#386 Inside the Emotion of Fiction A PLACE FOR PEOPLE LIKE US by Danila Botha, published by Guernica Editions on September 29, 2025
https://guernicaeditions.com/en-us/products/a-place-for-people-like-us
What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you finished the piece of fiction?
Oh wow, a long time ago. I started working on A Place for People Like Us when I did my MFA at Guelph University in 2016, it was actually my thesis.
Video of Danila talking about for all the men and some of the women I’ve known
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETSjUnuFlL0
BELOW: Danila in 2016 signing her book for all the men and some of the women I’ve known
It was an incredible experience, I had some of the best writers ever as mentors, including Catherine Bush and Dionne Brand, who were both unbelievable. But it’s a little strange to get so much feedback on a first draft. Normally with early drafts, you rely on instinct, and as you become more confident in the story you’re telling you share it with early readers, but I’m eternally grateful to the generosity of my professors, the time and energy and thought they gave everything. It was such a privilege to work with them, and my talented classmates, who were also amazing.
https://canadian-writers.athabascau.ca/english/writers/dbrand/dbrand.php
I’m much more comfortable with short fiction, so in between, Guernica Editions published my short story collection, Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness, and I worked on those stories. I finished A Place for People Like Us and submitted it to my publisher in 2022 (BELOW LEFT), and it was accepted for a 2025 publication date. We worked on the edits in 2024 (BELOW RIGHT), and then finally we were done. The story evolved a lot from where it first started; from third to first person, from multiple perspectives to just Hannah’s. The ending was rewritten a number of times too. I’m grateful to be at this stage, where the book is out in the world, and I’m incredibly grateful for the way it’s been received.
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail.
Mostly at my desk, which looks out of a window onto beautiful trees and the street, and is beside many bookshelves so I can easily cross reference things. I also draw and paint as part of my writing process, so I often have sketchbooks and pencils and even paint on my desk, so I can draw things out whenever I’m unsure of something. I also did some writing in coffee shops, just to get out of my house, but mostly I worked at my desk.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day?
I love listening to music when I write, I find it really helpful for accessing a character’s tastes, emotions, and finding their voice. I listened to a lot of when I wrote Jillian, since that was where her name came from. I also listened to a lot of classic soul, like Aretha Franklin, and Prince and Erykah Badu, Sonic Youth, A Tribe Called Quest, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, her taste was all over the map, eclectic but specific.
When writing Hannah, I listened to a lot of Tori Amos, Hozier, Arcade Fire, Leonard Cohen, Kathleen Edwards, Dot Allison, and Jessie Reyez, among others.
The song Wishing Stone by Dot Allison was helpful in writing about Hannah’s past and present colliding as they do later in the novel.
Rebel Girl and Liar by Bikini Kill were songs I listened to a lot too, when I thought about her and Jillian’s relationship, along with songs like A Mistake by Fiona Apple and Over and Over by Morcheeba.
I do almost all of my writing on my laptop, just straight into a word document. I’ve worked like that for a long time, I think it’s a speed thing, I can type as quickly as I think. I actually love working in Word. Sometimes I write in my sketchbooks, or I send myself emails with notes in the body of the email, ideas for a story, lines, references to books I want to revisit.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
The first time I met Jillian was the night I was about to meet my potential new roommate, and instead of texting me like a normal person, Cassidy called, frantic, and all I could hear was her breathy, high-pitched voice clarifying that she was “sitting near the bar” and “been waiting here for fifteen minutes,” and even though I knew I was less than five minutes late, I could feel my heart start to race.
It was hard to hear anything over all the noise, the people behind me yelling their orders above the blaring speakers at the bar, the band who was sound checking on a small stage in front of them, White Stripe-y garage rock like it was 2006 instead of 2016. I edged closer to her and heard the metallic scrape of her Coke Zero against the graffitied wooden table. Cassidy looked exactly like she did on Instagram, sandy blonde curly hair subdued in a ballerina bun, with a few loose ringlets framing her heart shaped face, glowing skin, no makeup except for a little mascara and lip gloss, a pink hoodie and black high waisted jeans that made her look like a fit suburban housewife with two kids, instead of a twenty-one-year-old, third-year undergrad like me.
“Look, I’ve got to go soon,” she said, tapping the dusty table with her phone like she was Judge Judy condemning a particularly unskilled criminal. “I have to get up at 5 a.m. every morning to run.” She repeated the words partial athletic scholarship three times. It would have made a good drinking game if only I still drank, and she had even the tiniest sense of humour.
Her phone case was full of gold glitter that moved around when she shook it. She wanted to show me photos of the extra room in her apartment. I leaned over, and from what I could see, it looked clean and bright, with a decent sized window, but it was definitely small. She said she had an extra futon and a bedside table, so I didn’t even need to bring my sidewalk-scored half-damaged Ikea crap with me, which was an extra bonus. Her parents paid her rent, she’d told me, but if she rented out the other room, she got to keep some of it, and her dad was impressed with her entrepreneurial spirit. She liked that I was a business major in one of the elite programs everyone knew was hard to get into. It was weird going to school in the most expensive building on campus. Webb Gallagher had intimidating marble floors and gold lettering, its vast open spaces filled with bright light and office building-like chairs and tables. Cassidy had no reaction to my double major in film.
