Featured Interview With Alia Luria
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Brooklyn, NY and raised in Tampa, FL. I have been back in Tampa the last few years after spending the majority of the last 30 years living in Orlando, FL. I’m an attorney and former software engineer, so I’ve worn a lot of hats over the years. I’ve also traveled extensively and lived abroad. My boyfriend and I together have two dogs and a cat.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I’ve loved books for as long as I can remember. My mother always let me read anything on our shelves at home, so went from reading The Phantom Tollbooth to Stephen King (IT) and Thomas Harris (Silence of the Lambs) by the time I was eleven years old. I read everything I could get my hands on and started writing short stories in middle school. I started my first novel at fifteen but never finished that particular story, only getting about 50 pages in.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I love to read science fiction, fantasy, thrillers, police procedurals, memoirs, and more. I read broadly, because I believe that it’s important to read a lot of different authors from different cultures to appreciate the universe of books out there. My favorite authors include Ursula K. LeGuin, Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Andy Weir, Haruki Murakami, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, David Sedaris, Arthur Conan Doyle, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Kelly Barnhill and so many others! All of these authors inspire me in different ways.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My new book is memoir essay collection titled Geri o Shimasu: Adventures of a Baka Gaijin. During law school, I spent the spring semester of 2008 living in Tokyo, Japan and attending Temple University Japan. This collection chronicles some of those adventures as well as a collection of haiku poetry and watercolor paintings from photographs I took while I was abroad. Even though this book takes place in 2008, I didn’t really start writing essays for it until 2020. A number of the haiku were written in 2017, since I like to use haiku as a form of journaling (similar to Jack Kerouac I guess, although I didn’t find that out until later). I always knew I wanted to write a book about my time in Japan, but during the pandemic, when we were all trapped at home, I began to think more seriously about what that collection would look like. David Sedaris definitely influenced me with his collection “When You Are Engulfed in Flames” which was his book about moving to Japan for three months to quit smoking, but my stories are very different. The title story Geri o Shimasu was written in 2020 and used to unsuccessfully query some small presses. I had a few stories written as of 2023, and I am extremely grateful that Unsolicited Press gave me a contract with three stories, some haiku, and some paintings.
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