Kathleen Alcott’s upcoming novel, Infinite Home, is excerpted in the newest issue of Recommended Reading. In the interview below, Alcott shares her thoughts on the book, and on her writing process.

Emma Adler: Infinite Home focuses on the non-biological family formed by an eccentric group of tenants. Your first novel, The Dangers of Proximal Alphabets, also focused on a non-biological family, and asked what drives people to forge familial ties outside of the family of origin. Is this topic is of particular interest to you? Why?

Kathleen Alcott: I find it interesting that this term and ones like it — “non-biological family” “unconventional family” — have come up so much for people describing my work, because it’s not one I’ve put forth, specifically. But my upbringing and young adult life was one long meditation on the nature of family, I suppose. Growing up in Northern California, I often lived with people who were not my family, friends of my mothers and their children, and I was urged both to rely on them and be accountable to them as I would my own blood. Something about this stuck with me, that we could chose closeness and intimacy like that, that these sort of atypical contracts of love were possible. But also, I lost both my parents by my early twenties, and that emphasized for me the obdurate distinction that exists in the real world between friends and family. Even the closest friend or partner cannot tell you how you looked on the day you were born, and sometimes that is very much what we need to be told. Creating and nurturing lasting connection between two people who come from different corners of culture and experience is an elaborate dance, and never as easy as saying, “I choose you, and we’re family now.” The blueprint for devotion has to be redrawn almost constantly.

Adler: The excerpt from Infinite Home published in Recommended Reading contains a wealth of different settings. In thirty pages, we go from an apartment building in Brooklyn, to a McDonalds, to library, to a hippie commune. One thing I was struck by, reading the excerpt, was how you manage to create a very strong sense of place for all of these settings, despite the relatively brief time we spend in each of them. Is this something that you feel comes naturally to you?

Alcott: I have a memory that is very much image-based. Maybe this makes me sound like a lunatic, but I sort of consider it a secret power, that I can be in line at the deli and suddenly be very much confronted by a very clear image of a place I was once, can conjure the texture of the t-shirts people I loved wore, the color of the kitchen tile, the particular type of tree. Sometimes this happens in the middle of something important, unprompted, and at the point I have to just yield to my memory, see what it’s trying to show me. I tend to attach to these sort of environmental details, and so sitting down and writing a fictional (or non-fictional) place, I’m “seeing” in the same way.

Adler: The excerpt focuses on one tenant from the apartment building, Thomas. But in fact, Infinite Home is an ensemble piece that, written in a close-third-person, frequently shifts which character it is “close” to. Do you find it difficult to shuttle between multiple protagonists? Did you develop a particular fondness for one character, or do you love all of your proverbial children about equally?

Alcott: I find the parent/child to author/character analogy a little problematic — my role as a novelist is not first to love my characters but to see them. Because my novels are very much character-driven, my job requires a lot of doubling back, exploring one assumption about a character’s behavior and uncovering an unexpected impetus, adjusting their vocal-physical presence and interior life given new information. That being said, I did find myself writing different sections depending on my own internal pitch. For instance, when I felt burdened by the modern world, I wrote Adeleine, who surrounds herself with antiquated things; when I felt like my agency in my personal life was compromised by grief, I wrote Thomas, whose life has been redefined by a stroke.

Adler: One of the most intriguing set pieces in the excerpt is the commune that Edith’s daughter, Jenny/Song, escapes to, and which is distinguished by the fact that its residents only use speech for one hour each day. Is this based on something from real life? How much research went into figuring out this part of the novel? Are you now on expert on California’s remote ascetic communities (if this is indeed a thing)?

Alcott: I did plenty of research for Infinite Home — about William’s Syndrome, and synchronous fireflies, and the pathology of agoraphobia, among other things — but the commune featured in the book came purely from my mind. One incredible feature of Northern California culture, to me, is the priority given to reinvention. Anyone is allowed and encouraged, at any time, to redefine themselves, to align with this credo or that, and the institutions that inspire a following — are often relatively new, often without historical precedent. Someone I knew was always attending a workshop on communication through ceramics, or escaping into the mountains to walk across coals, or going on a silence hike, or eating only ginger, or learning Qi Gong. On a more specific note, I was thinking about the push of many of the communes/programs/fads. It’s always a step back to the “authentic self,” always an attempt to carve down our identities to their simplest parts, to harvest inner fulfillment and in so doing need less from the external world. In meditation the most difficult part for many people is transferring the placidity of their practice to the rest of the world; yes, you can notice your thoughts and accept them with peace while you’re sitting on a pillow breathing deeply, but can you do that when you’re interacting with the rest of the world, with the sounds of ambulances and with the stack of bills and with the repetitive conflicts that make up close relationships. I created a community that dealt with this issue literally, that attempted to make life pure by reducing the clutter of spoken communication, to effect an ultra-awareness by asking its members to be alone with their thoughts for most of their lives. If a community like this exists somewhere, and if they have the internet and they’re reading this, I’m waiting for my invitation. I’m very happy to be alone with quiet, and also I’m a damn good cook.

