Happy Wednesday! It’s two author interviews in a row — I know y’all are shook. This week, we were delighted to welcome author Alanna Okun to the podcast this week to talk about her new book The Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater (out now from Flatiron Books).
You can listen to the podcast using the embedded player below, or download the file directly to take with you on the go!
You can find Alanna on Twitter or at her website, and the book is available wherever you get your books.
Get at me on Twitter, email the podcast, and friend me (Gin Jenny) and Whiskey Jenny on Goodreads. Or if you wish, you can find us on iTunes (and if you enjoy the podcast, give us a good rating! We appreciate it very very much).
Credits
Producer: Captain Hammer
Photo credit: The Illustrious Annalee
Theme song by: Jessie Barbour
Transcript is available under the jump!
THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to, or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.
WHISKEY JENNY: Hello! Welcome to the Reading the End Bookcast with the Demographically Similar Jennys. I’m Whiskey Jenny.
GIN JENNY: And I’m Gin Jenny.
WHISKEY JENNY: And today we are joined by very special guest Alanna Okun, author of The Curse of the Boyfriend Sweater: Essays on Crafting. Thank you so much for joining us, Alanna.
ALANNA OKUN: Thank you guys so much for having me.
GIN JENNY: We’re so delighted to have you.
WHISKEY JENNY: So first up we always talk about what we’re reading. And Alanna, we thought we could ask you the corollary as well of what are you crafting right now, if you want to tell us. So what are you reading and/or crafting right now?
ALANNA OKUN: Oh my God, I love this question. Especially because I like to read and craft at the same time. Like if I’m doing something simple enough, I can knit while— especially on a Kindle, it’s just easier to look at it. Although I’ve been known to hold a book open with my foot, which is maybe kind of gross.
GIN JENNY: No, I do that when I’m flossing my teeth as well.
[LAUGHTER]ALANNA OKUN: There you go. So right now I’m reading two books that are both wonderful, and sort of similar in unexpected ways. One is Homesick for Another World, which is short stories by this woman named Ottessa Moshfegh, I think. But she’d written this wonderful, wonderful novel called Eileen that I just devoured over the course of one weekend. And it’s just very strange and very funny, and sort of gross but also really compelling. And she’s written this book of short stories as well, so I’m working my way through that.
And at the same time, I’m reading this really wonderful— I think it’s a debut novel by this woman named Rowan Hisayo Buchanan called Harmless Like Me. And it’s just so cool. It’s this woman living in the 1970s. She’s just growing up, she’s left her family. She’s figuring out sort of how she wants to live. She’s Japanese-American living in New York. And then the book sort of shifts perspective and zags to the future to basically present day, where we find out that she has had a son and abandoned him. And now he’s looking for her. And it’s just so interesting the way it trades off these perspectives.
And reading both these books at the same time, they’re both very much about women making their own way, and maybe being slightly unpleasant, but that’s OK. I don’t know, and they’re just both really funny and really voicey, so that’s just been a joy.
And I’m actually crafting something that is going to make me sound like an absolute lunatic. So—
GIN JENNY: I mean, we already read your book and we know that you have made sweaters for rocks, so.
ALANNA OKUN: I’m actually about to outdo even myself. I am making a sweater for my book, essentially. So there’s sort of a back story here. There’s this yarn brand I really like called We Are Knitters. And I’d been just emailing with them being like, hey, I have this book coming out. I don’t know, is there anything that you guys want to talk about? And this woman wrote back and she was like, I have a wild idea. Why don’t you knit the book cover? Because it’s very stitch looking.
GIN JENNY: Yeah!
ALANNA OKUN: I’m like, I’ve never done that. That seems like a good challenge. So I started it, and I’m doing the words and everything. And then I saw my best friend the other night and she was like, that’s just a tube of fabric. Just add sleeves to it and you can make it a tiny sweater. [LAUGHTER] Why the hell not? I’m going to knit my book a sweater. [LAUGHTER]
This is what happens in the run up to publication. You just kind of crack. [LAUGHTER] For so long I was moving commas around and writing the acknowledgments. There were still little deck chairs I could rearrange. And now it’s out in 48 hours from when we’re talking about this, and I have nothing to do but knit my book cover.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Well I think that sounds super charming. I can’t wait to see the book sweater.
GIN JENNY: Whenever you do finish it, you have to send us a picture and we’ll put it in the show notes.
ALANNA OKUN: I’m actually trying to finish it today if possible. So yeah, that’s where my head and hands are at right now.
GIN JENNY: Whiskey Jenny, what are you reading?
WHISKEY JENNY: I am reading The Maltese Falcon, by— Dashiell?— Hammett.
GIN JENNY: Sure.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, there’s an I and an E in there that threw me off. Anyway, I’ve never seen the movie or read it, so I have no idea what’s happening, but I love those old noir detective stories. A woman with long legs walked in in the second paragraph and I was like, yep, great, here we go. [LAUGHTER] She’s kind of boring, actually, but I love the detective’s assistant, Effie Perine.
GIN JENNY: I love Effie.
WHISKEY JENNY: And the detective is Sam Spade. I know, isn’t Effie a great name? And they have excellent banter, and I want the book to be entirely just them bantering. But then this other lady shows up with long legs and she ruins everything.
GIN JENNY: Dammit!
WHISKEY JENNY: What are you reading, Gin Jenny?
GIN JENNY: I’m reading two things. I’m reading this book called Behave: The Biology of Humans at our Best and Worst, by Robert Sapolsky, which is this very— it’s massive, so I’m trying to read one chapter a day. But it’s this very friendly and readable overview of what causes human behavior. So he starts out at the mechanical level of your brain sending signals, and then steps back and looks at hormones, upbringing, and stuff like that, and how humans develop over the course of their lifespan.
