First Love Interview: Jeanna Kadlec

When I told my writers’ group that I was thinking about starting a newsletter, the first thing they did was crack up—I’d been saying for so long that I wasn’t going to. The second thing they did was what they always do when I share an idea: helped me hone it, gave brilliant suggestions, and gassed me up enough to actually do it. Specifically,

Jeanna Kadlec

suggested that I could include interviews where I ask other authors questions about friendship (my forthcoming book is about friendship, which means that it’s now my literal job to talk about friendship as much as I can in as many venues as I can… a pretty sweet gig tbh). So it’s only fitting that Jeanna—dear friend and author of the powerful, gorgeous memoir Heretic, about coming out, leaving the evangelical church, and building a new and beautiful life for herself from scratch—should be the first person featured in this brand new series, First Love Interviews.

(Disclaimer: Jeanna says some really lovely things about my work in this interview… I didn’t ask her to! That’s just the kind of supportive and generous friend she is.)

BUT FIRST: I’m extending the early-bird pricing for the next session of my Braided Essay seminar, which starts on March 2. Use code NEWYEARS to get 20% off when you register by January 12, and come write a brand-new braided essay with me over Zoom!

(Check out the rest of my current class listings, including The Personal/Critical Essay and an Essay Revision Intensive, here.)

First Love Interview: Jeanna Kadlec

conversations with writer friends about writing and friendship

Jeanna Kadlec is a writer, astrologer, former lingerie boutique owner, and recovering academic. Her writing has appeared in ELLE, NYLON, O the Oprah Magazine, Allure, Catapult, Literary Hub, Autostraddle, and more. A born and bred Midwesterner, she now lives in New York City. Heretic is her first book.

Subscribe to her newsletter, Astrology for Writers.

Tell me about an important friendship from your book, and its significance to the overall story.

There are a lot of close friends who were very important and influential during the years of my early-to-mid twenties that my memoir Heretic is set in, but it is literally impossible for me to talk about what happened, and how I changed, and most especially how I survived those years of coming out and leaving my marriage and leaving the church, without talking about my sister Jo.

I think what people don’t realize—and why would they—is that Jo’s and my friendship was actually a very new thing at that time. Those meaningful scenes of us getting matching tattoos, or her lying in bed with me as I confessed to being suicidal and looking me in the eyes being like I will never leave you—that would have been unthinkable even two, three years prior.

In Heretic, I sort of time jump from our very early childhood, where I was very much in a caretaker role for her because of the domestic abuse our mother was going through, to our relationship as young women, and that leaps over a whole decade-plus of time where Jo and I were not close at all, and often had a downright hostile dynamic. And our general disconnect and antipathy toward each other only grew when I left for college. Our parents got divorced then, so I was gone and really totally unaware of the hell she was going through, navigating their open hatred towards each other and their profound selfishness that often left her totally neglected. And she didn’t feel that she could reach out to me, because why would she?

That changed on a really long car drive between Wisconsin and Iowa we had to take together after my college graduation, when she was a rising college sophomore. I forget why, exactly, she and I had to do it by ourselves, without one of our parents, but we did, and so we had five, six hours in the car, alone, which we had never done, and we just hashed a lot of things out—to the best of our ability at that time, neither of us yet having been to therapy.

That drive was the turning point in our relationship, where we went from being sisters to choosing to be friends, to choosing to actually develop a relationship. And that friendship ended up helping to save my life. So yeah, it was very significant to the “story” of Heretic.

Tell me about a book you’ve loaned or given away multiple copies of.

My answer to this used to be Malinda Lo’s Ash, a YA queer Cinderella re-telling that I used to teach when I was still in academia, but now it’s a toss-up between yours (Negative Space) and Melissa Febos’ Body Work, for different reasons. Both are books I had a million copies of, first off, because of galleys and then the publicity copy and then having pre-ordered and also bought copies at signing, etc. etc. So I had copies to spare.

But also, being real, I don’t recommend books that I am not ten toes down on. And Negative Space is straight-up one of the best memoirs I’ve ever read. At this point, I think I’ve made every one of my IRL friends read it or at least order it. I rarely pull the “you absolutely have to read this” card, so when I do, they tend to pay attention.

And then Body Work, I think is required reading for every memoirist. I remember getting the galley when I was still in revisions for Heretic, and my god, it was just the most therapeutic read of my entire life. I read it in one sitting and emailed Melissa immediately being like, thank you. This was a revelation. So I put it into as many memoirists’ hands as I can.

What’s your favorite book you received as a gift from a friend and why, and who gave it to you?

One of my very best sister-friends, Melissa, who is in Heretic, who I first met in my graduate program, is a poet, and is always giving me new volumes of poetry from brilliant writers I wouldn’t otherwise hear of if not for her. Half of my poetry shelf was curated by Melissa.

She is also the person most responsible for my journey into Mary Oliver, and who first introduced me to some of the Mary poems that have most changed my life over the years (“Landscape,” “The Gardens”). I’m endlessly grateful.

How do writer friends impact your experience of being a writer?

Much like it’s impossible to talk about the Heretic years without my sister, I think it’s impossible for me to talk about the development of my writing career or the process of writing my books without my writers’ group—which is to say, without you, Angela Chen, Deena ElGenaidi, and Nina St. Pierre. Our group, specifically, has been the kiln that has refined my work, my writing practice, my professionalism in the field, and my relationship to myself as an artist over these last—god, nearly six years now? that we’ve all been together?

Being in consistent community with this group doesn’t just help me stay accountable to myself and my work, although that is, of course, a huge side benefit. Being in community with y’all helps me spiral a lot less than I otherwise would. We all have such varied experiences and areas of expertise that we are able to problem-solve on a frankly unreal level. The amount we are able to talk each other down or build each other up in the group chat? Whew. We are incredibly vulnerable with each other when it comes to rough drafts, ego shit, creative fear, and so much more, and that helps to make what I think are often the pitfalls of the job and the industry much, much more manageable in the long-term. Having people you trust, who you know won’t bullshit you and who have the chops to back it up is just so huge.

Brag about your friends! Tell me about some recent/upcoming work from a writer friend that you’re excited about.

It feels very meta to brag about your forthcoming book, Lilly, BUT I have read so much of it that it feels obvious. First Love is so good. I am so excited for it. And our fellow writers’ group friend Nina St. Pierre’s gorgeous forthcoming memoir, Love Is a Burning Thing, is coming out the same day! We are gonna be partying.

A brilliant, recently released novel that I got the privilege of blurbing was

gabrielle korn

’s Yours for the Taking. Don’t let the climate change dystopia sci-fi of it all scare you: it’s thoroughly queer and wildly engrossing. I read it in one sitting.

Another book I read in one sitting: my dear friend Lyz Lenz (

lyz

)’s forthcoming memoir, This American Ex Wife: How I Ended My Marriage and Started My Life. I read a very, very early draft of it that wasn’t even finished, and that version bowled me over. The world! Is! Not! Ready!

Brag about yourself! What’s something you’re working on/recently finished that you want people to know about?

My next book projects are still in the early stages right now, so you can find me at my newsletter, astrology for writers, which is in a big stage of growth and expansion! I specifically wrote about my negotiation of the Author vs. Astrologer tightrope (and getting witchier in public) in a recent essay, How the New York Times Forced Me Out of the Broom Closet.