Zibby Books author alert! Zibby welcomes Ava Dellaira to discuss her powerful and provocative new novel, EXPOSURE. Ava delves into her protagonists, Noah, a Black high school senior, and Juliette, a white college freshman, who go home together after a night of drinking. Twelve years later, Juliette’s best friend Annie accuses Noah of raping Juliette—and the story breaks into multiple viewpoints and timelines, exploring themes of race, artistic ambition, grief, and the co-existence of conflicting truths. Ava shares how the start of the #MeToo movement, her personal grief, and motherhood shaped this story. She also talks about her background in photography, the loss of her mother, and her writing journey (including her popular YA novels!).

Transcript:

Zibby: Welcome, Ava. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Exposure.

Congratulations. 

Ava: Thank you, Zibby. I'm so excited to be talking with you right now. 

Zibby: Yay! I feel so honored to have gotten such an early glimpse at the manuscript when we acquired it for Zippy Books, which was wonderful. But for everybody else, can you please share what the book is about? 

Ava: Yes, so Exposure begins in 2003 with Noah, who is a black high school senior, and Juliet, who's a white college freshman.

The two meet, they're lonely souls, they form a connection, and after a night of drinking, they go home together. The story leaves off there, and we move both backwards and forwards in time, getting to know Noah and Juliet and those closest to them, as we explore the themes that shape their lives, like the intensity of young female friendship, the tension between artistic ambition and romantic partnership, the effects of race and class and loss and grief.

It is 12 years later when Noah's done the impossible and broken through in Hollywood. His first film is about to be released. It's been a festival darling. He and his wife Jessie, who he's been with for years, have just had their first child. When a new story breaks, Annie, Juliet's best friend back in LA for the first time in 12 years is accusing Noah of raping Juliet back when he was in high school.

We get this story from multiple perspectives, both Noah's and Juliet's, as well as Annie's and Jesse's. And I think at its heart, it's really a book about what it means to empathize with opposing points of view and the possibility of holding space for more than one truth at the same time. 

Zibby: Wow. I mean, even the description shows us all the directions and characters and intricacies and plot weaving that must have gone into, to dreaming this up.

Where did this idea come from? Which pieces of it were there from the beginning? Tell me the whole backstory. 

Ava: So I first got the idea for this book in 2016. Interestingly, just before the Me Too movement really took off, but it was around the time of the 2016 elections when social media had sort of recently taken off as, you know, this new kind of public square, which obviously has all of these amazing aspects about it.

And it's an amazing place for connection. It's an amazing way for social movements to begin for people who historically have not had voices or power to have that in a different way. But it also was the birth of, and especially that election year, I think of a lot of divisions, like deep divides in our, maybe not the birth of them, but it was the time, a time when they were becoming newly visible, I would say.

And it was feeling like, you know, it's really hard to see sometimes the human being behind the person who's on the other side of any number of the battle lines we've drawn. I think it can be easy to sort of have somebody feel two dimensional in, in this kind of meeting space. So what I was interested in doing was like taking two sides of the story and really like Humanizing them, you know, it's like the the Kamala line that's popular right now, right?

Like nobody fell out of a coconut tree. We all have these, you know, we're all a product of our personal histories and our cultural histories. And so I wanted to just, you know, give people a chance to to see and to think about the human beings behind the headlines. 

Zibby: Is this something that like, when you're reading the newspaper or whatever, is this where your mind goes like, okay, this is what, this is what's being reported.

What's actually going on? What's the other side? Like, is that where you go in your head? 

Ava: I try to, yeah. I mean, I do, I do take time to, I do like try to pause and to think about like, You know, I have my own passionate moral and political and everything else convictions, but I do try to like, take time to also then hear the other side of a story and like, understand it from multiple points of view.

And, you know, I think the other part of it is like, when we're coming to these spaces online or in the news, we're often coming to it with like, a heightened nervous system, right? Like we're in this, place of fight or flight because these things often touch like our own histories of trauma, our own histories of loss.

