Allie Rowbottom: “When I Write, I Leave My Body a Little”
“There’s no procedure, no pill, no person,” writes Allie Rowbottom in her piercing debut novel Aesthetica. “Salvation is incremental, a smattering of small braveries.” Set in the not-so-distant future when Instagram is as irrelevant as Facebook and the age of the influencer is fading fast, Aesthetica tells the story of Anna Wrey, a former internet celebrity who, on the eve of undergoing a risky cosmetic surgery, is confronted by a part of her past that she thought was long buried. I had the pleasure of talking with Allie about navigating social media as a writer, the intersection of beauty and aesthetic, fiction and nonfiction, controlling your public narrative, and much more.
Mila Jaroniec: is your second book after the memoir , and it’s your fiction debut. In both your nonfiction and fiction, your narrators engage in similar moments of micro-reflection, where their thought processes and motives are revealed through what feel like intimations. Do you think writing
