Photo by Jill Goldman

Somewhere in between co-editing The Believer, teaching MFA students the wonders/horrors of fiction writing, and being one-half of the literary power couple that is herself and Ben Marcus, writer Heidi Julavits has published her fourth novel, The Vanishers, which came out this March on Doubleday.

The Vanishers tells the story of Julia Severn, a young student at the most acclaimed psychic institute in the world. She finds herself the victim of a psychic attack, brought forth by her ex-mentor at the institute, and, throughout the majority of the book, Julia is struggling to break free from the attack. In between, there’s time traveling, plastic surgery, spas, missing mothers, phantom e-mails, and people who disappear from life by their own choosing. Sound weird? It is. It’s also delightfully readable — I found myself doing dangerous things with the book, like walking and reading at the same time. And, of course, it features Julavits’ signature expertly-crafted sentences, which are a joy to read in themselves. I got a chance to ask Julavits a few questions about the book, as well as a couple other very important topics, like fashion and mental illness.

Julia Jackson: I feel like it’s such an obvious question, to ask how ideas from a book came to you, but the thing that struck me most about The Vanishers was how imaginative it is so I have to ask anyway: What were the first seeds of the the psychic institute plot line? And that of the vanishing from life?

Heidi Julavits: The psychic attack thing (and the opening chapter, where there’s a bitter conflict between mentor and mentee at a psychic institute) came to me via a book called Psychic Self Defense by Dion Fortune, which is basically a ’30s occult self-help book. It has the same cover as AS Byatt’s Possession, so if you’re reading it on the train, your co-riders might not suspect you to be a health risk, and move away.

Read the rest of this entry »