How it Works Out with Myriam Lacroix 💄
an interview with author Myriam Lacroix
I’m really excited to bring you a new queer author interview. This time around I’m talking to Myriam Lacroix, the author of How It Works Out. This book is divided into 8 stories—each story takes two lesbians, Myriam and Allison, and imagines them and their relationship anew. In “Anthropocene,” Myriam is a wealthy CEO with a humiliation kink and Allison is her low-level employee. In “The Sequel,“ Myriam and Allison write a best-selling book of lesbian relationship advice. In a desperate attempt to maintain their B-level celesbian status, they plan a PR-centered destination wedding and honeymoon that ends in tragedy and betrayal. In other stories, Myriam and Allison appear as marginally-employed anarchists, house pets, cabaret performers, and two lesbians trying to save their relationship by getting really into marathon running. Sometimes they have a baby named Jonas, other times they have a lot of kids or no kids at all.
The stories in How It Works Out are fast-paced, filled with possibility, and often very funny. They play around with a fear that is fundamental to a lot of us, I think, that love is always uneven— we will either love and want a partner who neither loves nor wants us, or find ourselves accepting love and devotion from someone we’re just not that into. There are passages in this book I will carry around until my dying day e.g. when the butch celesbian narrator of The Sequel describes her wedding, which is being attended by Tegan and Sarah and reporters from Vogue Canada and Autostraddle alike: “Now I’m in some château, kissing Myriam, slipping in some tongue for the press. I pick her up and jog her down the aisle, smiling to show off my crooked canine, which some internet forums agree is my best attribute.“ Like, what?? I love a narrator who’s obsessed with themselves.
Myriam and I met over Google Docs to discuss How It Works Out, celesbian culture, how to survive long writing projects, and femme too much-ness. I loved taking to Myriam and hope you’ll enjoy this interview, too.
Maddy: Your name is Myriam Lacroix. One of the main characters in How It Works Out is also named Myriam Lacroix. Why did you use your own name for this project and did you ever worry that readers would conflate the Myriam in these stories with the real you?
Myriam: How It Works Out is absolutely a work of fiction, but it also started as a more personal project. In its very early stages it was a list I was writing mostly for myself, of possible outcomes to the relationship I was in at the time. When I started to take the project more seriously as a potential book, I initially changed the characters’ names, but the book lost something when I did that. It’s such an intimate book for me, and not something that I could ever really separate myself from, emotionally. I wanted to keep it that way. I’ve always admired artists who can put themselves on the line for their art, like Marina Abramović who looks gallery-goers directly in the eyes, or mutilates her own body. Or Frida Kahlo, with her surreal self-portraits. I find it exciting to see artists eliminate some of the distance between themselves and their work, to see them risk something for their art. For me, some of that risk was giving my name to a character who cannibalizes her lesbian lover, or gets pussy-spanked for contributing to climate change.
Maddy: What’s your relationship to writing and how do you keep a book-length project sustainable and fun for yourself? Correct me if I’m wrong, but these stories read like you had a lot of fun writing them.
Myriam: Writing How It Works Out, I tried to be as uninhibited as I could be; I wanted it to feel honest and vulnerable and funny and outrageous. If I was ever afraid of writing something, I knew it meant I had to write it. I definitely had fun with it, but I also knew it would be hard for a weird queer novel with an experimental structure to get much traction in the publishing world, so I held myself to a really high standard in terms of the quality of the writing. It’s hard to regret it now that I got the coveted book deals, but for years I was basically running on this kind of intense anxiety-fueled perfectionism, and had absolutely no life balance. Unsurprisingly, since the book came out, I’ve been slammed with intense exhaustion, and am still working on getting my creative energy back. That said, I think it took finally getting some literary recognition to realize how much I value the other, totally unambitious parts of myself. It feels so good to go camping with my cute partner, swim in bodies of water, hug my niblings, hang with friends, walk slowly through my neighbourhood. It feels really good to sleep in my car somewhere out of cell phone range and not see what the internet is saying about me for many consecutive days. I know I won’t be able to write a next book, or generally feel well and happy, unless I keep prioritizing those things.
Maddy: Has your definition of success--literary or otherwise--changed after getting a book deal and publishing How It Works Out?
Myriam: It’s changed drastically, yes, and is still changing all the time! One of the first things I noticed when my book came out was how quickly the bar for success was raised. I remember finishing my book and half-suspecting I’d wasted six years of my life, sadly brainstorming alternative career paths while I waited (forever) for any agent to get back to me. At that time the thought of seeing my book on shelves across North America, nevermind on other continents and in other languages, would have absolutely blown my mind! I still find it really exciting, but it’s also hard to know where to direct my ambition now that I’ve achieved my biggest goal. Am I going to start counting reviews or lusting after big literary prizes? Is my goal to, I don’t know, be on a late-night television show or get a bunch of followers on social media? I obviously want my book to do well, but thinking too much about those kinds of benchmarks is pretty boring, and makes me weirdly nihilistic. That said, one of the exciting parts of having my work be in the public sphere has been the opportunity to work collaboratively with other artists. For my book launch, I worked with some local drag artists to turn part of my book into a kind of theatrical drag performance, which was so fun. I’m really hoping to connect more with other artists and see what can come out of that. Also, I want to be less anxious, and make people laugh, and keep experimenting in my sex life. If I achieved all those things, I’d consider it a real success.
