Zona Motel: An Interview with Juliet Escoria and Mesha Maren

'Fuck it, I’ll do it myself'

In January of this year, I received an email from Juliet Escoria. She said, ‘My friend Mesha Maren and I are starting a new publication on Substack, entitled Zona Motel, and are inviting you to join us. Our main idea is that we want a place for book coverage that is both intelligent and fun, and that values small presses and good writing.’ They asked if I wanted to be the Profiles Editor and I said yes of course. As a writer who runs an independent press and tends to organise a lot of community-based projects around it, I never get invited to be part of other people’s things! And the idea made perfect sense to me. We really need something like this. A place for writers, readers, editors, publishers, booksellers, and general enthusiasts of independent literature to come together, engage seriously with the work, and cultivate excitement around it. Again.

In the lead up to the launch, I asked Mesha and Juliet some questions about Zona Motel.

LKS: So first of all, who are you and how do you know each other?

MM: The first time I ever saw Juliet Escoria she was standing up on a bench on the sidewalk in Iowa City and reading a short story about being a coat check girl. She was very pretty and her writing had a sharp darkness to it that I loved. I was both intimidated and enthralled but mostly intimidated which made me glad that I had to go work my waitressing shift and couldn’t hang out afterwards. The second time I ever saw Juliet Escoria was in the parking lot of a restaurant in Beckley, WV. I was on my lunch break from my job teaching at a federal prison and I had just moved back to West Virginia after being away for thirteen years and I was trying to make friends so I had messaged [Juliet’s husband] Scott [McClanahan] on Facebook and the three of us met up. Juliet was still intimidatingly pretty and cool and she was wearing red jelly shoes. I decided that I would make her my friend.

JE: I don’t remember meeting Mesha in Iowa, but I do remember meeting her at that restaurant. Scott said that Mesha had moved back and wanted to be friends, but I was under the impression she was some boring fancy writer because she had been in Iowa (I just assumed she was an “Iowa Writers’ Workshop-type person”). But then I met her, realized I was wildly wrong, and instantly felt that connection of, “I understand this person, I like them, we should be friends.” And we’ve been friends ever since.

Point Pleasant, WV after The Mothman Festival in 2016

MM: This is probably petty but I feel very compelled to say that I didn’t go to the Iowa Workshop. Instead I served bad diner eggs to people who were in that MFA.

JE: Yes, I was doubly wrong. Mesha was not an “Iowa Writers’ Workshop-type person” and she wasn’t even at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

LKS: Can you describe the moment you came up with the idea for Zona Motel?

MM: For me it was a combination of many things that had been slowly brewing in me having to do with my frustrations around current book culture and it was kind of catalyzed by going to see the Y2K movie with my husband Matt [Randal O’Wain] and Juliet and Scott and Megan [Boyle] and Blake [Butler]. We all went to see the movie together and talked about how the internet used to be fun and it used to bring us together and help us to meet other book nerds and now it does the opposite. This was in December. At the time I was reading William Butler Yeats’ Autobiographical Writings and he was talking about his work with Maud Gonne on the Irish Literary Society and how they were fed up with the kind of literature that was being forced on them and they decided to form their own little society and make libraries all across Ireland to help people access the kind of writing that they believed in. I started thinking that I wanted to do something like what Yeats and Gonne did. Then Juliet texted me to ask if I would be interested in starting a substack with her as an antidote to all of the aspects of book culture that we both hate (the lack of substantial reviews, the fact that all the books that do get publicized are boring and safe, the fact that book culture entirely revolves around the identities of writers and self-promotion and not the books themselves, etc.) I texted her back saying that I had just been thinking that I wanted to do something like that.

JE: Yes, for me it was Y2K, which is funny because that movie isn’t even good. A few days after we watched it, I was on my elliptical machine, thinking about how I missed the fun internet, and then I got the thought of: “Wait. Who says we’re not allowed to have fun on the internet anymore?”

And then that thought started swirling around in my brain with conversations I’d had with Mesha over the summer—we had noticed that our experiences with publishing a book in 2024 were very different than the other books we had published. It seemed like there was no infrastructure anymore, and that everything was either a list or a promotional essay. When my first book came out in 2014, it was on a micropress and I did all my publicity myself—and it still found a readership. It pisses me off that young or new writers on indie presses in 2025 wouldn’t be able to have the same experience I had a decade ago. I have a rule of thumb I use to decide when to act, or to not act, on something that pisses me off, which comes from the end of Voltaire’s Candide: “All I can do is cultivate my own garden,” meaning I can’t change the world, but I can make my tiny corner of it a little bit nicer. And on the elliptical that day, I thought, “Wait, this is my corner.” I have 15 years of experience in the publishing world, and because of that experience, it is easy for me to list at least fifty people who I respect immensely, because of their writing and way of looking at the world and their reading habits. So maybe “tending my garden” means I should get these 50 people together so we can make our corner of the world a slightly better place, as a collective, rather than simmering in frustration as individuals.

