Author Spotlight: Candice Lola

Hello everyone! Welcome to another author spotlight! These will be posts where I discuss and showcase, predominantly women and people of color, their writing talents and published works. So without further ado let’s get on with the Author Spotlight!

Meet the Author!

How did your writing journey start?

The answer to this is so complicated for writers, so often we’ve had false start after false start before we realized that we cannot survive without taking our writing seriously. My story isn’t much different, I got a tiny poem published at 7, wrote secret stories on blogging website under a fake name when I was 17, and then ran from writing until I was 27, where I realized that if I didn’t take my writing seriously, I would regret it for the rest of my life.

What initially inspired you to create Women of Glass and Other Parables, and what did you want this collection to say about womanhood and resilience?

Many of the stories in this collection started out as practice and exercises almost ten years ago. I had applied to NYU and got waitlisted, and then rejected. I dropped my hours at work and started practicing nearly every day, trying to get looser and closer to my actual writing voice. Women of Glass is a manifestation of my true voice, which honestly was fucking terrifying in the beginning. I didn’t mean to write horror, I didn’t mean to add violence or magic or anything of the sort. When I didn’t censor myself, this is what I wrote, and I grew to accept it. 

So much of womanhood is about shame. We are relegated to a narrow existence that demands we dress up or cut off our “ugly” parts. Women of Glass is what happened when I gave my shadow self the pen. I want it to inspire more women to make friends with the dark, with the power, with themselves. That is the secret to resilience, I’ve noticed; knowing which parts of you are actually you, and which parts someone added on, which parts you can discard, and which part you absolutely must guard with your life. 

How did you come up with the characters in these stories, and do any of them reflect your own experiences, beliefs, or emotions?

The characters arose after many edits, after many editors returned my work to me confused as to what I was trying to do. I realized that I needed to give my reader some sort of vehicle, a point of view to anchor to, and so I forced myself to settle down and write characters. They are all versions of myself, I think, I haven’t decided yet. So many of them are named after people I grew up with, people I admire, or just names that I think are beautiful. There is only one story that is very loosely based on a true story though, Flytrap. My mother was an amazing storyteller. She told me about the demon fly while I was braiding her hair for my sister’s wedding.

Each story in the collection feels layered with symbolism and emotion. How did you balance realism with the mystical and spiritual themes woven throughout?

This is a tough question for me because I believe it happens intuitively. People in my family love to speak in riddles; my mother was a grand storyteller and my father is a pastor. We love us a good idiom or metaphor. Symbolism at times has felt like the only safe way to describe what I’m experiencing, what I’m thinking.

Which story or character in Women of Glass and Other Parables was the most difficult or rewarding for you to write?

LaQuonda from Of God and Wonders is my absolute favorite, hands down. Her story is an examination of religion, specifically how I have experienced religion as a young, curious girl. Writing her symbolism took a lot out of me, partially because this was one of the first stories I completed for the collection, and partially because the frustration from that time of my life threatened to shut down that story completely.

The collection centers deeply on the Black feminine experience. What did you want readers, especially Black women, to take away from these stories?

I want Black women, firstly, to feel beautiful when they read this collection. I had the most fun coming up with ways to describe Black beauty; dark skin that reflects in blue and pink, cotton hair that rises into a halo, dark color that pours over the skin like honey. I took my cues for that from Toni Morrison specifically, it was so clear how beautiful she believed Black people were. 

I want every woman that reads this to look their shadow self in the face. I want them to fight through their fear and make peace with it. I want them to question everything unsatisfying and painful and out loud, interrogate why you are tolerating that. Don’t hide your anger. Question it. Investigate it. Let it OUT. Understand that you are big enough, powerful enough, to shape the world into what you want; in fact that is your call.

The worlds you build often blend pain, divinity, and transformation. What message do you hope readers carry with them after finishing the book?

Every bit of you is there for a reason.

So…what are you working on now?

Right now I’m working on a novel that I believe will be an extension of one of the stories in Women of Glass. It’s been interesting focusing on such a big project. I’m having a good time. Other than that I’m just trying to get enough sleep, to be honest. It’s my favorite hobby.

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Candice was fun to interview and work with! She is such a unique writer and person! If you want to get in contact or connect with Candice you can follow her on:

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Thank you all for reading and remember:

Live. Love. Laugh.