Interview with Addie Citchens
Author of Dominion
Author Photo of Addie Citchens (pronounced like the room where you cook).
Today’s headliner is, my friend, the amazing and talented Addie Citchens. We go way back to being young writers just trying get read. Addie’s was the rare writing that made me go, “oh, she’ll be famous one day.” Her debut book is Dominion and it is incredible. Full of women who feel like family, I read it in one sitting about a year before it came out…the perks of being an author. I moderated Addie’s New Orleans book release. The house was packed, and we all laughed so much it felt less like a reading and more like a bunch of friends at a party!
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Without further ado, here’s the Big Interview with Addie Citchens.
Maurice: What are your earliest memories of reading or writing literature?
Addie: My mother read to me and was a teacher who encouraged reading. I feel like I’ve been a reader as long as I’ve had memory, and I’ve been a writer since shortly after that. My mother still has stories I wrote in the second grand.
Maurice: What was it that made you turn to writing your own literature?
Addie: The urge was irresistible from the beginning. For one, I’ve always loved books. From the earliest chapter books I read, I just knew I had something to say. As well, I’m from Clarksdale, Mississippi, a place with a rich musical legacy like New Orleans. There was something so lyrical about my town, about the way my grandmother spoke, how her friends spoke, the music of church, the dance in our routine, something so beautiful yet haunted about it, that I knew it would explore in literature one day.
Maurice: I was honored to moderate the New Orleans event for your vibrant and undeniably great Dominion. The book is so full of incredible women. How did you develop the story and characters? Did any of them appear in other things you tried to write?
Addie: Thank you for that great moderation; we were great, lol. But, no, these characters were truly their own. These women were based on the church women I watched, the church girls I knew, and the church girl I was. I always knew they were specific for this novel. I kinda spat the original version of this novel out in 6 months back in like 2013, as it was a story that had been sitting in my head since I was a teenager. I shopped it around to agents, who loved the first half, but trashed the second half. It had been sitting in my files for nearly a decade until I found FSG’s Inaugural Writers Fellowship Program. It won. So it took a question from my editor and experiencing more of life, an evolution of mind and self to complete it. I developed this novel by living.
Maurice: Do you ever need inspiration to write, and if so, who or what do you turn to?
Addie: I’m nosy as hell. I think that’s why I don’t really have to go looking for inspiration. I’m a big fan of walking, so while I’m getting my steps in, I’m looking in windows and down corridors. I’m eavesdropping on folks’ conversations. I’m watching and walking and experiencing. I talk to strangers. Inspiration is everywhere.
Maurice: What hobbies or obsessions do you have outside of research and writing?
Addie: I love to dance. I love music. I love all kinds of exercise; I also love food and restaurants and going new places. I love to read.
Maurice: How have you changed from your early writing to Dominion?
Addie: Dominion is kind of like early writing for me, rather one of my earliest attempts at a novel. So what I’ve learned in the drafting and revision process is to be more intentional, that it’s okay to take it slow.
Maurice: I won’t enumerate everything that’s been going on politically in the nation and around the world. Suffice it to say, something feels different and more chaotic than usual. How do you respond to the disorder of the world?
Addie: Writing is my response and my refuge. I like to move. I do some social media, but I unplug. I meditate and breathe. I love on those I love and let them love on me. I fuck with optimists heavy. I stay grounded, but I stay ready.
Maurice: What’s your favorite book, film, tv show, and/album of all time?
Addie: This is so hard because I have so many of each; these are representative. Sula, Hatchet, A Mercy, Their Eyes were Watching God, and Heavy are some of my favorite books. I don’t watch too much TV, but I used to love Living Single, The Golden Girls, and Unsolved Mysteries. My favorite films include Moonlight, Poetic Justice, The Little Mermaid, 17 Swans, and Waiting to Exhale. I love the Waiting to Exhale soundtrack, Embrya Maxwell, Movin’ On by Playa Fly, The Ashnaia Project Escape from Reality, Audioslave by Audioslave, Jar of Flies Alice in Chains, most of Luther Vandross’s 80s discography, Whitney Houston’s Whitney album, The Velvet Rope Janet Jackson—too many.
Maurice: What project are you excited about working on next?
Addie: I have a speculative fiction novel as well as a historical novel about a long-buried Mississippi neighborhood trying to jump out. But before that, I’m excited to work on the second novel I sold, which is a coming of age story that includes that piece I had placed in The New Yorker.