Can you just talk about her desire to be saved or rescued from her life, and how that intersects with the beauty that she experiences? SN: The narrator feels trapped in her life, but she also experiences moments of overwhelming beauty. The narrator hasn't really had a lot of parental figures in her life either - her mom is kind of unknowingly absent and her dad was emotionally abusive to her. She wants someone to pay attention to her and listen to her and talk to her. JKF: When I was thinking about writing this book, there's so much that is tied into what makes us attracted to certain people, and I don't think it's as simple as, “I'm attracted to her because she's a girl” or “I'm attracted to him because he's a guy.” is really starved for… not love, but for a kind of attention.

SN: Can you just talk about riding the line between queer love and queer obsession, especially as it relates to the age difference between the two characters?

Once I got the voice, I sort of began thinking about the book more clearly and then plot points and other characters started coming into view a little bit more. It twisted my heart a bit and it gave me the idea for a voice that fit with what I was thinking of with the novel, which would be a pizza delivery girl falling into obsession with a customer that she delivers to. There was a point where I was deleting emails out of my email inbox and I found these old love emails I used to send to my first girlfriend, and there was just something so sweet and genuine about those emails… the length of them, just unapologetic, sentimental. I just didn't know how I would make all of that work. I'd been really wanting to do a teen character of some kind, and I knew I also wanted to do a pizza delivery novel. JEAN KYOUONG FRAZIER: I was a lot of short stories similar topics - young parenthood, addiction, sexuality, Americanization. SARAH NEILSON: What inspired this character? Shondaland sat down with Frazier to discuss art, love emails, complicated queer characters, and what it means to celebrate pride. Pizza Girl is a singular novel, complex and gripping, a short but sweeping story of a truly compelling character. Her fixation on, and relationship with, an older woman reveals new backroads into her psyche and her needs, while the drab, and, at time, bright landmarks of her life not only draw the reader deep into her character, but propel the story to surprising places.Īs we enter Pride month, in a year where a pandemic has changed much of how we come together, it’s especially vital to think about, read, and uplift queer stories that go beyond the typical narratives of white cisgender men and coming out narratives. Her narrator’s interiority is a map of all the pain, desire, and boredom that make a life. Frazier delivers a novel that is as breezy to read as it is hard-hitting.

Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier