Zibby Mag

Delia Cai’s debut novel, Central Places, follows Audrey, a New York City professional who is forced to relive her past when she returns to her tiny Illinois hometown over the holidays. It’s the first chance for her white fiancé to meet her immigrant parents, and it forces her to question what she wants from life. Delia is represented equally by Jade Wong-Baxter and Caroline Eisenmann at Frances Goldin.

Zibby Mag interviewed Delia and Jade to get a glimpse into the author/agent relationship and find out more about Delia’s creative process, the publishing experience, and what it means to return to your hometown.

You can preorder Central Places here (it releases on Tuesday, January 31st!) and follow the meme page on Instagram @centralplacesnovel.

I’m stealing this question from LitHub’s 5 Authors, 7 Questions because it is so good. Without summarizing in any way, what would you say Central Places is about?

Delia: I would say it’s about that rush of vertigo and nostalgia and cringe that hits you when you come from a small town, and you go home over the holidays—that moment when you step inside the hometown bar and see everyone again.

Jade: I agree with that. I would also say it’s about the friction that comes from going home and realizing you are just a teenager again with your parents, and nothing has changed. And then panicking about that.

What was the beginning of your professional relationship? How did you find each other?

Jade: Delia, I reached out to you, I think. I appreciated that you had a platform and a Substack, but that’s not actually how I found you. I found you through your Catapult story. I had just been on Catapult reading around and had thought, oh whoever that girl is, she’s a great fiction writer. I reached out because of that, and we talked really early on, while you were still in the middle of writing. And then, on my very first day at Frances Goldin, you sent me the manuscript. It felt very serendipitous.

Caroline, who represents Delia with me jointly, also read the manuscript, and we both loved it. We decided to work on it together.

Delia: It’s kind of amazing. It’s the dream thing you think is going to happen when you publish a short story. I was thinking, this will be nice to show my friends and maybe very far down the line it will be something I can show an agent. But meeting with you, Jade, helped light a fire under my ass. I was like, great, now I have to finish this novel because I have someone to show it to. That was really exciting.

Jade: That’s great. I wish every writer felt that way.

Delia, what stood out to you about Jade as an agent?

Delia: At our first meeting, we just talked about what books we like, and Jade gave me a bunch of recommendations. I’m still working my way through those. One that really stood out to me was Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado. It was creepy and weird; there was a messiness I really loved. I thought, it’s awesome if Jade has this sensibility and this taste—I really trust her.

Also, at the end of the day, I was writing an Asian-American novel. I have an agent and advocate who sees me and this story for all of what it is, in terms of nuance and complexity. I definitely got the sense that Jade was up to the task. I think that was one of the first conversations we had: Jade told me, I’m in this industry because I want to see more of those stories and champion them. That felt like a really promising fit.

How far along was the novel when you started working together and what kind of development did you do together?

Jade: When I first reached out, Delia, you were kind of in the middle of the novel, right?

Delia: Yeah, I was in the throes of writing that first draft.

Jade: And then you finished the first full draft of the novel and sent it. I remember reading it overnight. I was looking back through the old editorial notes and there was some stuff we did at the beginning—pacing, scattering exposition, deepening some of the character relationship. But it was not by any means a heavy lift. Maybe you felt differently, Delia, as the person who had to do the editing.

Delia: No, it felt…not easy, but straightforward in a lot of ways. All the things we talked about made so much sense. I had tried to do a Pachinko, decades-old flashback to the narrator’s parents, and I realized you can’t really pull a Pachinko if you’re not Min Jin Lee, so I was glad that we cut that. It was fun to work out, almost as an exercise, but we didn’t need to show all the backstory.

How did you choose your editor, and did anything stand out to you about the publishing process?

Delia: The process was easy—I kept waiting for this big conversation in which we had to change a lot of things, or we weren’t on the same page. Anne told me on the phone that even though she wasn’t from the Midwest or from a small town, she felt the story deeply. I trusted her immediately and was really excited. During our first conversation she told me the things she had in mind to improve the plot, and I was like…I wish I’d thought of that! That’s pretty good.

Jade: The one unexpected thing about this book was how relatively smoothly it went. Anne clearly had the enthusiasm and the passion for this book, and she was able to get team support behind her as well.

What books do you feel like Central Places is in conversation with?

Delia: Jenny Zhang’s Sour Hearts. I remember reading that book of short stories. It was such a formative experience for me, not only to read about growing up in New York as Chinese-American girls but also just how untidy the stories were. Some of that book is really grisly and gruesome, and I love that. It felt refreshing compared to some sanitized narratives about growing up the daughter of immigrants.

Jenny’s stories are so specific and so rooted in place. I didn’t grow up that way, but I did grow up in the Midwest. I thought, maybe there’s a version of the great, grand Asian-American narrative from my point of view. I haven’t read very much about growing up Chinese in the Midwest.

Jade: We pitched this as a Hallmark movie written by Jenny Zhang, which I love.

I have been thinking a lot recently about Goodbye, Vitamin by Rachel Khong. I’d like to revisit it. Delia’s book has a real sense of humor and studies the awkwardness of going back in a way that Goodbye, Vitamin does too.

Who do you see as the ideal audience for this book?

Delia: It’s for everyone who is, whatever the opposite of gaslighting yourself, about how weird you felt about growing up in a place you didn’t really like, for any number of reasons. And then finding a sense of appreciation for it, even if you weren’t necessarily repping the hometown pride all your life.

Jade: Obviously everyone, but I envision two key audiences. I keep thinking about my Midwestern Asian-American friends and how much they’re going to love this book. Their experiences are just so different from coastal Asian-American experiences, and I hope this book speaks to them in a way they’ll recognize.

The other audience I envision is people who are having quarter-life crises! Going home forces this reckoning for Audrey, but it’s also about getting off the wheel and making active decisions about your life. I think that’s really relatable, especially to people who are starting to settle into specific life paths.