By Breen Nolan

Elizabeth Ellen’s dazzling and darkly funny novel, American Thighs, follows Tatum Grant, a former child actor who steals her daughter’s identity to start her life over as a high school cheerleader. Tatum’s troubled upbringing is the catalyst for her move from Hollywood to Elkhart, Indiana, a town with painful ties to Tatum’s past. Written in interview style, American Thighs takes wild leaps though the inner lives of high school students and the flawed people expected to guide them into adulthood. Part high school drama, part cultural critique, and part high-speed chase, American Thighs explores the ways young women are expected to consent to their sexualization in a world that also wants to control their every move.

The Coachella Review sat down with Ellen to discuss the inspiration behind American Thighs, why it’s important to follow your obsessions even if that means you’ll offend some people, and how knowing less can work to your advantage.

The Coachella Review: I read that you wrote American Thighs ten years ago. Why are we just now getting to read it?

Elizabeth Ellen: It just kind of sat in my laptop.  My ex-husband and I decided to do the 90-Day Novel because we read Ottessa Moshfegh did it [with her novel] Eileen. We were just entertaining ourselves. I can’t remember if I shared it with him during the process, but definitely after. Later, I had an agent briefly and I showed it to her. She was sending me feedback while she was reading it. At first, she was like, Oh, I love this, blah, blah, blah. And then at some point she was like, I’m not going to keep reading, I don’t think this is for me. Then I decided, it’s a big publisher type book or nothing. So, I set it aside. Later on, a friend of mine said, You should send it to Clash [Books, the publisher]. So I did and they liked it.

TCR: Did you make any changes to it between 2014 and now?

EE: Just a tiny bit, maybe ten percent character development stuff. Mostly with the male characters. But it’s mostly the same as when I wrote it.

TCR: Did you do an outline before you wrote [the book]?

EE: The 90-Day Novel has you do a rough sketch and an outline. I remember a lot of character backstory and development. I think I did all that before I started putting the story together.

TCR: What were some of your inspirations for American Thighs?

EE: The first thing was a news story I read about a woman in Wisconsin. She had stolen her 15-year-old daughter’s identity. This woman was 31 and entered high school as a 15-year-old. [She] tried out for the cheerleading team, made it, went to a couple parties, and then she got busted because she wrote a bad check for her cheerleading costume. It’s a sad story. She went to trial and I think wound up in a psychiatric ward. That was the basis.

I’ve [also] always been interested in child stars like Drew Barrymore and Brooke Shields, so I read their memoirs. Children of celebrities, some that are mentioned in the book, like Michael Jackson’s daughter and Kurt Cobain’s daughter were interesting to me. When you don’t have a normal childhood, whether you’re a Hollywood star or you get pregnant at 15, you become an adult really fast. Also, River Phoenix’s death and his girlfriend at the time, Samantha Mathis, who was a celebrated actress but also not really visible, so she could blend in easily walking down any street in America… all those ideas went into the book.

TCR: You did a great job exploring the psychology of your characters. There’s so much nuance to each one. It’s very compelling. Even the characters that behaved in depraved ways, I still cared for them. I’m wondering how you’re able to add that level of depth to your characters?

EE: Even though [the characters] have bad qualities and behaviors, there’s still empathy there, which was important to me. Like I said, I’ve had a lifetime interest in characters like that. I was obsessed with Kurt Cobain, River Phoenix, and Drew Barrymore. And the characters [in the book] represent people I’ve always researched. I did do more, but I already had the basis. Around this time while working on another project, when I had breaks, I would watch MTV’s Teen Mom. I was thinking of them, how they were 15 and 16 and now they have kids and a baby daddy, all [of] that stuff thrust upon them. There was some of that element, too.

TCR: There are so many stories about older men having relationships with teenagers and not that many about older women having relationships with teenagers. Can you talk more about that choice? Also, are you drawn to writing about taboo subjects?

EE: Yeah, I’m always drawn to whatever you’re not supposed to talk about. Any taboo. I guess I started thinking of that news story and that actual woman going to these pool parties with the teenagers. Somewhere that just naturally lent itself to like, ‘Oh, what if, instead of falling in love with a high school boy, she falls in love with a high school girl?’ It just seemed more interesting because I hadn’t seen that before. It seemed possible.

TCR: I love how you wrote through the perspective of teens; it was so realistic. How did you do that?

EE: At the time, my daughter was a teenager, so I was borrowing from her friends – vernacular, behaviors and stuff. She hasn’t read the book; she’d probably be slightly annoyed. But yeah, definitely being immersed in her world and her friends’ world at that time gave a lot of the details to the characters.

TCR: What advice do you have for writers interested in challenging cultural norms in their own writing?

EE: I’d say, if you have a natural interest, lean into it and try not to think about what people are going to say about it. For me, that kind of thing makes me want to do it more. It makes me more invested and obsessed with the project. But you also have to be willing to take some pushback and even people pushing you aside. A lot of the places that used to write about my books aren’t [anymore]. They won’t interview me or do a review of this book. I’m not sure how much is the book being taboo or [just] me, because of cancelations and stuff. You have to be willing to not always have [access to] all the outlets you would be able to have.

TCR: How do you manage the criticism?

EE: 2014 [was] when I had my first cancelation, and that one was devastating. I lost a bunch of weight really fast; I was crying all the time. And then, after a while, like, after a year or so, you just kind of get used to it. Then you almost lean into it, I guess. You can go one or two ways. You either go belly up and apologize and try to do everything that the culture wants you to do. Or you go the other way. Being raised by the mother I was raised by, she was always rebellious about everything, so she taught me to be that way. I just kind of went the other direction. Then it’s like, once you’re at the bottom, there’s nothing to lose. [It’s] just like, ‘Well, I might as well be this person now that isn’t afraid of anything’ and lean into that.

TCR: That’s great advice. I think many writers are afraid of criticism, I know I am.

EE: As an artist, to have any kind of fear, you’re not going to be true to yourself. It’s really going to [flatten] the art. So, whenever someone’s ready, go that way and take [it] on.

TCR: I like what you said earlier about obsessions. To just go for it. It’s not productive to [worry] when creating.

EE: Yeah, and it takes the joy out of it, at least for me. Because when you’re obsessed with something, that’s kind of like falling in love or the joy of [falling in love].

TCR: I empathized and cared for both Tatum and Taylor Ragner [Tatum’s best friend-turned-lover]. It’s something I’ve been thinking about: [the morality of the relationship] while seeing them for the complicated people they are. What are your thoughts on it?

EE: Well, the other thing I was thinking of is, going back even fifty years, how many people like Loretta Lynn or Bonnie from Bonnie and Clyde got married when they were 16? [They] go into adulthood and get out of their houses. That wasn’t uncommon. I’m not saying one is morally good or bad, but just, that could be something. And in this book, that happens because [Taylor] feels like she’s ready to become an adult or enter that world and also to liberate herself from her mother and her parents’ house, rules, etc.

TCR: ls there anything you want to people to take away from American Thighs?

EE: I would say, try to have an open mind about human sexuality and to try give the characters a chance. The other thing that’s taboo to talk about is [the] different state laws [around] what age someone can have sex, which makes no definitive moral understanding of human sexuality. And so, I think American Thighs was an exploration of that. There’s not a definite [age] when you’re mature enough, that we can all agree on, nationally. It’s up to each state, and each state has very very unique, varied, and specific laws. So, it’s kind of trying to figure out, like, ‘When do we become adults? When do we own our sexuality? Is it when we are capable of reproducing, ourselves?’ And so maybe just try to have an open mind and explore these questions with the novel and the characters who are also exploring these questions.

TCR: In addition to writing, you’re also the owner and publisher of Hobart Pulp and Short Flight/Long Drive Books. What’s it like to manage [both] with your creative work?

EE: Five days a week, I work four to five hours on it. For almost twenty years, my ex-husband worked on it, and I saw how his writing suffered, and his time. So, when everything happened and I took on Hobart, I wanted to put energy into it because I didn’t want it to fail. I wanted to persevere. To show I could do it. And I think I did. I’m really proud of Hobart and all my editors and contributors. It’s been very empowering to work so hard on Hobart and watch it thrive. Now, I’m trying to not put quite as much time into it and get back into my writing, but I do love editing and publishing and working with up-and-coming new writers and also writers who can’t find another publisher for more provocative writing.

TCR: What are you working on now? Do you have another project?

EE: Well, I have a book called Surveillance, and I can’t decide if it’s a memoir or a novel. It’s about a woman who’s obsessed with her ex-husband and his double life. Then she takes on a double life of her own in investigating his double life, in surveilling him with a number of escalating tactics. It’s kind of a dark sexual love story. [laughs]

TCR: Very excited for that! When you’re starting a new project, how do you keep everything organized? And how do you put it all together?

EE: I have a million notes, a lot of Word documents. When I wrote Person/a that went through 10 years and so many different drafts. It was going to be a really long novella. Then it just became this really long book over the course of time. I think [projects] just shape shift the more you work on them, until you get to where [you think], ‘Okay, I feel like this is what it needs to be.’

TCR: What’s the hardest part of getting a book from start to finish? Is there one stage that’s the most exhausting for you?

EE: I think the initial stage, just until I get the style I like.  Even if it’s, like, ‘Is it memoir, is it a novel? Is it first person? Is it third person? Is it more traditional narrative or more flashes of narrative, a paragraph or two on each page?’ You know, it’s figuring all that out, how it works best on the page. And then once you get that, it runs a lot smoother. But sometimes that part is just making choices. And there are infinite choices.

TCR: What do you wish you would have known when you first started out?

EE: I didn’t know anything, to be honest, and looking back, I think that benefitted me. I kind of had to feel my way and figure it out. I don’t have an MFA, and my friend Chloe Caldwell doesn’t have an MFA, and I think in some way, that kept us liberated and more unique. But also, we didn’t have the pressure. We didn’t have peers or mentors that we cared about what they thought and that we had to live up to or compete with. So, maybe the less you know, [the more] you can just be free to be yourself.

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Breen Nolan is a writer from Rochester, New York. She is a current MFA candidate in the University of California, Riverside-Palm Desert low-residency program in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts and is the managing editor at The Coachella Review. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her family.