Bls Eliza Clark’s debut novel Boy partsWhen it was released in the summer of 2020, it almost went under the radar. But the hype on TikTok soon catapulted the book into cult status. Since then, there has been a one-woman stage adaptation at the Soho Theatre and its sequel, Repentancein which a journalist investigates a gruesome true crime set on the day of the Brexit referendum, is being adapted for television by Juno Dawson, now 30, who was named one of the best young British novelists by Granta last year.

Julia Armfield, 34, has won a loyal following with her gothic, horror-inflected books, lyrical language and aquatic imagery. Her first short story collection, 2019, Salt slowlywas as thrillingly macabre as you would expect from someone who wrote her master’s thesis on teeth, hair and nails in the Victorian imagination. Her haunting 2022 debut novel, Our women under the seawas nominated for the Foyles Prize for Fiction Book of the Year and won the 2023 Polari Book Prize. Both authors are publishing their third book this year. Clark’s extensive collection of stories, She is always hungrytakes her back to her beginnings in speculative fiction: readers will be surprised by the amount of spaceship content (it’s excellent). Armfield’s impressive second novel, Private ritesreinvents King Lear in an apocalyptic future where three sisters fight while the world ends.

The harmony and easy exchange between the two is clear when we meet in a cafe in south London. Their mutual enthusiasm is not dampened by the oppressive heat of the hottest day of the year. Armfield says of Clark: “Apart from how talented she is and how much variety and mastery there is in her voice, it’s always just funny. I’m so happy to hear a joke.” Clark is full of praise for Armfield: “I was really impressed by Salt slowlyand The Great Awake, which White Review Story price – it’s understandable why this would be a career-starting story.”

Her work draws not only on literature, but also on pop culture, classic cinema and the weirder sides of the internet (Clark is now obsessed with Japanese batsuior punishment games, usually based on endurance tests). When they talk about their process, both draw on different memes. For Armfield, it’s a two-part drawing of a horse, one beautifully realized, and the other a child’s sketch. “It’s my idea of ​​what I’m going to write, as opposed to me if I started writing and ruined it by being myself.” Clark’s technique is more like the “Draw the rest of the damn owl” meme: “For two years I sketch these two circles, and then in about six weeks I draw the rest of the owl.” She wrote the last 10,000 words of her two novels in one day. “I don’t know if that’s necessarily a bragging point,” she says. “It becomes a little bit like, ‘No TV and no beer drives Homer crazy.'”

How did you meet?
Julia Armfield It was during lockdown and I was asked to interview you for your book launch on Instagram Live. It was extremely well attended considering a) it was Instagram and b) it was your debut novel. You had your hair hot rolled up and were wearing this pink outfit, and I was wearing dungarees.

Eliza Clark I was trying to “kind of” deal with being in my house, so I wore a nightgown and a sheer robe with marabou feather trim on the sleeves and looked silly but like I was having fun.

YES It was hard, Jayne Mansfield. And afterward we became friends.

EC We went online with our partners a few times and watched movies together.

YES You made us watch Cats. To be honest, I still don’t have a good feeling about it.

You both write short stories and novels. How do the two compare?
YES It’s really interesting because I started with short stories and when you do that people say, “That’s cute, but can you pitch us a novel too?” Now I’ve found that by writing novels I can do what I want better and more complexly, but that’s been quite a journey. For me, short stories focus on a trick or a twist, whereas novels are very character and mood-driven. They allow me to spend more time with people.

EC I have lots of ideas, but then it’s about working out the greatness of an idea. I like writing both. You can’t really fail with a short story collection because they’re so scary commercially – they’re almost doomed to fail. So anything positive that happens is a success, whereas with a novel you can really fail.

YES There’s scope for you to focus more on genre in short stories and still be considered literary. I think there’s a lot of genre snobbery at play – in some ways I’m never taken fully seriously as a novelist because there’s often a sea monster. And I think that gives you freedom. It’s a different pursuit.

