My Reading Life: Portalmania author Debbie Urbanski was obsessed with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a child

After releasing her debut novel After World in 2023, Debbie Urbanski is back with her debut short story collection Portalmania. The collection explores any and every genre from sci-fi and fantasy to horror and realism. It’s the perfect book for anyone looking for supernatural escapism that is dripping with the grounded and unique characters.

We asked Urbanski to answer our recurring My Reading Life so readers could get to know the books that shaped her life.

What was the first book you were obsessed with as a child?

I’ll be honest, it’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. This seems overly convenient since my book Portalmania is, well, about portals — but it’s true. I had really wanted, as a kid, to find a way into another world. Though I loved any book with a portal, including the Narnia series and The Wizard of Oz, Alice was, hands down, my favorite. I was drawn to her ordinariness. She wasn’t a typical hero-warrior needing to battle witches or evil itself. She was just a girl in another world trying to—was she even trying to do anything? Maybe she was trying, occasionally, to get home, but often she seemed to just be wandering around and exploring. I still love that idea: the anti-quest.

What book helped you through puberty?

It’s hard to list only one book. I loved pretty much every book I read back then, meaning that every book I read felt necessary and important to me, whether I was reading Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Margaret Atwood, or Leo Tolstoy. If I was forced to get specific though, I would call out Neuromancer by William Gibson (I loved the confusion I felt while reading it – that plot is complicated), and You Can’t Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe (I had this really strong emotional connection to his writing and over-writing that I’m not sure I fully understand looking back but it was there), and big old novels like War and Peace by Tolstoy, Les Misérables by Victor Hugo, and The Recognitions by William Gaddis. I had the mysterious sense that books like these last three were important, and I was floored that I, as a high school student, could still participate and be connected to this through-line of literature just by visiting the library and opening any one of those books. I’m noticing that all of these books are by men. Somehow these distant male lives felt relevant to my high school self. Or perhaps I was actively avoiding reading about characters too close to myself.

What book do you think all teenagers should be assigned in school?

I’d go with something that challenges what most people think should be the form or structure or language of a book. So something like House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban, Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu, or Several People Are Typing by Calvin Kasulke. I think it’s time to expand the definition of what a novel is or could be, and this might help. 

If you were to teach a class on Damn Good Writing, what books would make the syllabus?

It’d be necessary to try and define “good writing” before the class began as that looks look so different for everyone. Then I’d make everyone read these books: 

• The Wall by Marlen Haushofer: to demonstrate the beauty of slow pacing.
• Edwin Mullhouse by Steven Millhauser: a master class in how to write precisely and beautifully without overwriting. 
• Is This A Room: Reality Winner Verbatim Transcription: proof that ordinary speech can read like extraordinary literature. 
• 60 Stories by Donald Barthelme: many of these stories question standard ideas of what a story is and what good writing is–a worthwhile exercise. 
• Ariel: The Restored Edition: I’d put this on the syllabus and then also make students memorize several poems. Memorizing Sylvia Plath, a slow and ongoing process for me, reminds me how each word, even the choice between “the” and “a,” has importance and intentionality. 

What books helped guide you while writing your book?

I started reading Barthelme when I was writing some of the later stories in Portalmania. I see his influence particularly in “The Dirty Golden Yellow House,” which was the last story I wrote in the collection. Barthelme truly gave me (and keeps giving me) permission to do whatever I want in my writing. Some of his stories are also more like story essays (or essay stories?). Either way it’s a form I’m interested in and that I used in a few of the Portalmania stories as well. 

I also, while writing Portalmania, had started reading plays. I love how a play immediately acknowledges, through its very form, that what we’re seeing (or reading) is made up – while, at the same time, it encourages us to pretend that what is happening is real. This is a balance that I feel is missing in most novels, which just expect us to pretend that they’re real. All the play-reading I did inspired me to try out some mostly dialogue stories – one of them (“Hysteria”) is in Portalmania. Plays I read and loved while I was writing my collection include Long Day’s Journey Into Night by Eugene O’Neill, Copenhagen by Michael Frayn, and The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams.

What books are on your nightstand now that you’re looking forward to reading next?

My nightstand pile is towering but here’s a sampling. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey is a slim surprising book, part personal memoir, part ode to how awesome snails are. Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk is sadly out of print but I was lucky enough to find a used copy. I love Tokarczuk deeply as a writer. Also: Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof by Tennessee Williams, Old Times by Harold Pinter, The Inferno of Dante translated by Robert Pinsky, The Employees by Olga Ravn, House of Beth by Kerry Cullen, and I could go on for a very long time but I’ll stop there.