What Else?: A conversation with Annell López
A new interview column on Now What.
Writing a newsletter can be a lonely business.
Each week, I type out my little words and send them into the digital void, never knowing if anyone reads anything or happens to feel the same way. I get it. That’s part of a writer’s job. And as an only child, I’m usually good at doing stuff on my own. But it would be nice to talk about the things I’m writing about, too. To pick the brains of other creatives like me and see if I’m the only one out there struggling to balance my working, writerly life with a life that is less focused on productivity.
It is with this idea in mind that I introduce a new interview column on Now What., entitled What Else? Once a month, I’ll speak with a writer about a hobby or interest they have that has nothing to do with their work. And then you’ll get to read all about it!
My first feature is the brilliant, hilarious, and all-around gorgeous Annell López.
I was introduced to Annell working on the promotional campaign for her debut short story collection last year. My job in book marketing often requires me to pitch titles I would never read otherwise, but I’ll Give You a Reason couldn’t be further from that description. When I got my hands on the galley, I instantly fell for its cast of characters: a group of immigrants in Newark, New Jersey who confront challenges of identity, race, and belonging all while searching for connection. I wanted to befriend them, and unsurprisingly felt the same about Annell when we met at last year’s AWP conference.
Read on for my conversation with Annell about her experience working in different art forms, one surprising way she thinks through character development, and some details on her novel in the works. Fair warning: if you haven’t eaten yet, the photos might make your stomach rumble.
What is something that you do for yourself that is completely unrelated to your writing?
I have been a side hobby person for a long time, things that are not related to writing and that I’m not good at. At one point, I liked to paint, so I bought all these canvases and all this paint. I made about a dozen paintings. They were all so, so stupid. I tried collaging. I tried using found objects, like a broken mirror, and I spent a lot of time and resources on this hobby.
I think I’ve personally struggled with being bad at art forms and still having fun doing them. Did you also feel that way when you were painting?
I thought it looked nice! I was delusional. It was getting to the point where I was decorating my own place with canvases of my own work. People came over and kind of looked at it like, “Oh…” I eventually stopped proudly announcing that I’d made it. I wasn’t getting the positive reinforcement I thought I would get. So I slowly backed away from it.
One time, I went to my parents’ house. I was hanging around in the kitchen and saw something I made. The brushstrokes were laid on so thick. The paint just didn’t blend. It was definitely amateur work but it looked worse, like grammar school work. Then I realized, “Wow, I’m really wasting money on these things and I’m not great at it.” I can’t believe my mom still has it hanging from the wall.
It’s nice to know my parents aren’t the only people who keep my high school art projects up in the house.
Someone feels proud about it, and that’s really nice. I did seek that positive reinforcement when I was doing it, but it was a hard hobby to keep up. At first, I was approaching it as an artist. When you’re a writer or an artist, there’s the element of wanting to create something beautiful, and then there’s the element of being a critic. If you don’t enjoy it and you’re not producing that beautiful thing you’re aiming to produce, you’re hard on yourself. I think that and realizing I wasn’t good and it was taking up space and money, I moved on. I’ve moved on from a couple of things, that was just the big one that I quit.
What’s something you haven’t abandoned?
Cooking. It’s like my new, permanent hobby. I like to try new recipes and work on presentation. I think I’ve been influenced by all the cooking shows, so I pretend I have a chopped basket of random things and somehow they have to be worked into a meal. I like to go shopping for what I’m going to eat but also I try to pick up something I wouldn’t normally have just to try cooking with it. And I work really hard on making that plate pretty. It fills my heart as a creative outlet. It’s not writing. It’s not painting. But I have to feed myself and who’s to say I can’t feed myself something beautiful?
I’m well documented as being on the record about not enjoying cooking. But I know a lot of creative people do find it to be a positive outlet. How frequently are you cooking like this and how long does it take you?