Are short stories and polyphonic narratives also a way to prevent people from identifying with your characters?
YES They will try anyway. They will try to find a voice among the many and say, “That’s you.” It’s an incredibly frustrating cliché to address to female novelists. But at the same time, you are writing about reality to some extent, so you are often writing your own voice. In Our women under the seaI found it much more annoying to have to use Miri’s voice when writing than Leah because she was much more me.

EC I had a rather malicious review of Repentancewhere the person completely ignored that there was a narrator involved and wrote about what their impression was of my political beliefs. I didn’t really get much of that because it’s so extreme and clearly far removed from my life, but someone found a way anyway.

Every few years someone claims that the novel is dead. Is that true?
YES That’s a bizarre claim, except that one could say, “The version of the novel as I personally very, very much appreciate and perceive it has probably been out of fashion for some time.” I think that’s a much less exaggerated and hysterical way of saying exactly the same thing.

EC I’ve spoken to you about this fear before – I sometimes worry that I personally am contributing to the decline in the quality of literature. You could put it more positively: that I’m interested in pushing literature forward in different places. Not that I’m a great experimental novelist – I’m not Rebecca Watson, who’s much better at that. I’m interested in experimenting with the form. But then I do worry, “Oh, should I have read some Dostoyevsky?” I feel like people will take me seriously when I’m 50.

Sometimes you hear people talk about their relationship with writing—strangers, no one I know—but you think, “Do you really like writing, do you really want to write? Or do you like the idea of ​​writing?” For some people, the point of a novel seems to be to expand their lifestyle brand. Nobody is forcing you to do it. You don’t have to write a novel. You can just read books or find another creative outlet. If you really enjoy it, it feels less like you’re fighting with other people for the crumbs.

YES And most of the time you probably have to work a full-time job to finance it, so you’re tired all the time. Ultimately, it’s either worth it because you want to do it, or it’s not.

Do you work full time?
YES Yes. I’m doing great! It’s important to talk about it though. There’s a real misconception that once you sell a book you’re done. And that makes people feel either very intimidated or like they’ve failed. But that’s the case for 80% of the authors I know. In the vast majority of cases (when people write full-time) they’ve either been extraordinarily successful in a way that can’t be easily replicated or they have private funds.

EC I don’t have a permanent job—I did until August 2022. But even among full-time writers, many of us also have a matrix of freelance work. Mostly teaching, grading manuscripts, writing copy, working in some form of publishing. Sometimes you definitely feel like, “If I don’t get a seven-figure advance, I’ve screwed it up.” But when someone becomes successful, it’s really the exception and not the rule, and that’s miserable.

Compared In countries like Scandinavia or Ireland there doesn’t seem to be much government support for writers.
YES It is a real failure of this country as a whole – it is terrible and so obvious. It is simply not respected as a profession or a culture. The idea that places like the White Review have to close, even though it was an incredibly important starting point for so many people, because they lack funding. This is an absolute farce.

EC This is mainly because Britain has such a strong literary tradition, but it has faded into the background.

YES We both should have gone to Stem.

EC No, I got a C in math. You know those interviews where writers are asked, “What would you do if you weren’t a writer?” And usually there’s a pretty romantic answer. But I think I’d probably still be working in digital marketing for a nonprofit, and that’s not a fun answer.

What are you currently reading?
YES I enjoyed it Henry Henry by Allen Bratton, which was fascinating. After doing press work for Private ritesit made me think of a lot of the same things – it’s a bit Shakespearean, and it’s about abusive parents and coming to terms with what you are when you’re not raised properly to be anything. I thought that was really good.

EC At the moment I am listening take a blood sample by William Joseph Martin, formerly Poppy Z Brite, because your wife recommended it. I really enjoyed it Exquisite corpse And Lost Souls. This was considered his worst film, but it’s still really good. I recently attended a panel in Australia with Patrick DeWitt and Jonathan Lethem, so I read The Sisters Brothers And Motherless Brooklynand I loved both of them.

She is always hungry by Eliza Clark will be published on 7 November by Faber