Q&A With: Melissa Lozada-Oliva, author of Candelaria
By Bex Frankeberger
September promises new works from some of the most innovative, original writers to ever grace our humble shelves, and Melissa Lozada-Oliva is at the top of that list. A prolific writer, she has been a staff favorite since her novel-in-verse, Dreaming of You, debuted in 2021. Her newest work, Candelaria, takes readers from cult ceremonies to secret audio transcripts to family dynamics at the Old Country Buffet at the Watertown Mall. Melissa’s work is at once funny, thoughtful, and spellbinding, and everyone at the store is greedy for more. She was kind enough to answer my questions in preparation for Candelaria’s release, during which I tried my hardest to do more than simply gush.
One thing I found so particular and intriguing in both Candelaria and Dreaming of You is the structure. Both books have a structure and narration that bring to my mind the image of weaving and bobbing. I'm picturing someone doing backflips through a laser field to get to a box of jewels, and of course they (you) make it look so easy. How did you approach the structure for each of these books? For Candelaria specifically, were the POV shifts always a part of the book, or did those change and develop as the novel progressed?
Thank you so much for making me feel like a hacker! I struggled a lot with structure for both of the books. With Dreaming of You I had the guidance of an MFA program and an advisor, and I was constantly looking at the forms of other books for inspiration. I wanted all the poems to stand out on their own, even the ones that were moving the plot forward. I thought about arranging them the way a musician arranges an album. You can still skip around the songs, but together, the album from start to finish gives you a story. With Candelaria, I was still hungry to do genre-breaking things but initially I went overboard. I wanted every POV to be in a different genre. I wanted Candy's to be a movie script. I wanted Bianca to only be her audio transcripts. I wanted Zoe to sound like Wuthering Heights. I wanted Candelaria to be in second person (that stayed) and I wanted Lucia to be flashes of poetry. Honestly, typing it out like this, it still sounds cool, but I simply didn't have enough time. My friend Sarina also kindly asked me, after I told her my plan, "Do you think you're just afraid of trying new things?" And truly, I was. Sometimes you do a bunch of backflips through a laser field in order to not do the very simple, painstaking task of writing a novel. As I progressed, I was able to tap into the character's interior with a simple close third person. It was hard! There's so many ways to hide from a simple sentence. I still do. Anyway, multiple POVs are kind of frowned upon in publishing because they're hard to sell, but I think a lot of us diaspora writers are inclined to go there because we're always thinking of everybody. I wanted Candelaria to feel the way the cover feels: a dance, a battle, and a shared meal between three generations of women.
I'm always curious what the editing process looks like for different writers. Do you have a specific approach you've developed over the years?
I feel like editing is pretty simple. It's like, you write a chapter. You print out the chapter. You sit somewhere for several afternoons going over it with a pen. You go back to your laptop and add all your changes. I kind of bop around. I have the Scrivener program which allows me to jump from chapter to chapter without scrolling and losing my place or my mind. The best part of editing is towards the end when you're just like hmmm how can I make this pretty? For some reason I edit the best when I'm about to send it to a friend, and maybe it's because I'm reading it through their eyes, and I'm like, okay, I gotta impress you. I'd say that's the best editing technique. Choose someone you trust and be like, "Can I send you five pages?" And even if they never respond you get so much done because you're getting something ready for somebody. Like how you only really deep-clean if someone you know is staying over. Maybe that's just me.
A few years ago, Ocean Vuong spoke at Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures and talked about how poetry makes stronger prose. Since then I've started realizing how so many of my favorite works of fiction and memoir are written by poets. Your first novel, Dreaming of You, about a woman who resurrects Selena from the dead, was written in verse. How do you feel poetry has prepared you to write prose? Or, to avoid presumption, how has prose prepared you to write poetry?
I definitely think poetry makes more precise prose because poets are always thinking about the economy of words. We love beauty and dedicate our lives to it, so when we write we want it to be gorgeous. I think poetry prepared me to write characters’ interiors and metaphor, but I needed so much practice when it came to getting a character to walk across the room or show that they were feeling awkward. My editor at one point was like, 'There's a lot of looking around' in this book,' and I was like SHIT! Perhaps Looking Around is the human experience?? I also struggled with not using the passive voice, because the passive voice just sounds more poetic. Being direct is scary. To me there was so much magic in something beginning to happen, instead of it just happening. Anyway, only writing a novel can prepare you for writing a novel.
Did you have any specific books in mind when you were writing Candelaria? Any books you kept on your writing desk?
I was thinking of the multiple POV book The Immortalists by Chloe Benjamin when I was reading this, which is about five siblings who are all told the day they are going to die, and then each POV is just each character's entire life. I also thought about Yo! by Julia Alvarez, and how everybody gets to tell Yolanda's story except for Yolanda, who just mined her family's life for art. I also loved A Tale for The Time Being by Ruth Ozeki and how metaphysical the book allowed itself to get. When I was trying to write something particularly disgusting I turned to The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. A big inspiration for this book came from a short story written by Joe Hill called “Twentieth Century Ghosts,” in which an usher falls in love with a beautiful woman at the theatre who happens to be dead.
Is there any art (books, movies, exhibitions, etc) you're really enjoying right now?
I'm in a Better Call Saul binge right now. I love this show because it's just a character study, and you're never really that anxious that way Breaking Bad made you anxious. It's also really about this relationship between two people, and how much of their relationship is about negotiating the truth in order to stay together. I also love love scammers, and there's an immense pleasure in seeing Jimmy Mcgill pull off a con. I'm loving Pure Colour by Sheila Heti but sometimes I have to put it down because I start crying. I loved the Kehinde Wiley Archaeology of Silence exhibition at the Deyoung museum in San Francisco. My favorite movie this year is Past Lives.
What's a piece of writing advice you've received that has stuck with you over the years?
I remember Morgan Parker saying that writing isn't just writing, it's collecting. Going to a museum is writing. Getting a beer with your friends is writing. Meghan Falley also told me once that you should put a lot of work in your verbs. Don't like, turn running into scurrying or fighting into quarreling. But maybe like, make the phone cry. Make the TV hiss.
Candelaria is now available for purchase along with Melissa’s debut novel-in-verse Dreaming of You and her book of poetry Peluda. You can watch the livestream of the launch for Candelaria right here.
