{"id":37882,"date":"2025-10-20T14:18:39","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T18:18:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/?p=37882"},"modified":"2025-10-20T16:01:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T20:01:09","slug":"lara-elena-donnelly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scottedelman.com\/wordpress\/2025\/10\/20\/lara-elena-donnelly\/","title":{"rendered":"Polish off pasta with Lara Elena Donnelly in Episode 266 of Eating the Fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you believe the meatspace calendar, this year’s Worldcon is already in the rear view mirror, but as far as this podcast is concerned, the party isn’t over yet. That’s because it’s now time for you to take a seat at the table and eavesdrop on my third meal from Seattle, following Eugenia Triantafyllou<\/a> and John Picacio<\/a>.<\/p>\n

My latest guest, Lara Elena Donnelly<\/a>, is the author of the Nebula, Lambda, and Locus-nominated Amberlough Dossier trilogy, which consists of the three books Amberlough<\/em>, Armistice<\/em>, and Amnesty<\/em>. Her most recent novel is the contemporary thriller\u00a0Base Notes<\/em>. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons<\/em>, Escape Pod<\/em>, Nightmare<\/em>, and Uncanny<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Lara has taught in the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College, as well as the Catapult Workshop in New York. She’s a graduate of the Clarion and Alpha writers\u2019 workshops, and has served as on-site staff at the latter. She\u2019s also one of four co-founders at Homeward Books, which currently has a Kickstarter running<\/a> to fund the company\u2019s first title, The Witch of Prague<\/em>, by J.M. Sidorova — and if you\u2019re visiting here within the first week or so of this episode going live, there\u2019s still time to back the project, so please check it out.<\/p>\n

We discussed the hot tub conversation which led to the sale of her first novel, why the contradictions of her Clarion experience were liberating, the reason her relationship to the writing process means she’s primarily a novelist rather than a short story writer, her complicated emotions about the conclusion to her debut novel, why she got sick of the word “prescient,” the gnarly origins of the perfumes we love (and the reasons she needed to learn about them), why she decided to start a service advising how to write better sex scenes, the novel she wrote without gendering a character (and the fun in following which readers assume which genders), how she and Sam J. Miller were able to collaborate without killing each other, and much more.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s how you can join us at Mezzanotte<\/a> — <\/p>\n

1) Subscribe at Apple Podcasts<\/a> — or wherever<\/a> you choose to consume your podcasts — where I hope you’ll be tempted to sample a few of the 265 previous episodes.<\/p>\n

2) Listen via the RSS feed of http:\/\/eatingthefantastic.libsyn.com\/rss<\/a> on the device of your choice.<\/p>\n

3) Or simply use the embed below.<\/p>\n