We were both trying to act like we weren’t desperate, even though school started again in less than a week. Jen, Cassidy’s old roommate was a faster runner, and when she found out she got a full track and field scholarship to Purdue, she ditched Cassidy without a second thought. “She turned out to be the worst kind of friend,” Cassidy said. “Cutthroat and so inconsiderate. So I decided, I’m never going to live with another friend again. This is a business arrangement, right, so we’re going to get along, but it’ll be easier to have boundaries.”
She pulled up a contract on her phone. “I just need you to read this and initial here.”
I took a deep breath. The kids I babysat loved the Little Mermaid movie, and I felt like Ariel, signing my voice away for the vaguest potential of happiness.
I knew I couldn’t spend another second in the messy, revolving door communal artist house I’d been living in no matter how cheap it was. For one thing, it was almost an hour from campus. What started out as interesting and relaxed quickly started reminding me of childhood. Officially, there were four music majors from my university who were in a band together, along with the lead singer and the drummer’s girlfriends. They were called Shut Your Eyes and See, which was apparently a James Joyce quote, and they sounded like a cross between the National and Arcade Fire. They smoked an obscene amount of weed, did mushrooms and drank, practiced and fought at 2 a.m. It was the dirt streaked, sticky wooden floors, the endless nights of rice and lentil dinners, watching them cheat on their Drama or English major girlfriends, who always played dumb or cried and screamed but then took them back.
I skimmed and signed.
I looked at Cassidy’s little diamond studs, and her chunky silver Tiffany’s heart necklace. She was talking about being a kinesiology major and her plan to become a physical therapist.
For the past two years, I’d worked for a wealthy family in Leaside. They had a full-time live-in housekeeper and hired me to take care of their kids. My boss, Stephanie, taught me all the subtle signifiers of wealth.
She gave me tons of her old clothes. “Better you than the Salvation Army,” she’d said, which made me feel both excited and queasy, like a pig gorging on the pile of truffles it was just supposed to dig up.
When I told my mom about my potential new roommate, when I took a selfie in Steph’s clothes, with squeaky clean hair and a tiny, delicate gold crucifix around my neck that she’d given me for my birthday, she was so relieved. I knew all she wanted was for me to be able to push my past further into the rear-view mirror.
I wanted for the millionth time to just be able to buy a pint of whatever was on tap, and drink it slowly, like Cassidy was doing. I fantasized about a pitcher of Sangria, the deep purple kind with thick juicy slices of orange and canned maraschino cherries floating in it. I could tie the stem of the cherry into a knot using my tongue. It always distracted people from how much I could down quickly.
Whatever I did, I committed to all the way, which my mom always said was just like my father. I wished I was different, but for the past year, I’d been fully committed to sobriety. I went to NA and AA meetings every week.
I rubbed the knuckle of my index finger under my nose, wiping away traces of imaginary powder. I only ever drank to make the coke last longer. Just thinking about it filled my stomach with a tantalizing mix of exhilaration and fear.
I glanced over at the stage. Another band had started playing, louder, heavier rock, and I got up, turned my camera on and started filming. The singer, who was wearing red leather pants and a cropped black tank top, was dancing her way into the crowd. I look at her, and, in one of those surreal moments that only happens in movies, the singer walked right up to me, took my phone out of my hands and kissed me right on the lips. I pulled away and regretted it immediately.
The singer had a big red grin that was both charming and devious, like a cross between Taylor Swift and the Joker. She looked like she’d been expecting me to wait around. “I’m Jillian,” she said. “I always look out into the audience and choose someone who looks like they need some shaking up.”
Cassidy thought the whole thing was hilarious, and I was too embarrassed to talk much to Jillian. I wanted to ask her what her last name was so I could creep her on Instagram or at least hear more of her music.
“Hopefully we’ll see each other again,” I said, trying to sound casual and she grinned at me. “Don’t worry, we will.” It sounded like a promise.
I moved in with Cassidy two days later.
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? This emotional moment must not be from the character’s emotion but from your emotion as a writer.
This excerpt is the opening chapter in A Place for People Like Us. It’s emotional because it changed so much from where I started, because the title was inspired by Denis Johnson’s seminal short story collection, Jesus’s Son, from the story Beverly Place. The story ends with the line “I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us,” and finally, when we got to this last draft, I felt I captured similar searching and vulnerability in Hannah, in her relationships with Naftali and Jillian, and even with herself.
I hope readers continue to connect with this too.
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/remembering-denis-johnson
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us?