And I think from that like fight or fight place, it can be pretty hard to take in the, like another perspective. That's not what our body is like primed to do right then our body is primed to fight or to freeze or to flee. But one thing that reading does for me is that it like slows down my nervous system.

So like Reading a book or a memo, you know, a novel or a memoir, or even like a long article can sometimes like put me into more of like a rest and digest space where I'm actually then able to like have the space to take in different perspectives, if that makes sense. 

Zibby: Wow. So are you drawn to stories like this?

I know Publishers Weekly in their recent review said fans of Celestine take note, which is like so cool. Are these the types of narratives that when you read you're most drawn to or what are, what are some of your favorites? 

Ava: Favorite books? 

Zibby: Yeah. Favorite books or favorite authors or even just favorite types.

Like this feels, you know, it's a book that makes you think and feel. It's, it's. It's can be, I mean, it's definitely not controversial, but it's, it does, it's designed to get you to, you know, debate, right? What happened? What was the thing? What was the wrong thing that it's like, it's the best sort of book club fodder, right?

Because sometimes there's gray areas and who knows what's right. And do you like, what's another, are there books like that that you're like, yes, I felt like that too. And you know, there don't have to be, I'm just wondering. 

Ava: I mean, I do love books, of course, that make me think and feel. I just started reading this book, Consent, that came out recently that I'm like super interested in, but I'm still at the beginning, so I can't really comment on it yet, but obviously she's exploring the gray areas in her marriage, in her long marriage, and the beginnings of it when she But I think they got together when she was like 17 and he was in his 40s.

So, and then they stayed married for many, many years. So it's an interesting interest, brings up some interesting questions, I think. 

Zibby: Well, there are so many sort of strands to this. And one is of new motherhood and Jesse's experience, uh, Noah's wife and the way you write about that with such authenticity that any, Any new mother or mother to be or whatever can relate to that sort of isolation, physical, you know, boundary less state that it, you know, and where your mind just goes like, I don't even know where, which is really powerful.

And that is mixed sort of with Noah's trajectory as someone really striving to excel in a very difficult to break into career as a screenwriter and having to work the jobs that, you know, will get him to where he needs to be and getting his hopes up and just all of that when you're sort of hoping that what you desperately want will happen and you just don't know.

Which is also what you could say about motherhood too, right? We so desperately want our kids to grow up to be functioning members of society and ultimately it's sort of out of our control just like trying to sell a screenplay. So tell me about those two and that couple and the way you conceived of them and those themes. 

Ava: Yeah. I mean, there's definitely all shot through the whole book and all of the storylines. The, the girls, Juliet and Annie's as well as Noah and Jesse's are pieces of my own life and experience. And, you know, my husband and I fell in love as like young, young, striving writers. I think it was interesting to me to write that relationship because, you know, when, I mean, they met in college and then they, move to LA together.

Jesse's just lost a father and Noah has this historical loss of his mom, but they're both just fighting so hard to sort of become someone and to break through. And when that happens for Jesse first, there's this like, really, you know, difficult time in their relationship. Like what happens when two people are bound together by this dream?

And then, you know, one, it comes true for one of them and it doesn't yet for the other. So that was like a poignant. for me to work on writing and then the young motherhood stuff. I mean, I was, I started writing this book when I was pregnant with my daughter, who's now six. You can, you can hear how long this has been.

Um, but I, I wrote some of those early, those new motherhood scenes, like drafts of them, like, In that moment, like, like the first time I actually left her was like, I don't know, she was a few months old and she was stayed with my mother in law and I like went to a coffee shop and I'd like been awake the whole night before and I was in this like fever dream, like blurry, like, Who am I? Where am I? Like, what's, you know, so And I, and the first thing I wanted to do was like, write, write it down. Those scenes went through a lot of editing, but my own sort of experience with that transformation is definitely in the book and with what, I mean, obviously the circumstances for Noah and Jesse in the book are, are extreme because of these huge events that have happened, but I think that it can be relatable to people in a lot of ways that like, Suddenly you, like, you have been living in the same world together and then suddenly you have a baby and it feels like you're sort of inhabiting these like two different spaces sometimes for a little while.

