How Bestselling Novelist Aris Janigian Writes

The Writer Files: Writing, Productivity, Creativity, and Neuroscience

#PodcastersForJustice

The bestselling, award-winning novelist, Aris Janigian, had a candid conversation with me about the recently "mandated dystopia," his circuitous path to bestselling author, the city as muse, and what it means to be a transgressive writer.

“As a cognitive social psychologist, I can tell you without any hesitation that the human mind really is built for deception.” – Aris Janigian

The author of six novels (all without traditional representation), critics hailed his 2012 novel This Angelic Land – set during the 1992 Los Angeles Riots – as "today's necessary book," and his novel Waiting for Lipchitz at Chateau Marmont, spent 17 weeks on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list.

Janigian holds a PhD in psychology from the Claremont Graduate School and was formerly Senior Professor of Humanities at the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

He was a finalist for Stanford University's William Saroyan Fiction Prize and has been a contributing writer to West, the Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine.

The second book of Janigian's Waiting for... trilogy, Waiting for Sophia at Shutters on the Beach, "... is a satirical mashup of Nabokov's Lolita and Dostoevsky's Notes from the Underground."

The book has be described as "... an unflinching, deadly serious ... tragic-comic view of male sexuality in the era of #metoo."

*Note: This interview was recorded at the beginning of May, 2020.

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In this file Aris Janigian and I discussed:

• The life of a lazy author
• Why graduate school corrupts good writers
• Wisdom on the importance of mentorship
• How the cruel mistress of Los Angeles plays a character in his works
• The self-censorship of academia
• And why life is the best teacher

Show Notes:

• ArisJanigian.com
• Waiting for Sophia at Shutters on the Beach by Aris Janigian [Amazon]
• Aris Janigian Amazon author page
• “When the Lunatics Run the Asylum: On Aris Janigian’s “Waiting for Sophia at Shutters on the Beach” - LA Review of Books
• "Governors should trust mayors and county officials on reopening. California shows why." - Washington Post
• Aris Janigian on Twitter
• Kelton Reid on Twitter

#PodcastersForJustice

Anti-racism Resources Donate to any of the following:

• Minnesota Freedom Fund
• Black Visions Collective
• Campaign Zero
• Black Lives Matter

Podcasts to subscribe to:

• 1619 (New York Times)
• About Race
• Code Switch (NPR)
• Intersectionality Matters! hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw
• Momentum: A Race Forward Podcast
• Pod For The Cause (from The Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights)
• Pod Save the People (Crooked Media)
• Seeing White

Articles to read:

• "Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Don’t understand the protests? What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge" | Los Angeles Times
• 75 Things White People Can Do for Racial Justice

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