HOT AUTHORS SERIES // Part 3: Fiona Maazel on Writing, Her New Novel and Thistles in Love

Photo: Tobias Everke

Tonight from 7-11pm we're joining forces with Canteen Magazine to host a panel discussion and party to celebrate their new issue, which pairs 16 amazing authors with 16 premier photographers. The event is part of the Brooklyn Book Festival, which culminates Sunday at Brooklyn Borough Hall with a bunch of great events.

We've already featured two of the panelists who'll be partying with us tonight, Christopher Kouloris and Tao Lin, and here's a third: Fiona Maazel.

She's the author of 2008's Last Last Chance, which, in addition to being receiving praise from the likes of the New York Times, Slate, the Boston Globe and Time Out New York, also earned her the Bard Fiction Prize and a place on the National Book Foundation's "5 Under 35" list. According to the Times: "Last Last Chance' isn’t your average novel, thanks in no small part to Maazel’s funny, lacerating prose. The book fits squarely in the tradition of novels about the wealthy and dissolute, but ultimately it's less John Cheever than Denis Johnson — the Denis Johnson of "Jesus' Son," with its drug-addled narrators — though Maazel’s voice is more caffeinated, more fueled by attitude."

We caught up with Maazel to talk about her second novel, Woke Up Lonely, which she just recently finished. 

"It's about a cult leader, his ex-wife, and the four people he takes hostage," she says. "It takes place over a four-day Waco-type siege situation, and tracks the fate of all six people. But really the book is about loneliness, which I guess is an obsession of mine. Loneliness! Is it congenital or acquired? Is there anything that can roll back on solitude besides narrative? Does companionship help at all? There's a good deal about North Korea in the novel (the loneliest country on earth, of course), about cloud seeding and labial reconstruction, gambling and the NSA, cancer and a city under the city of Cincinnati."

Since Canteen's new issue and tonight's discussion looks at the waning role of writers as cultural icons or "rock stars," we thought we'd ask Maazel for her take on the subject. "I think it's fine that writers have lost their glam status, though I wouldn't mind being fawned over in this way," she says. "I certainly remember myself as recently as the late nineties falling to pieces when X, Y, or Z writer walked into the room. Imagine having that effect! Well, I'm kidding. What really depresses me is that literature appears to be losing its relevance and power to arbitrate or even influence the discourse. If no one cares who I am, okay. If no one cares what I write, that's disheartening. If no one cares what my heroes write, that is disastrous."

In addition to her novels, Maazel has written for publications including the New York Times Book Review, Bomb, N+1, the Village Voice and Salon. When she's not writing she makes whimsical short movies, which you can watch over on her website. "My favorite movie is probably the first one I ever made, of giant thistle in Marfa, Texas," she says. "I was there working on my first novel, and often just stared out the window at these huge thistle balls rolling down the street. So I had the idea they were in love because of the to and fro of their coupling in the wind. And I went from there."

What's next for Maazel now that she's finished her second novel? "Another one, of course."

Catch Fiona Maazel tonight at Hot Authors, right here at 3rd Ward. The panel discussion will be followed by the party, with live music by Year of the Tiger and Gunfight, DJs and complimentary drinks from Manhattan Cocktail Classic.

-- John Ruscher