Maddy: On the topic of fame and success, How It Works Out is sprinkled with cameos from Ellen DeGeneres, Tegan and Sara, Kristen Stewart, and other celesbians. Does being a fan or consumer of pop culture inform your writing? Are there any celesbians that you feel especially attuned to??
Myriam: I wouldn’t say I’m super tuned in to pop culture, partly because I have poor impulse control and have to seriously limit my social media use. That said, I did blossom into my queerness at a young age in the fairly traditional millennial way of listening to Tegan and Sara, binging the L World, and watching every low-budget queer or lesbian movie I could track down. Engaging with queer media makes me feel connected to the greater queer universe, and I’m endlessly inspired by all the cool/beautiful things queers create. Like the rest of the world, I’ve been listening to Chappell Roan non-stop lately, and I love the absolute explosion of femmeness in her music. I also love that she isn't being treated as some niche musician just because she’s queer.
I think that’s part of what I was grappling with when I decided to write about queer women writers who were desperately reaching for celesbian status. When I started writing How It Works Out (almost ten years ago), I didn’t know any openly queer women writers that straight people were also reading, especially not ones who were writing weird or risk-taking stuff. I was also super femme and wore lots of lipgloss with experimental thrifted outfits, and was rarely taken seriously when I told people I was a writer – especially by men and mascs. So it felt cathartic to write this big joke about Myriam wanting to be a famous writer, but everyone underestimates her because she’s bubbly, wears padded bras, and has all these anxious neuroses. At the same time readers know that Myriam is the one actually writing what they’re reading, which was a fun meta thing to play with, and cathartic in a different way.
Maddy: Oh man, there are so many lesbian pop stars and celebrities right now. When I was in high school circa 2005 to 2009, it really was just Ellen and Rosie O’Donnell. I didn’t even know about Tegan and Sara until I went to college, that’s how difficult it was to find dyke representation. Kids today will never understand reading The Perks of Being a Wallflower several times in a row because you feel inexplicably drawn to the singular gay, semi-tragic character and then getting your dad to drive you to the record store to spend $17 of your hard-earned babysitting cash on a Smiths CD because Charlie in Perks of Being a Wallflower talks about how “infinite” their music is, and rushing home and popping Louder Than Bombs into the CD player and being like, what the fuck is this??
Anyways, I digress. Do you think the Myriam of “The Sequel” has read High Femme Camp Antics by Jenny Fran Davis?
Myriam: Right? It was so weird to come into queerness with no actual examples of it to base yourself off of. I remember the first time I saw a masc queer at a party in high school, I walked right up to her and was like “Hi my name is Myriam, would you like to make out?” She was wearing a “Kill Your Television” t-shirt, and nothing in my life had prepared me for that special mix of masc + antiestablishment, or how I’d react to it. I’d never even met a queer person before! Thankfully we did end up making out, which, judging by people’s reactions, was the most scandalous thing to have happened in the history of that Catholic school.
Wow, that essay on High Femme Camp Antics is *incredible*. It’s also super in my head right now and I’m very suspicious that all of my behaviour is somehow an HFCA. I had to check with my partner that they actually do enjoy this method of flirting (they do), and that nothing about it feels icky to them (it doesn’t). But yes, I think if the Myriam from “The Sequel” hasn’t read this essay, she definitely should. Fantasizing about what your partner would do if you died tragically is a pretty obvious HFCA, but at the same time, there's a logic to it. Like, we are gay, I have every right to demand that you be completely and irrationally obsessed with me. Isn’t that the whole point? That said, I don’t see Myriam’s antics involving being unkind to other femmes, because she’s pretty confident in her femmeness. That’s kind of the tragedy. She’s just going about the world, uninhibited and taking up space with her femmeness, and doesn’t realize how it affects the way people react to her. Doctors don’t believe her when she’s sick, everyone attributes the writing of the book to her masc partner, who is basically ashamed to be seen with her in public. I know she’s kind of a big farce in the book, but I always have a soft spot for that Myriam. I guess what I wish for her, and for all campy high femmes out there, is to find the people who’ll see them for who they are, antics and all.
Maddy: Right! Femme excess is a logical response to not being taken seriously–when no one’s listening, you have to speak louder…you have to YELL. Thank you so much, Myriam I loved this conversation. <3
Myriam: Thanks, Maddy! <3
How it Works Out is available NOW from your local library or wherever books are sold. This is the perfect read for anyone who resonates with any or all of the following topics: cannibalism, Canada, anarchist baby showers, lip gloss, an otherworldly cabaret act, and a lesbian couple whose been together for a hundred years, can’t stop fighting, and are now having the most overwrought wedding ever. Read an excerpt here 💄
Always adore this high quality dyke prose, the hilarious externality and internality simultaneously.