INTER/E/VIEWS

Poet and author of Life of the Party Olivia Gatwood has released her long-awaited debut novel, Whoever You Are, Honey. Set in the liminal space of Santa Cruz, California (a town grasping on to tradition as modernity threatens to destroy its past), we meet Mitty, a reclusively introspective protagonist whose rejection of the world reveals a stormy interior contrasting with her unassuming exterior.

I’ve been told I sometimes fall into the trap of writing a story about nothing—not the Seinfeld kind, but the kind of story where a protagonist reflects on their life, interacts lightly with the world, and then comes to an epiphany with mostly just the provocation of one memory crashing against another.