Jean Kyoung Frazier’s debut novel Pizza Girl was published by Doubleday in June of 2020. Pizza Girl was named an NPR, Marie Claire, and Teen Vogue best book of the year and a most anticipated book of 2020 by Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Time, People, Buzzfeed, Bustle and more. Jean received her BA from the University of Southern California and her MFA from Columbia University. She currently resides in New York City.

Joe Bohlinger: You described in an earlier interview that you had come up with the idea for Pizza Girl when you were ordering pizza to your house in college and described it as “full of messy, rowdy humans and a semi potty trained dog.” I love that description, but I think for most people like me who want to get to where you are, that place doesn't seem like the most conducive to getting writing done. But clearly it was important to Pizza Girl. Could you talk a little bit about how that time in your life was important, and how it influenced either your writing in general or Pizza Girl specifically?

Jean Kyoung Frazier: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a good question. I think there's like a couple of things. You can have an environment you’re productive writing in, but not feel inspired to write anything, you know what I mean? So I feel like sometimes it's really hard to have both. But that's why I try not to feel bad if I'm in a place where I'm not doing any writing… Look at right now—I feel like perhaps I'm not so eager to get back into my second book because I don't really feel like a member of this world. And at least for the type of writing I like to do, I like being around people and I like getting to know other people. And, you know, the best thing to me is writing that feels very grounded. And so, yeah, even though it might not sound like the best place to be preparing to write with way too many people and the dog thing, I don't know. I feel like those years are really important to me, just personally.

JB: Do you feel that pressure of right now people assuming that there's a lot being done in this forced downtime we are all having? Honestly, it sounds like you're in a pretty good place.

JKF: I mean, you have days it's easier said than done sometimes. But I don't know—in general, America specifically has a really toxic mindset towards productivity lifestyle, and I've been trying really to get away from that. Away with that. Away from that. Because I think ultimately even if you get stuff done, you're kind of already looking at the next thing to get done if you don't really give yourself many moments to enjoy what you're doing.

JB: You mentioned in a previous interview that you weren't someone who shared your work (specifically this novel project) while you were in college or your MFA. Was that something you were anxious about? Did you feel that nervousness while you were working on Pizza Girl?

JKF: No, I've been trying to get more away from that. Because definitely before my first book came out, I really did want to get something published, you know, and I wanted to do it when I was young, too, especially with the project like this. I wanted it to be before the experience of being like 18 was a little lost or too far behind me. And the reason I don't share, I mean—I'm always trying new things and changing my opinions about things. But coming out of the MFA, which was a great experience for me, and I love workshop and I got to know a lot of brilliant writers…I just think that if you get too many voices, too many cooks in the kitchen, you can get really self-conscious. And as someone that gets really self-conscious and lets peoples’ voices get in my head, it's better to just go cold turkey and not talk to anyone, especially about the project. In terms of actually seeing it, no one read it until I sent it to who would become my agent.

JB: I was curious, did you submit chapters of Pizza Girl to your workshop?

JKF: I didn't start working on Pizza Girl until my last semester in the MFA. I came into it to write a different novel and I just wasn't making any headway on it. And so I started going back to what I like, know, and love, and what I think a lot of MFA people can relate to, which is short stories. I remember I finished Pizza Girl and my agent was like, do you have some short stories from the program? And I was like, yeah, but they led me to Pizza Girl. So publishing them would be redundant. But there is something about all the work that doesn't end up being something but ends up leading to something.

JB: It sounds like you were building towards Pizza Girl in a lot of different ways, but I was curious about the voice. Was the voice something that came to you when you developed that incredible first line? Did her voice just kind of follow after that? 

JKF: I'm not trying to brag at all, but it takes like a lot of effort to make something sound really conversational and effortless, at least for me. I think it can be easy to read really voicey stuff and think like, “Oh, man, that must just be so inherent to how they write.” It's not that if you don't have a voice that comes naturally, then you shouldn't do it. It just means you're going to have to work harder.

JB: When you were coming up with the voice, did it feel genuine? Or did you run into moments where the voice that was speaking seemed like it wasn’t authentic?

JKF: I do think it's almost like prepping for a game, like if you're an athlete or, I don't know, like if you have a big speech, you kind of have to get in the mindset, kind of like how Beyonce becomes her alter ego. I did try to think about like memories of that time in my life and think: What was I really trying to say? And that is a lot of stuff that doesn't make it on the page. But, yeah, I thought about a lot of personal things. 

