Sarah Lariviere
Sarah Lariviere is an award-winning novelist who lives in Los Angeles. In her forthcoming YA duology, Riot Act (Knopf, July 2024), an alternate history set in 1991, theater kids fight for freedom of expression.
Instagram: @Sarah.Lariviere
Is there a genre of music that influences your writing/thinking? Do you listen to music while you write?
I can’t listen to music and write at the same time. But I make playlists and blast them when I’m driving. The Riot Act playlist is heavily punk influenced with some late ‘80s hip-hop as well. I dance while I drive, and sing loudly. My son and I drive around Burbank together, singing and dancing. It amps me up to sit again, and let the story continue.
Not all books are for all readers… when you start a book and you just don’t like it, how long do you read until you bail?
I’m impatient but it doesn’t serve me at all. I quit after 2-3 pages. However, when I’ve told someone I’ll read something, I finish it, and am often surprised by how engrossed I can become when I give a book a chance. If the language is careless, though, I can’t do it. Many popular books are not for me. Syntax, poetry, lusciousness, originality in a sentence, or voice I guess I should say—these things hook me, and I’ll go a lot of places with an author who gives me that.
Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?
Art museums are my number one joy, especially when traveling. I’m seduced by John Chamberlain’s wall sculptures. I recall seeing my first one in Vienna nearly 30 years ago. It took my breath away. Now, I have a treasured bumper sticker that I picked up from Hauser & Wirth in LA that says, “My other car is a John Chamberlain.” If you know what that means, we will be friends.
What’s the difference (at least for you!) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?
I’m not sure of the difference. Maybe if I’m a writer writing letters I feel I can and ought to be more loose and rambling. But if I’m an author writing a book, I want to be sure I take someone somewhere and cut out the extraneous information? Maybe. Ideally, these things merge into one, somehow, and that’s the voice.
What brings you great joy?
My son! And my husband. Playing, dancing, being silly, eating wonderful meals, beautiful spaces and rooms with soaring ceilings, surprising dreams, laughter, my garden! All the hummingbirds darting around my garden, and the spiders, and the flowers, and the scent, every day, of so much sage… my friends, when they call, and we realize we’re both baffled by the same aspects of being alive… when I’m suddenly less alone. And my new thing is power yoga, wow it’s hard, and that brings me joy, too.
