Joselyn Takacs: On Disaster Revealing Story

Joselyn Takacs holds a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California and an MFA in Fiction from Johns Hopkins University. Her fiction has appeared in Gulf Coast, Narrative, Tin House, Harvard Review, The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, Columbia: A Journal of Art and Literature, and elsewhere. She has published interviews and book reviews in the Los Angeles Review of Books and Entropy.

Joselyn has taught writing at the University of Southern California and Johns Hopkins University. She lived in New Orleans at the time of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon spill, and in 2015, she received a grant to record the oral histories of Louisiana oyster farmers in the wake of the environmental disaster. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband. Follow her on Instagram.

Joselyn Takacs

In this interview, Joselyn discusses the process of writing her debut literary novel, Pearce Oysters, her advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Joselyn Takacs
Literary agent: Maria Whelan
Book title: Pearce Oysters
Publisher: Zibby Books
Release date: June 25, 2024
Genre/category: Literary fiction, family drama, southern fiction, ecofiction
Elevator pitch: Pearce Oysters is a debut novel about a fractured family, a devastated community, and the disaster that brings them together. The novel follows the Pearce family, who own a storied oyster company in Louisiana, and it follows the family over the course of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

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What prompted you to write this book?

Long before I began writing this novel, I was living in Louisiana after college. I was waiting tables at a French Quarter restaurant in 2010 when I heard about an explosion on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana. That explosion preceded the largest accidental oil spill in world history. We were all gobsmacked by the enormity of the disaster that followed.

That summer, I read a profile in a weekly paper about an oyster farm that was closing. The oyster farmer explained the threat of the spill from his perspective—one that could put him out of business for years. An oiled oyster reef was not just a season’s loss, but the loss of several years because it can take three years for an oyster to reach market size.

I kept thinking about that profile, even after the oil spill and its effects faded from national headlines. In 2015, I received a grant to record the oral histories of oyster farmers about their lives and how they’d been affected by the oil spill. I interviewed farmers from across Louisiana. They opened their homes to me, invited me for dinner; some invited me out on their boats to see the reefs. On one trip, our boat grounded in the marsh of a Native American burial mound and the captain assured me that we’d be free once the tide came in—four hours later. What those men and women taught me about the ecosystem and the industry—and the oyster—became the foundation of this novel.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I began writing this novel in 2015, so nine years ago. At the time, I didn’t know when the novel began, or whose story it was. I always knew I wanted to tell a family’s story, but since it takes place during the 2010 oil spill, I wondered if I needed to begin on the oil rig that caught fire—to deliver a complete vision of the disaster—and emphasize how it connected so many unsuspecting lives. After months of reading and writing about oil rigs (they have gyms on them, you know, movie theaters even) and the cause of the explosion itself (extraordinarily complex), I eventually threw away those pages.

In the end, it wasn’t emotionally relevant to the Pearce family’s story, and it was probably so far removed from my own experience it may not have been compelling. Throughout the years, I’ve fallen into various research traps. So much so that my dissertation adviser told me that I couldn’t sink any more time into research as I was writing that first draft. She sensed, quite rightly, that research was a form of anxiety and procrastination for me. Her admonition freed me up to produce more pages, and I was grateful to her for it.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

So much of the publishing process for me was characterized by waiting and hoping—querying literary agents, going out on submission, awaiting pub day. Everyone necessarily develops their own coping strategies for this, and I suspect those strategies change over time. On the heels of a particularly painful rejection, I felt gutted, so my husband drove me an hour to go bungee jumping. His offer: “You’ll feel differently, even if only for a few moments.” And, well, he took me to a park he frequented as a child with a bungee jump tower—for children. The tower had been taller in his memory of it. We had a laugh about this and then climbed the stairs behind two young sisters. I remember that afternoon so fondly.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Whenever I walk away from my computer satisfied it’s because I’ve been surprised in some way while writing—a line of dialogue that opens up a scene, a description that marries a theme, an observation that buoys a moment. Surprise is the whole pleasure of the enterprise for me. Aside from the dream of sharing the work, it’s the pleasure of writing itself that keeps me at it.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I hope readers will connect with the Pearce family—that they can relate to or at least recognize these characters enough to root for them. In the process, I hope they learn a bit about Louisiana, the ecosystem, and the oyster.

What would it be if you could share one piece of advice with other writers?

Download one of those no-nonsense internet blockers for your timed writing sessions. I use one appropriately called “Freedom.” Because if you’re like me, there’s a saboteur that lives within you, and it wants you to check your email again.

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