Serena Jampel

Lily King is an award winning American novelist. Members of the Fiction Board Katie Catulle and Serena Jampel interviewed her over Zoom on February 26th, 2024 to talk about writing: membranes, rules, and how badly we want it to be fun. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Ottessa Moshfegh is an American author and novelist. Her debut novel Eileen won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Her subsequent novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation was a New York Times bestseller, and will be adapted for film by director Yorgos Lanthimos.

First she finds a finger, tucked neatly under the pillow, slightly crooked as if in admonishment. The mother stares at it for a long moment before gingerly scooping it up and carrying it over to the shag carpet where the boy lies on his back, shadowboxing the air with all four limbs. It takes her a few tries, but by dangling a demonic plush rattlesnake in the boy’s face, she is able to distract him long enough to reattach it, peeling open his tiny clenched fist. The boy immediately starts wailing, high and thin like a faraway siren.