Zibby Books Author Alert!! Ava Dellaira, EXPOSURE: A Novel
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[0:43]A bit of Lara is the author of Exposure A Novel, which is one of our ZibiBooks titles, and we're so excited about it.
[0:50]Ava is the author of the critically acclaimed young adult novels in search of us and love letters to the dead, which was named Best Book of the Year by Apple, Google, Buzzfeed, the New York Public Library, and the Chicago Public Library.
[1:02]She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow, and the University of Chicago.
[1:08]She grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and now lives in Altadina, California with her husband and their two young children.
[1:14]Welcome Ava. Thank you so much for coming on mom's. Don't have time to read books. Discuss exposure. Congratulations.
[1:21]Thank you, Zibi. I'm so excited to be talking with you right now.
[1:25]Yay. I feel so honored to have gotten such an early glimpse at the manuscript when we acquired it for ZibiBooks, which was wonderful, but for everybody else, can you please share what the book is about?
[1:37]Yes. So exposure begins in 2003 with Noah, who is a black high school senior and Juliette, who's a white college freshman.
[1:48]The two meets their lonely souls. They form a connection and after a night of drinking, they go home together.
[1:55]The story leaves off there and we move both backwards and forwards in time, getting to know Noah and Juliette and those closest to them.
[2:04]As we explore the themes that shape their lives, like the intensity of young female friendship, the attention between artistic ambition and romantic partnership,
[2:16]the effects of race and class and loss and grief. It is 12 years later when Noah's done the impossible and broken through in Hollywood.
[2:25]His first film is about to be released. It's been a festival darling. He and his wife, Jesse, who he's been with for years have just had their first child.
[2:36]When a new story breaks, Annie, Juliette's best friend back in LA for the first time in 12 years is accusing Noah of raping Juliette back when he was in high school.
[2:50]We get this story from multiple perspectives, both Noah's and Juliette as well as Annie's and Jesse's, and I think at its heart it's really a book about what it means to empathize with opposing points of view and the possibility of holding space for more than one truth at the same time.
[3:12]I mean, even the description shows us all the directions and characters and intricacies and plot weaving that must have gone into to dreaming this up.
[3:23]Where did this idea come from? Which pieces of it were there from the beginning? Tell me the whole backstory.
[3:30]So I first got the idea for this book in 2016. Interestingly, just before the Me Too movement really took off, but it was around the time of the 2016 elections when social media had sort of recently taken off as
[3:48]you know this new kind of public square, which obviously has all of these amazing aspects about it and it's an amazing place for connection and it's an amazing way for social movements to begin for people who historically have not had voices or power to have that in a different way.
[4:10]But it also was the birth of and especially that election year I think of a lot of divisions like deep divides in our maybe not the birth of them, but it was the time when they were becoming newly visible, I would say, and it was feeling like you know it's really hard to see sometimes the human being behind the person who's on the other side of any number of the battle lines we've drawn.
[4:39]It can be easy to sort of have somebody feel too dimensional in this kind of meeting space. So what I was interested in doing was like taking two sides of the story and really like humanizing them.
[4:55]You know it's like the the Kamala line that's popular right now right like nobody fell out of a coconut tree we all have these you know we're all a product of our personal histories and our cultural histories and so I wanted to just you know give people a chance to see and to think about the human beings behind the headlines.
[5:20]Is something that like when you're reading the newspaper or whatever is this where your mind goes like okay this is what this is what's being reported what's actually going on what's the other side like is that where you go in your head.
[5:33]I try to yeah I mean I do take time to I do like try to pause and to think about like you know I have my own passionate moral and political and everything else convictions, but I do try to like take time to also then hear the other side of a story and like understand it for multiple points of view and.
[5:57]You know I think the other part of it is like when we're coming to these spaces online or in the news we're often coming to it with like a heightened nervous system right like we're in this place of fight or flight because.
[6:10]These things often touch like our own histories of trauma our own histories of loss and I think from that.
[6:18]Like fight or fight place it can be pretty hard to take in the person like another perspective that's not what our body is like primed to do right then our body is primed to fight or to freeze or to flee.
