd like to do that with you now. ⁓ And some of these we'll start with some sort of old place, new place questions. So ⁓ culvers or in and out. Hmm. Madison sourdough or is it boot in or boot?

speaker-1: Great, I love that. Culverse.

speaker-0: Yeah.

speaker-1: Yeah. Bodine. Okay. Yeah. It's people say Bodine, but I think that's wrong. Like a French person would not say it that way. Ooh, that's so good. Okay, so bod ⁓ now you're confusing me. Boud Bodine is a is a San Francisco sourdough. ⁓ my gosh. I d ⁓ that's so cruel. I'm gonna have to go bodine just because it's my childhood, but I love Madison sourdough.

speaker-0: How about a snowy winter walk or a foggy San Francisco morning?

speaker-1: ⁓ my gosh. That's really hard because did you know that I hate sunny weather? And so were you making this question extra hard? Wow. ⁓ man. I mean, I feel like I'm betraying my upbringing if I don't say fog, but I have had a really tough time emotionally this winter, I will say. I'm missing Wisconsin. ⁓ we've had a really kind of scarily warm winter in

speaker-0: I was thinking about you, sure. Wow.

speaker-1: the Bay Area and I love winters in Wisconsin. So I can I can I beg like can I have like one pass?

speaker-0: Sure. Okay. We'll give you a pass on that one. And I'll move away from San Francisco, Wisconsin questions a little bit. Character first or plot first? Mm.

speaker-1: I think character, but I find that when I have an idea for a novel, it's both together. There's usually a nub that is intertwined.

speaker-0: Sure. Big ideas or intimate moments.

speaker-1: ⁓ well you know I have to say both for that. That's like my whole thing.

speaker-0: Okay, here's one. Knowing the ending before you start or figuring it out late.

speaker-1: Ooh gosh. Knowing the ending, which I feel sounds makes me sound like less open to discovery during the writing process than I am because I actually I hold it very loosely, but I do like to know I don't necessarily know everything along the way, but I like to have a rough sense of arc and where the book is going.

speaker-0: Yeah, that makes sense. ⁓ one sort of philosophical one that I feel like thematically maybe ties into your books control or surrender.

speaker-1: ⁓ well ⁓ aspirationally surrender, realistically stru struggling.

speaker-0: Mm. Mm. Yeah, same. Last one. Time travel to the past or time travel to the future? Mm.

speaker-1: Yeah. Hmm. Probably the past, because I think the future scares me. Like there's so much that I don't like about how things seem to be going. But I've always desperately wanted to know about life on other planets. Are there aliens and what are they like? If I could ask one question of the universe before I die, it would be that. And so if I could go into the future just to know that, then I would 100% pick that.

speaker-0: Come back in two years for Chloe's new book on alien life on Mars. Chloe, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate it. Thanks.

speaker-1: Thank you Jeff, this was so fun.

speaker-0: One more big thanks to my guest, Chloe Benjamin, and thank you for tuning in. You can find Chloe online and sign up for her newsletter at ChloebenjaminBooks.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating or share it with a friend. It really helps. And don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss new episodes. They come out every Wednesday. You can reach me anytime at Jeffaloisia.com slash writingforward. That's J-E-F-F-O-L-O-I-Z-I-A.com slash writing forward. I'd love to hear from you. This episode was recorded at the Madison Public Library with support from Dane Arts. It was produced, edited, and mixed by Anya Van Wagtenonk. The theme music is by the Lola Ombre. Our logos and episode art are by Tim Burton. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time.