Interview with Elana Lev Friedland as told to Andrea Read.
For more information on Elana go to:
www.elanalevfriedland.com
@elanalevisalive
Elana Lev, your work encompasses poetry and storytelling for the page and the stage. How do these different modes influence your creative process?
In terms of training, I was first a musician, then a theatre artist, then a writer; there’s a foundation of music beneath my subsequent disciplines. I’ve also loved poetry since I was young, and consider myself to be a poet at heart, so there tends to be a lyric impulse woven throughout my work, whatever its primary genre may be—I actually first took a poetry workshop in the interest of making the dialogue of a play I was working on more “poetic.” Discovering the existence of hybrid writing as a distinct practice was a revelation, which is all to say that I don’t necessarily draw hard lines between what exists on the page and what lives through performance.
I do consider what each medium and each genre can uniquely offer, though. Writing and reading are often solitary acts, while works for the stage and performance pieces often entail the involvement of other people. I try to make sure that if I’m writing something meant exclusively for production and consumption in a physical space or site, something with an embodied component, that it acknowledges and utilizes a human presence in real time.
Can you tell us about your creative engagement with and relationship to Judaism?
I was raised in a religious household, but I became non-observant in college. Judaism is something I had to come back to on my own terms. In the years after undergrad, I found myself increasingly incorporating Jewish content into my writing—I was working on a queer, contemporary retelling of the Persephone myth when I began wondering why I was digging into Greek mythology rather than looking to my own religion and culture for inspiration. I switched gears, and my initial goal for my time in my creative writing MFA program was to complete queer, contemporary retellings of Queen Esther’s story through both a poetry collection and stage play.
As my graduate studies progressed, I found myself most at home in Jewish community brought together through both artistic and academic engagements with Judaism and Jewishness, resulting in me completing a graduate certificate in Jewish studies alongside my creative writing degree. I ended up drawing from the Hebrew Bible, Jewish thought, Ashkenazi folklore, and more to create a thesis that consisted of lyric speculative fiction and hybrid-genre writing focused on Jewish futurity via an engagement with the Jewish supernatural and queer reproduction. The intersections of Judaism and gender feature prominently across my work regardless of genre. My early experiences of Judaism were of it being a religion with traditional gender roles, with obligations and ritual practices divided along binary gendered lines. As a nonbinary person, I don’t fit into that framework. I don’t explicitly see people like me in the religious texts I grew up with. An aim of my creative practice has been to create Jewish stories that are distinctly trans.
I’ve come to realize that writing is my spiritual practice. One night while singing prayers as part of a congregation gathered in Somerville on a rabbi’s driveway for Friday night services, I had the lightbulb realization that that religious experience felt the same to me as the flow state of writing. Both involve tapping into something bigger than myself. Judaism is still something I engage with intellectually, rationally, but now I’m aware that my points of connection also include elements that are intangible, mystical—softer, fuzzier around the edges, less easy to define.
What are you currently working on?
I’m currently working on three book projects in different genres; being able to bounce back and forth between them has been helpful for my neurodivergent brain. I’ve got a poetry collection that puts the Book of Psalms into conversation with Yiddish labor music. I’m also at work on a literary speculative novel about a modified RealDoll brought to life to serve as both sex toy and cyborg golem, a creature from Jewish folklore meant to provide protection during times of intense antisemitism. And, finally, I’m working on a romance novel about a pair of bisexual people with bipolar disorder—a contemporary romantic comedy starring trans protagonists, set in Somerville and Salem.
How did you make your way to Somerville? What are some of your favorite things about the community?
Like many people, I first came to the East Coast for college—I’m originally from Skokie, IL, and attended Brandeis University in Waltham for my undergraduate studies. I next lived in Brighton for five years before moving out of state for my creative writing MFA at the University of Colorado Boulder. I appreciated the change of scenery from Boston, but quickly found myself missing Massachusetts. I moved back as soon as I could after graduating in 2019. And I’ve happily lived in Somerville ever since. Somerville appealed to me due to its support for the arts and its substantial queer population. Over the years, I’ve come to greatly appreciate how civically engaged folks are here in our city. Somerville is the most densely populated municipality in New England, and I appreciate the diversity that accompanies that. I’ve found the community here to be caring, creative, and willing to show up for one another.
What are some of your favorite books from childhood?
I grew up reading fantasy. Tamora Pierce’s Tortall books, opening with the Song of the Lioness quartet, were a major favorite (fun fact: my given first name is pronounced in the same way as Alanna’s!). I was also a fan of Sabriel by Garth Nix and its sequels. One notable non-fantasy favorite was Poetry in Motion: 100 Poems from the Subways and Buses edited by Molly Peacock, Elise Paschen, and Neil Neches.
Where do you most like to do your writing?
Well, it’s not a matter of “like” so much as somewhere born of necessity, but you can often find me scribbling things down in my phone’s Notes app while I’m walking around town, often on the side of the sidewalk when I’m on my way home from the bus stop. Most of my writing happens in my apartment in West Somerville.
What are you currently reading, watching, listening to?
Things that I’m currently reading, re-reading, looking forward to reading ASAP are—on the speculative fiction front, A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers and Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel by Julian K. Jarboe. When it comes to romance, it’s Second Chances in New Port Stephen by TJ Alexander, Thank You for Sharing by Rachel Runya Katz, and Single Player by Tara Tai. And then for poetry I’m reading Autobiomythography of by Ayokunle Falomo, Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear: Poems from Gaza by Mosab Abu Toha.
I recently-ish watched the series finale of What We Do in the Shadows and the season finale of The Boulet Brothers’ Dragula. Since my shows are over, I’m taking recommendations for new TV programs to watch! I’ve also been watching the works of video essayist Jenny Nicholson.
I’m a fan of pop music, especially pop music made by queer and trans artists. Chrissy Chlapecka, Ashnikko, and Dorian Electra frequently appear on my playlists.
What do you like to do when you’re not writing or creating?
The Alewife Brook and Mystic River are close to my apartment; I love to stroll along those bodies of water, as well as taking walks along the community path starting in Davis. I love visiting museums, especially art museums. I’m a fan of Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop roleplaying games, and I adore Stardew Valley.
Do you have any favorite Somerville haunts?
We’re very lucky to have three phenomenal independent bookstores in Somerville that are focused on highlighting marginalized voices and creating community through both what’s on their shelves and the events that they hold. I highly recommend spending time at Narrative in Davis Square, All She Wrote Books in East Somerville, and Side Quest Books & Games in Union Square at Bow Market.
Mr. Crepe in Davis has fabulous outdoor seating in the warmer months. Mortadella Head offers very generous pizza portions, and Dragon Pizza’s great for a bite later at night.
What (or who) have been some of the most formative influences on your own work?
I’ve got a theatre piece on the backburner (a stage play with performance experiments and music) that I’ve described as the lovechild of Tony Kushner’s A Dybbuk, or Between Two Worlds and Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis. I found major inspiration for both that piece and work in other genres via Tarell Alvin McCraney’s The Brother/Sister Plays. I’m attracted to the blurring of boundaries between art and life, between the possibilities for play that that opens up, and I’ve found that in the performance art and conceptual art of Yoko Ono, Félix González-Torres, the Neo-Futurists, Fluxus, Blast Theory, and others. I really admire Gabrielle Civil’s literary and performance art, and Lillian-Yvonne Bertram’s engagement with technology and poetry. Rosebud Ben-Oni is a poetic maestro. Discovering the concept of fabulism was absolutely crucial to my growth as a writer of fiction. Discovering the concept of Yiddishkayt was vital to my growth as a creative, across genres. Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir was what led me back into the world of genre fiction that I’d abandoned when I entered academia. I’m always excited to encounter more of Carmen Maria Machado’s speculative writing. And I’m grateful more than I can ever say for TJ Alexander’s romantic comedies, for the books that they’ve written about trans people finding love, about trans people having happy endings.