Austyn Wohlers is a New York-based writer and musician, whose debut novel, Hothouse Bloom, was recently published by Hub City Press. In the novel, Wohlers details the struggle of the protagonist, Anna, to turn a profit on the apple orchard that she inherits from an estranged relative. Over the course of a season in the orchard, the story gains complexity as it shifts perspective, upends our expectations for a straightforward pastoral, and sheds new light on questions of artistry and productivity. I sat down with Austyn Wohlers to talk about the impetus for the story, labels and influences, and why Hothouse Bloom speaks so eloquently to this specific generational moment.
Can you give a brief background of your history as a writer.
It was always around growing up. I remember wanting to be a writer as a kid, trying to write novels when I was in fourth and fifth grade. It’s hard to say that there was a moment when it started. It just sort of came with my consciousness, I guess. I wrote poetry in middle school. Then in high school I picked up writing as such, in a more serious way. I was into a lot of psychedelic literature, that sort of world. The Glass Bead Game by Herman Hesse was a very important novel for me. I had the original idea for Hothouse Bloom when I was 20. It was originally a short story that I was writing in an advanced fiction workshop in college. The professor just completely did not like it, and told me I didn’t understand the basics of fiction, which to me was devastating because it was what I wanted to do. I took making it into a novel a bit out of spite, because I was like, “No, this is going to work, actually.” And I think that feeling of spite or wanting to prove that it was an idea that could work kept me going with it.
Was there some specific element of the basics of fiction according to your professor that Hothouse Bloom was misunderstanding?
I think change or character development. A lot of people think it’s a psychological novel, but you don’t necessarily know a lot about the character, right? She sort of steps out of a void, and you don’t know too much about her past, except for this failed art career. I really like that. I like the idea of having someone step onto the scene from a kind of mistiness. I started reading Lispector in college, and she really changed the way I thought about literature and drove me towards a more language-based writing as opposed to one that had some of the more traditional elements of fiction. At this point, it’s a fairly accessible book. I think it’s definitely lyrical, but there is a plot and there is change. I think the impetus for it is really the language.
Do you identify as a millennial or as Gen Z?
I feel like I’m on the cusp. I’ve always had a lot of older friends, so I have always hung out with more millennials, but I think I am effectively Gen Z.
Do you think that you could have something important to say generationally, as a Gen Z novelist?
I would say that there are definitely elements of the novel that are reflective of sort of this moment in time. One, I think, is the element of fantasy that’s in there. Anna has this fantasy of what life is going to be like, and what it’s not going to be like. It doesn’t turn out that way, and I think that growing up around the internet and having so much access to information, it’s possible to dream more vividly of other ways of life than it has been at other points in history. That’s definitely an element that sort of speaks to this generational moment. I think also we’re at a point of economic crisis, I would say since 1970. I buy into to the Robert Brenner Long Downturn thing. I think that for a lot people in our generation—Millennial, Gen Z, however you want to put it—there often is this call to leave this world and live more simply, whether it’s the post-pandemic homesteading thing, or people who are like, “I just want to go raise goats in the woods. I don’t want to do any of this anymore.” That dream has a long tradition. You can look back to Nathaniel Hawthorne and various commune dreams of yore. But I also do think it’s of this particular moment, and I wanted to write a novel that bought into that and explored that, but also ultimately critiqued it.
I think that growing up around the internet and having so much access to information, it’s possible to dream more vividly of other ways of life than it has been at other points in history. That’s definitely an element that sort of speaks to this generational moment.
How do other art forms inform your vocation as a novelist? You’re also a musician. Do you have a background and painting as well?
I don’t have any background in visual art. I’ve always been very attracted to visual art and been a very visual person. I feel like both in music and in writing, there is a visual element that I’m sort of grasping for, but it’s not actually something that I’ve ever pursued. I moved to New York in the past year and since then I have made a lot more visual artist friends. There are a lot more painters around here than in other cities and I’ve started painting casually with some friends, using their material when we’re hanging out. It’s been really fun, but it’s nice to keep it as a creative element that’s less stressed and not really that serious. I make music. It’s interesting. I think of it more in terms of separate outlets. I’m definitely somebody who needs to be working on something all the time or I go crazy, and I start to be, like, “Oh, my God, my life is slipping away.” When I get really frustrated on a book, I can switch to music, or if I get really frustrated on an album, I can go write for a bit. And I think that music is more social than writing, although I actually have a pretty social relationship to literature as well. I think that I started reading in part to not be alone. I’m very social person. But then I also think that music may be more directly about feeling and experiencing the world, whereas literature—even though this was an emotional book—ended up being more about reflecting the process in the world. And so in terms of how they inform one another, I think I’m interested in similar things. I’m interested in tragedy, I think in both forms, but I think of it more in terms of different ways of processing the world.
