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Courtney Maum, the author of three novels, including I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You, Touch, and Costalegre,  inspired by the real life figure of Peggy Guggenheim and her daughter. Maum has also just published a memoir, The Year of the Horses, in which she writes about turning to a childhood passion for horses as a response to depression, and is the author of a best-selling guide for budding writers on navigating the travails of publishing. She has said that when she started writing her first book, in 2003, “I wasn’t professional about my writing: I didn’t research, I didn’t outline, I didn’t stress. I was very romantic and naïve about the process—I would wait until a mood hit me, and then I’d just start writing. But you can’t pay your mortgage by being verbally romantic! So now, I write like a goddamn professional.” 

Professionalism is one hallmark of the novels that Maum has chosen to talk about today, both of which feature two of the most distinctive voices I’ve yet to come across. The first, published in 2020, is Hex by Rebecca Dinerstein Knight,  about an expelled biology PHD candidate, obsessed with botanical toxins; the second is Wolf in White Van, a novel by the musician John Darnielle.