JB: Were you conscious of big ideas (like identity, the millennial generation, capitalism) when you were coming up with the character and the plot here? Or did those things kind of emerge as those came? 

JKF: Yeah, it's a little bit of both. I definitely knew I wanted it to be a millennial novel. We're not the youngest generation anymore. And it's time for us to write novels about our experiences in that way and not have older generations tell us what it was like to be a millennial. So, yeah, that was a very important part. And, you know, capitalism makes me ill. So I wanted to address that. And specifically, how as millennials, we’re in just such a shit time to be coming of age and trying to get a job. It's just all so fucking sick, you know. I didn’t know necessarily I would write about Koreaness as much as I did, but that kind of came into it. You can know what you want to do, but then you try to see if you can pull it off and pull it all together. And, you know, even now, I probably would have wanted to fit more stuff about sexuality and culture in there, too.

JB: So when you sent this for the first time to an agent and you got feedback, how is that process? Did you start again from zero and just rewrite? Or did you actually go back in and do some wedging and things like that?

JKF: A little bit of wedging, because my agent really liked it and he wanted to go out with it pretty quick. Which, you know, you can say is a good decision, or a bad one. We agreed, though. And so we did a pretty quick round of edits, something like a week and a half, two weeks. But I mean, I worked on it really quickly. It was like a lot of it was just little things that could just be solved with a line, I think. Sometimes it might seem more daunting than it is, but then when you get into it, you're like, I can fix that with two lines. Like what he's asking is not that big of a deal, actually.

JB: When you were working on that first draft, what did your daily writing habit look like? 

JKF: I do believe in looking at your manuscript every day or thinking about it. It’s essentially my routine. I'm just an early riser and I was working full time, so I would just get up before my job, at like five thirty, and I'd look at it for a minute, maybe do some writing before work. then I'd go to work, get back, and sometimes I'd work on it. But I mostly write in the morning—or I did when I had my full-time job. I think sometimes when I have too much free time, it's easy to be like, “Oh, I have all the time of day to work on it, so why work on it?” But having that feeling that your novel is not going to get done if you don't make the time to get it done is good. So I like being busy personally, but everyone is different.

JB: In your acknowledgments, you mention like so many past professors by name. What role have writing mentors played for you as a young writer?

JKF: I liked community, and I just like reminders that I don't suck. I think that if there's anything professors do, hopefully, if you have good ones, is that they're encouraging and they push you to keep working. Your classmates do that. That's why I tried to name a lot of people I took classes with. I really respect their work and how they push me, even if they didn't realize they were pushing me.

JB: Do you think there can be detriments to surrounding yourself with only other writers? Do you also enjoy being around non-writing people?

JKF: I think it's a little bit of both. I believe in competition, if that's what you mean. I don't know why we make that so negative. I think there’s a way to be competitive and not gross. When you read someone's work and you're like, “Damn, that was really good. I wish I did that.” And then hopefully you try to one up it or it inspires you. So yeah, I believe in competition.

JB: So, back to your book. I love that the novel ends and begins with the same line: “Her name was Jenny Hauser and every Wednesday I put pickles on her pizza.” Obviously they're different because the last one is spoken in dialogue and the first one is in the interiority of the character. But was that cyclical structure something you thought of immediately, or was that like you groping for the end and that emerges from the darkness?

JKF: Kind of groping? I knew I wanted the ending to be essentially like that, because the epilogue is sort of playing with the idea of what an epilogue is. My editor did say when we were working on it, “Do you think the character needs to change more?? And I'm like, “Why?” That's an expectation of a reader. But that's not actually how life is. I wish I could say that I fucked something up and then I never fucked it up in the same way ever again. But like, you fuck up, you fuck up, you fuck up and you just pivot and pivot and pivot until finally one day you're like, “Oh, I guess they did change a little bit.” So all the changes in the epilogue are slight if they are. But the biggest change is that the main character acknowledges her daughter finally, and hopefully she won't drink after that night. She probably will, frankly, knowing what we know about her, but she's acknowledging her daughter at least, and that's a step. Then I realized, “Oh, the first line could be the last line.”

JB: In the time you were working on editing the novel before its publications, was all your focus on that rewriting process? Or were you letting yourself move away from the project a little bit?

JKF: I think the scariest thing about coming out with a book is, at least for me, is that it just gets this point where it doesn't feel like it belongs to you anymore. But that’s okay. Ultimately stories shouldn't really belong to anyone. They should belong to everyone. That's the whole point you, know? But that is still hard to come to terms with. I don't know if I'll feel that way about my second book, but I definitely felt that way about this one.