Anna definitely has this fraught relationship with productivity. You see her grappling to set aside her art career, as a reaction to what she perceives as a failure. And then you see her also struggling to turn a profit at the orchard, which is a different kind of productivity. Are there any elements of that that are autobiographical? Do you see Anna as a kind of outlet for your anxieties around productivity?
Absolutely. Especially in writing the novel. I would say at this point in my life, I’m more like Jan. But at the time, I was going back to that wound surrounding the incident with the short story in my college writing seminar. I was so anxious about my ability to self-actualize as an artist and be the person I wanted to be. I was so afraid of not becoming that person and to me, for some reason, it would just mean that I failed my life. So I think that one autobiographical impetus was, well, what would it look like to fail and just completely reject these methods, or the idea of productivity that we are enmeshed in? What would it look like to just seek absolute stillness? But I think I knew that that wasn’t the right answer either. I mean that both in terms of myself personally, although I’ve learned to value rest a little bit more. And I also mean that more broadly. I think that withdrawing from the world’s problems is very attractive, but ultimately not the right answer. That goes back to The Glass Bead Game by Hesse that I read as a kid. It’s about a boarding school for boys that are all trying to master this game, which is an abstract synthesis of math, science, art and all sorts of other disciplines. The protagonist Joseph gets really good at this game and becomes the master of it, and then ultimately decides that he doesn’t have the right to withdraw from the world of problems and retreat into this boarding school because it’s kind of like an ivory tower. He goes into the city and he becomes the tutor for an old friend’s kid, and then at the end of the book, they try to take a swim together and he drowns. It’s really abrupt. Because of his upbringing, he’s not equipped to handle the real world, even if it’s something as simple as swimming in a lake. I thought that was just devastating. It was so good. It was a 600 page novel you’re learning so much about this guy, and then he dies so fast, and without any fanfare. Actually, in the original draft of Hothouse Bloom, Anna died.
I think that one autobiographical impetus was, well, what would it look like to fail and just completely reject these methods, or the idea of productivity that we are enmeshed in? What would it look like to just seek absolute stillness?
I felt like the novel was leading up to Anna’s death. Why did you change that ending?
I felt like, ultimately, it’s sort of what she would want to happen, still buying into her dream of a fantastical world, and I didn’t want to give her what she wants. I think that going to McDonald’s is kind of more horrible for her. It’s a different kind of death. But I am really interested in this idea as a form. You see it in the work of someone like Lispector, in particular. I really like novels and stories that give you someone’s really intense psychology, and then make them die abruptly. You have this perspective shift at the end where someone else is watching their death or experiencing their death. And I think that even though Anna’s death didn’t make it into the novel in the end, you do get the other perspectives coming in late in the novel, and that was related to the idea as a form. It’s the death of her consciousness as the thing that the reader is trapped with.
You mentioned Clarice Lispector as an influence. Did you have any other major influences?
I’m heavily into German literature. I read the Sorrows of Young Werther this year at La Monte Young’s Dream House, where I was volunteering in New York. I have this hilarious photo of me sobbing at the Dream House, my mascara running as I’m finishing the Sorrows of Young Werther. That stuff hits for me. I’m also into the long read. I read Septology by Jon Fosse last year, and I was also reading a lot of Transcendental literature. I’m definitely into Thoreau. I would say two other books that really inspired me were Henry Bosco’s Malicroix, which is sort of similar to Hothouse Bloom. The protagonist inherits some land and begins reflecting on what it means to be part of these two different lineages: one of very gentle, sun-touched fruit growers, and the other of really harsh people raising sheep in this tough environment. He feels his spirit split between the two, which I think even though it’s a French book, is very German. That’s kind of mirrored in the Anna-Tamara relationship in Hothouse Bloom. Another book I related to was São Bernardo by Graciliano Ramos, which is a tragedy, but also sort of a comedy, about a farmhand that tricks someone into giving him his agricultural estate, and then falls in love and becomes a complete monster. I really wanted to explore the idea of evil and what it meant to have a protagonist who in some ways is not at all likable. I love that. There’s a great line in the beginning of the novel where the protagonist has tricked the guy into giving him his property and he’s like, “I’m leaving you in your long johns.” That has always stuck in my mind. That is such a great line to me.
