What are you reading?
Marcy Dermansky edition
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With the release of her sixth novel, Hot Air, Marcy Dermansky is off on the literary festival circuit yet again. I caught up with the author and editor at the 2025 Brattleboro Literary Festival in Vermont this year where she was on a panel with The Wedding People author Alison Espach. After reading three of her books I reached out and asked her:
1. What are you reading and what was the last thing you read? I just finished reading Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li. It’s about surviving the suicide of both of her sons. Which is unimaginable and I am only slightly able to imagine it. I did know what to expect and I am glad that I have read it. Is it strange to feel like I am a better person for having read it. Not because I earned good person points, but because I know more about life and pain and how to talk to other people is pain. I am currently reading a debut novel called Atomic Hearts by Megan Cummins which I am loving. I don’t think I am ever going to stop reading coming of age novels. |
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Next up, I have two books on my pile from writers I recently met at literary festivals Ada Calhoun’s Crush which I already know is going to be a treat and Amanda Uhle’s Destroy This House who I met at the Texas Book Festival and also loves to swim. Going to book festivals is a really impractical way to make friends but has worked for me.
2. Do you have a favorite book (or books) you keep coming back to?
When I was a kid and then in high school, college, I used to read and reread books. I don’t do that anymore. I feel like the books that I read over and over are kind of specifical to me like Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson or Rich in Love by Josephine Humphreys. I used to be obsessed with the early novels of both Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt (who were married which makes so much sense) and also Haruki Murakami. I read Dance Dance Dance a bunch of times. My novel The Red Car was a homage to all of my obsessive Murakami reading.
When I was a kid and then in high school, college, I used to read and reread books. I don’t do that anymore. I feel like the books that I read over and over are kind of specifical to me like Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson or Rich in Love by Josephine Humphreys. I used to be obsessed with the early novels of both Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt (who were married which makes so much sense) and also Haruki Murakami. I read Dance Dance Dance a bunch of times. My novel The Red Car was a homage to all of my obsessive Murakami reading.
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3. At the Brattleboro Literary Festival you spoke about writing your six books in some very different settings, from cafes to a writing & sushi club. Do you find it helpful to switch things up, or is there a setting you have found most productive to write in?
Yes, basically I write every book in a different place. I think the circumstances of my life just keep changing. I actually wish I could be more consistent. I finally have a room in my home just for writing, my cat is sitting on my desk right now next to my computer, cleaning herself and I love that, I like to write from home, but there are days when I need to leave my house and so I still go to cafes. Sometimes this works; sometimes it doesn’t. And it was never anything as formal as sushi and writing club but it sounds like a marketable idea if I were the kind of person to start an actual business. |
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4. Many of your books involve swimming pools, and specifically other people's swimming pools, as something of a unifying, healing force. What have pools, yours or otherwise, meant to you in your life?
It’s gotten embarrassing honestly.
More and more, even, in my adult life, how much I want and need to swim and my pursuit of good swimming pools. The best ones are often out of my and most people’s price range. And what is important to me often becomes important to my characters and so there are pools central to the plots of Very Nice, Hurricane Girl, and Hot Air. I am working on a new novel now – and it’s a relief – there is not a swimming pool in the book. I don’t know want to become a caricature of myself.
It’s gotten embarrassing honestly.
More and more, even, in my adult life, how much I want and need to swim and my pursuit of good swimming pools. The best ones are often out of my and most people’s price range. And what is important to me often becomes important to my characters and so there are pools central to the plots of Very Nice, Hurricane Girl, and Hot Air. I am working on a new novel now – and it’s a relief – there is not a swimming pool in the book. I don’t know want to become a caricature of myself.
5. Have you thought about writing follow-ups to your books? Is there a sequel in the works in which Lucy gets a surprise younger sibling from the events in Hot Air?
So the truth is that I am working on a sequel now, my first sequel, but it’s not for Hot Air, but an earlier not to be named novel (for right now). I am finding it harder to write. I am worried about comparison, judgement and I would change the names of characters now if I could.
6. When you were a child you wrote a 20 page short story which your teacher then had bound for you. What was it about and what inspired it?
I wrote stories about animals. My first story was about an African elephant in the zoo who is lonely. Elephants were my favorite animal. Then I wrote a story about a fish who is also a babysitter and the little fish gets caught up in a fishing line. Somehow they both escape. I wasn’t writing autobiography back then. Or maybe if I were to reread them, I would find myself in the elephant and fish. I wouldn’t be surprised.
So the truth is that I am working on a sequel now, my first sequel, but it’s not for Hot Air, but an earlier not to be named novel (for right now). I am finding it harder to write. I am worried about comparison, judgement and I would change the names of characters now if I could.
6. When you were a child you wrote a 20 page short story which your teacher then had bound for you. What was it about and what inspired it?
I wrote stories about animals. My first story was about an African elephant in the zoo who is lonely. Elephants were my favorite animal. Then I wrote a story about a fish who is also a babysitter and the little fish gets caught up in a fishing line. Somehow they both escape. I wasn’t writing autobiography back then. Or maybe if I were to reread them, I would find myself in the elephant and fish. I wouldn’t be surprised.