Every now and then, I like to ask writers, “Is there a question you’d like me to ask?” I’m always surprised by the types of questions they’d want to ask themselves, so I decided to take the idea of the self-interview and give writers some restraints.
One. Use Who/What/When/Where/Why-ish questions.
Two. Have fun.
Our next Debuti-Self Interview features Alejandro Puyana, author of the debut novel Freedom Is a Feast, a sweeping multigenerational saga set against the backdrop of revolution, regret, and redemption. From the jungles of 1960s Venezuela to the barrios of early-2000s Caracas, Puyana’s novel traces the emotional and political reverberations of one man’s youthful betrayal across decades—and generations.
Originally from Venezuela, Puyana moved to the United States at twenty-six and received his MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas. His work has appeared in Tin House, American Short Fiction, and The American Scholar, and has been selected for The Best American Short Stories. Freedom Is a Feast is out August 5, 2025 in paperback.
But enough from me. Let’s turn it over to Alejandro Puyana.
Who was Freedom Is a Feast written for?
Readers that like characters that wear their heart on their sleeve. That like to be transported when they are reading. That like to close a book and think I see the world differently now than I did when I started. I think writing an unapologetically Venezuelan book in English was always a bit of a tough sell, but I’ve been amazed by the amount of people that have told me that they see my country in a different light now, after reading Freedom. That was always the objective. We Venezuelans know how amazing our country and its people are. We also know the horrors we’ve had to endure (and are still enduring) in the last few decades. This book was my attempt to build a bridge for others to glimpse at the Venezuelan reality, both its beauty and its pain, through a narrative that was propulsive, engaging, and full of heart. At a time when Venezuelans in the U.S. are being hunted and rounded up—sent to concentration camps in the swamp, or concrete fortresses in El Salvador (Fuck ICE, by the way)—this book might serve as an opportunity to get to know who Venezuelans are, and why they are coming here in the first place. It is also a call against tyranny in all its colors and ideological positions, whether orange-skinned or wearing a military cap. I learned very recently that the book is a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, which highlights works that “foster understanding, reconciliation, empathy, and peace.” To have others recognize that aspect of the novel validates the decade spent thinking about these characters and this story.
Which books is Freedom Is a Feast indebted to?
First and foremost, Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits—an ambitious debut novel that attempted to capture the recent history of a country, to explain what had happened to bring Chile to where it was, without forgetting to dive into the intricacies of its compelling characters. The book showed me that writing Freedom could be done. I also felt a kinship with Allende herself, who wrote House from exile as a way to hang on to Chile (she actually wrote the novel in Venezuela, where she lived for decades after escaping Pinochet’s regime). I wrote my novel in the U.S. feeling similarly to what I think Allende might have felt—so removed from the country I wanted to be in, with writing my only way to get it back. Other books also lit the way, especially when it came to a strong focus on place: Jesmyn Ward’s Salvage the Bones, Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings, and Junot Díaz’s The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao showed me it was possible to write so specifically about a place, be it Jamaica, Dominicana, or Mississippi, and still speak universally about what it means to be human, what it means to love, what it means to belong somewhere.
Where do you write and why is it your favorite place?
Our house in Austin has a converted garage that I’ve filled with some of my favorite things. I’m what I would call an organized maximalist when it comes to décor. I like to be surrounded by interesting objects, things that are associated with a memory, or a story, or a feeling. I like color, and mismatched furniture, with a sprinkle of weird. I started collecting things when I was a kid, but it didn’t become an obsession until I bought my first X-Men comic, when I was 13. I slowly built a collection through my teenage years and through my twenties. Then, in my thirties, I really got into old movies, and then movie posters, which became an obsession of its own (I have a flat file cabinet with hundreds of movie posters, from blockbusters like Jaws and The Terminator, to indie mainstays like Eternal Sunshine and Hotel Budapest, to underground classics like The Holy Mountain or The Man Who Fell to Earth). I collect author portraits, and books as well, of course. And my office also serves as a studio where I hand-sew notebooks, a skill I learned by taking a book-binding class as an elective when I did my MFA at The Michener Center for Writers. I write on an 70s Italian white desk made out of fiberglass, that has all these compartments and molded pen holders I got off of Craigslist, it’s another of my favorite objects. What I like the most about my writing space is that I can look at anything in there and immediately think of why it makes me happy—the pencil holder that my friend Eben made for me, or the Michener Center mug that I got after graduating, or my collection of Lord of the Ring books, including a LOTR-themed tarot deck that my wife gifted me during the pandemic.
What are your obsessions outside of writing?
They all eventually make it into the writing, which is, I think, just one of the fun things about reading. You can really learn a lot about a writer by noticing what subject matters they take their time with—Murakami’s running, R.O. Kwon’s powerlifting, Junot Díaz’s comic books, John Irving’s squash, Laura Van den Berg is publishing her boxing novel soon, and I’m so excited to read it because I know boxing is a huge part of her life. For me, currently, it’s tennis and billiards. I’ve played pool since I was a kid and always loved it, but in the past 10 years have been involved in league play, which has been so much fun. I wrote about how important pool was for me for Texas Highways Magazine, not only as a way to help me focus on the actual writing of the novel, but also as a way to reconnect to my upbringing in Venezuela (Pool does make an appearance in the book—Eloy and his stepfather bond over playing it, and then Eloy uses it as a way to make money in prison).
Tennis is a more recent love. I started playing it right before the pandemic with my wife (author Brittani Sonnenberg, who writes for tennis magazines Racquet and Open). It’s one of those sports that can so quickly take up your life. It’s tremendously fun and also quite cerebral which tickles my brain in a very specific way, and makes it addicting. Both pool and tennis are very heady sports, you are (mostly) on your own, in your own head, and dependent on your skills and your mental fortitude. I’m currently working on my second novel and it’s a tennis novel, an immigration novel, and a father and daughter novel, maybe in that order. Half of the fun in doing it will probably be researching it—and I’m definitely writing off all my tennis classes expenses from my taxes.