Contemporary Authors

• How to Set Yourself on Fire ( novel) Dzanc Books (Ann Arbor, MI), 2018

How to set yourself on fire LCCN 2017036657 Type of material Book Personal name Evans, Julia Dixon, author. Main title How to set yourself on fire / Julia Dixon Evans. Edition First edition. Published/Produced Ann Arbor, MI : Dzanc Books, [2018] Projected pub date 1805 Description pages ; cm ISBN 9781945814501 (softcover)

• author's site - https://juliadixonevans.com/

  Julia Dixon Evans is author of the novel How to Set Yourself on Fire, forthcoming from Dzanc books on May 8th, 2018. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, Paper Darts, Pithead Chapel, Fanzine, Flapperhouse, Hobart and elsewhere. She is program director for the literary nonprofit and small press So Say We All in San Diego, nonfiction editor for Noble Gas Qtrly, and hosts the San Diego literary reading series The Foundry.

  JULIA DIXON EVANS is author of the novel How to Set Yourself on Fire, forthcoming from Dzanc books on May 8th, 2018. Her work can be found in Paper Darts, Pithead Chapel, Fanzine, Flapperhouse, Hobart and elsewhere. She lives in San Diego and is program director for the literary nonprofit and small press So Say We All. She was a 2014 PEN in the Community resident and a Poets & Writers grant recipient for teaching creative writing. Twitter: @juliadixonevans

• So Say We All - http://www.sosayweallonline.com/

  Julia Evans is author of the novel How to Set Yourself on Fire, forthcoming from Dzanc Books in May 2018. Her fiction can be found at Hobart, The Fanzine, Tyrant Books, Pithead Chapel, Paper Darts, and elsewhere. Her non-fiction work has been featured in Barrelhouse, Hobart, Like the Wind Magazine, and elsewhere. Her editorial credits include Black Candies, The Radvocate, and Incoming.

  She was a recipient of a PEN in the Community Residence in 2014 and a Poets & Writers Grant for teaching and facilitating writing workshops and serves as Program Director for So Say We All.

  Production Director: Julia Dixon Evans works on programming and production for So Say We All. Her fiction can be found in Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Noble/Gas Quarterly, Black Candies, and elsewhere. She was twice nominated for a 2015 Pushcart Prize and for the 2015 Best of the Net. Her non-fiction work has been featured in VAMP showcases and in Like the Wind Magazine. She has taught creative writing at Veterans Village of San Diego, for the ARTs TranscenDANCE youth program, with the Lesbian Wellness Project, at High Tech High Chula Vista, and at the Braille Institute of San Diego. Her background is in non-profit programming and fundraising, as well as technical writing in engineering. She was a PEN in the Community Resident in 2014 and received a Poets & Writers Grant in 2015 for teaching and facilitating writing workshops.

• Shelf Awareness - http://www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?issue=3271#m40738

  Reading with... Julia Dixon Evans
  photo: Nelwyn Del Frate

  Julia Dixon Evans is the author of the novel How to Set Yourself on Fire (Dzanc Books, May 8, 2018). Her work can be found or is forthcoming in McSweeney's, Literary Hub, Pithead Chapel and elsewhere. She works, edits and teaches for the literary nonprofit and small press So Say We All, is nonfiction editor for Noble / Gas Qtrly and hosts the Foundry reading series in San Diego.

  On your nightstand now:

  My nightstand is a weirdly methodical mess--the on-deck, the references-too-often-to-put-away and the oh-my-god-why-can't-I-finish-this-one? In order: Elle Nash's new Animals Eat Each Other, Hanif Adburraquib's They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides and the second goddamn book in Stephen King's Dark Tower series that I have been trying to read for three goddamn years.

  Favorite book when you were a child:

  It's hard to not say Matilda by Roald Dahl here. I remember secretly wishing my parents were more evil and dastardly so I could be more like Matilda. Unfortunately, my parents were all right.

  Your top five authors:

  Jeffrey Eugenides (I even loved The Marriage Plot), Shirley Jackson (I came to Jackson as an adult, as a mother, and I subsequently ate her writing up with a spoon), Laura van den Berg (she was probably the first writer I fell for since trying to be a writer myself), Roald Dahl (because he made a reader out of me), J.D. Salinger (because when I read Franny and Zooey in high school he made an obsessed reader out of me).

