1--What is the title of your latest release?
HOW TO CARE FOR A HUMAN GIRL
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
Two estranged sisters, Jada and Maddy, come together again to deal with simultaneous unplanned pregnancies in the wake of their mother’s death.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
It originally took place in Houston, which was where I was living when I began writing it. But it soon became clear that I needed to set the book in my home state of Pennsylvania because there was no place I knew better. Parts of the story take place in Pittsburgh, while other parts take place in an assortment of rural locations throughout western and central PA. This tension between urban and rural—and their associated politics—creates some friction for the characters in the book.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
I would definitely hang out with Jada, even if she would probably be lost in her own thoughts most of the time. I’m not sure I’d hang out with Maddy socially. She’s quite a bit younger than me, and she’s…a lot.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Jada: analytical, anxious, ambitious. Maddy: emotional, impulsive, vulnerable.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
One of my protagonists, Jada, is pursuing a PhD in social psychology. I had to learn a lot about the psychology of choice, decision-making, and intimate relationships to describe her research and immerse myself in the vocabulary, ideas, and questions she would think about every day. Since Jada is a very analytical person who relates the things that are happening to her to the things she’s studying, a lot of that researched material went straight into the book. Choice overload and counterfactual thinking were two psychological concepts that ended up being especially pertinent to Jada’s experience.
Also, since Maddy volunteers at a wildlife rehabilitation center, I learned a lot about the owls and raptors she works with in the novel.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
A little of both. I have a hard time moving on from a scene or even a sentence if I know something is wrong with it. I like to get things into passable shape early on, but I always return to them again later to cut, expand, polish, or tighten what’s there.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Macaroni and cheese. In the South, where I live, it counts as a vegetable.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
I’ve spent most of my adult life writing at my childhood desk, which moved with me from city to city and state to state. It was a wooden desk whose surface was covered in nicks and globs of dried glue. I recently upgraded to a “big girl” desk, though, which feels luxurious!
I like to have something to do with my hands when I’m not typing, so there’s usually some kind of tactile prop nearby—one of those bubble popper toys kids play with, or a knot pillow, or just a pen with a cap that’s fun to pop on and off. And there’s usually a cup of tea going cold. Other than that it’s just me and my laptop.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Virginia Woolf.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Yes; Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. It’s one of my favorite novels, and it’s offered me key bits of inspiration throughout my writing life. The epigraph and title of my short story collection, Happy Like This, come from a quotation from the novel: “They’re happy like that; I’m happy like this.” It’s from a scene where Lily Briscoe, the artist in the book, is thinking about how the world has changed since the death of Mrs. Ramsay, an older woman she’s long idolized, who has recently passed away, and who represents a bygone, old-fashioned version of womanhood that Lily ultimately rejects. And the book’s insights about Lily’s struggle to create art in a male-dominated world have always resonated with me.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
I was lucky to secure a contract for How to Care for a Human Girl when it was still an unfinished, untitled manuscript that I’d been wrestling with for several years. This happened after the release of my first book, Happy Like This, on a small (university) press. I was overjoyed to have a contract for my novel-in-progress, but I also felt a huge amount of pressure to finally finish it.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I love literary fiction about complicated women.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
Some people might think this is a strange answer, but my favorite movie is a six-hour Italian historical drama from 2003 called The Best of Youth. It follows two Italian brothers and their family through some of the most tumultuous moments in their lives—and in Italy more broadly—over a period of about forty years starting in the 1960s. It’s utterly gorgeous and heartbreaking, well worth the time investment and subtitles for lovers of complex characters and family sagas.
15--What is your favorite season?
Fall.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
Something quiet and private, maybe a nice dinner and a trip to my favorite indie bookstore. I’m notoriously tight-lipped about my birthday, and it took even my closest friends years to figure out when it was. I don’t really like being the center of attention.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I recently saw Kelly Reichardt’s beautiful film Showing Up, where Michelle Williams plays a sculptor trying to get by in the art world and in life. It’s one of the most startlingly honest depictions of the creative life I’ve seen.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Definitely Italian. I grew up watching my grandmother flick gnocchi off the tines of a fork—one of my favorite memories and favorite foods.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
Write, read, or hike.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
I’m not sure! I’ve started a few new projects, but they’re still in the early stages where they could grow into something completely different than what I’m envisioning. Ultimately it’s always up to the story and the characters—and not so much the writer—what will end up happening.
A Novel
From “a writer at the top of her game” (The New York Times) comes a bighearted and sharply funny debut novel about two estranged sisters and the crossroads they face after becoming unexpectedly pregnant at the same time.
Two years after the death of their mother, Jada and Maddy Battle both navigate unplanned pregnancies. Jada, a thirty-one-year-old psychology PhD student living in Pittsburgh, quietly obtains an abortion without telling her husband, but the secret causes turmoil in her already shaky marriage. Back home in rural Pennsylvania, nineteen-year-old Maddy, who spends her time caring for birds at a wildlife rehabilitation center, is paid off by the man who got her pregnant to get an abortion. But an unsettling visit to a crisis pregnancy center adds to her doubts about whether to go through with it.
Although Maddy still hasn’t forgiven Jada for a terrible betrayal, she goes to her for support, only to discover the cracks in the façade of her sister’s seemingly perfect life. As their past resentments boil over, the sisters must navigate the consequences of their choices and determine how best to care for themselves and each other.
With luminous prose and laser-sharp psychological insight, How to Care for a Human Girl is a compassionate and unforgettable examination of the complexities of choice, the special intimacy of sisterhood, and the bizarre ways our heated political moment manifests in daily life.
Literature and Fiction Literary [Atria Books, On Sale: August 8, 2023, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781982157227 / eISBN: 9781982157241]
Ashley Wurzbacher’s novel, How to Care for a Human Girl, is forthcoming from Atria Books on August 8, 2023. Her debut short story collection, Happy Like This, won the 2019 John Simmons (Iowa) Short Fiction Award, selected by Carmen Maria Machado, and was a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and a New York Times Editors’ Choice.
Ashley’s short stories have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, The Cincinnati Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, and other journals. She earned her MFA from Eastern Washington University and her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Houston. Originally from Titusville, Pennsylvania, she currently lives in Birmingham, Alabama, and teaches creative writing at the University of Montevallo.
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