The best way to describe it is to show you. This is the original first chapter of this book, a scene that was later moved and partly used towards the end. Hannah is so closed and so self loathing here—her voice is in the third person, and she is at such a distance even from herself. The story really evolved and changed a lot, and sometimes it’s both refreshing (and wild) to remind ourselves of how much things grow and change with every draft, with everyone’s insightful feedback. I had the chance to work with Elyse Friedman, a Canadian author and editor whose advice was invaluable. My editor Michael Mirolla was fantastic too. I’m grateful for all the support I’ve gotten, and for readers who’ve written to tell me how much they connected with the story.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/9382/elyse-friedman/
https://www.michaelmirolla.com/
Here is the original opening chapter: (it’s wild to be sharing this now)
Freedom. It felt like the exhilarating thud of tired feet against a pitiless pavement after running a marathon. It felt like wind in Hannah’s lungs, like sun in her throat. Every one of her fantasies lately involved eating non-kosher food, and she was disgusted with her own lack of imagination. This was the main one: she’d go into a downtown Wendy’s and order a Bacon Cheddar cheese burger, dripping with extra mushrooms and grease. She’d have a large French fries with barbeque sauce and ketchup, and a vanilla milkshake with it. She’d get it all put into a brown paper bag that would get soaked with spots of oil. Of course, just eating the food would never be enough. It was a warning she’d had from rabbis and her husband’s family from the beginning. One transgression encourages a greater loss of control. All the structure and definition had appealed to her back then. Everything had seemed so easy.
Hannah paced the hallway outside her bedroom, making a mental list of all the things she needed to bring with her. She’d packed furtively, even though the only other person at home was their housekeeper, who was doing laundry in their basement. Hannah had gotten into a pattern lately of going downtown, of sneaking into a washroom with a Mary Poppins sized bag, taking off her wig, and her long skirts and collar bone covering, full arm-covering sleeves, and wearing regular clothes. She had found a pair of jeans and tank top from years ago, and instead of the old feelings of self-loathing, she’d felt excited. She could escape, if only for a few hours. Her main fantasy involved Johnny. Johnny, who had full lips and eyes that saw through her clothes down to her underwear. Johnny who had teased her, who had flirted with her, who she had never actually slept with. Out of the all the fantasy men, it was always him. She hadn’t seen him in years.
In the fantasy, she’d arrange for him to meet her there, in the line, and he’d look the same; artfully disheveled. He’d smile and slip her a few in a small bag, along with everything else she needed, and he’d stand outside the bathroom door, guarding it. She’d go in and binge: on the food, and the gear. She’d tear the burger apart, shovel in the fries, and then stop. She’d smoke a rock, lie back and feel all her anxieties finally stop. Then he’d take her back to her place, and she’d have it all–pleasure, escape, possibly death. The possibility of that kind of selfishness was delicious.
There had been too much for Hannah to process lately. Jillian’s illness was progressing and it had stretched the outer limits of Hannah’s faith. Her family lived in service of a God who leaned back and watched people die. When Hannah visited Jillian in their old apartment, she always tried not to cry. She wanted to be a calming presence. She brought whatever food or drink Jillian could stomach because of the chemo. Lately it was ginger ale and Twizzlers. A few weeks before, it was cream soda and matzoh ball soup. When Jillian was healthy, her presence was magnetic. She was funny and charming and beautiful. She’d talk to a stranger on the subway or streetcar, and they’d fall in love, she’d flirt with a salesperson or waiter, and they’d give her free stuff. Hannah thought of all the times she’d seen Jillian perform. Lately she found herself re- watching her live performances on YouTube, seeing Jillian careening across the stage, her dark long hair flying, her vibrato riveting crowd after crowd, to grins, to wild applause, to tears. It struck Hannah as she watched, that the loss would not be hers alone. Jillian had always had fans. She had always been small and fine-boned but she looked like a child lying in her parents’ bed now, pale and helpless. As soon as Hannah had closed the door behind her, she’d found herself sobbing.
There was no one in her life that Hannah could talk to. She was barely speaking to her husband. He slunk around, guilt imbuing his blue eyes with a strange levity. She hated herself for still loving him. Then there was the matter of her father in law, and Iris. Nausea flared in her chest. Everything she’d thought she was marrying into, every value and hope of becoming better was a lie. It was time to end the charade, at least for herself. She took her phone out of her jacket pocket and called a cab.
“To Tyndall, off King,” she told the driver when she got in.
“Do you have a particular address in mind?” he asked her.
She shook her head, and looked out the window. “Just on the corner, you know, in Parkdale.”
She leaned back into the soft tan seats, and adjusted her bra. Milk was leaking out of her right nipple. Motherhood had not been a transformative revelation. She was desperate to burst out of her skin. When she first met her husband, she’d been honest about her past. It wasn’t supposed to last, so she didn’t think she had anything to lose. Later, when they shocked everyone by becoming serious, his parents had expressed doubts about her. She understood. She was not from their world. And still: she’d converted to Orthodox Judaism. She’d attended synagogue. She’d worn clothing that fit her like a body bag. She’d had three children. Deep down though, she’d always known that she would screw it up somehow. She was doomed, and accepting it finally felt better.
When they were more than ten minutes away from her house she ripped off the scarf that had been tied tightly around her hair so that not even an inch in the front, a tefach, was showing. She undid her ponytail. She rolled the window down and felt her hair blowing in the wind. Today would be the day that she finally proved her in-laws right, she decided.