Long a paragon of the West Coast lit scene, this year ZYZZYVA celebrates its thirtieth year in print, and does so with a star-studded anniversary issue. We spoke to the journal’s editor Laura Cogan about where it’s going, where it’s been, and how to navigate the tongue-tied.

Jake Zucker: Congratulations on your thirtieth birthday. I know you have the dynamite anniversary issue out now, but what else do you guys have planned as celebration? What’s going on on your end of the continent?

Laura Cogan: Thank you, Jake! As you can imagine, we’re honored and thrilled to shepherd this prestigious organization through its 30th anniversary year. It’s rare for an independent journal to survive this long; perhaps rare for any arts organization to do so. And it’s poignant to celebrate this anniversary in San Francisco in 2015, at the nexus of so much transition, so much change, and in the midst of such tremendous pressure on the cultural life of this city. San Francisco is at the center of technological innovation and investment; it has also been, historically, a place of innovation and daring in its arts scene. So while the environment is in some ways very challenging, we do also feel that the need for organizations and publishers like ZYZZYVA in San Francisco is as essential as ever. And for readers across the country, and across the world, our vantage point is an interesting one.

We’re planning to celebrate the anniversary throughout the year, with special elements in each issue. Our upcoming Fall issue (due out in September) features cover art and an interior portfolio of work by a tremendous Bay Area artist, the late Jay DeFeo. The pieces featured are exquisite and rarely seen works by a major contemporary artist, and we’re also publishing a meditative essay on her artwork by emerging writer, Andrew David King. That dynamic mix of acclaimed and emerging talent is fairly representative of what the journal strives for in general, I’d say. The issue also features fiction by Anthony Marra, David L. Ulin, April Ayers Lawson, and Glen David Gold — among others. And in Winter we’ll have artwork by Paul Madonna (who is designing cover art especially for the issue) and fiction from Dagoberto Gilb, as well as some wonderful new works in translation. As always, we’re keeping up a busy schedule of events throughout the year, too.

JZ: You spoke of the relationship between ZYZZYVA and the city of San Francisco, and, indeed, your journal’s stated mission explicitly evokes the region in which you publish. For example, the journal’s slogan is “A San Francisco Journal of Arts & Letters,” and the ZYZZYVA website says the journal publishes work of “a distinctly San Francisco perspective.” What is that perspective? And has it changed over the journal’s long history?

LC: It’s an evolving relationship. When the journal was founded in 1985, the mission was to publish West Coast authors exclusively. The idea was to serve as a kind of counterweight against any East Coast bias in publishing, because while the West has always been rich with writing talent, the majority of publishing activity has been, of course, based on the East Coast. As a result, there was (and perhaps, to a lesser degree, there still is) a sense that if you’re doing work at a large geographic remove from the heart of the industry, you may be at some disadvantage in getting the attention of publishers, editors, reviewers. That has all changed somewhat. For one thing, there is more publishing activity here than there used to be; for another, some of that geographic distance may be collapsed by the ease of communications. And people move — many don’t stay anchored in one place for their entire lives. So for all of those reasons, Oscar [Villalon] and I opened up the journal to writers living and working anywhere in the world.

Yet the journal’s roots and presence in San Francisco inevitably inform the editorial viewpoint in many ways, because the choices we make are of course influenced by the immediate concerns of the community around us. So for example, we’ve published a considerable amount of poetry and art that evidence simmering concerns about the environment and California’s drought; fiction and non-fiction about the drug war in Mexico; and, organically, a great deal of literature that addresses national concerns from a Western setting — everything from fiction about the mortgage meltdown in a Southern California development, to nonfiction about serving as a juror in San Francisco, or the shifting idea of the border and its implications for immigration reform. And just as San Francisco is a cosmopolitan city that embraces so many cultures from around the world, the journal is also inclusive. We’re publishing writers from New York, Italy, Mexico, and always looking for those voices from beyond our backyard.

