An Interview with Alia Luria

Alia Luria’s debut novel, Compendium, was published in 2015 and has garnered several accolades, including the National Indie Excellence Award, the eLit Gold Medal, the Reader’s Favorite Silver Medal, and an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Silver Award. It was also a finalist for the Independent Author Network Book of the Year Award in three categories, including First Novel. The sequel, Ocularum, is forthcoming in early 2026. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairleigh Dickinson University. Her personal essay, “You Might Eat Organic, but You’re Still Full of Baloney,” was a creative nonfiction finalist for the Malahat Review Open Season Awards in 2018 and was published by Northwest Review. Her first collection of personal essays, Geri o Shimasu: Adventures of a Baka Gaijin, won the memoir category of the Great Southeast Book Festival; it is available for preorder and releases August 12, 2025, by Unsolicited Press.

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

I have been writing stories for as long as I can remember. I recently unearthed an old journal from when I was in middle school, and it had the beginning of a novel in it. I remember starting another novel when I was fifteen, and then another at twenty-five. It wasn’t until I found a process that worked for me that I was actually able to finish my first novel. In the past, I struggled with both not plotting enough and over outlining. I need a balance of knowing where I’m going in the project but also still having some surprises. In my fiction, I have definitely been influenced by classic speculative fiction, like Ursula K. Le Guin, Octavia Butler and Margaret Atwood.

For my non-fiction, my process is a bit different. I start with a story or even a title for an experience I’ve had, and then I build it out into a narrative essay and bring in threads from other experiences. For my non-fiction, I have definitely been influenced by David Sedaris. I love his raw storytelling and introspection mixed with cringeworthy events. That is very much my style with my personal essays and has been since I published my first one with Northwest Review.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

In my twenties, I worked as a software engineer and web developer. I decided after about five years that graphics and code weren’t my day-to-day passion. I decided to move over to the business side of things. This entailed finishing college, which I had dropped out of to focus on programming. I went back to school and got my economics bachelor’s degree. From there, I applied to law school having no real idea about what lawyering would entail. All I knew was that I wanted to help businesses and I didn’t want to go to court. Fast forward, and I’ve been a corporate and privacy lawyer for almost 16 years now. I have my own practice and also work for a boutique privacy firm. It allows me to balance my left brain and right brains, because I structure my life so that I work with amazing clients and still have time to write, paint, design knitwear, and pursue my other creative endeavors. I somehow also fit an LL.M. in taxation (thanks, 2008 financial crisis) and an MFA in Creative Writing in there as well.

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

My book title was extremely easy to come up with, since it’s the first essay in my collection. That said, I do sometimes wonder if I should have picked a title in English that’s easier for people to pronounce. But my sometimes juvenile sense of humor won out, and I stuck with Geri o Shimasu, which literally translates from Japanese as “I do diarrhea.” I get my tasteless joke in, but people also don’t have to deal with the visual…at least, not until they read the story. Also, I love that the title is not grammatically or stylistically accurate for a Japanese speaker, because it conveys the sense of fumbling through another culture that the book focuses on.

How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?

I really love this cover. The designer did an amazing job of visually representing the oppressive clash of high technology and restrictive tradition that is the dichotomous reality of many parts of life in Tokyo. Surrounded by monuments to modernity in every direction, pressed in against people with a very old social structure and culture, and ultimately alone in the journey. I am really proud of how this book looks and the subjects it tackles.

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

My book actually does have a soundtrack! You can check it out the playlist by visiting https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7HeXJPmXQPusR7bqlmpKlv

Many of the songs were chosen because they were songs that I listened to and enjoyed around the time that I lived in Tokyo. Others were chosen because of particular connections to people who visited me while I was there. For instance, “Lonely Rolling Star,” a song off the Katamari Damacy soundtrack, was picked for my best friend Amey, who visited me for three weeks while I was living in Japan. She is featured in the book in a couple of separate stories. “Strawberries” by Asobi Seksu is a song I love and actually used in some of the old iMovie videos I put up on YouTube (with credits of course) back in 2008. Check it out if you want to hear an eclectic mix of pop, video game and anime music, and Japanese artists.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?

I want my readers to finish the book feeling like they just had a long dinner with a weird and hilarious friend who told them funny stories and gave them a lot to think about. I want them to understand that this book is about recognizing and appreciating the absurdity of life. It’s about highlighting the fragile nature of normality and realizing that the world is a much bigger place than the small corner we each inhabit. My perfect reader is an avid traveler who loves learning about new cultures and immersing themselves in situations that are foreign. I hope this appeals to any avid traveler or expat visiting Japan.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

Geri o Shimasu: Adventures of a Baka Gaijin is my first full-length collection of personal essays, releasing August 12, 2025, and I’m very excited to be working with Unsolicited Press on this project. Unsolicited Press has branded 2025 the Year of Womxn, and all of the authors they are publishing this year are women or non-binary-identifying authors. We are being treated as a cohort, and I could not be more pleased to be surrounded by such amazing writers.

When I wrote my first creative nonfiction essay in 2017, I didn’t think that I would ever be able to consistently publish in this genre, so I am beyond thrilled to have proven myself wrong. I love telling stories and creating worlds in my fiction, but there is something special and terrifying about sharing an unfiltered piece of myself with readers. That’s what this book is.

What new writing projects are you currently working on? Or, other projects that are not writing?

I’m working on a few different projects right now. I’m in the process of having my second novel in my Artifacts of Lumin series, Ocularum, edited and prepared for release. It will be coming out early 20206. It is about eight years overdue, but I’ve had a lot of life get in the way, so I’m giving myself grace about this project but excited to finally bring it to my readers. In addition to Geri o Shimasu, Unsolicited Press has also acquired my next essay collection, Preposterous Bloodshed, which will release in 2027. I also have in the works an illustrated book of haiku to be printed as a picture book with full color watercolor drawings and haiku on each page. I am still shopping this project but hope to have it finished by mid-next year.

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