Q&A with Jessica Rao

  

 

 

Jessica Rao is the author of the new novel Nowhere to Go but Everywhere. She is also a journalist, and she lives in the New York City area.

 

Q: What inspired you to write Nowhere to Go but Everywhere, and how did you create your character Helena?

 

A: Helena made her first appearance in 1994. I had just graduated from college and was living in the basement apartment of my parent’s Brooklyn brownstone. One night, while I was sitting on my $75 Salvation Army couch, listening to Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, I scribbled some lines in a marble notebook about a character named Helena.

 

She lived inside that notebook for 15 years until I became a mom who still had a hankering to write. I signed up for a writing workshop at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. Helena showed up again in some stories I wrote there.

 

Like Helena, I went to the University at Albany and like Helena, I waited tables a few blocks from the Capitol. Unlike her, I didn’t drop out of college, nor did I do what she does in the novel. Except wear a beret. We both have a thing for black berets.

 

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A: The novel’s title was taken from a line in On the Road by Jack Kerouac. A wonderful writing mentor, Jimin Han, suggested that I mine the novel after three failed attempts to give the book a name.

 

Though my characters are ‘90s kids, a couple of them have a deep reverence for Jack Kerouac. They want to go West and live the beatnik road trip dream.

 

Q: The author Jacqueline Friedland said the novel has “echoes of The Catcher in the Rye”--what do you think of that comparison?

 

A: I think it’s a huge compliment. I know the novel can be polarizing, but it’s hard to deny that it’s an important piece of literature. It was one of my favorite books in high school.

Is it an apt comparison? I think yes, and I think it’s the voice. Helena Vinci, the novel’s protagonist, has a salty, if immature, take on things, that’s not unlike Holden Caufield. They both say “it killed me.”

 

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I had an idea but didn’t know exactly. I actually wrote a previous version that had a different ending. It’s in a box in my family room closet.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’m working on another novel. Though I’m not sure where it’s going yet, it feels like it’s going to be a coming-of-middle-age story. Is there such a genre?

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m thrilled to be publishing my first novel, but I’ll add that even though it’s not out yet, it’s already been a wild ride. Tremendous excitement coupled with nerves, and so many to-dos. I now get why my author friends compare publishing a book to having a baby. Talk about not sleeping. 

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb