Daniel M Lavery is the “Dear Prudence” advice columnist at Slate and hosts their advice podcast Big Mood, Little Mood. He’s the cofounder of The Toast, and the New York Times bestselling author of Texts From Jane Eyre and The Merry Spinster. He was listed on the Forbes 30 under 30 media influencers and his collection of essays on gender transition and family dynamics Something That May Shock and Discredit You was named one of the most anticipated books of the year by Entertainment Weekly, The Oprah Magazine, and BuzzFeed.
Here Daniel talks with poetic prose about his life growing up in California and his appearances at the Auckland Writers Festival:
Please tell us where you grew up and what life was like for you growing up.
I’m equal parts a child of California (greater Los Angeles, from birth to age eight) and the Midwest (just outside Chicago, in John Hughes territory, from eight to sixteen). As far as I can recall, it was pretty smooth sailing once I mastered object permanence and neck control. I preferred ballpoint pens to mechanical pencils, and both to traditional pencils, although like many children I enjoyed walking over to the pencil sharpener throughout the school day, both for the fresh smell of pencil shavings and for the precious delay it afforded me in avoiding getting back to my work. I was one of fifteen snare drummers in the school band between fifth and sixth grades but was weeded out in junior high when band practice was moved from after school to before. I disliked not having any of my own money. On balance, I had a perfectly all-right time, but I wouldn’t like to do it again. Once was enough.
What effect do you believe identifying as queer has had on your writing?
It’s a bit difficult to say for certain since there’s no control-group version of me I can use for comparison. I certainly admire a number of queer writers — Iris Murdoch, Patricia Highsmith, Djuna Barnes, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Quentin Crisp — and think there are certain strains of meanness/sensitivity/humor that I share with some of them that’s of a piece. And of course, in my advice-column writing there’s been a fairly straightforward and direct influence. I was asked more questions by queer people (and sometimes by straight people dealing with queer people in their own lives), more frequently, and generally prioritized autonomy in most of my answers.
Aside from being queer, what defining life moment do you think has had the biggest impact on your work?
I suspect the best thing I’ve ever written was about Untitled Goose Game back in 2019.
When you finished the process of writing Something That May Shock and Discredit You, what did you hope readers would gain from reading it?
Cheer and goodwill, a bolstered sense of resilience, a delighted sense of all the many and varied ills the flesh is heir to, gratitude for their own problems and sympathy for the problems of others.
Why should all of our readers be attending your session at the Auckland Writers Festival?
You’ll get to hear about all the secret struggles of strangers, without having to risk anything by exposing your own troubles.
Daniel Lavery is appearing at this month’s Auckland Writer’s Festival.