[6:34]But one thing that reading does for me is that it like slows down my nervous system so like reading a book.
[6:42]Or you know a novel or memoir even like a long article can sometimes like put me into more of like arrest and digest space where I'm actually then able to like have the space to take in different perspectives if that makes sense.
[7:00]So are you drawn to stories like this I know publishers weekly in their recent review said fans of selecting take note which is like so cool or these the types of narratives that when you read your most drawn to or what are what are some of your favorites.
[7:13]Favorite books yeah favorite books or favorite authors are even just favorite types like this feels you know it's a book that makes you think and feel it's it's it's can be.
[7:26]definitely not controversial but it's it does it's designed to get you to you know debate right what happened what was the thing what was the wrong thing that it's the best sort of book club fodder right because sometimes there's gray areas and who knows what's right and.
[7:43]Do you like what's another are there books like that that you're like yes I felt like that too and you know they don't actually I'm just wondering.
[7:51]I mean I do love books of course that make me think and feel I just started reading this book consent that came out recently that I'm like super interested in but I'm still at the beginning so I can't really comment on it yet but obviously she's exploring the gray areas in her marriage in her long marriage and.
[8:09]The beginnings of it when she but I think they got together when she was like 17 and he was in his 40 so on then they stayed married for many many years so it's an interesting interest brings up some interesting questions I think.
[8:25]There are so many sort of strands to this and one is of new motherhood and Jesse's experience Noah's wife and the way you write about that with such.
[8:40]Any that any any new mother or mother to be or whatever can relate to that sort of isolation, physical you know boundary list state that it you know and where your mind just goes like I don't even know where which is really powerful and that is mixed sort of with Noah's trajectory as someone really striving to excel in a very difficult to break into career as a screenwriter and.
[9:05]I think that's where he works the jobs that will get him to where he needs to be and getting his hopes up and just all of that when you're sort of hoping that what you desperately want will happen and you just don't know which is also.
[9:19]What you could say about motherhood to right we so desperately want our kids to grab to be functioning members of society ultimately and through out of our control just like trying to sell a screenplay so tell me about those two and that couple and the way you can see.
[9:34]and to the way you can see to them and and those those themes.
[9:38]Yeah, I mean there's definitely all shot through the whole book in all of the storylines the the girls.
[9:46]really had an Annie's as well as no injustices are pieces of my own life and experience and you know my husband and I fell in love as like young.
[9:56]Young striving writers I think it was interesting to meet.
[10:00]to write that relationship because, you know,
[10:03]when, I mean, they met in college
[10:05]and then they moved to LA together.
[10:07]Jesse's just lost a father and Noah has
[10:10]this historical loss of his mom,
[10:13]but they're both just fighting so hard
[10:15]to sort of become someone and to break through.
[10:19]And when that happens for Jesse first,
[10:22]there's this like really, you know, difficult time
[10:27]in their relationship, like what happens
[10:29]when two people are bound together by this dream.
[10:32]And then, you know, it comes true for one of them
[10:36]and it doesn't yet for the other.
[10:37]So that was like a poignant for me to work on writing
[10:43]and then the young motherhood stuff.
[10:44]I mean, I was, I started writing this book
[10:47]when I was pregnant with my daughter, who's Nas X.
[10:50]You can hear how long this has been important.
[10:53]But I wrote some of those early,
[10:58]those new motherhood scenes, like drafts of them
[11:01]like in that moment, like the first time I actually left her
[11:06]was like, I don't know, she was a few months old
[11:08]and she was stayed with my mother in LA
[11:10]and I like went to a coffee shop
[11:11]and I'd like been awake the whole night before
[11:15]and I was in this like fever dream, like blurry,
[11:18]like who am I, where am I, like what's going, you know?
[11:22]So, and the first thing I wanted to do was like write it down.
[11:27]Those scenes went through a lot of editing,
[11:29]but my own sort of experience with that transformation
[11:35]is definitely in the book.
[11:37]And with what, I mean, obviously the circumstances for no one
[11:41]and Jesse in the book are extreme
[11:43]because of these huge events that have happened
[11:46]but I think that it can be relatable to people
[11:48]in a lot of ways that like suddenly like you have been living
[11:52]in the same world together and then suddenly you have a baby
[11:56]and it feels like you're sort of inhabiting these like
[11:59]two different spaces sometimes for a little while.