Yes. 

Zibby: In a whole different planet. I wish I had. written more like in, in it when I was going through some of that stuff instead of just, because now looking back, it's all sort of a blur. I just. 

Ava: I think your brain is actually programmed probably to like, it's like by the time I had got pregnant with my son again, I'd already forgotten, you know. 

Zibby: Coffee shop day well spent only day I remember. Well, anyway, it doesn't matter. So you also have this photography element, too, because Annie's mother, Annie's late mother, right? Am I getting this right?

Ava: Yes. 

Zibby: Yes. Right. Annie's late mother was a famous photographer, sort of a la Sally Mann, who I'm obsessed with and did a whole research paper on in college and all that.

Ava: You did? Oh, wow. 

Zibby: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And now every time I see one of her works in like a museum or like wherever and get an exhibit or whatever, I'm like, oh my gosh, like. I thought I was the only one who, like, kind of knew better, but anyway, in fact, I read part of her book, Hold Still, although I didn't finish it.

I don't know if you read that, but that was really interesting. 

Ava: Actually, exact same. 

Zibby: Yeah, it was like a thousand pages, so whatever. But you do have, you know, a mother figure who uses, young girls, right, them as models, so to speak, and almost sexualizes them in a way. And I was watching the Brooke Shields documentary last night, actually, it's sort of similar to what a photographer did with her in this Rizzoli coffee table book when she was nine, and then the pictures leaked and got out later when it was, when she was less, you know, anonymous.

But anyway, so this is like a thing that happens, but tell me about this character and why this relationship and what her lens and the sort of exposure as it relates to photography as well, what all that means and where we should go with that theme. 

Ava: Yeah, I mean, I've always loved photography. I studied it in college, and that was like one of my, you know, I had a little photography show.

Zibby: Oh, amazing. 

Ava: Yeah, I've always been fascinated by Sally Mann, actually, and like my college girlfriend who's still a good friend of mine was did model for photographers when she was young, she modeled for a few different people. I don't want to tell her story because that's her story. But, you know, so I was I've been aware of these kind of themes for a long time, I think.

And like you, I went to see a Sally Mann exhibit while I was writing and just just like reminded of how powerful her work is. I mean, you. Obviously there are a lot of complex questions behind it but to me, the like sheer beauty of the images themselves is like, so arresting. 

Zibby: Haunting though. A little bit.

Yeah. 

Ava: They're just like, yeah. I mean, she's very talented. Obviously there's nothing more intimate than the view between a mother and her children, I think. And that's like what I was sort of getting at and the Juliet and Margo relationship, um, Margo is the name of Juliet's mom and I had this whole backstory, this chapter about Margo that didn't make it into the book that I think we're going to use for bonus material, but it sort of like shows it from her side where she got divorced really young. Her husband cheated on her. She was alone with her child and like her identity was as an artist. And she eventually was like, I can't like, she just didn't want to leave her every day and go to work. And she's like, she'll just be, we're going to do it together. I have to be able to be, if I'm going to survive this, I have to be able to be a mother and an artist in the same breath.

So you get that point of view, you know, and I think that's even woven into what's there, but also, you know, there's this, question of like, how much does Juliet really see herself and how much is, does, is she just seeing herself like through her mother's eyes and through her mother's lens? And how much has she modeled herself and her identity after who she thinks her mother wants to see?

Or, you know, I think those lines become very blurry between them so that she is not quite like separated from her mom yet. And so then when she loses her mom suddenly, obviously that grief is so intense for anybody. But I think for Juliette, it also leaves her like unsure who or where she is or like how to see herself without seeing herself through her mother's lens.

