My very first novel, my first born, was released this October and I'm still reveling in the excitement! I started writing Zigzags while I was in grad school at UC Riverside and it began, not coincidentally, as a story about a young, queer woman, also in her mid-twenties, also getting her MFA in a city east of LA, who wanted to go back to Chicago because she missed her friends. It took me about four years to get what I called a final draft. All the while, I was writing my memories in a notebook, bringing scenes to workshop, going back to Chicago to see said friends, writing about what I felt while reading my writing and then wondering what my characters would do next. Yes, I was putting together a novel, but I was also trying to put together my own life and figure out what the hell I was doing with it.

The book centers around my main character, Aneesha, and a group of friends she hangs out with at a bar in Chicago, called The Buffalo Bar. Over the course of a summer, when sh...