So there’s a lot of stuff that I have to— some of it gets really technical, especially about— he’s a neurologist, so he especially gets really technical about parts of the brain. And it would be really great if I had some kind of diagram to look at. Because I never remember the parts of the brain. There’s so many parts of the brain, you guys.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: It sounds like you’re basically decoding humans. It sounds like you’re going to be able to unlock humans once you read this book.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, that’s what I think, yes. Thank you for noticing. That is what will happen. [LAUGHTER] And then kind of as a break from that, I’m reading one of my most very favorite fanfics, Earthbound Spook, by cest_what, which is a seventh year at Hogwarts story where Draco Malfoy has been killed by Aurors. But then another Draco Malfoy shows up from another universe in which things have gone very differently. It’s super plotty and fun, and I go back to it all the time. And it’s a good counterpoint to this extremely— I don’t want to say it’s hard to read the behavioral book, but it gets pretty technical, so it’s nice to have a break.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, Alanna, we also always ask our guests, sea or space?
GIN JENNY: Yeah, we have to know.
ALANNA OKUN: So I’ve had a lot of time to think about this, and I unequivocally think sea. Because it’s right here.
JENNYS: Yes!
ALANNA OKUN: It’s right here. It’s right there, and we still know nothing about it.
GIN JENNY: Exactly!
ALANNA OKUN: Isn’t it like 90% of the oceans haven’t been explored? And it’s literally like, I can see it. That’s so wild! And obviously no shade to space, but I don’t know, I think it’s really cool to have just this source of unplumbed mysteries basically in our own backyard. So sea, definitely.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh my gosh, Alanna, you’re a woman after our own heart.
GIN JENNY: This is practically word for word what we each think about the sea. [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: I mean, you talk about like going on vacation in this book to the sea. It’s so strange to me that it’s like, fun, happy, party time, but also we have no idea what’s down there.
ALANNA OKUN: Exactly! I actually wonder if there is something— maybe the behavior book will address this. You’re sort of drawn to this mass, like there’s almost this gravitational pull. And it makes everything else feel so much more inconsequential. Where it’s like, oh, if I’m just dipping my toes in the waves, the stupid email I sent, or the fight that I had, or whatever, it just feels so much smaller. Because any number of creatures could rise up and pull me back under. [LAUGHTER] It’s not my exact thought process, but you know.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, Whiskey Jenny and I have a lot of strong feelings about the fact that YA fantasy novels do not feature enough sea creatures, such as selkies or mermaids.
ALANNA OKUN: There you go.
WHISKEY JENNY: They really don’t.
ALANNA OKUN: Did you ever read— it was Eva Ibbotson. She wrote— I forget which one it was. Anyway, she wrote a couple books that I absolutely loved. One was called The Secret of Platform 13. One was called Island of the Aunts, which I think is more likely to have it. But there were selkies in one of those books.
GIN JENNY: No, yeah, yeah, yeah! I don’t remember the creatures that were in Platform 13, but definitely Island of the Aunts had sea creatures, sea monsters.
ALANNA OKUN: No, for sure. I mean, I guess island would imply that. Anyway, that’s what I always think of when I think of selkies now.
GIN JENNY: Well, Whiskey Jenny has a favorite Colin Farrell movie that features a selkie, right?
WHISKEY JENNY: I do. I was just watching Ondine this morning, actually. [LAUGHTER] I thought, oh, I’ll turn it on while I clean my room. I’m nothing if not predictable.
GIN JENNY: Well, Alanna, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and this book, and how you got started crafting.
ALANNA OKUN: Yeah, absolutely. So I’ve been crafting truly my entire life. Like, I think my grandma taught me how to knit when I was six. And it was just this thing that’s always been really present. It’s funny, because it’s definitely been sort of a central metaphor, but it’s also just been this thing that I do all the time. Like, it’s very practical and very literal. So I’ve been crafting really the whole time, and about as long I’ve been writing. Maybe the knitting predates it by a year or two. Writing has just always kind of been my lodestar.
And they sort of live close to each other in my brain. I think that the muscle that controls writing and the muscle that controls knitting have to kind of live near one another, at least in terms of how I think about them. So I grew up in Boston. I went to Vassar College in sort of upstate-slash-sidestate New York. And then that was when I really realized, OK, I can make a go of this writing thing. And so I ended up moving to the city after graduating and did a variety of sort of publishing, writing adjacent stuff.
And I ended up working at BuzzFeed, maybe as BuzzFeed was becoming a thing that people knew about. This was around like 2012 so I had started seeing stuff surfacing on my Facebook feed. But this was when they were really starting to build out the editorial operation, and I covered a lot of women’s issues and a lot of politics but then found my love in the DIY space.
And my wonderful, wonderful boss at the time and I ended up launching the DIY section. Which was such a misnomer, because literally it was just stuff we thought was cool. A lot of it was look at this weird stuff on Etsy, or hey, here’s how you make so and so. But a lot of it was also just crazy fonts, or architecture, or whatever. And that was really my entree into this world of writing about crafting in any real way. And I wrote a couple of personal essays about crafting and how it had helped me while I was at BuzzFeed.
And I ended up leaving that job maybe a year and a half ago, and now I work at this wonderful little website called Racked, which is part of Vox media. And we do basically everything to do with how and why we shop. It’s all features and essays and reported pieces on the culture and psychology and business and economics of shopping, which is really, really fun. And it’s really nice to be part of this small, strong team. And so I’ve been writing about crafting, though, ever since. And I sort of do that at my current job, I’ve done it at my old job.
And the way the book came about was, shortly after those first couple of BuzzFeed essays, I realized that I just had a lot more to say on this topic, that I really thought that I could write fifteen essays, more than two. And so I started poking around and figuring out, like, how does one make a book? And I’m very privileged in a lot of ways— not just my demographic, but also I live in New York, and I have access to a lot of these people who know how the publishing industry works. And there is definitely a barrier to entry, and I don’t want any of this to sound like, “and then I just found my agent because I was really talented.” So all of this is with that caveat.
Basically so I just asked a bunch of people for a bunch of help. And then eventually, I was sending out these cold emails to agents with what I thought was a book proposal. And then when I finally found my wonderful agent— who actually is a crafter as well, which is kind of a coincidence— she gently disabused me and helped me form an actual proposal. Which took about as long to write as the first draft of the book.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh!
ALANNA OKUN: Yeah. And then we sent it out and heard back from Flatiron, and they’ve just been so wonderful. And it’s cool because my editor is not a crafter at all. And so that was part of the formulation of this book, was the idea was that obviously we wanted it to appeal to my people and to have the language and the insider knowledge, but also hopefully appeal to people who are not crafters, and who just want to read about anxiety, or grief, or finding this thing that can be a guiding light through all that stuff— in maybe a slightly less self-helpy way than I just made that sound.
[LAUGHTER]Yeah, it’s just been really wild, and it’s been really fun to kind of explore these different corners of the topic and of the internet. And meeting all these folks who were like, oh yeah, I know about the curse of the boyfriend sweater! Because that’s not something I made up. That’s borrowed from the lore of the knitting community. So that’s been really rad, to have people just be like, I feel so seen by this. Because that was kind of the goal the whole time.
GIN JENNY: Well, so I really love the title of this book, and the idea of the curse of the boyfriend sweater. So can you tell us what that is, this piece of received wisdom?
ALANNA OKUN: Yes, absolutely. So it’s this sort of old wives tale, quote unquote, that is all about if you set out to knit your partner— be it a boyfriend, a girlfriend, what have you— a sweater— and it’s only a sweater. It only applies to sweaters— you are going to break up before it’s done.
And there’s sort of variations on this theme. Other people will say, yeah, yeah, yeah, you can finish the sweater, you can give the sweater, but you won’t get married. Harm will befall you if you haven’t locked it down and you choose to make someone a sweater. Which obviously this is a problem on literally every level you can think of. Not only is it super heteronormative and patriarchal, and the wedding is the end all be all— just like, there are so many different kinds of relationships.
And I will say— and this is a spoiler for the book— I did knit, or crochet rather, my college boyfriend a sweater. And I saw him a couple of months ago and he was like, oh yeah, I think I still have that sweater. And we ended up breaking up, but not because of the sweater.
GIN JENNY: Well that’s what I was going to say. Because you say in the book that you came close to breaking the curse, but I think you actually broke the curse. You made it and you finished it and you gave it to him, and you didn’t break up until later.
ALANNA OKUN: And I think actually, when I talk about breaking the curse, I think more what I mean— and this is maybe quite self-aggrandizing— but I ended up making a sweater for myself. And I’ve made a lot of sweaters for myself. And kind of realizing, that’s the thing. You know, that I’m the one who wants them. If I want to make this thing, if I want to live my life the way I want it to, I can do that.
And that’s the thing that knitting has always been for me, and crafting in general, is just finding this power, and making the world look a little bit how I want it to, regardless of if there’s a boyfriend around or not, you know?
GIN JENNY: Yeah.
ALANNA OKUN: That, I think, is sort of the more like powerful codebreaker and it comes to the curse. But again, I think everyone’s mileage varies. And I say if you want to make your partner a sweater, go forth and make half a dozen sweaters.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well you’ve talked about the emotional meaning of crafting to you. And I’m just curious how early in your crafting life you started thinking about its larger meaning to you and the weight behind these projects.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, when did it start being a metaphor?
[LAUGHTER]ALANNA OKUN: That’s a really, really good question. And I also sort of wrote this book from the perspective of, like, oh, I’ve figured it out, and so now I can fill in everything. I actually don’t know that— the first time that I really can register knitting as having been very clearly a balm for me was, the summer after I graduated high school was during the recession. So I just didn’t have a job and was really depressed and was just hanging around my parents’ house all day and all night, and was staying up till 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning. And I don’t think I even registered at that time that that was depression. Like, that’s what depression feels like.
And that was when I really started crafting— I don’t even know if in earnest is the right phrase. It was fairly manic, honestly. It was just like, I wanted to know that even if no one else was choosing me for these jobs, even if I didn’t have anywhere to go, even if I was anxious about starting school, I could do something to help myself. And so I watched YouTube videos and read all these books, and crocheted a horrible dress, and knitted a sweater, and just really kind of cracked it for myself. And so even if I wouldn’t have been super articulate about it, I think that was the first time where I was like, oh, this is something that I can use to save myself a little bit. And everything since then kind of was like this dim awakening.
But I didn’t really put words to it until close to the end of college, when I was taking a writing class and I ended up writing an essay about knitting. And it’s funny, because when I sold the book I was like, oh yeah, I already have an essay about knitting from a few years ago. Maybe I should see if it fits. And you guys, I couldn’t even get more than three paragraphs into it.
GIN JENNY: Oh no! [LAUGHTER]
ALANNA OKUN: It was just so snotty college kid. Every other word was an adverb. I was obviously so pleased with myself and thought I’d just solved everything and was being so snarky. And kind of dishonest in that snark. It was just so ironically distanced that, like— I don’t know. Anyway, none of that essay made it into the book.
GIN JENNY: Well I think it’s good when you go back. Like, it’s painful, but I always feel like it’s good to go back to earlier writing and see how bad it is, because then I feel like I’ve grown.
ALANNA OKUN: Absolutely. And throughout this process I’ve had to keep going back and have looked at stuff that I wrote early on in my career at BuzzFeed, and then when I went to Racked, and freelance stuff. And as I’ve gotten older and as I’ve been edited more rigorously, the rate of return feels so much higher. Stuff that I wrote seven years ago, I want burned. Stuff that I wrote five years ago, I’m still like, you know what? Maybe it was overly earnest, but I could see the ironic facade falling away, and this obsession with voice becoming a lot more seamless. So that’s actually been really kind of nice, to be like, I don’t hate everything. [LAUGHTER] The stuff when I thought I was cute as shit.
GIN JENNY: When you were writing the book, when you were in the process of thinking, OK, yeah, I really want this to be a book, how did it change from when you originally conceived of it to the finished product?
ALANNA OKUN: That’s a good question. I think— you know what, when I sent the proposal in, I did have a pretty firm outline. Or at least I had, if not a perfect outline, it was a list of the notes I wanted to hit. Like I knew I wanted to write about anxiety, I wanted to write about grief, I wanted to write about my little sister. And that actually didn’t change a ton. There were obviously whole essays that I wrote that me and my editor ended up discarding, stuff that really turned out to be much larger than what I had initially conceived. But the overall spirit of it actually has stayed quite the same.
The thing that I was fooling around with— and frankly, the thing that, like, I love this book to death, and I’m so proud of it, but I think the thing that I would want to play around with more on a next book, is the structure. It is pretty definitely an essay collection. There is a narrative from start to finish, and I organized it, obviously, very, very carefully with that in mind. But you know, it’s kind of designed to not necessarily be read all in one sitting. You pick it up and then go.
And there was a while where I was trying to play around with, OK, do I want one central story running in every other essay, or sort of in-between? Should I be chronological? That kind of thing. And I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t think that that would have served this book particularly well, and I like that I organized it almost by emotion more than anything else.
The next time I try any sort of large project like this, I think I would want to maybe have a little bit more of a cohesive throughline.
GIN JENNY: You said you had dropped essays. Were there ones that you are keeping around and maybe will repurpose for later?
ALANNA OKUN: Yeah, definitely. And I don’t even know if the exact writing, because I actually super agree with my editor on every count. I kept a Word document of book runoff, essentially. When I’ve been looking back through it, there are certain topics I really want to write about that I think I was kind of trying to shoehorn into this book in a way that didn’t make sense and might require a little more distance or what have you. So I think that I’ve got probably a good 10, 15,000 words just sitting around that aren’t perfect, and probably in their current form won’t see the light of day, but will provide the groundwork for something else. So that’s a good feeling.
It’s kind of nice to like— you know when you go to a diner and they give you the milkshake, and then you get the extra milkshake in the little whatever? That’s kind of how I feel. I got some extra book.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: That’s right. It’s a backup. You just keep it in your pocket.
ALANNA OKUN: Exactly.
WHISKEY JENNY: Were there any specific crafting projects that you wanted to write about but couldn’t fit in or figure out how you wanted to write about them?
ALANNA OKUN: It’s funny, because this was actually another thing I played with, was should this book be purely project-driven? Should each essay be about a thing I made? And again, that might have been neater, but also I don’t think it would have felt as true. The individual projects for the most part don’t really matter. I should say that; they can hear me.
It’s more, the act of creating feels so much more key to me, and being in something. And it’s not to say that it feels the same to make a blanket or make a sweater, or whatever. But the motion of crafting is comfortingly the same all the time. So it almost becomes less and less about the vessel of it, and more about the motion. And I wrote about— the things that I was really proud of were, like, the embroidered clock that I made.
GIN JENNY: I love that embroidered clock. I found a picture of it. It’s so cute.
ALANNA OKUN: I’m so into my embroidered clock. And I have not changed the battery in six months, so it doesn’t even work. [LAUGHTER] I mean, it barely works. But I just love it. And a friend of mine, actually, her name is Marian Bull, and she’s this really wonderful ceramicist and also a writer. And she just made a ceramic clock that is so dope. It’s so, so cool. I’m going to send you guys a picture of that, too. And I feel like it’s just the much cooler older cousin of my embroidered clock.
[LAUGHTER]But anyway, all this is to say, yeah, I really got to shout out the stuff that felt important, and the projects where I learned especially salient lessons. But it wasn’t like— I’ve made so many things that trying to stuff them all in wouldn’t have made sense. And it’s more about the sum total anyway, than any individual project.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. The longer essays all get into a lot of really personal stuff about your life and your history. Were any of them especially hard to write, or were any of them especially easy to write? Either because you were having an easy time telling that story of your life, or because the craft project was so special to you?
ALANNA OKUN: Yeah. The boyfriend sweater essay, the title essay, was really, really hard. Not to write— writing it felt good. But that was the one where afterwards I was kind of like, oh shit. This is really personal. And more than that, I finished writing this book pretty much two years ago, and then was editing in between. And not to say— I’m 27 now. And not to say that where you’re at when you’re 25 is that substantively different, but it kind of was. I was definitely in a place when I finished that that was very true and very raw, and was this sense of, I’ve been a girlfriend for so long and now I’m not, and reckoning with that.
And it’s actually funny, because in those two years, I actually now do have a partner. I do have a boyfriend, who I’m very happy with, and don’t feel that crushing anxiety that the essay is really about, that sort of relentlessness. And that’s just been interesting, and having him even read the book and being like, wow, this is wonderful, but this is really a version of you that I don’t know. That’s not to disavow it, and I think that that part of myself is always going to be there. But it was really hard to look back on this essay and just to sort of be like, oh man, this version of myself is out there now. And it’s really scary.
But the heartening thing is that that’s also the essay I heard back the most from from early readers, being like, oh my God, you really captured that feeling of breakups and that uncertainty. And that feels really good, just to feel like, OK, if I’m putting this out there, at least it’s in the service of saying, you’re not the only one. This is how I define that. And I also basically did a boyfriend tour of North America and saw some of the boyfriends written about. Who are all so wonderful, and pretty much remain, to a man, good friends of mine to this day. So that was really scary but really fun, to just give them the early copy and just be like, hey, so I wrote about our dating life.
GIN JENNY: I always wonder about this when I’m reading autobiographical writing, is how writers go about telling stories of other people. And I was just wondering, were there rules you gave yourself for how you wanted to talk about people? And they didn’t exactly vet the essays, but it sounds like you gave them the essays to have a look at before the book was published.
ALANNA OKUN: That was very important to me, just giving everyone at least a heads up, if not much, much more. So probably the most personal, whatever you want to call it, essay in the book is about my little sister, who has mental health struggles and has become a crafter in order— not in order to, but part and parcel of that. She’s a basket maker, and she’s incredible. And that asking her— do I have your permission to tell this story? And you can retract it at any time— was really kind of the scary one. Because it’s her story to tell.
And so the way that I conceived of that, and the way I conceived the boyfriend sweater essay, and the essay about my mom, and really the whole thing, was coming at it from a place of, I’m not going to try and tell someone else’s story here. I’m going to tell my experience of it. My experience of having the person who I love most in my life, my sister, going through this stuff, and also our tandem crafting journeys. And all I can do is approach it from me, Alanna, being kind of a brat; being someone who really tries to help in a way that might harm; not feeling totally like I had access to her in those times. That was what I wrote about, more than trying to say oh, my sister probably felt this. Or I think that this was this for my sister.
And certainly the same for the boyfriend essays. I wasn’t at all trying to litigate relationships. It was just like, here’s who I was in that time, in that space, with that person. And all I can do is try and capture that as true to me as possible, and not try and sit down and put words in anyone else’s mouth. So that was forefront of my mind the whole time, was not any sentence that would imply that I was assuming what someone else would think or feel, or how they behaved.
GIN JENNY: Did you get any feedback from any of those people, either this is exactly how I remember it, or this is super different to what I remember?
ALANNA OKUN: My mom was a really amazing fact checker— like, not even on an emotional level. Literally on a physical level. She’s still maintains— the very last essay in the book is about going to visit her mother on Christmas. And my mom is just adamant that I’m wrong about us moving Christmas a day. And I’m like, no, I know I’m not wrong. I absolutely remember this. [LAUGHTER] It’s fine. Like, also, kind of, who cares.
But she was really, really helpful. Even there’s a line in the book about— my dad’s a fisherman, and I’d had the incorrect length of the sea bass that you’re allowed to keep. And she checked on, I think, literally the Rhode Island fisheries and hunting website or something. [LAUGHTER] So she was really helpful in that regard.
But no, everyone who, on a more serious level, who I put it to as, hey, I’m telling our story. Did I capture the spirit of it? Every single one of them was like, yes, oh my God, you got it. And that, again, not trying to toot any horns here, but that was just like a big project of mine. And I’m really, really happy and gratified that they felt seen and they felt accurately represented.
In fact, actually my best friend, Aude, who is in the book and suggested at one point that I name it Aude: The Aude Story. [LAUGHTER] I think her main complaint is— she’s like, I kind of think I could be in more of it. Like, if you want you can just go in and add me in a few other chapters. She was like, I definitely come off like this totally cool badass in a way that I’m super not. I’m like, actually, unfortunately, you are a cool badass, so.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: Well, I definitely thought, reading all these essays, that your love and affection for all the people you were talking about came through really clearly.
ALANNA OKUN: Look, it’s not like everything’s been perfect. And there are certainly aspects of all those relationships that I left out, either because they weren’t my story to tell, or because it’s just not something that can be neatly encapsulated yet. But also, it is largely a book about love. Even when it’s a book about anxiety or grief, it’s sort of about— I’ve built this life that I’m really, really pleased with, and I’m still only at the beginning of it, God willing. And how do you sort of interrogate that? How do you make room for joy? How do you make room for growth? How do you preserve it in the face of these bad things in a way that feels useful and doesn’t feel naive? And working through that project was a big second tier thing of the book.
GIN JENNY: My favorite, favorite anecdote in this entire book was when you were talking about when your little sister was born, that you refused to accept any of the names that your parents proposed. [LAUGHTER]
ALANNA OKUN: Yes, that is a confirmed anecdote. Well, also I mean, I was three and a half, so any memory of this, I think, was just sort of inceptioned into me after. But Charlotte and Alanna, they just don’t super go. And I love the name Charlotte, but Charlotte and Alanna just is a little cutesy. But Mariah and Alanna, that has just a nice oomph to it. There’s a cadence there. And I did not know the word cadence at three and a half, but I think I thought that.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: You knew it in your heart.
ALANNA OKUN: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, I mean, I’ve always known what I liked aesthetically, that’s for sure.
GIN JENNY: Actually, I think it’s really nice that they both ended up being crafters. That’s really lovely.
ALANNA OKUN: Oh, I love it so much. We actually, not too long ago, maybe it was right before the holidays, ended up selling together at a holiday market. And I am so many orders of magnitude below her in terms of just the professionalization of my crafting. It’s really just stuff that I do in drips and drabs. I didn’t even really have a pricing structure. I was just kind of like, I don’t know.
Because most of what I make is custom. Like if someone’s just like, hey, I want an embroidery, or I want a hat that says this, I’ll just do it for that and do it on a per project basis. But Mariah, she has just these incredible baskets, and she has these business cards printed up that have zigzag stitching around the edges. It was just so cool to see her in action. And she obviously outsold me, like hundreds of dollars worth. It was so funny. [LAUGHTER] And it benefited Planned Parenthood, which was great.
GIN JENNY: Oh, that’s great.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, awesome.
ALANNA OKUN: So that was really, really fun, and I want to do more of that. I want to ride her coattails to craft fair glory.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well, sort of related to that, you talked about how knitting and crafting is not an innate skill, and it is something that has to be passed down from person to person. What’s your favorite part about passing this skill on to other people?
ALANNA OKUN: Oh my God, I love it so much. I actually think teaching knitting at this point gives me about as big a rush as knitting something myself.
GIN JENNY: Aww.
ALANNA OKUN: I love proving people wrong. And this is something that I’m actually writing about right now, but there is this sense, I think especially among adults, that if you’re not immediately great at something, it’s just not for you. That there are other people who take to stuff naturally, so why would you even try? And I don’t think that’s true, particularly with knitting and crochet.
GIN JENNY: You should see my face right now. I feel so accused.
[LAUGHTER]ALANNA OKUN: No! I just think it’s fine to fuck up. I think it’s OK to be bad at something, especially for a while at the beginning. And I think that knitting in particular is just so stark in that regard, because the learning curve is really steep. It’s really fiddly and feels kind of unnatural. And for all that there is a distinct cause and effect when you’re crafting— you know, you do one thing, you get another— with knitting, it doesn’t look like what it’s going to be until all of a sudden.
Like the first few— like I’m knitting a sleeve for my book sweater right now. And it just looks like a weird little bracelet or something. It’s just ugly. And it’s going to be ugly for the next few inches until all of a sudden I’m going to look down and it’s like, oh yeah, no, that’s a sleeve. That’s the beginning of a sleeve. And I’ve been knitting for over 20 years and that’s still the case. And so that’s really, really gratifying, when you finally get to that point with a new knitter, and they’re like, oh my God. Yeah, I can see that this is going to be a hat one day. I can see that this could eventually become a scarf. So that’s just a really, really cool moment, to prevail upon someone to just push through the part where it sucks and get to the part where it’s a little bit better.
GIN JENNY: See this is my downfall as a crafter. Because Whiskey Jenny and I have both— I mean, Whiskey Jenny is a much more ambitious crafting person that I am. But we’ve each gone to some classes at the Brooklyn Brainery and stuff and tried new things. And I’m such a brat about it. If I’m not good at it immediately, I’m angry and I quit immediately. But Whiskey Jenny actually sticks with it and makes awesome stuff.
ALANNA OKUN: Nice. [LAUGHTER] And again, I don’t ever want to be like, oh my God, knitting’s the end all be all and everyone has to do it and if you just try you’ll love it. Because I don’t think that’s the case. I don’t think it appeals to everybody.
But I do think that more people than think they would like it, end up liking it. And people who write themselves off as like, I’m not crafty, or I don’t have the patience for this, I would say maybe one out of three actually does. [LAUGHTER]
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, I loved the essay when you were talking about your father’s fishing, and how it’s sort of the same almost meditative act for him as knitting is for you. And I thought that was just a really lovely idea, that even if knitting isn’t your thing, that everyone could have a thing.
ALANNA OKUN: Absolutely. And Aude, my best friend, I’ve taught her how to craft in every way. She already knew how to knit, and I sort of retaught her. And she does it every now and then, but what her thing is is drawing. And she just draws constantly and is becoming so, so wonderful, and starting to do all these really cool commissions and illustrated pieces.
And that’s been really neat. She’ll come over to my house and she’ll just draw and I’ll just knit. And it doesn’t even have to be a silent indoor activity. Another friend of mine runs marathons. You know, I think that everyone kind of has their thing. Not even the thing that’s going to make them rich and famous or whatever.
GIN JENNY: Just a thing. Well actually, I really identify— so I cross-stitch. That’s my only craft. I really resonated with the thing you said about it scratching the same itch as pulling hair. I don’t pull hair out, but I do cut off split ends and then peel them, and I do this obsessively.
ALANNA OKUN: Oh right, you were tweeting at me about that. I do the same thing. I love to just futz.
GIN JENNY: Oh God, it makes me feel so pleasant and calm.
[LAUGHTER]ALANNA OKUN: That was an essay that at first was hard to write. Maybe that was the hardest to write, was the one about quitting pulling— or quitting and starting and quitting. But once it was done, I was just really happy with it. I made very, very few changes. I was just kind of like, you know what, this is what it feels like. And this is what it is to live in my body, and it sucks, and a lot of people have it. So, you know.
GIN JENNY: Yes. Are there any crafts that you haven’t tried yet that you’d like to?
ALANNA OKUN: Honestly, yeah. I would love to be getting into ceramics more. Like I said, I have a good friend who does it. And I’ve noticed that there’s sort of an uptick in Brooklyn women of a certain age— a.k.a. their mid-20s— getting really into it. Which, again, is not to dismiss it or disavow it. I think it’s just there are certain studios that have cropped up that are really great.
And I want to get into that. It seems so fun and messy, and it almost seems like it lives in the same space as sewing does, or wood carving or whatever, where— as opposed to knitting or crochet or something, where you start with almost nothing. You start with yarn and you build it up into this big thing. Those are crafts where you’re taking a quantity of material and whittling it down into whatever you want it to be. And that I think is kind of good for me to retrain my brain in that regard, that crafting can be something where you’re taking a blob and articulating it, as opposed to building it from the ground up. So I definitely want to get into ceramics. But the thing is it’s sort of prohibitive in terms of time and money.
GIN JENNY: That’s what I was going to say. Yeah, you need a lot of materials.
ALANNA OKUN: Yeah, and it’s not something I can just teach myself in the quiet of my home like the fibery crafts are. So I want to— there are a lot of things I want to learn in the next couple of years. And I want to figure out a reasonable schedule to make that all happen.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: Well you mentioned you noticing people of a certain age and a certain gender being drawn to craft. And you talk about, in the book, how it’s traditionally sort of a feminine space. Is that something consciously on your mind when writing this book?
ALANNA OKUN: It’s definitely something that’s always kind of on the back burner as I do these things. But I think I’ve been doing it for so long that it’s just kind of in my bones at this point. That of course it’s worthwhile. Of course it’s sexist and ageist and silly to dismiss it. Just sort of like, anyone who would disavow it, I don’t really care about. Sort of the don’t feed the trolls mentality.
[LAUGHTER]But to your question as to whether it was something I even thought about really writing about, that was a conscious choice, where originally actually, a couple of essays were more cultural analysis. I don’t want to quite say political, but definitely a little bit more sociological about how and why do we knit, and how are people awful about it, and who does it. And I just realized that wasn’t really the story I was trying to tell. And a lot of what I was trying to do with that was cover all my bases.
And that ultimately wasn’t the right book to be writing, because there are people who are writing those books and who do work in that regard that is amazing. There’s a bunch of women I know in particular, and female-identifying people. And men do as well, but it’s definitely a female space. And this woman named Betsy Greer, she’s so, so great, she wrote this book called Craftivism that was all about these projects and these things people are doing around the world. And that’s so dope, and I want to direct people toward those resources and those books, as opposed to trying to think that I can put the entire octopus to bed at once.
[LAUGHTER]Anyone who just thinks crafting isn’t worthwhile, they certainly do not need to read my book, or follow me on Twitter, or really have anything to do with me. Because I think I would become very tedious for them very quickly.
GIN JENNY: Do you get feedback like that when you write about crafts online?
ALANNA OKUN: Honestly, no. I mean, inasmuch as whenever I would write anything for BuzzFeed, we’d get the garden variety assholes just being like, why would I waste my time with this? But very staggeringly, I would say, people respond positively. Like people say, oh my God, I do this as well. This is me!
And I think part of that has to do— and this is sort of a pet theory— with the fact that crafting is very solo in a lot of ways. Like yeah, you can take classes, and there’s knitting groups, and there’s all kinds of things. But I tend to think that crafters go about it by themselves. And so to see someone come out and say, oh, hey, this has helped me with my anxiety in X, Y, and Z ways, or whatever, people feel really gratified by. So that’s been cool, to get those emails and those good comments, and they definitely outweigh any of the just stray awful ones.
GIN JENNY: OK, I have a question that is only barely related to the talk about craft.
ALANNA OKUN: Hit me.
GIN JENNY: OK, you did a capella in choir. I need to know everything about this. How closely did your college experience resemble the hit movie Pitch Perfect?
ALANNA OKUN: So I was in an all-female a capella group. And I was in charge of that group, and I was the beatboxer.
GIN JENNY: [GASP]
ALANNA OKUN: Which is actually kind of embarrassing now in later life, but whatever. But the thing is, we loved each other. My a capella group were my best friends. Some of them still I talk to constantly, and we all lived together senior year and stuff. So there just wasn’t really any drama. It was just really fun.
And I was in choir all through middle school. And I’m still in one now, actually. I’m in one in the city called the Young New Yorkers Chorus, which is really, really fun. And it’s just like, singing has always been— that’s something I’ve never really written about, but it’s just been in my life for so much of it. And it’s just everything for me. It’s so fun to be part of the group, and to just mingle in that way. It’s just nice to have a grown up extracurricular, honestly, just a place that I have to go on Wednesday nights, even when I don’t want to.
I’m actually taking a hiatus right now because of all the book stuff. But I’m really excited to rejoin, and to just get back in the swing of it. I’ve really missed working out that muscle.
GIN JENNY: I always want to join a choir as an adult, because I sang in choirs when I was a kid. But the performance part really psychs me out. I wish that I could have a choir that just always rehearsed and never performed, but other people, I understand, would find that unsatisfying.
ALANNA OKUN: What I like, though, is because it’s a group, it’s not about you. It’s very much like you’re scaffolded by all these other wonderful people singing around you. You don’t even have to be at the front. Nothing you do, save fainting on stage or just belting out the totally wrong note, can really do much. Which I love. It’s nice to just cede responsibility in that way.
GIN JENNY: Oh, that’s a great way of looking at it. I think also my perspective is skewed, because when I was a kid, I was the shortest kid in class, so I was always in the front row.
ALANNA OKUN: Oh!
GIN JENNY: I know. But now I’m old, and I’m tall.
WHISKEY JENNY: So you can hide in the back. I will say Jessie organizes— Jessie, our theme song writer, she runs a holiday choir, and she lets me only rehearse with them and does not make me perform with him, which is very kind of her.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: That sounds great.
WHISKEY JENNY: Yes. I did page turn on one song, which was stressful enough.
[LAUGHTER]ALANNA OKUN: See, that seems much scarier! Because that’s actually something you can screw up.
WHISKEY JENNY: I could have, but I did not. Thank heavens.
GIN JENNY: Oh my gosh, Whiskey Jenny, I can just picture your terror doing this.
WHISKEY JENNY: It was a lot, yeah. It was just one song, though. But it was at the end, so I couldn’t enjoy the rest of the concert.