[12:03]Yes.
[12:04]I'm in a whole different planet.
[12:08]I wish I had written more, like in it
[12:12]when I was going through some of that stuff
[12:14]instead of just, because now looking back,
[12:16]it's all sort of blur and just-
[12:18]And now I think your brain is actually programmed
[12:20]probably to like, by the time I had got pregnant
[12:24]with my son again, I'd already forgotten.
[12:27]Well, okay, three or four.
[12:28]But that was a coffee shop day, well spent.
[12:31]And only day, I remember, well anyway, it doesn't matter.
[12:36]So you also have this photography element too
[12:39]because Annie's mother, Annie's late mother, right?
[12:43]Am I getting this, right?
[12:44]Yeah.
[12:45]Yeah, right.
[12:46]Annie's late mother was a famous photographer,
[12:47]sort of Ola Sally Mann who I'm obsessed with
[12:50]and did a whole research paper on in college
[12:51]and all that.
[12:52]You did?
[12:53]Yeah.
[12:54]And now every time I see one of her works
[12:56]in like a museum or like wherever and exhibit or whatever,
[13:00]I'm like, oh my gosh.
[13:01]Like, I thought I was the only one who kind of knew better.
[13:03]But anyway, in fact, I read part of her book Hold Still,
[13:06]although I didn't finish it.
[13:07]I don't know if you read that,
[13:07]but that was really interesting.
[13:10]Actually, exact same.
[13:11]Yeah, it was like a thousand pages, so whatever.
[13:14]But you do have, you know, a mother figure
[13:16]who uses young girls, right?
[13:20]Them as models, so to speak, and almost sexualizes them
[13:23]in a way.
[13:24]And I was watching the book Shield's documentary last night,
[13:27]actually sort of similar to what a photographer did with her
[13:30]and this resili coffee table book when she was nine
[13:34]and then the pictures leaked and got out later
[13:36]when she was less anonymous.
[13:38]But anyway, so this is like a thing that happens.
[13:41]But tell me about this character
[13:43]and why this relationship and what her lens
[13:47]and this sort of exposure as it relates to photography
[13:50]as well, what all that means
[13:53]and where we should go with that theme.
[13:56]Yeah, I mean, I've always loved photography.
[13:59]I studied a college and that was like one of my,
[14:02]you know, I had a little photography show.
[14:05]Oh, anything.
[14:06]Yeah, I've always been fascinated by Sally Mann,
[14:09]actually, and like my college girlfriend,
[14:12]who's still a good friend of mine,
[14:14]was did model for photographers when she was young
[14:19]or she modeled for a few different people.
[14:22]I don't wanna tell her story because that's her story.
[14:25]But you know, so I've been aware of these kind of themes
[14:27]for a long time, I think.
[14:30]And like you, I went to see Sally Mann exhibit
[14:33]while I was writing and just like reminded
[14:36]of how powerful her work is.
[14:39]I mean, obviously there are a lot of complex questions
[14:44]behind it, but to me, the like sheer beauty
[14:48]of the images themselves is like so arresting,
[14:52]haunting though, a little bit haunting.
[14:54]Oh, yeah, they're just like, yeah.
[14:57]I mean, she's very talented.
[15:00]Obviously there's nothing more intimate
[15:02]than the view between a mother and her children,
[15:06]I think, and that's like what I was sort of getting at
[15:11]in the Julia and Marga relationship.
[15:13]Marga was the name of Julia's mom.
[15:15]And I had this whole backstory, this chapter about Marga
[15:20]that didn't make it into the book
[15:21]that I think we're gonna use for bonus material,
[15:24]but it sort of like shows it from her side
[15:27]where she got divorced really young,
[15:30]her husband cheated on her,
[15:31]she was alone with her child.
[15:33]And like her identity was as an artist.
[15:36]And she eventually was like, I can't,
[15:38]like she just didn't wanna leave her every day
[15:41]and go to work and she's like, she'll just be,
[15:43]we're gonna do it together.
