I first stumbled upon Joshilyn Jackson’s books while working in a small indie bookstore in North Carolina, McIntyre’s Books. Jackson’s The Girl Who Stopped Swimming was on one of the tables, and I picked it up—and then proceeded to read Gods in Alabama and Between, Georgia, getting lost in her narratives and characters. In 2017, through her novel The Almost Sisters, I rediscovered Jackson. And when I heard about her latest novel, Never Have I Ever, I was intrigued. I don’t usually go for the psychological twister books, but Jackson’s signature storytelling drew me in and took me on a wild ride. We caught up via email to discuss her newest book, parenting, and writing.
I read that Never Have I Ever came out of your last book, The Almost Sisters, which I loved, with all the subtle geeky elements. Can you tell me more about that? Does that happen often?
Midway through The Almost Sisters, the narrator, Leia, sits down after a shocking day to have tea with Wattie, a 90-year-old woman who has been her grandmother’s best friend since childhood. Leia’s learned something about her grandmother that has changed how she perceives her family, her town, and her own history. She’s wrecked, and she asks Wattie, who was involved and who has known all along, how she lives with it. Wattie tells her, “You can’t go around holding the worst thing you ever did in your hand, staring at it. You gotta cook supper, put gas in the car. You gotta plant more zinnias.” I knew immediately that line was the jumping off point for my next book.
In Never Have I Ever, my narrator Did Something. It was a long time ago, and she isn’t the same person now. She’s wholly reinvented herself as a working wife and mother. No one knows about her former life, and the book begins when a mysterious woman named Roux appears at her book club, hijacking the discussion and turning it into a drinking game. It soon becomes clear that the game has a purpose; Roux knows Amy’s past. To protect her sweet, normal life, Amy decides to play Roux’s game, though she knows there will be dangerous and deadly consequences.
I think Wattie’s line and the book that grew out of that line both have genesis in my work with Reforming Arts, a non-profit that brings liberal arts education to Georgia’s women’s prisons. One of my students who has been in prison for most of her adult life will be released soon. She is outspoken, brilliant, an excellent role model, and an advocate for other incarcerated women.
She once told me her greatest fear was that after she was released, she would be reduced to the worst thing she ever did. She is an artist, a mother, a grandmother, and a straight-A student who is close to completing a college degree. She has served her time and worked hard to grow and change and learn, and yet once she’s outside, potential employers, landlords, and communities might see her only as a single act committed thirty-some years ago.
All of your books feel very character-driven, and in some, the South actually seems like a character as well. While setting played less of a role in Never Have I Ever, this book was very character-driven—Roux is a marvelous case-study, and Amy is no angel, either. There’s a lot to unpack with these women. Was writing this book different from writing your other books?
Not in terms of character. I think I became a writer because as a child and a young woman, people were so hard for me to decode. I wanted and I still want to understand The Other. Writing (and reading) is the deliberate practice of empathy, and I was so invested in learning empathy that I made a career out of it.
Even though I’ve changed genres, my regular readers are really liking the book so far. I am delighted, and I think it is because Never Have I Ever is still mine in most of the essential ways. It’s got my kind of complicated female characters who act instead of reacting. My kind of themes, particularly the transformative nature of motherhood, redemption, and all the ways that the past is alive inside the present. My kind of plot twists; I usually have murders or crime in my books. My kind of language and images. All the big changes were structural. I moved narrative drive to the front and raised the volume on it.
How do you think the creative community can support women, and mothers, especially?
When my kids were babies, I used to pack them up and shove them at my husband, sending him off to his mom’s for weekends so I could write. It took me years to sell a book, and when I finally did, my MIL said, “So… all those weekends, when you sent them to me, you really were writing a book?” She was floored.
She just thought I needed a break, and she was happy to give me one. She gave me that time. My husband gave me that time. And best of all, they wouldn’t have resented it even if I had never sold a book. The best thing we can give each other is time. If someone does it for you, that’s love. You have to reciprocate.
What was your writing process like for this book? There are so many narrative threads to it—how did you keep them straight?
Thank you. I don’t know how. It’s just a thing that my brain can do. I have always been able to do it. I have never taken notes or used an outline. It’s just a gift. Like many gifts, it comes with a price. My brain is very bad in other ways. I have sensory issues, anxiety, and trouble regulating both my emotions and my volume. I have almost no executive function. I have a hard time keeping track of my limbs. I am so clumsy that I am constantly bruised from ramming into things while paying attention to the story in my brain. But I am glad because I love my weird, amazing, very specific novel-writer’s memory. I also have the ability (or curse) to get obsessed and stay obsessed. The worlds and the people I invent take up a great deal of my head space, and all those threads seem to me like a single thing: a story I want to tell.
What are you struggling with, as a parent and as a writer, right now?
My daughter is a rising senior. Help! We are deep into SATs and college visits, and I feel this terrible pressure, as if I have one more year to get her ready to launch. My son is prepping to launch at the same time. So it’s double-scary. He is also neurodivergent, so he lived at home for college. He is finishing his last class this summer, looking for a full-time job, and preparing to live independently. We are very excited and hopeful for both of them. I’m also terrified, like a bird about to shove at her fledglings and hope the whole “wings” thing works out.
They are great people though. He is so brilliant! He has a memory that makes mine look sad! More importantly, he is ethical and soft-hearted and genuinely likes helping people. She is smart, empathetic, passionate, and an extreme extrovert—I have no idea how many recessives had to get full expression for that to happen. My husband, son, and I are introverts. But I love her ability to make friends and build community wherever she goes.
What books inspire you, and what are you reading right now?
The best books are the ones I loved most in childhood. My brain was a sponge, and they all had influence that I can see in my work. By nine, I was reading the literature I snuck out of my mother’s stack: To Kill a Mockingbird, Tender Is the Night, Roots. I was also pilfering my teenaged brother’s books: The Hobbit, Watership Down, the Conan books. I also read all the things my friends were reading: Trixie Belden books, Charlotte’s Web, A Little Princess. I adored Robin McKinley and Stephen King. I still do. I was ten when The Stand came out, and by now I must have read that book 30 times.
I am still an eclectic reader, though I strongly favor novels over non-fiction or short stories. I’ll read just about any genre. I always have a paper book and an audio book going. I am currently reading The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern and listening to The Silent Patient.
What advice would you give to a writer trying to juggle parenthood and writing?
Decide that time to write is important, and do what you need to do to create that time. If you have a partner, advocate for him or her to help you create free hours here and there. If you don’t, ask friends or relatives to help you out. Trade babysitting hours. Get up an hour earlier than everyone else, and make every single one of those dead silent, perfect minutes count.
I started writing my first novel when my first-born child was a couple of months old. You can do it, but you will need help. It’s okay to ask for that help, and to barter for it, and even to fight for it.
What’s next for you?
Another psychological suspense novel. I loved writing Never Have I Ever, and I want to stick with this for a few books, see where it leads. This one is called Two Truths and a Liar, and it begins like this:
The day my baby disappeared, I woke up to see a witch peering in my bedroom window.
She was little more than a dark shape with eyes, razor-wire skinny but somehow female, staring in through the partly open drapes. Sunrise lit up the thin, silvery hair that straggled out from under her hat.
I hope she’s not standing on my basil plants, I thought, hazy and unworried. Even half asleep, I knew that there was no such thing as witches. I’d long forgotten the most important thing the theatre had ever taught me—that the human body can hold two truths at once. Even truths that seem to rule each other out: There’s no such things as witches, true. And I was looking at one.
Author Photo: Wes Browning