  Book you've faked reading:

  I faked reading a lot in school because I was always overworked. I loved lectures and discussions, and could bullsh*t a top-notch essay based on that. The only time I was ever proud of this was when I read maybe five pages of Edmund Spenser's 1,000+-page ye olde English The Faerie Queene for an entire class that was just about that book. The class was an 8 a.m. lecture by a 90-year-old professor, and I got a B.

  Book you're an evangelist for:

  The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides. See? I've mentioned it in three answers now.

  Book you've bought for the cover:

  All of them.

  Book you hid from your parents:

  The first book I hid from my parents was Judy Blume's Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret because periods and boobs and boys, and omg, it felt so good to have a secret. I still love that feeling, like when I'm reading something pervy or violent in public and wonder if anyone can tell. And weirdly, I can't wait for when my own daughter reads Are You There God....

  Book that changed your life:

  Isle of Youth by Laura van den Berg. I read this when I was trying to stitch together a new-ish life: small children getting less small, me trying to write and grasp at this emerging identity, me being old and thinking I was too old to have my life changed. LVDB's writing is stunning and quietly transformative for sure, but I wonder if maybe this is more a function of my life changing around me while I happened to be reading this book.

  Favorite line from a book:

  " 'Have a carrot,' said the mother bunny." This is the very last line of The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown. I love last lines, and this one is delightful. I say this to people a lot, and I never really mean what the book means (which I think is: despite every ridiculous thing you have done to me, I am here for you and I will not make a big deal out of the ridiculous things you have done to me, let's eat). I usually just mean, Can you eat this piece of vegetable please? But it always makes me smile. Because how many volumes have been written about motherhood? That (kinda disturbing) book catches it in three words. That's what parenting means, that's what unconditional love means, that's what friendship means.

  Five books you'll never part with:

  Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger, The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides (strike 4), In the Heart of the Valley of Love by Cynthia Kadohata (because 18-year-old me, transformed by this book, wrote long tomes in the margins with pink glitter gel pen, and no used bookstore will ever take it and my book margins are the closest thing I have to a journal), Bookmarked: Stephen King's The Body by Aaron Burch (same, except not with a pink glitter gel pen. I will never part with the things I wrote in those margins) and Horror Business by Ryan Bradford, which is out of print and that's a crying shame.

  Book you most want to read again for the first time:

  Well, for the fifth time I'm gonna have to say The Virgin Suicides by Eugenides. The magic is how the plural narrator gets under your skin. I love recommending this book to people, but I also feel a weirdly forceful envy of them. It's not fair that they get to read it for the first time.

  Are you sponsored by The Virgin Suicides?

  Yes.

• Literary Hub - https://lithub.com/when-the-wildfires-of-your-novel-come-to-life-around-you/

  When the Wildfires of Your Novel Come to Life Around You
  Julia Dixon Evans on the California Wildfire that Destroyed 282,000 Acres
  April 25, 2018 By Julia Dixon Evans
  Share:

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  My husband’s childhood home burned to the ground in the Thomas Fire in Ventura this December. “My parents just got evacuated,” he told me that Monday night, December 4th, 2017. It was very late; I had been out hiking. I remembered the first blush of a Santa Ana, wind from the east, from the desert. I always love that first blush, before the dryness turns the skin around your fingernails to lizard-like scales. That whipping wind, something brewing. The fragrance of it. The disconcerting nature of a December Santa Ana meant that the wind was cold at night in the mountains, not warm. It didn’t seem like my California. It felt like somewhere else. And at the same time, like something new.

  “I didn’t even know there was a fire,” I said.

  I stayed up until 2 am, refreshing Twitter and listening to the Ventura police scanner. I heard that a single house had burned at an intersection a block away from their house and then, what seemed like seconds later, that 50 houses near that intersection were gone.

  *

  The day we all drove up to see the remains, to rifle through the rubble, one of the first recipients of my forthcoming book tagged me in a picture of the galley. I looked at the cover: the title How to Set Yourself on Fire hovering above charred slips of paper against a reddish-orange background. I saw the way it looked in someone’s hands as we drove up the hill where dozens of homes were incinerated in a frighteningly short period of time. I didn’t say anything to my husband.