[15:44]You know, I have to be able to be,
[15:47]if I'm gonna survive this,
[15:48]I have to be able to be a mother and an artist
[15:50]in the same breath.
[15:51]So you get that point of view, you know,
[15:53]and I think that's even woven into what's there.
[15:57]But also, you know, there's this question of like
[16:01]how much does Julia really see herself
[16:05]and how much is she just seeing herself
[16:07]like through her mother's eyes
[16:10]and through her mother's lens
[16:11]and how much is she modeled herself?
[16:13]And her identity after who she thinks her mother wants
[16:18]to see or, you know,
[16:20]I think those lines become very blurry between them
[16:24]so that she is not quite like separated from her mom yet.
[16:30]And so then when she loses her mom suddenly,
[16:34]obviously that grief is so intense for anybody,
[16:36]but I think for Julia,
[16:37]it also leaves her like unsure who or where she is
[16:43]or like how to see herself without seeing herself
[16:45]through her mother's lens.
[16:48]And she's, you know, very extra lost for that reason.
[16:54]For Annie, Julia's friend who becomes, you know,
[16:57]they become close friends at the beginning of high school
[17:00]and that Annie begins participating in the photographs.
[17:03]And there's a whole series with her in Julia
[17:06]that that, you know, as it claimed,
[17:09]I, for her, I think it feels like being seen
[17:14]for the first time in a way and like being accepted
[17:17]and like having a home for the first time,
[17:19]getting to participate in this.
[17:22]But then when she's lost,
[17:24]Margot and Julia, those photographs become like
[17:29]this haunting and escapable sort of testament
[17:32]to what she's lost.
[17:33]And then they take on a new life
[17:35]and a new meaning after the accusation
[17:39]when she and Julia and Noah and Jesse are all,
[17:43]you know, part of this big public conversation
[17:46]and these images that Margot took all those years ago
[17:49]are sort of influencing the way the whole story's being read
[17:52]and contributing or like intensifying the tension already
[17:59]that exists between a white woman accusing a black man of rape.
[18:02]But here they are these like, you know,
[18:06]idealized teenagers like for everybody to take in.
[18:10]So I was sort of interested in exploring the way
[18:13]those images then shape and influence the public narrative.
[18:21]If that makes sense.
[18:22]Yeah, of course.
[18:23]So give listeners a little background on you
[18:27]and we didn't even touch on all the grief in the book,
[18:29]would you also do such a good job of?
[18:30]And it's also a major, major theme,
[18:32]which I could have led with in this,
[18:34]but let's like skip around to your background
[18:37]and how you became an author and your experience
[18:40]and other age group material and why an adult novel
[18:44]at this point and just your whole trajectory of writing.
[18:47]So take us from your photography major in college.
[18:50]Yes.
[18:51]Yeah, well, I was a dual major.
[18:53]I stepped a bunch of things into the humanities umbrella.
[18:58]I actually wrote a thesis about trauma in college.
[19:01]And then I did like a poetry thing too.
[19:04]So but I thought after college actually
[19:07]that I would apply to I had an advisor who I loved
[19:11]and I'd been convinced that I should become an academic
[19:14]and I was going to apply to PhD programs,
[19:16]which are of course their own kind of really hard
[19:20]world to break into.
[19:22]And then that summer after I graduated college,
[19:24]my mom died suddenly and I was just like,
[19:28]I can't do it like I was not no longer interested in that
[19:33]and I'd always loved writing and always written poetry.
[19:36]And that was like the only thing that I sort of wanted to do.
[19:40]So I ended up coming to LA for a year
[19:42]and applying to MFA programs.
[19:44]And I went to Iowa Writers Workshop
[19:47]where I studied poetry.
[19:49]And I was still really in the thick of grief,
[19:52]I think in those couple of years.
[19:55]And afterwards I was like, all right,
[19:57]I guess I got to figure out how to make a living.
[20:00]I think I'll try going back to LA and doing screenwriting,
[20:05]which seemed like a way to make money as a writer.
[20:08]I was pretty young and naive.
[20:11]And I had a lot of random jobs, a lot of hard ones.