And she's, you know, very extra lost for, for that reason. For Annie, Juliette's friend who becomes. You know, they, they become close friends at the beginning of high school and, and Annie begins participating in the photographs and there's a whole series with her and Juliet that, you know, is acclaimed. I, for her, I think it feels like being seen for the first time in a way and like being accepted and like having a home for the first time getting to, to participate in this.

But then when, when she's lost Margo and Juliet, the. Those photographs become like this haunting, inescapable sort of testament to what she's lost. And then they take on a new life and a new meaning after the accusation when she and Juliet and Noah and Jesse are all, you know, part of this big public conversation.

And these images that Margot took all those years ago are sort of influencing the way the whole story is being read. And contributing or like intensifying the the tension already that exists between a white woman accusing a black man of rape, but here they are, these like, you know, idealized teenagers like for everybody to take in.

So I was sort of interested in exploring the way those images then shape and influence the public narrative, if that makes sense. 

Zibby: Yeah, of course. So give listeners a little background on, on you. And we didn't even touch on all the grief in the book, which you also do such a good job of, and is also a major, major theme, which I could have led with in this, but let's like skip around to your background and how you became an author and your experience and other age group material and why an adult novel at this point and just your whole trajectory of writing. So take us from you're a photography major in college.

Ava: Yeah. Well, I was a dual major. I, I stepped, I stepped a bunch of things into the humanities umbrella.

Zibby: Okay. Okay. 

Ava: I actually wrote a thesis about trauma in college and then I did like a poetry thing too. So, but I thought after college actually that I would apply to, I had an advisor who I loved and I'd been convinced that I should become an academic and I was going to apply to PhD programs, which are of course their own kind of really hard world to break into. And then that summer after I graduated college, my mom died suddenly. And I was just like, I can't do it. Like, I was not no longer interested in that. And I'd always loved writing and always written poetry and that was like the only thing that I sort of wanted to do. So I ended up Coming to LA for a year and applying to MFA programs and I went to the Iowa Writers Workshop where I studied poetry and I was still, you know, really in the thick of grief, I think, in those couple of years and afterwards I was like, all right, I guess I got to figure out how to make a living. I think I'll try going to it.

Going back to LA and doing screenwriting, which seemed like a way to make money as a writer. I was like pretty young and naive and, you know, I had a lot of random jobs, a lot of hard ones and eventually I was just sort of searching for a way to break in. And I eventually started working for the author and screenwriter and director, Stephen Chbosky, when he was making his first book, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, into a movie.

So I, um, feel like I got really lucky there. We had, I worked for him for like six years and we were really close. And he, when I first gave him my attempt at a screenplay, he was like, I think you should write a novel. What? That's going to take so long. But that night I thought of, you know, the first, my idea for my first book, which was called Love Letters to the Dead.

And it's a young adult book where a girl is grieving the loss of her sister by writing letters to like famous dead rock stars and poets and such. And I would write it like up till 2 a. m. after work. Then you know, just kid, ignoring all possible social plans. I really didn't have a life. I was just like going to work and really trying to write this book.

And, you know, I eventually ended up publishing it. Then I wrote a second young adult follow up for the same publishers. And then I, you know, my love letters to the dead, like, took off and connected with a lot of people and did really great and the next book didn't do as well as the first one had. And it came out like right as I was giving birth to my daughter.

And I just was kind of like. Okay, like, I don't know, like, who am I, where am I, what's happening? I thought I built this life as a writer, but now I don't know, and it's really hard to like figure out, you know, when you're on your own, it's one thing, like, to take the risk of writing a book in terms of the time and energy.

Every act of writing is a leap of faith, right? You never know if anyone's going to read it, if it's going to be any good, if it's going to connect with someone, if it's going to be published. But I felt like, you know, taking that, that jump felt so different when it was just me alone in my little like shoe box studio versus.

When I had a baby and then another, and then two babies who wanted me and needed me. So it took longer, but I did ultimately make that leap of faith to say, like, I am taking time away from them to write this story. Because for some reason I really believe in it, even though I don't know, I was just, I think at that stage in my life, like drawn to more adult themes because I'd done some growing up.

