We chat with debut author Nancy Foley about I Am Agatha, which is a darkly funny and moving debut novel about the unforgettable Agatha, whose devotion to a widow with dementia (and an inconvenient attachment to her daughter’s grave) sparks a radical reckoning with life, loss, and love’s aftermath.
Hi, Nancy! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I grew up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, the site of the Manhattan Project. To get there you drive an hour on a winding road north from Santa Fe, up to a high plateau; until 1957 there was a 10-ft barbed-wire fence and a military checkpoint to restrict access. The town is not only physically set apart from the rest of the state, it’s also culturally different. There are plenty of jokes about Nobel-prize-level minds shoveling their driveways or coaching Little League teams, but there’s a darker current: nuclear weapons, environmental concerns, and the impact on surrounding communities. I didn’t realize what a strange place it was to grow up until I left home for college, but what I’ve always held close is a deep love for the northern New Mexico landscape, and that is a big part of my debut novel I Am Agatha.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Los Alamos was full of scientists and full of churches, with lots of overlap between the two. My dad was a scientist, but we didn’t go to church. What we did do on Sundays was go to the library. I read everything from V.C. Andrews’ pulp gothic Flowers in the Attic to Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovic. Also I’d sit at a library table and write in my diary, inventing stories about what was going on in my life. The diary was a private space that I turned into a performance. I’d feel a thrill, imagining someone sneaking a look and believing it all to be true. I have that same feeling when I’m working on a novel.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, by Joan Aiken
- The one that made you want to become an author: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Book of Emma Reyes, by Emma Reyes
Your debut novel, I Am Agatha, is out March 17th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Wry, mysterious, meditative, sometimes shocking.
What can readers expect?
An unlikely love story between two women in their sixties, set in 1970s New Mexico. Agatha, a painter, moves to a remote mesa in search of solitude; instead she falls for a small-town widow with a secret buried in her backyard. It’s dark and funny, about art and love and aging, and has some suprising plot twists.
Where did the inspiration for I Am Agatha come from?
It was loosely inspired by an anecdote—truthfully, a bit of unverified gossip!—told to me twenty years ago by my grandmother, about an obscure period in the life of abstract painter Agnes Martin. In the 1970s Martin lived in New Mexico, not far from my grandparents. My grandmother mentioned a hidden friendship between Martin and my grandmother’s best friend, along with the tantalizing detail of a packet of letters that was later destroyed by the best friend’s son.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Agatha’s voice started up in my head and it was irresistible to me. One day I wrote down “My house looks west out over a canyon that although far from any ocean whatsoever yet resembles one in scope and light” and after that I just kept going. Her voice was often surprising and made me laugh, which was a boon as this was during the first Covid lockdown. Every day on the page new things happened that I wasn’t expecting. All along I had the feeling that the story already existed and I was excavating rather than inventing it.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
The thing I enjoyed most—writing in Agatha’s voice—was also my biggest challenge. The book is in first person, and the main action is in present tense. I didn’t want Agatha’s voice to completely overpower the other characters, so I tried to create space and perspective around her through their reactions to and conversations with her. I wanted every line of dialogue, as subtly and seamlessly as I could manage, to create implication and insight about Agatha for the reader.
This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
I wrote my first novel in my late twenties, but knew it wasn’t good and promptly shelved it. I wrote three more novels after that, none of which I shared with anyone. I didn’t have a writing community, and this largely solitary practice continued for 25 years. But after I finished the first draft of I Am Agatha, I thought: maybe this is the one. I signed up for a writers conference that was held virtually that year because of Covid. During the conference, I pitched my novel on zoom to a literary agent. The agent liked it, and things took off from there—though not as quickly as I initially envisioned. I spent two years revising the manuscript before we sent it out to editors. Those two years were when the novel truly came together. I look back at that early draft and wonder how my agent saw anything promising in it!
What’s next for you?
I’m working on something new, a novel I hope to finish drafting over the summer. I’ve been writing around the idea of it for a few years, but hadn’t quite found the way in until recently, when the first sentence came to me. I always write in first-person, and I always need that voicey first line to really get started.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up this year?
I can’t wait to read They by Helle Helle, The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova, and The Keeper by Tana French.