[LAUGHTER] That’sALANNA OKUN: Amazing.
GIN JENNY: Well Alanna, what’s next for you, in terms of crafts, in terms of writing? I know you’re going to have the rollout of the book on your plate for a while. But after that, what are you’re going to do next?
ALANNA OKUN: Man, I have been thinking only toward March 20, 2018, for the last whatever years— three or something. I don’t really know. I know I want to be writing another book, certainly. I really just loved the act of writing this book. The process of it was just so satisfying.
I actually want to get more into audio. that’s something that really appeals to me, and I recorded the audio book, which was just so fun and so interesting to just conceive of the book even in those terms. I’m definitely looking around to see what that might look like, and what I would need to learn to make I don’t even know what happen.
I am learning Japanese. I really want to go to Japan. I’m just filling my life right now with these small ad hoc projects and not trying to force myself to find the next big thing right now. Because I was spending a long time after I finished the edits of the book really being like, OK, what’s my next book? And I started so many things, and everything just felt sort of frantic, and it lacked a center almost. And now I’m kind of like, you know what, team? Just lie fallow for a second and you’ll figure it out. So I’m just trying to be nice to myself and follow my impulses. And it turns out that I have a lot of them.
GIN JENNY: Well that seems incredibly sensible. That seems like a good way to go about it.
ALANNA OKUN: I feel like I could drive myself crazy if I was just trying to get onto the next thing right now. But talk to me in three weeks and I might be like, oh my God, I need to get this proposal out, rah rah rah!
GIN JENNY: Well, I think often projects find you.
ALANNA OKUN: Exactly. And I want to be open to that.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well before we head out, I just want to say, because I don’t think we mentioned it up top, I really loved this book.
ALANNA OKUN: Thank you so much.
WHISKEY JENNY: I had such an enjoyable time reading it. Yeah, thank you so much for it, and for joining us. It had one of my favorite feelings when reading a book, which is when the writer describes emotions or the way things look in a totally new and different way that I’ve never thought of, but as soon as they say it, you’re like, oh my God, yes, that is exactly what that is like. And I had that feeling so much with this book. So thank you.
ALANNA OKUN: Thank you. That’s such a great thing to hear. I’m still getting used to the fact that people who I don’t personally know are reading it. [LAUGHTER] So it’s always nice to hear feedback.
GIN JENNY: Yeah, and same for me. I was just at a conference where I acquired many branded page flags, which was very exciting for me. So there’s a million page flags in the book right now, where I was flagging passages I liked.
WHISKEY JENNY: Well before we head out, Alanna, is there somewhere you want to tell people to find you online?
ALANNA OKUN: Yeah, absolutely. So my website is AlannaOkun.xyz, because .com was too expensive. And my Twitter handle is just my first name, just @Alanna.
GIN JENNY: Well it was great talking to you. Thank you so much for coming on. This was such a treat.
ALANNA OKUN: Thank you so much for having me.
GIN JENNY: And I mean, good luck with the book and everything. Good luck with learning Japanese. That’s amazing.
ALANNA OKUN: That’s not going well.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: But as you said, it’s OK to not be great at the beginning.
ALANNA OKUN: Exactly! It’s really fun to just write the same character over and over again until it sucks a little bit less.
[LAUGHTER]GIN JENNY: All right, well, take care, Alanna.
ALANNA OKUN: You guys, as well. Thank you.
JENNYS: Thank you.
GIN JENNY: So listeners, it’s very exciting. Our next episode is our 100th episode!
WHISKEY JENNY: Hundredth! Diamond Jubilee! [LAUGHTER]
GIN JENNY: That’s not what Diamond Jubilee means
WHISKEY JENNY: It’s not really a Diamond Jubilee, but that’s what we’ve been calling it.
GIN JENNY: So next episode is our fake Diamond Jubilee. And we’ve got some exciting announcements coming up in the hundredth episode, so stay tuned for that. But also, we are going to be reading Endurance, by Alfred Lansing, which is the classic book about Ernest Shackleton’s voyage. And we thought it was just going to be really fitting for our hundredth episode to dig into Ernest Shackleton and give him the attention he deserves,
WHISKEY JENNY: Yeah, because we’ve basically survived a polar exploration at this point. I think we can equate ourselves with Shackleton at this point.
GIN JENNY: Yes, yes. Very, very similar.
[LAUGHTER]WHISKEY JENNY: By the way, I’m joking.
GIN JENNY: Nope, she’s totally serious. I’m super excited, though. I’ve known this book exists for a really long time, and I’ve always been like, oh, I should get to that. It was Whiskey Jenny’s brilliant idea to read it for this episode, and I think it’s the greatest idea of all time.
WHISKEY JENNY: Oh, thank you. Yes, I’m really excited to read it on such a fitting occasion also.
GIN JENNY: Yeah. But in the meantime, this has been the Reading the End bookcast with the demographically similar Jennys and special guest star Alanna Okun, author of The Curse of The Boyfriend Sweater, which is out now. You can visit the blog at readingtheend.com. You can follow us on Twitter @readingtheend. We are both on Goodreads as Whiskey Jenny and Gin Jenny. And you can email us, please do, at readingtheend@gmail.com. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, please leave us a review. It helps other people find the podcast.
Until next time, a quote from The Fifth Season, by N.K. Jemisin. “Neither myths nor mysteries can hold a candle to the most infinitesimal spark of hope.” [CLINK]
THEME SONG: You don’t judge a book by its cover. Page one’s not a much better view. And shortly you’re gonna discover the middle won’t mollify you. So whether whiskey’s your go-to, or you’re like my gin-drinking friend, no matter what you are imbibing, you’ll be better off in the end reading the end.