LKS: I love that, and I think we can.

What does the name ‘Zona Motel’ mean?

MM: Juliet and I sat around the table in her kitchen for probably five hours and wrote down words and phrases that we liked. We bounced them off of Scott who was sitting in the living room. Somewhere midway through this process I threw out the name of Zona Heaster Shue aka The Greenbrier Ghost. Zona was murdered by her husband in 1897 in my home county. Her husband strangled her and then tried to make it look like she died of natural causes but Zona’s ghost appeared to her mother and revealed the truth. This was the only time in history that a ghost’s testimony was used to convict a murderer. Mostly I just liked Zona’s name and her relationship to the county where I grew up, it didn’t really make sense as a name for a literary substack but Juliet and I both kind of liked that aspect. I think we both feel like there is too much of a push in current book culture for things to line up and make sense and illuminate some greater truth and we both wish that more things existed simply because people like the way they sound in your mouth. We put Zona on the list of words we liked along with a bunch of other words, we narrowed it some more and then we stopped for the night. I showed the list to Matt, when I got home and he pointed to the word Motel and said, you should definitely include this. We stuck Zona and Motel together and rolled them around in our mouths for a few days and they felt good.

JE: I personally liked the idea of Zona because she’s from West Virginia, we’re both West Virginians (Mesha is a native and I’m adopted), and this state is shit on in just about every way imaginable but it’s actually an amazing place, and I wanted to have some sort of West Virginia element to it. Just about anyone in southern West Virginia is going to know what “Zona” is referring to, but outsiders won’t. And I like the way that Motel and Zona fit together, both visually and acoustically. I can come up with at least 5 different ways that the word “Motel” is applicable to what we’re doing, even though it actually means nothing—and I like that anyone can give it their own meaning.

LKS: Why do you feel like you need to do this?

JE: I just refuse to believe what we’re being told about publishing! I started being aware of publishing as an industry when I was getting my Bachelor’s, which was in 2006-2008. Even then, the industry was going on and on about the death of literature, having a fit over eBooks. And it’s been like that ever since: publishers and media outlets being all “woe is me” about things. And it’s stupid! It’s cynical and it’s lazy. Like I said, I can name at least 50 people who are making great work without even having to try. I refuse to believe we’re dumb and everyone wants another YA fantasy series. I refuse to believe that people don’t want to read. They do! They just need help with finding books that resonate. I can’t make writers like Niina Pollari or Lucy K Shaw or Sam Heaps or any of the other literal geniuses we’ve got writing and editing for us into national bestsellers, but I can do something to bring a little more attention to their work. And then I also look at the book coverage that does still exist, and it’s all so boring and formulaic, and I don’t understand who decided that this is what book coverage needs to look like. I love Eve Babitz and I love Otessa Moshfegh but I do not want to read yet another list telling me to read them. I don’t want to read another essay that was written to sell a book. I want to read the thoughts of a smart person who is telling me about a book because they love it. I am sick of algorithms, sick of formulas, sick of trends, sick of playing it safe, sick of brand consciousness—I want the opposite of all of that. I assume that I am not unique, and other people want this too.

MM: I feel like I need to do this because I am sick of my own complaints. I have spent too much time complaining about the conglomeration of the publishing industry and the way that mainstream media coverage of books is tied to internet capitalism and I feel ready to do something more constructive like curating the types of conversations I want to engage in. This is a fucking dismal time for “big publishing” and the kinds of support systems that once existed for indie writers are mostly gone but I agree with Juliet, I want to tend my own little weird ass garden and put my energy into that.

LKS: I had a similar experience last summer, after publishing some new books and going on tour and meeting a lot of people who were making and doing cool things in the small press world, I came back from that and felt like, wow I should probably be making a magazine to cover this stuff because it feels like nobody is recording it or paying attention, and so I made a few loose plans and came up with some ideas, but then I kind of lost confidence or ran out of energy, because it didn't occur to me that I should be inviting everybody else to join in. I thought I had to do it by myself. (lol). So when Juliet reached out with the idea for Zona Motel, I was so ready for something like this. And obviously having a masthead with dozens of people makes so much sense, because much of the point of this project is to fill that sense of lost community.

Could you talk about some of the people involved with the project? And what the reaction has been like when you’ve invited writers to be part of this?

