Nina LaCour: Author of "Yerba Buena" on Shifting from YA, Drawing on Family History and Finding Beauty in the Unexpected
Bestselling and award-winning YA author Nina makes her exquisite adult novel debut with Yerba Buena. Yerba Buena follows two star-crossed women as they navigate family, trauma, self-discovery and love. Written in lush prose, Nina brings us into her characters’ worlds so vividly, it’s almost tangible.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Nina where she discussed the shift from writing for a YA audience to writing for adults, drawing on her family’s rich history to bring her characters to life and finding beauty in the unexpected.
I know Yerba Buena is your first book not geared towards the YA audience. When you started writing Yerba Buena did you start with intent for writing for an adult audience or did things just kind of take shape organically?
Actually, it’s the first novel that I ever started writing. I was almost finished with college and I just had this idea about these two women and their families. And I just wasn't quite ready to write it yet. I mean, I did a lot of kind of character explorations, and then I started grad school and I fell in love with writing for YA audiences. My grad school thesis was my first book called HOLD STILL, and then I just kept writing for YA and kept getting contracts and YERBA BUENA was just kind of there, lingering on the sidelines. I didn't have much time to go to it, but I would return to it every couple years and read what I had written.
I would always get stuck because I felt like I would grow as a writer or change as a writer over those years each time so I would return to it and feel like it was unfamiliar and I didn't know how to get back in. It’s always lingered there as I've had my career. Then, during the 2020 shelter in place orders, I really got through that time by writing. I think for a lot of people, it was a time of reflecting and figuring out what's important and what to prioritize and I thought, you know, it really does matter to me to finish this book. And so, I kind of started over from the very beginning and wrote it from there.
I approached my YA books, always knowing that it's meant for teen readers and I want to just be as gentle or thoughtful as possible when I'm talking about the hard things. I always want to be completely honest, but I also know that I'm writing for a young person. In YERBA BUENA, I'm writing for an adult audience, so I can just tell the story as it comes out and not be as concerned about making it feel like it's age appropriate.
It's apparent through the book that you have so much affection and compassion for your characters, especially your two main characters, Sara and Emilie. How did the characters of Sara and Emilie characters come to you? How did they begin to come to life in your mind?
Sara came to me so many years ago. It was a strange thing. I was actually in New York City for the first time in my life and we went to Brooklyn and I was in this café and something about that space made this character come to life. And at least in my recollection of the cafe, it has this great big chandelier in it. And the chandelier ends up coming back in YERBA BUENA in terms of something that Sarah dreams about. I just saw this woman in the café and she was Sarah and then for so many years I worked on figuring out who she was. She was just alive in my mind, but I had to figure her out in some ways. I always saw her as someone who was a little bit difficult to get to know and who was pretty private and reserved and so I had the real challenge of thinking, what made her this way and what will it take for her to drop some of that in order to allow herself to be loved or be in connection with others.
The character of Emily is a much more familiar character to me. Emily's side of the story with her Creole heritage and her grandparents, that's taken directly from my life, even down to my grandparents’ love letters. Those are the love letters that I quoted in the book. The original house in Long Beach that Emily inherits is my grandparents' house. My grandparents moved from New Orleans to LA as part of the great migration to start a new life.
I feel like Emily is kind of like who I am if I had made different choices and had come from a slightly different family. I was always very singularly focused. I knew I wanted to be a writer and I went to college and grad school and published my first book and had this very kind of controlled path. But if I hadn't been that way and I had been drifting, if my life had been different, I feel like Emily is more like who I would have been.
That’s the perfect segue into my next question - when I was doing research for this interview, discovered that you come from a family of artists and I feel like this seeps into your writing -your writing is so lush and full of detail. How do you think your background, in that regard, has impacted your writing?
I mean, so much. I’m just thinking about my grandmother, because she is kind of the inspiration for Claire in the novel. I used to spend summers with my grandparents in Long Beach and my grandmother loved China painting. She painted these beautiful flowers on these pieces of China and she would teach me to do it. I just remember so clearly: the palette and her letting me choose the colors that we would use and her showing me the techniques. And I would emulate her work. It was just such a beautiful little ritual that we had when I visited her. I think that transfers to so many different parts of my life.
My mom used to be an art teacher, so I grew up going to museums and looking in big art books and falling in love with things like that. My dad sings and plays the guitar and is an incredible chef so the art of food and making food and serving it to people is something that I grew up seeing as very important. And my wife now is a great mixologist. She makes the most amazing cocktails and that’s a beautiful form of art as well. It's just very much part of my life.
It’s funny, every question is leading into the next. My next question was how you came to land and these specific career trajectories for Sarah and Emily, like restoring houses or floral design or mixology. It’s such a specific kind of artistry and you do it in such a beautifully detailed way.
I'm so interested in that. I really love making things. I mean, I love writing so much, but sometimes when the writing is hard, I wish that I had more of the physical, tactile of art. Like, floral arranging. It's just beautiful. And when it’s done, it’s done. And then you move on to the next one. And there's something very satisfying about that.
In terms of the house restoration, I just really, really love houses. I love beautiful spaces. And that was one of the early points of inspiration for the book. I would go to all these open houses and I loved it when I could go into these like huge rundown houses. There was one specifically in Oakland, California, where I was living at the time and it was just so astonishing, both in like its state of disrepair and just how architecturally beautiful it was. I just kind of thought that would be perfect for, for a book especially a book about figuring out who you are and figuring out what home is, and then building a life and building a home. It felt thematically resonant as well.
You're such a prolific writer - you've written and published so much. Can you describe your writing routine? Do you have a specific practice?
I am inconsistent (laughs) I have always been inconsistent. I teach writing too and I think so many of us crave consistency in our practices and I do too, but I have never been able to achieve consistency. When I'm really deep in a project, then I am the most consistent. I feel like there's a sense of momentum that I need to keep up.
My basic philosophy is some words on most days. That's my goal. I usually suggest to people to just stay as close to it as you can so that it doesn't feel like this elusive thing. It's so hard to start to feel completely disconnected from writing and then enter back in. That can feel so big and overwhelming. So, some words on most days is what I strive for.
I'm actually talking to you from an office that I just got for myself. I rented an office, which I've never had before and it's a little less than a mile from my house, so I can walk here and I am just really enjoying having this space. It is only for my work and I can the energy of being able to come in here and write and work on, on my books. And it's been pretty special so far, so I hope it continues. I hope it continues to have that kind of magic.
NINA LACOUR is the Michael L. Printz award-winning and nationally bestselling author of Watch Over Me, We Are Okay, Hold Still, and Everything Leads to You. She hosts the podcast Keeping a Notebook and teaches for Hamline University's MFA in writing for Children and Young Adults program. A former indie bookseller and high school English teacher, she lives with her family in San Francisco.
About the Interviewer
Barrie Miskin is a teacher and writer whose work has appeared in Hobart, Narratively and elsewhere. She recently completed her first book, HELL GATE BRIDGE, a memoir of her journey through maternal mental illness. Barrie lives in Queens, New York with her husband and daughter.
