Bryan Washington was preparing to enjoy a nice cup of bubble tea when he heard that former President Barack Obama called his debut book, Lot, one of his favorites of the year.
Washington appeared on Late Night With Seth Meyers on Wednesday and told the comedian he thought he was being pranked at first.
“I was at a tapioca shop, just getting boba, and then one friend texted me, and I just kind of ignored it because, like, ‘You’re lying,’” he recalled. “I got another text from a friend from a radically different friend group, and I thought, ‘Either y’all hate me and I just didn’t know it, or there might be some truth to this.”
Washington’s new novel, Memorial, started out as a short story, the author said. “I was in the middle of writing the thing that I thought would be the next book, and it was just going really poorly with no hope of recovery whatsoever,” he told Meyers. His friends suggested he concentrate on the characters in the story that became Memorial, and his editor, Laura Perciasepe, agreed.
“I think because I didn’t know where the characters in Memorial would end up, that’s what got me to want to actually try the project in earnest,” he said.
Washington also talked about using his phone’s notes app to keep track of story ideas—to mixed results.
“I’ll wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning, and think that I’m just rattling off these ideas, and this is going to be the next project, and then I’ll look at it, and it’s like, ‘Fork, sandal, puppy, H-E-B,’” he said, referring to the Texas supermarket chain.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