JE: I wanted a range of people, in terms of experience, location, age, background, etc. and I feel like we’ve got that. I think we’re spanning ten time zones. A lot of the people I’ve known for a while (Brian Allen Carr, Ken Baumann, Joseph Grantham, Katherine Faw), some I’ve known for just a little bit but found to be great writers and interesting people (Nathan Dragon, Raegan Bird, Ivan Genc, Izzy Casey, Kayla Jean), and others are people who were recommended to me by others, like Elinor Abbott and Mariah Barden Jones, who were recommended by Niina Pollari and Raegan, respectively, and both instantly got what we were trying to do, or Jimmy Cajeloes, who is a friend of friends but I’ve never interacted with him until now, and he’s lovely. It’s been such a great experience so far-- and we haven’t even launched yet-- of realizing that yes, I was right! There are so many great writers out there, who read widely, and look at the world in a unique way, and want to be challenged, and want to talk about the things they love.

And the reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. Like you said, I didn’t want to do this alone, and I don’t want to be the boss of it--more of a shepherd or custodial role. It seems like there are a lot of people out there who are frustrated with the state of things and are excited to have a home for that great essay they wrote last year but couldn’t find a place for, and to be told “Write whatever you want.”

MM: I was very excited to reach out to some former students and writers who I had met on book tour. For the past few years I have felt sad when my students ask me where they should be looking on the internet to find smart reviews of non-mainstream books and I have felt like I didn’t have a good answer for them and so I was particularly excited to write to some of them and say Join the Brotherhood! I was also excited to reach out to some writers who I met at book festivals and who I hung out at the bar with talking shit about the publishing industry. It felt nice to be like, instead of just slinking around and talking shit, let’s do something together.

I like to think that I am working to create space for the kind of writing that I want to read. I don’t want to make any rules for Zona Motel. Well maybe two rules– no self-promotional essays and no lists.

LKS: And how about other people who are just hearing about this for the first time and also want to be involved? How can they participate?

JE: I stopped inviting people not because I ran out of ideas of who to invite, but because I was getting overwhelmed with emails. We still have room to grow, and I’d especially like more people to cover readings and other events. And we could use another editor for the essays section. So yes, if you want to write for us, you can email me at juliet.zonamotel at gmail. Here are our submission guidelines.

We also need money, because I don’t believe writers should work for free, so becoming a paid subscriber helps. We want this to be a place that feels communal, and the benefits that paid subscribers get are shaped around that idea-- by becoming a member of the Brotherhood, you have access to this tiny world of people who love books. Right now, we have a paywalled gossip column and a chat. Soon we’ll have monthly Zooms, which will be led by a different Zona Motel writer following a format of their choice-- so think craft classes, readings, and salon-y type stuff. We have other ideas in the works. There are so many things people can subscribe to these days, and I want to make the thing people are paying for with Zona Motel feel both valuable and unique.

ME: Also participation by sharing is great. We want people we have never met to read the amazing essays and reviews that our contributors are writing so one great way of participating is by telling people that we exist. If you feel excited about what you read then spread the word and feel free to reach out and let us know about books we should be covering and people we should be connecting with. My email is mesha.zonamotel at gmail. We would also like to have a lively comments section on Substack so please join the conversation and tell us what you love and what you hate about what we are doing.

LKS: There’s clearly a nostalgic element to this project, in some ways. You’ve talked about a time, not that long ago, when the possibilities for using the internet to publish and promote contemporary writing felt more fun, and you’ve listed some of your influences in the manifesto, including projects that ended several years ago, such as HTML Giant or Alt Lit Gossip, alongside others that are still active, like Dennis Cooper’s Blog and even Shabby Doll House, and I’m just wondering what your thoughts are on how we can ensure that Zona Motel is a publication that’s oriented towards the future? I mean, I also miss those times when everyone was making ebooks with basic html, but we can’t go back there. So where are we going?

JE: All the websites and art movements we listed-- the thing they’ve got in common is a “Fuck it, I’ll do it myself” mentality. (Except for Hipster Runoff. I put that on there because I enjoyed its sense of mischief.) That’s something I want to see more of. And I want to provide support to the entities that do this already, like Shabby Doll House, R&R Magazine, Rose Books, and Cash 4 Gold Books-- I could list more.

I think a lot of people are frustrated by the sanctimonious, PR-language, blandly corporatized approach to book coverage we’ve seen develop these past few years. Maybe we can tilt the needle to favor a readership that is more invested in quality, community, and fun than in book sales.

MM: I think that in the future, the act of creating and reading thoughtful books will become an ever more radical act. There has always been a lot of garbage out there but now more than ever it is being crammed down our throats and so it is super important to keep talking about the weird little books that we find and read and write and love.

Zona Motel

launches April 7th, 2025.

You can read the Manifesto here. And you can subscribe now to begin receiving smart, fun coverage of independent literature next week.