JZ: Anniversaries are an occasion (or excuse!) to look back. What would you say have been the highlights of ZYZZYVA history — both within and beyond your tenure at the journal?

LC: It really is a perfect occasion for reflection. To my mind, ZYZZYVA’s tradition of risk-taking is one of its defining characteristics. It’s a publication that, for years, has risked publishing challenging material, has invested in emerging writers, and has shrugged off the pressures of fads. The journal has always welcomed previously unpublished authors, and showcases their work alongside contemporary masters. This model asks a lot of the reader, but, we hope, also affords her great rewards for her time. So our long-time readers have had the opportunity of discovering Haruki Murakami, Jim Gavin, Po Bronson, and F.X. Toole in these pages. They’ve found early works by Sherman Alexie and Jane Hirshfield, artwork from Richard Misrach. Those are hi-lights from earlier years, and part of the defining legacy of the journal.

And that spirit of risk-taking is something Oscar and I have sought to sustain in our tenure, too — and expand upon. We introduce new writers to our audience as often as possible — writers such as Daniel Tovrov and Monique Wentzel, both of whom were published for the first time in Issue No.99, and whose talent we believe in strongly. We also offer a place for established authors to stretch out and try something new. We’ve published fiction by playwright Octavio Solis, nonfiction by Edie Meidav and Glen David Gold, poetry by John Freeman. In recent issues, we’ve had the pleasure of bringing our readers short stories by many acclaimed authors new to the journal, people like Eric Puchner, Hector Tobar [ed. — Tobar’s “Secret Stream” was featured on Recommended Reading, Issue 163, recommended by ZYZZYVA] and Elizabeth Spencer. And while fiction and poetry remain the bulk of each issue, Oscar and I have also really delighted in expanding the journal’s nonfiction offerings, recently publishing a vibrant diversity of essays by Rebecca Solnit, Katie Crouch, John Gibler, and Julie Chinitz, among others.

Lastly, I’d note one more hi-light of recent years: the events program we’ve built. We’re now producing, hosting, or co-hosting nearly two dozen events every year. They range from readings in bookstores and galleries, to panels and informal mixers. These events have created such a terrific sense of community around the journal. Writing and reading are fundamentally solitary activities, but there’s a hunger for opportunities to meet in the same room with others who are similarly invested in these endeavors, to share ideas, to hear an author reading their words, to ask questions. It’s been rewarding to see the events flourish.

JZ: As an editor, are there schools of writing that you’re particularly interested in representing in ZYZZYVA? What gets you excited? And are there trends that turn you off?

LC: I’m excited when I find a story that captures something essential about contemporary life, fiction that somehow breaks through the buzzing surface of this incredibly noisy mode of modern life, and finds (or creates) something meaningful amid all that chaos. Fiction which, even if it may not suggest any answers, offers that wonderful satisfaction of articulating one of the fundamental questions, or stresses, or tragedies, or absurdities, of contemporary life; or brings vividly to the page something about our shared cultural past — work which, hopefully, also casts some illuminating light on the present. This is what I’m looking for, much more so than representing any school of thought or school of writing. I’m not inclined toward the purely personal, confessional mode; for our purposes, even personal essays need to look beyond themselves, to offer layers of meaning and resonance beyond a straight-ahead reporting of a personal experience, no matter how meaningful that experience was for the writer. Happily, there’s a wealth of great, serious work being done, and in a variety of styles and voices.

JZ: Lastly, I have to ask: what’s the worst you’ve ever heard someone butcher the journal’s name?

LC: Oh, we’ve heard every imaginable variation (or so I think). I take the approach of someone greeting a traveler from a distant land, a tourist attempting to speak in a language foreign to them: I’m respectful of any good-faith attempt at pronunciation, and understand it’s not an obvious or easy word to pronounce. We’ve certainly heard plenty of people venture the beginning of a guess aloud and then trail off in a rising inflection, which comes out something like, “Zyzzzz…?” But really, once you’ve hear it spoken aloud once it’s quite simple, and sort of rolls off the tongue.

Laura Cogan photographed by Alix Klingenberg