Zoje Stage's debut novel, BABY TEETH (2018), was a USA Today and international bestseller. It was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a First Novel, and was optioned for film by Village Roadshow/Valparaiso Pictures. Her second "mind-bending" (NY Times) novel, WONDERLAND (2020), was one of Book Riot's Best Horror Books of 2020, and one of Overdrive's Best Audio Books of 2020. Her third novel, GETAWAY, described as "stunning" in a starred review from Booklist, will be published in August 2021. A former filmmaker with a penchant for the dark and suspenseful, she lives in Pittsburgh.
1 - Which writer who came before, do you admire the most?
I've admired Ursula Le Guin for many decades now. (I have a tattoo named Ursula, and a cat named Tilly-Leguin.) She was the first writer I encountered who used genre as a way to explore aspects of society and human nature, incorporating philosophy and social commentary into truly creative genre fiction. She died on my birthday, which kind of kills me.
2 - Which teacher(s) had the most profound effect on you?
I've been self-taught in most areas of my life. While I only finished three years of high school, I took my lone writing class (and one of my only college classes) when I was seventeen, at the University of Pittsburgh. The teacher—whose name I totally forget—made me feel like not only was I good at writing, but that I had something worth saying and a unique way of saying it. I've needed to remember that sometimes when I'm feeling like too much of an oddball.
3 - Besides writing, what’s your favorite hobby or passion?
Since May 2020, I've developed a passion for tap dancing. I was looking for a new hobby and I discovered it blends two of my interests: playing an instrument, and dancing. Truly, tapping is like playing drums with your feet.
4 - What is something that those who don’t write fiction do not know or understand about it?
Genre fiction relies on a reader's ability to suspend their disbelief. This is as true for the happily-ever-after love story as it is for science fiction or psychological suspense. I can write something that is completely probable given my knowledge and experience, but if a reader doesn't share enough of the same understandings, they will reject a story as unbelievable.
5 - Can you think of a key breakthrough moment in your work, for you, that you’d be willing to share?
Writing novels was initially very intimidating for me…who am I kidding, it still is. One of the things I struggled with was trying to figure out how much to include—how much description, how much backstory, how much internalization, etc. I hired an editor to give me an overview of an early novel precisely because I hoped her comments would be applicable to my writing in general. I learned that I had a newbie bad habit of using too much summary. She pinpointed a couple of things that I had summarized that she thought would've made terrific scenes or chapters. That really helped me recognize how much more dynamic it is for readers to experience things simultaneous to the main character. My rule of thumb became to write the good stuff in-scene, and leave the boring-but-necessary stuff to summary.
6 - What’s next for you?
In 2022 readers will get to see something a little different from me, a dark fairytale novella called The Girl Who Outgrew the World. In the spirit of fairytales, the story is a parable, so on the surface it's about a young girl who grows into a giant (and then searches for a place where she belongs), but it also represents how patriarchy treats the female body. Then, if all goes well, I'll have a new suspense novel available in 2023. It's at a delicate stage in its publication journey, so I can't say too much about it yet except that it's an adult mother/daughter story, very psychological, and a little batshit crazy.