Maybe once or twice a week I take my absolute time. If I’m making a simple thing like a spaghetti sauce, I’ll make it absolutely from scratch. Same with baking. I take all of my time. I’m not concerned with how much I’m going to clean afterwards or the number of dishes I’m going to use or how messy my kitchen is going to be. I’m just going to delight in the process of every single thing.
When did you start doing this and realizing cooking had this fulfillment for you?
I think during Covid when I was making most of my meals, I became a little more experimental. I wasn’t really going out to restaurants in Spring 2020. So I started to get groceries and I would buy a lot of things in bulk. I had time to get craftier. I didn’t need to constrain making dinner to thirty minutes, I could take two or three hours. When I did that, a few things happened to me that I hadn’t experienced in the kitchen before.
I really love the process of cooking for myself. It felt creative in the sense that I could explore, deviate from a recipe if I wanted to, and present a plate in a pretty way. I also found I enjoyed cleaning after, and I’ve retained this weird habit where I like to do dishes by hand even though I have a dishwasher. I enjoy the rhythm. It puts me in this meditative state. I think and process while cleaning. Same with cooking. I feel very connected to using my hands, to not feeling the pressure that there has to be some outcome that will be judged by anyone eating it other than myself.
What’s been your favorite dish to come out of this?
I made a flourless chocolate cake that was really good early in the pandemic. But lemon curd was probably my favorite. I was addicted to the Trader Joe’s Lemon Curd for a long time and then I discovered I didn’t have to buy it anymore, I could make it myself.
That sounds delicious… Alright, you make a great case for cooking, but I’m still not sold. And I definitely don’t like dishes. You’re a special person there.
I swear, it’s great. I can stand here and really think. Solve all these problems. Sometimes I think about my writing and it’s just uninterrupted time.
That was going to be my next question. Have you had any unexpected benefits for your writing that have come out of your cooking?
I think so, yeah. It’s become a time when I'm not on my phone, which is increasingly something I’m more aware of. I’m not at work, either, and I’m not talking to people. It’s a very solitary activity for me. I’m paying attention to what I’m doing in the kitchen, but if it’s not complicated and my attention drifts, I’ll think a lot about what I’m writing. I think about my novel. I start to solve stuff. Characterization, plot. It’s a good way for me to have that time that isn’t being corrupted by anything else. I’m not on anyone’s clock. It feels great.
I think that when it comes to writing, so much happens on the page. But with writing fiction, it has to happen outside the page, too. You have to think a lot: about characters, about stories. Sometimes there’s less pressure when you’re not in front of the computer trying to type. When instead you’ve given yourself enough time for ideas to form, marinate, and come to life. Then by the time you get to your computer it feels more prepared, like you’ve done the work in your head.
You mentioned thinking about a novel. Can you share anything about that?
I’m almost done. It is about this character, Nina, from a short story in my collection. Nina is a widow in the short story. The novel travels back in time to when she’s a teenager. She has this really intense relationship with her mother and some things happen that lead to Nina getting married young. It essentially takes us through her origin story, her marriage, becoming a widow, and then in the present narrative meeting a bunch of people at a grief counseling group. It’s about a lot of things, but those are the main points.
I love the Annell López universe of characters and that you’re still playing with them. It’s nice to know we’ll get more soon. Have you ever thought of pairing a meal with one of your books? What dish would suit Nina?
I’ve thought about pairing other people’s books with snacks. That’s a reading list I kind of want to write. For my novel and for Nina as a character, I think of steak frites. Just like a nice cut of steak and some really salty french fries, and maybe chimichurri sauce.
Annell López is a Dominican immigrant. She is the author of the short story collection I’ll Give You a Reason, winner of the Louise Meriwether First Book Prize. A 2022 Peter Taylor fellow, her work has received support from Tin House and the Kenyon Review Workshops and has appeared in American Short Fiction, Michigan Quarterly Review, Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. López is an Assistant Fiction Editor for New Orleans Review and just finished her MFA at the University of New Orleans. She is working on a novel.
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