I first encountered Michelle Tea’s work on the shelf of Left Bank Books in Seattle. By that point, almost everyone under the sun had urged me toward her texts. For whatever reason, I resisted the nudge and let her leant novels sit on the shelf beside my bed for too long. But just a few flips through Valencia while standing in the Left Bank’s aisles, and I was hooked. Tea’s voice caught me, and I found myself following her through her lusts and longings, deeper and deeper into the queer scenes and girl tribes she described.

Her latest book is the first of a trilogy out on McSweeney’s new YA imprint, McMullens, takes us back to Tea’s hometown of Chelsea, Massachusetts, where Sophie Swankoswki and her best friend Ella will do anything to escape the oppressive culture that surrounds them. They play the pass-out game just to get away. The girls, their friendships, and the way they make a way in the world seems a little touched by magic–and maybe it is.

We chatted about her newest teen-targeted venture over email.

– Genevieve Hudson

THE BELIEVER: Is this your first foray into the world of fantasy? I’ve noticed a trend in literary fiction that repurposes folk and fairy tale aesthetics into more modern modes. Do you think there’s something about our current cultural climate that lends itself to telling tales through magic?

MICHELLE TEA: I think there has been a real rise in fantasy-type stories in literature and on television; I can’t speak to the cultural shifts that might have provoked this moment beyond the constant hunger for something new. Mermaid in Chelsea Creek is my first fantasy book. I was very, very inspired by the His Dark Materials series when I read it some years ago, and it opened my mind to the way fantasy can be utilized and layered over real life. After being burned out with real life from memoir, this was a great way to turn to the stories that obsess me and that I’ve dealt with in memoir – girlhood, poverty, family, tough towns – and play with it in a very different and new way.

BLVR: What books did you read as a younger person?  Did you find it hard to find alternative narratives that carried queer subtexts–was that even something you were consciously searching for?

MT: I had no IDEA I could be queer as a young person. I was pretty boy crazy up until I realized that girls could be boys, too. As a younger person I liked scary books, like by Lois Duncan, books about secret witches and curses and...