Novelist Jen Michalski chats with me about her new LGBT literary novel, All This Can Be True.
Bio:
Jen Michalski is the author of the novels All This Can Be True (Turner/Key Light, June 2025), You’ll Be Fine (NineStar Press, 2021), The Summer She Was Under Water (Black Lawrence Press, 2017), and The Tide King (Black Lawrence Press 2013), a couplet of novellas called Could You Be With Her Now (Dzanc Books 2013), and three collections of fiction (The Company of Strangers, 2023; From Here, 2014; and Close Encounters, 2007). Her work has appeared in more than 100 publications, including Poets & Writers, and she’s been nominated for the Pushcart Prize seven times. She’s been named as “One of 50 Women to Watch” by The Baltimore Sun and “Best Writer” by Baltimore Magazine. She is editor in chief of the literary weekly jmww.
Welcome, Jen. Please tell us about your current release.
When Lacie Johnson’s husband, Derek, suffers a stroke at forty-seven and falls into a coma, her plans come to a screeching halt—asking Derek for a divorce, going back to school to get her master’s, and starting over as a single woman now that their children have grown up. But what begins as a disaster brings an unexpected blessing in the form of Quinn, a kind stranger whom Lacie meets in the halls of the hospital.
This is just a stop-over for Quinn, who is traveling up to the British Columbia coast to live in a co-op of grief survivors on a remote island after the loss of her young daughter. She’s also the former singer of a post-riot grrrl band who fled the group and the public eye more than fifteen years ago for reasons unknown. Lacie thinks she’s discovered in Quinn the life and the person she’s always wanted. But Quinn harbors a secret that connects her to Derek. And if Derek wakes up, Quinn must come clean and risk destroying her growing relationship with Lacie.
Told in alternating points of view, All This Can Be True follows Lacie and Quinn as they make the journey to each other—and then grapple with the fallout.
What inspired you to write this book?
I began writing All This Can Be True during the pandemic. I was fascinated with the idea of what we owe people—our spouses, our family, ourselves. The book began as two images in my head—a mysterious, widespread illness (you don’t say!) that causes the protagonist Lacie’s husband to fall in a coma and left for dead, and an image of Lacie lying in bed with a strange woman months later when the hospital calls to tell her that her husband has woken up. What does one do when, thinking their old life is over, has moved on and what if the old life comes calling, back from the dead?
I also like the idea of second acts—as I’ve gotten older, I’m not in the same relationship from my twenties that I thought would last forever, I’ve moved from the city in which I thought I’d live forever, etc. It takes a lot of bravery to go and live the life that you want rather than the one that is convenient, particularly as an older woman bound by the conventions of her time.
Excerpt from All This Can Be True:
“The lighting in here is terrible,” Derek said, burping under his breath, fist to his mouth. Lacie, having no idea what he was talking about—the lighting was fine, a little bright for the interior of a plane cabin, even—reached in her purse and pulled out two sticks of gum.
“Here.” She pressed one into his palm.
“How is this going to help?” Derek cocked an eyebrow.
“It’ll take your mind off things.” She watched as the foil wrapper tumbled from his open hand and onto the floor, as his lean body coiled forward into the small well in front of his seat to retrieve it.
“Can you turn the overhead on?” His voice, muffled, came from this contorted position. She put her hand on his back and was startled to feel a thin layer of moisture underneath his shirt.
“Just get it later,” she pressed. “After we take off.”
Although she was surprised that he gave up so easily, resurfacing and resting his head against the back of his seat, or that he’d even managed to drop the wrapper in the first place, her attention moved to the flight attendants as they began their instructions at the front of the plane. In a few minutes, they would be taxiing down the runway at O’Hare and, four hours from now, they would be back in San Diego, their home in Del Mar, until Derek left for another business trip to Raleigh. And, if he asked her, she would go with him.
It was something Lacie had been doing, accompanying Derek on his business trips, since the girls were finally out of the house–Rachel permanently and Sam, at least for now, while she did her third gap year. She wasn’t keeping tabs on him. Nor did she want to become more involved with his business.
She went simply because he’d asked. A year ago, when he was searching online for flights for a trip to Boca Raton to visit some medical device company (it was something he’d done himself, booked his own travel, since he first started his venture capital firm more than twenty years ago), he’d asked her if she wanted to go.
“To Boca Raton?” She’d looked up from her book as if he’d asked her to fly to a war zone. “What’s in Boca Raton?”
“I’d just like to see you more.” He’d shrugged.
“What, are you dying?” She’d laughed.
But she’d gone and kept going. She’d accompanied him to Portland and Seattle and Austin and, recently, Chicago. During these trips, she’d go for a walk around the city while Derek was in a meeting. If she was feeling brave, she’d venture out on public transit. She’d get a latte at a local coffee shop, a book from an independent bookstore. She’d go shopping too, of course, but she’d also try to hit any major exhibitions at art or history museums. Just a few days ago, she’d seen an exhibit, Sarah Charlesworth’s Stills, at the Art Institute of Chicago–fourteen photographs, each of a person jumping or falling from a building, all taken before the iconic 9/11 photograph The Falling Man. The photos, which Charlesworth had taken from newspapers, showed bodies that appeared to be suspended midair, some that appeared to climb upward, some nearly horizontal, head first, feet first. Lacie had been struck by the idea that someone could be taken by such surprise, the ground disappearing beneath them, nothing but air and terminal velocity below, falling and trapped at the same time, an endless loop of falling. Falling, falling …
Falling
Lacie gripped the seat arms as the plane dipped a few feet downward. Turbulence. She glanced to her left and saw Derek had fallen asleep so soundly, his chin nearly on his chest, that his phone hovered dangerously near the end of his knee. She picked it up and slid it into her purse and thought silently to herself: It’s possible that we’ll crash but unlikely.
She took a deep breath, closing her eyes. It was low-level anxiety, the kind that a Klonopin would wipe away clean. If she could still have one. She thought this wistfully, like one might think about a parent who’d died long ago. Nobody told her ten years ago, when she went into recovery, that she’d still think about them fairly regularly, desire their reassuring presence.
To get at the root of her anxiety, she did an exercise her sponsor, Marcie, had taught her. She closed her eyes, took a few deep breaths, and thought the first thing that came into her mind.
I want to leave you. She glanced at Derek, who was still asleep.
Of course, their marriage looked great on the surface. Just five years ago, they had been featured in a photo shoot for San Diego Magazine, “The King and Queen of Del Mar,” about venture capitalist Derek Johnson and his wife, Lacie, philanthropists, native Southern Californians (at least Derek, who’d grown up in Encinitas, was), and parents of two girls. It had become a joke, the article title, a lighthearted one, among their friends–Here come the King and Queen of Del Mar! Christine would lift her mimosa glass when they arrived ten minutes late to the Americana for brunch. Was this what she’d wanted twenty-five years ago? For good or for bad, they were a fixture in their community. The way, Lacie had often thought as she passed the framed photos of the article in their foyer, that a severed moose head is the fixture in a lodge.
But she’d never wanted to be a queen, and, like anyone else’s, their marriage hadn’t been a fairy tale. Still, did she really have it so bad? When she had thoughts like these, she (or at least, her therapist) had chalked them up to “leisure anxiety”—she’d been outside the workforce for more than twenty years; the girls were now out of the house. She had too much time on her hands, too many opportunities to equate boredom with unhappiness. She should be thankful, she always reminded herself, for their economic security. Even if she had sacrificed her own career for it, and her intellectual stimulation at times—well, it wasn’t as if smarter, better women than her hadn’t done so as well.
“Derek.” She nudged his head lightly where it had fallen onto her shoulder. They’d be landing in San Diego in less than an hour. “Wake up.”
What exciting project are you working on next?
A comedy-drama (dramady?) about a family that spends a weekend together at Coachella, one of the biggest outdoor concert festivals in the US. Secrets are revealed, relationships are tested, a surprise weather event tests everyone’s resolve.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
When my mom showed me how to make a “book,” ie, folding a paper in quarters. I was about six, I think, and on the paper I wrote a story about my birthday. I find that I write to process my feelings, to figure out how I (or others) would respond to difficult situations. It’s like play-acting but putting yourself in other people’s shoes, too.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I am a full-time freelance medical copyeditor, so I mostly write on the evenings and weekends. But a lot of the writing goes in my head—at night, in bed, and on walks with the dog—before it gets to the paper. There’s so many more distractions in the world today, and it can definitely be harder to get into a quiet place and work, but a good session of writing, even if it’s a few pages, makes me feel like I’ve had a good meditative session. I feel like I’ve cleared a lot of the fog swirling around in there.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I work from home, and it’s just me and the dog, Ripley, most of the time, so I like to narrate her life in song. I’ve got one great, epic poem going.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
An elephant! I remember having actual arguments with my mom about it. I remember being completely convinced it was a viable career option. I’m glad I had writin to fall back on, because it turns out my mom was totally right.
Links:
Website | Instagram | Bluesky | Turner Publishing