Interview with Daisy Alpert Florin
Today we have another mini-interview, this time with Daisy Alpert Florin, author of the debut novel, My Last Innocent Year, which has gotten a lot of buzz, for good reason. It centers the protagonist, Isabel, during her final semester at a prestigious East Coast college as she falls into a relationship with her professor. It’s incredibly atmospheric and beautiful. Set in the late 90s against the backdrop of the Clinton/ Lewinsky scandal, it’s a smart, beautifully written novel that examines consent, the cost of our mistakes, and how we reckon with our past.
It’s the kind of novel you can get lost in, which is always nice. Oh, and Daisy made a playlist for the novel and has a Substack you should also check out! So without further ado…
Did you ever doubt this book would be published?
My path to publication was relatively straightforward—I found an agent after a few months and the book sold quickly. But but but: beneath that story are years of self-doubt. I didn’t start writing in earnest until my late 30s, and this novel will be published right before I turn 50. And before that, I floundered in my work life and felt basically like a loser. It took so long for me to think of myself as a writer, to realize I had actually been one all along. Then I had to give myself permission to pursue this crazy dream when I was the stay-at-home parent of three kids making no money and spending all this time (and money) working alone in the wilderness. Like so many of us, my publication story is just the tippy top of a vast iceberg. Looking back, I think I held on to the book as long as I could, maybe pathologically so, so when it went out, it was really ready.
Can you share any tips or tricks for staying motivated?
I think what kept me going was that I really loved the story I was telling, and I felt excited to come back to it every day (well, not every day). People say to write the story you want to read and I definitely did that! I do think the process cannot be rushed, as hard as that might be. When I was working on the novel, people would sometimes say “Oh, I know an agent” or “Do you want me to connect you with my friend who’s an editor?” I think they did that because they felt sorry for me. But I always said no because I knew the work wasn’t ready and that I would know when it was. And I did. It was really hard to work in a vacuum for so long, but now I know that’s what it takes and I’m glad I was able to ignore whatever pressure I felt to finish faster so I would have something to show for all my work. We are human after all and want to be recognized for our work. I went on a writing retreat with Dani Shapiro in 2017 and when I told her I had been working on the book for more than two years at that point, she stopped me and said, “That’s not that long.” It was an incredibly helpful reminder that writing a book takes time, that it takes the time that it takes, and I held onto it for a long time.
Any reading recommendations?
I have recently added audio books into my life, which has helped me read even more. Some books, those that are very literary or prose focused, don’t work that well as audio books, but the ones that do work are incredible. I just finished listening to Marisa Tomei narrate Elena Ferrante’s The Lying Life of Adults, and I can’t imagine anything better! Now I’m listening to Ferrante’s The Lost Daughter. It’s only five hours long, and I’m almost halfway through just with little driving trips here and there. I loved Catherine Newman’s novel We All Want Impossible Things. I’ve been reading her essays online for years, and she is an absolutely delightful writer. I just finished rereading Miriam Toews’s All My Puny Sorrows and loved it even more this time around.
Thank you, Daisy!