[20:16]And eventually, I was just sort of searching for a way
[20:19]to break in.
[20:21]And I eventually started working for the author
[20:23]and screenwriter and director, Steven Chabaski,
[20:27]when he was making his first book,
[20:30]The Perks of Being a Wallflower into a movie.
[20:33]So I feel like I got really lucky there.
[20:38]We had, I worked for him for like six years
[20:40]and we were really close.
[20:41]And when I first gave him my attempt at a screenplay,
[20:46]he was like, I think you should write a novel.
[20:49]But like, what, that's going to take so long,
[20:52]but that night I thought of, you know,
[20:57]the first, my idea for my first book,
[20:59]which was called Love Letters to the Dead
[21:01]and it's a young adult book where a girl is grieving
[21:05]the loss of her sister by writing letters
[21:08]to like famous dead rock stars and poets and such.
[21:12]And I would write it like up till 2 a.m. after works
[21:15]and, you know, just kids, ignoring all possible social plans,
[21:19]I really didn't have a life.
[21:20]I was just like going to work and really trying to write this book.
[21:24]And, you know, I eventually ended up publishing it.
[21:28]And I wrote a second young adult follow up
[21:30]for the same publishers.
[21:32]And then I, you know, my Love Letters to the Dead,
[21:36]like took off and connected with a lot of people
[21:39]and did really great.
[21:40]And the next book didn't do as well as the first one had.
[21:43]And it came out like right as I was giving birth to my daughter.
[21:47]And I just was kind of like,
[21:49]okay, like, I don't know, like, who am I, where am I?
[21:53]What's happening?
[21:54]I thought I built this life as a writer.
[21:58]But now I don't know.
[21:59]And it's really hard to like figure out, you know,
[22:05]when you're on your own, it's one thing,
[22:08]like to take the risk of writing a book
[22:10]in terms of the time and energy,
[22:12]every act of writing as a leap of faith, right?
[22:16]You never know if anyone's going to read it.
[22:19]It's going to be any good.
[22:20]If it's going to connect with someone,
[22:21]if it's going to be published.
[22:23]But I felt like, you know, taking that,
[22:26]that jump felt so different when it was just me alone
[22:29]and my little like shoebox studio versus when I had a baby
[22:34]and then another, and then two babies who wanted me
[22:36]and needed me.
[22:37]So it took longer, but I did ultimately make that leap of faith
[22:43]to say like, I am taking time away from them
[22:46]to write this story.
[22:47]Because for some reason, I really believe in it,
[22:49]even though I don't know.
[22:51]I was just, I think at that stage in my life,
[22:53]like drawn to more adult themes,
[22:56]because I'd done some growing up.
[23:02]We hope that we all graduate to adulthood.
[23:06]If I'm so sorry about your mom and her sudden loss,
[23:10]I'm so sorry at that young age and it's so horrible.
[23:13]I'm so sorry.
[23:15]Thank you.
[23:16]Yeah, my father actually passed away also
[23:19]and during the time I was writing this book,
[23:22]so eight of grief in it are very strong and fallible
[23:27]and definitely part of my lived experience,
[23:31]like so, so many of us, really.
[23:36]Well, I feel like the backstory explains
[23:41]some of the rawness of the feeling in it, right?
[23:44]Like grief and then all the motherhood and all of it
[23:49]because it does feel so emotionally immersive to me,
[23:53]the whole book, even though there's,
[23:55]it's definitely plotted and all that stuff.
[23:58]I think that when someone's guard is totally down
[24:00]and you like get the real feelings,
[24:03]it's hard not to connect and want to keep like devouring.
[24:07]And so I feel like that's something you do well.
[24:10]And I'm selfishly glad that writing helped you
[24:15]because then it helps so many other people
[24:17]when they read it.
[24:19]Thank you, Zippy.
[24:23]Not that you have to answer this in the affirmative
[24:26]by any stretch, but do you happen to be working on another novel
[24:30]or are you just like gonna sit pretty with this one
[24:32]for a little bit?
[24:33]Yeah, I am, I'm working on something new.
[24:36]Usually I can't like,
[24:39]when we sent out the book on submission,
[24:41]my agent Richard was like,
[24:42]now's a great time to start a new book.