I’m glad that you brought up the idea of the unlikable protagonist. There is kind of a discourse, especially when the unlikeable protagonist is a woman, surrounding the implications for an unlikable protagonist in the realm of feminist or post-feminist literature. I did think it was interesting that your novel is being described as post–feminist. Do you agree with that label?
It’s interesting. Maybe I haven’t thought about it as much as I should have. I think Ottessa Moshfegh has some good discourse on this, which is basically that literature has to explore evil. I come from an upper middle class background and I am, you know, white. I have a lot of privilege, and I think that when you’re writing from positions of power, you sort of have, if not a duty then at least a motivation to explore and critique those things. I think in terms of Anna being unlikeable there is also an element of mental illness, which I struggle with myself. I finished this book in a psych ward. I think that, in a way, it was a way to explore the most evil parts of oneself. I think that’s a cool thing literature can do, you know?
I really wanted to explore the idea of evil and what it meant to have a protagonist who in some ways is not at all likable. I love that.
Do you think that being an educator contributes to your vocation as a novelist?
It’s interesting. I really love talking about writing, and I love teaching writing. I was applying for tenure track jobs this year. I was a final three candidate for one, and I was really excited, but also felt like I wasn’t maybe quite a time of my life to move to a small town and pack it up. Work as an educator is something that I’m good at and that I enjoy alongside writing. I especially like when I’m able to teach art. But I don’t know that it has any bearing on my work beyond that.
What are you working on that’s new at the moment?
I’m writing on a novel about an alcoholic ex- sculptor who gets seduced into working on a Christo-fascist land art project. In some ways, it’s very different from Hothouse. Stylistically, it’s first-person, it’s fragmented, and it kind of reads like an erotic thriller at the beginning. But it has another unlikable, crazy female protagonist who’s trying to escape from the world—in Anna’s case into nature, and in Frances’s case into sex and alcohol and God. I just got some notes back from my agent on it. I’m really happy with how it’s coming along. And it’s also about an artist who has sort of failed or given up. It’s been interesting to see what kinds of things I come back to as a writer, in that sense, because for a long time it felt like everything I was writing was very different.
Can you say something about the Christo–fascist element of the book?
You know about this whole scene, the Dimes Square stuff? There’s this trend in DC too. I think that this is where I’m much more of a Gen Z writer than a millennial writer. I’m interested in the rightward swing amongst a lot of cultural youth. It’s a book that critiques that, obviously. I think that we live in a time of crisis. We live in a time where leftism is a way of acknowledging that the world is broken and being committed to fixing it, and I think a lot of these kind of neo-religious movements recognize the world is broken and instead try to re-mistify or ritualize it. And I think that people who didn’t grow up Catholic, who are attracted to that, are also looking for something similar, a way of making the world make sense. In this character’s case, it’s a feeling of not understanding the difficult world and just wanting a way out of it. The character comes from a non-Christian background and is encountering these things for the first time. It almost reads as some way like conversion literature. It’s a different way of understanding the world, but for her, it’s sort of maybe wanting to mystify and ritualize it as opposed to fix it, or fix it in a different way, like reifying the family et cetera. It’s a way that a lot of people get politically demotivated right now. I was interested in what leads people to that.
Hothouse Bloom is now available from from Hub City.
Austyn Wohlers was born in Atlanta in 1996. Her debut novel Hothouse Bloom was called “the rare kind of debut that resets the bar for the field at large” by Blake Butler and “strikingly original” by Mesha Maren in The New York Times. She is also a musician.
Cristina Politano is a writer from New Jersey. Her essays and fiction appear in Identity Theory, The Dodge, and La Piccioletta Barca, among other places. Twitter/X and Instagram/BlueSky: @monalisavitti.
minor literature[s] 