You were the cofounder and an editor for Joyland magazine for many years. How does writing and publishing your own novels differ from your work as an editor? Do you think your “day job” has influenced your role as an author?
Reading different kinds of writing and from as many different perspectives as possible has been a gift to me as writer. It has helped me focus on my own voice: What do I bring? Why do I want to tell these stories? And it also means that I know how important the editing process is! There’s always a moment of dread I have when I’m on the other side of editing, waiting for feedback on my work, but it’s so vital to making any book better.
You grew up in Canada, and now live in Brooklyn. Why did you decide to set Little Threats in suburban Richmond, Virginia? What experience do you have with this area, and why did it interest you?
My family is from Detroit, but in the 1970s my dad decided he preferred Canada to Vietnam. It was closer. When I moved back to the United States in 1997 after college, I picked Richmond because I had family there. It was an almost random pick, but my time there turned into a crash course about living in America. Richmond is both North and South and has all the burdens that come with those identities. I know Virginia is now reconciling with its history and embracing change, but back then it was a place that could be hostile to change, and to newcomers.
I didn’t grow up like the Wynns, but I worked in a store in Carytown with a rich white clientele and I saw the different kinds of wealth: the old money with no shame about its past—the ones who bragged about being related to statues—and the anxious new-money families, like the Wynns, who could never stop striving. The women I served had a sadness to them I didn’t expect from the rich. That was only one part of Virginia though. Everett is another part, and so is Dee Nash with her family history. I left after two years, but the complexity and beauty of that place stayed with me.
Guilt—and the way it defines us and destroys us—is an important theme in the novel. Why were you interested in writing about guilt?
I was interested in writing about people learning to move beyond their mistakes—or not, depending on the character. In Kennedy, I wanted to show someone who had destroyed her life before it began but who was trying to make a new start. All the forces of the world continue to punish a person after a jail sentence. Even with her privilege, Kennedy faces that.
Without giving too many spoilers, is the guilt Kennedy feels hers? Or is she carrying it for someone else? Similarly, Carter disappears into her addiction in the years following Haley’s death and Kennedy’s imprisonment—is it because she wasn’t there and couldn’t save her friend? Is it because she can’t save her sister from her sentence, or their mother from cancer? Carter is described as the softer twin, and I see her as the caregiver in the novel. She puts her own needs second, but the stress of that weighs on her. Sometimes very young people have these incredible burdens—often invisible to others.
How much did you know about your characters and their paths before you started writing Little Threats? Were you surprised by the murderer’s identity? Or had you known it from the outset?
I knew who had done it after maybe my first fifty pages, but that had a drawback because the murderer was incredibly obvious throughout the first draft. I had to go back over scenes and take out the tells and strengthen a lot of secondary characters. I really wanted the clues to stay within the girls’ world also—ephemera of the era—print photographs, letters, the trinkets, and necklaces they wore. I was thinking a lot about symbols of girlhood, the things we let go as we get older.
What’s next for you?
My new novel is under way, but all I can say right now is it’s about three friends from New York who get together upstate for what they call a remembering party. It doesn’t go according to plan. I really want to get away to work on it, but we did a podcast adaptation of The Blondes last year and that has taken off and just been dubbed into French and Spanish so there’s interest in it again as a TV series. But trust me, that never goes according to plan, either.
Photo of the author © Sara Maria Salamone
Emily Schultz is the cofounder of Joyland magazine and author of, most recently, The Blondes. It was named a Best Book of the Year by NPR, BookPage, and Kirkus Reviews. The Blondes was produced as a scripted podcast starring Madeline Zima (Twin Peaks). Schultz’s writing has appeared in Elle, Slate, Evergreen Review, Vice, Hazlitt, and Prairie Schooner. She is currently a producer at indie media company Heroic Collective and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.
Visit Emily Schultz Online
emilyschultz.com
Twitter: manualofstyle
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Little Threats Page 28