Alexa Yasemin Brahme‘s writing has earned her nominations for is a Pushcart Prize, the Robert J. Dau PEN Award, and Best of the Net. Originally from Southern California, she received her MFA from the New School and currently lives in Brooklyn, where she works as a bookseller at Books Are Magic (aka Debutiful’s favorite bookstore in America).
Now, her novel Good News has arrived. Set in New York City, Good News follows a young artist whose creative ambitions and personal life begin to unravel as her thesis falters, her relationships strain, and a magnetic ex reenters her orbit. As pressures mount from family, love, and the art world, she is forced to question not just her work but the life she’s been building.
We asked her to answer our My Reading Life Q&A so readers could get to know the books that shaped her life and influenced her writing.
What was the first book you were obsessed with as a child?
The first book I was obsessed with as a child was the D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths. I used to make my mom read me and my brother myth after myth at bedtime. I remember particularly loving Daphne turning into a tree to escape Apollo. Something about imagining her legs twisting into roots really stuck with me. It obviously felt magical, but it also felt real, like something I could picture happening to my own body.
The book I was second most obsessed with was a picture book called Rufferella. It was about a dog who pretends to be a person and the moral is, of course, it’s always better to be yourself. Perfect 10, no notes.
What book helped you through puberty?
I’m not sure there’s any helping with puberty, but The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton was the first book that made me cry and that felt like a monumental thing when I was 12. That a book could make me feel something so deeply, could overwhelm me so much, that I could be brought to tears. It was also the first book I ever re-read (and it still made me cry, perhaps even harder). Crying was a big part of puberty, turns out.
What book do you wish 16-year-old you had read?
God, 16 is such a ripe time for feeling. When you’re that age, you’re so insanely hormonal and your feelings are so big and there’s so little language for them. At least, that’s how it felt for me. I think I took to reading big, sweeping epics to cope like East of Eden and The Odyssey, which is so self-serious and kind of hilarious. So maybe something more fun but still full of feeling and catharsis. Honestly, Melissa Broder’s The Pisces would have been good. Something that could show me how the strange and eccentric could also be a way to express what I was feeling. And that I could lighten up!!!
If you were to teach a class on Damn Good Writing, what books would make the syllabus?
This list is in no way comprehensive, but I’d say Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Beloved by Toni Morrison, Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri, The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner, The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien, and When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz. These were books that cracked open my brain while reading. I didn’t know books could do what these authors were doing, that language could be used and manipulated into something more than language. I don’t even have the vocabulary or skill to appropriately praise them, but I am grateful they exist.
What books helped guide you while writing your book?
I wrote GOOD NEWS over so many years, that basically my entire adult library helped me write this book. Anything that helped me develop as a person contributed to my writing, which includes but is not limited to: The Idiot and Either/Or, both by Elif Batuman, Writers and Lovers by Lily King, How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti, White on White by Ayşegül Savaş, I Love Dick by Chris Kraus, The Creative Act by Rick Rubin, Mother Doll by Katya Apekina, Beautiful World Where Are You? by Sally Rooney, and so many more.
What books are on your nightstand now?
Right now, there’s The Essential Rumi, Women Who Run with Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, and The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. Can you tell I’m doing some inner work? Results TBD. There’s also the massive tome My Faraway One, which is a collection of Georgia O’Keefe’s letters between her and her husband Alfred Stieglitz. I’m officiating my brother’s wedding this summer and what better inspiration than love letters?