Zibby: We hope that we all graduate to adult. Ava, I'm so sorry about your mom and her sudden loss. I'm so sorry at that young age and it is so horrible. I'm so sorry. 

Ava: Thank you. Yeah, my, my father actually passed away also in, during the time I was writing this book. So grief in it are very strong and palpable and definitely part of my lived experience.

Like, like so, so many of us really. 

Zibby: Well, I feel like. The backstory explains some of the rawness of the feeling in it, right? The grief and the, you know, all the, the motherhood and all of it, cause it does feel so emotionally immersive to me, the whole book, even though there's, it's deftly plotted and all that stuff.

I think that when someone's guard is totally down and you like get the real feelings, it's hard not to connect and want to keep like devouring and so I feel like that's something you do well and I'm, I'm selfishly glad that writing helped you because then it helps so many other people when they read it.

Ava: Thank you Zibby. 

Zibby: Welcome. Not that you have to answer this in the affirmative by any stretch, but do you happen to be working on another novel or are you just like gonna sit pretty with this one for a little bit? 

Ava: I am, I'm, I'm working on something new. Usually I can't, like, when we sent out the book on submission, my agent, Richard was like, now's a great time to start a new book.

And I was kind of like, huh, no, no, thanks. Like, I was just like too in this story still, but once writing, I finished the edit and you know, once I was like fully done writing this, then almost immediately I got sort of my next idea came so I'm working on it. Hopefully I'll get to tell you more. 

Zibby: Exciting exciting and what are you what conversations about this book?

Are you most excited to have with readers? 

Ava: Oh, that's a really good and interesting question. You know, I hope that this book actually makes people feel seen in different, like you, like you've mentioned, there's a lot of, it's about a big topic, right? And it's about the topic of consent and, but it's also, like you said, a really intimate book that has all of these different threads about, you know, new motherhood about like about grief about losing parents about striving in one's career or like trying to make it or the idea of trying to become something about like every woman who's read it has said some version to me of like oh my god the girlhood stuff like i had a friend like that or i remember how that felt at that time so i hope that it will make people feel seen in a way that allows them to like, also want to see other people, if that makes sense.

Yeah, I, I was terrified the whole time I was writing this book. Like, I knew that I was dealing with things that are really hard, and as far as the, you know, like, I've had all the experiences that the women have had in this book, and I was processing that for myself, and I have definitely been, like, a little bit like, Oh, wow okay. So like I was pretending sort of to myself for a lot of time that I was writing this that no one would ever read it in order to like, find the courage to really go there. And now it's coming into the world. But I think it's coming into the world at like, the right time is sort of my feeling like that now is actually a good moment for this book to come out and a moment when I think people really are like, looking for ways to feel connected to each other and like wanting to be able to hold space for more than one truth at the same time.

Zibby: Amazing. Ava. Thank you. Thank you for trusting Zippy Books with this very important, very personal launch. And we are holding your book with kid gloves and hope to hand it to those who will, you know, take it joyfully and treasure it the way that we have internally. So we are excited for that and thanks for letting us be a part of it.

Ava: Oh yeah. I couldn't honestly, I have to say just. Last thing, you guys are incredible and this is like the amount of care that everybody, like the way that the amount of care you guys give to your authors and the way that you let us like participate in all of the parts of the process, it feels so good.

There's like this, obviously it's like terrifying to let your baby into the world, but like knowing that it's. in such amazing hands with people who care so much and care so much about me and care so much about all of your authors. And, you know, I was expressing some anxiety when we had like a recent marketing publicity call.

And afterwards I was just like, well, like you guys are Clearly doing everything you possibly can that like could ever possibly be done. So like, I'm just gonna let go because like you got it, which is an amazing feeling. So thank you for speaking this book in and giving it a home. 

Zibby: Thank you. That means a lot.

Thank you. Amazing. Well, off we go to the races. Thanks. 

Ava: Bye.