Elisa Faison is the author of the new novel Skin Contact. She is also a freelance editor, and she lives in Carrboro, North Carolina.
Q: What inspired you to write Skin Contact, and how did you create your character Frances?
A: In 2021, I was working as a bookseller, determined to sell as many copies of Sorrow and Bliss and Nightbitch as I could. I loved recommending books about complicated, angry women; about yearning, avoidant, bisexual women; about tumultuous and beautiful marriages.
But as a reader, I was finding myself frustrated. Where were the portrayals of bisexual women who were actually dating women? Where were the portrayals of open marriage that didn’t ultimately suggest they were a doomed or even dangerous phase? Where were the portrayals of polyamory that were as intimate as those of love between two people?
Here’s what else was going on in my life: I was mourning my mother, who died in 2020, and my grandmother, who died in 2019. I was in a very happy open marriage. I was in denial that my relationship with my girlfriend was going to end at any minute. And I was trying to get pregnant.
It was a lot! I managed my feelings about it all the best way I knew how: by writing about them in what would eventually become Skin Contact.
Frances – probably the main character in this polyphonic, multi-POV novel – shares many of my experiences and traits. But the longer I thought about her – and the more I manipulated her environment and created new characters for her to interact with – the more different we became.
It became fun to have her make worse decisions than me, or to say things I’d never say, or think things I’d never think. It allowed me to explore my life in a new way.
Q: How would you describe the relationship between Frances and her husband, Ben?
A: Ben and Frances are married and have been together since college – so, for over a decade. They know each other incredibly well. They love each other, like each other, are attracted to each other, and support each other, even as they grow and, to some extent, become different versions of themselves.
Skin Contact is a love story – and the love between Ben and Frances is, in my opinion, the constant, stabilizing force that grounds the many different forms of love that the novel explores – and its messiness only makes it more real!
Q: The writer Ada Calhoun said of the book, “While exploring the boundaries of desire and fidelity, Elisa Faison’s characters ask big questions about the choices we make and how to negotiate what's beyond our control.” What do you think of that description?
A: I love this description! I think Skin Contact uses the open marriage format in order to explore bigger, more universal questions and experiences. It’s about desire, sexuality, and (non)monogamy – but it’s also a story about grief, aging, the fear of disappearing into marriage and motherhood, the value of friendship, and the expansive potential of love more generally.
Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: Skin Contact is actually the novel’s second title! When I was querying the manuscript – and when we sold the manuscript to Cardinal – it was titled Mommy. I loved (and still love!) this title – but we worried that its sexiness wouldn’t be evident to all readers.
After some brainstorming, we ended up retitling it Skin Contact – and now I can’t imagine it being called anything else; it’s perfect! It refers to a specific moment in the text when Ben and Frances and their friends are on vacation tasting skin contact wine.
Frances ruminates on the term – it reminds her of the skin-to-skin contact between a mother and a baby, the first form of intimacy and trust a newborn has in the world. It’s also – of course! – meant to evoke all of the other forms of intimate touch in the novel!
For me, it’s a really beautiful way to tie together many of the novel's most important themes: motherhood, intimacy, the physicality of friendship—and even loneliness, the desire to be touched.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m very happy to share that I’ve just completed a new manuscript! Without giving away too much, it’s a novel that shares many of the same themes as Skin Contact – but it’s got a much tighter, more cloistered structure, and it’s set during a silent retreat at an Episcopal nunnery. I hope you’ll be able to read it very soon!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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