[24:44]And I was kind of like, oh, no, no, thanks.
[24:47]Like I was just like two in this story still.
[24:51]But once writing, I finished the edit
[24:54]and you know, once I was like fully done writing this
[24:57]then almost immediately I got sort of my next idea came.
[25:01]So I'm working on it.
[25:03]Hopefully I'll get to tell you more than it's in.
[25:07]Exciting, exciting.
[25:09]And what are you, what conversations about this book
[25:11]are you most excited to have with readers?
[25:15]Oh, that's a really good and interesting question.
[25:19]You know, I hope that this book actually makes people
[25:22]feel seen in different like you,
[25:25]like you've mentioned there's a lot of,
[25:27]it's about a big topic, right?
[25:29]And it's about the topic of consent.
[25:31]And but it's also like you said,
[25:35]a really intimate book that has all of these different
[25:38]threads about new motherhood,
[25:41]about like about grief, about losing parents,
[25:46]about striving and once career,
[25:49]or like trying to make it,
[25:50]or the idea of trying to become something,
[25:53]about like every woman who's read it
[25:56]has said some version to me of like,
[25:58]oh my God, the girlhood stuff.
[25:59]Like I had a friend like that
[26:01]or I remember how that felt at that time.
[26:04]So I hope that it will make people feel seen in a way
[26:07]that allows them to like also want to see other people
[26:12]if that makes sense.
[26:13]Yeah, I was terrified the whole time
[26:15]I was writing this book.
[26:16]Like I knew that I was dealing with things that are really
[26:22]hard and as far as the, you know,
[26:26]like I've had all the experiences that the women
[26:29]have had in this book and I was processing that for myself.
[26:32]And I have definitely been like a little bit like,
[26:36]oh wow, okay.
[26:37]So like I was pretending sort of to myself
[26:40]for a lot of time that I was writing this
[26:42]that no one would ever read it in order to like,
[26:45]find the courage to really go there.
[26:46]And now it's coming into the world.
[26:49]But I think it's coming into the world
[26:51]that like the right time is sort of my feeling.
[26:54]Like that now is actually a good moment for this book
[26:58]to come out and a moment when I think people really are
[27:02]like looking for ways to feel connected to each other
[27:06]and like wanting to be able to hold space
[27:10]for more than one truth at the same time.
[27:13]Amazing.
[27:14]Ava, thank you.
[27:15]Thank you for trusting ZB books with this very important,
[27:18]very personal launch.
[27:19]And we are holding your book with kid gloves
[27:22]and hope to hand it to those who will, you know,
[27:26]take it joyfully and treasure it the way that we have internally.
[27:30]So we are excited for that.
[27:32]And thanks for letting us be a part of it.
[27:34]Oh, yeah.
[27:35]I couldn't honestly, I have to say just last thing.
[27:38]You guys are incredible and this is like
[27:42]the amount of care that everybody like the way
[27:46]that the amount of care you guys give to your authors
[27:49]and the way that you let us like participate
[27:51]in all of the parts of the process that feels so good.
[27:55]There's like this, obviously it's like terrifying
[27:58]to let your baby into the world,
[28:00]but like knowing that it's in such amazing hands
[28:04]with people who care so much and care so much about me
[28:07]and care so much about all of your authors.
[28:09]And, you know, I was expressing some anxiety
[28:13]when we had like a recent marketing publicity call
[28:15]and afterwards I was just like, well,
[28:17]like you guys are clearly doing everything
[28:20]you possibly can that like could ever possibly be done.
[28:22]So like I'm just gonna like out
[28:24]because like you got it, which is an amazing thing.
[28:28]So thank you for welcoming this book in
[28:31]and giving it a home.
[28:33]Thank you.
[28:34]That means a lot.
[28:34]Thank you.
[28:36]Amazing.
[28:37]Well, off we go to the races.
[28:38]Thanks.
[28:39]Thank you.
[28:40]Bye.
[28:43]Thanks for listening to momstone have time to read books.
[28:46]If you love it, please leave a review and follow us
[28:49]on social at city Owens and at city readers.