  Just beyond the tiled entryway, the charred remains of my mother-in-law’s cookbooks were the only things I could safely reach. The entire house had imploded into the basement, into the crawlspace. Stepping anywhere other than on the concrete foundation seemed stupid at best.

  I picked one of the books up. In the bright sun, the first clear, smokeless day since the fire, I could tilt the pages and still make out the lettering. The page disintegrated at my touch. Nothing lasts forever, especially not books. “2018 is gonna be dope,” that reviewer had captioned, beneath that Instagram picture of my book. I was supposed to be so excited that day and for the year ahead of me, but I turned off my phone. Nothing felt right.

  *

  We’d struggled with the title. I spent the entire drafting period with a filename of “sheila,” my main character’s name, and when it came time to query agents, it was difficult to not just title the book Sheila. Ultimately, I plucked a line from the final third of the book—Other Burning Places. The manuscript was picked up by an agent, and eventually by an editor. Everything was going fine. I didn’t love the title.

  I never love the titles.

  We went through a million possibilities. I asked friends for input and then shot down their innocent, decent suggestions like a shithead. You can Google my name and find at least three titles for this book, because over the past year, we thought we’d solved it, twice.

  “How about How to Set Yourself on Fire?” I finally said.

  My editor loved it. The sales people loved it. No more changes, they didn’t have to say out loud. We’re going to print. A stranger tweeted at me saying I had the best book title ever. I wasn’t used to loving titles, so I basked in the strange, cozy sensation. Yes, I eventually thought. Yes, I agree.

  *

  My husband’s family lives in Ventura, and they’ve always lived there. It’s a beautiful town, tucked between imposing, wild foothills and the Pacific Ocean. Those imposing, wild foothills would spell its demise. My father-in-law is a realtor, the kind everyone in town knows, his name on countless for sale signs throughout the city, including at least two signs I noticed on their street this Thanksgiving, the week before the Thomas Fire turned them all to dust. My mother-in-law is equal parts wry, compassionate, and kindly-reserved, and my god, can she take care of a house. Theirs was beautiful, built in the 1920s. Gorgeous Spanish tile in the kitchen, vivid greens, yellows, and blues. Ancient green appliances, not so much “vintage” as they were “energy-inefficient,” but there’s a part of me that just understood that my mother-in-law was not going to let go of them.

  “Although I am excited to see my book out in the world, I know that I’ll never separate these things. This book, the fiery demise of that house, forever intertwined.”

  When I’d visit, I’d retreat into that darkened kitchen late at night, after the kids went to sleep, and sip a glass of my mother-in-law’s secret stash of Crown Royal beneath the light of a single dim bulb. No ice, because that ancient freezer didn’t have the capacity for ice. Every visit, I’d take a picture of the way the glass of whiskey looked against that tile in the low light. I’d decompress there, in that kitchen. I’d understand my mother-in-law there, in her kitchen. I’d feel at home there.

  I probably wrote tens of thousands of words of How to Set Yourself on Fire in that house. And I was visiting them, brushing my teeth in the blue bathroom, when my agent emailed me to say she’d received an offer on the book.

  When we went to see the rubble, the Thomas Fire still aggressively burning in Ventura county and Santa Barbara, I spotted the Spanish kitchen tile in mangled sheets, the paint nearly melted all the way off. Instinctively, I wanted to go touch them, to press my hands flat against what was left of the tile, but it was too dangerous. The fridge, once-avocado green, lay belly-down, tipping precariously towards the lower floor. We tiptoed around the entryway, careful feet not straying from the exposed foundation, but we didn’t venture further. I wanted to raise a glass of whiskey to this place one more time, but all the glasses were gone.

  *

  I stand next to my husband in the ashes and try not to say the wrong things to him. I try to be quiet enough, supportive enough, pensive enough.

  Instead of any of that, I say something like, “So are you thinking about your old baseball card collection?” He doesn’t answer, maybe just a polite chuckle.

  Things feel better when we try to figure out which piles of rubble belong to which rooms of the house. It feels productive and up until that point we felt out of control and helpless. “I think this is the blue bathroom!” and “Look, this must have been our room,” and “Oh, the piano.” But it’s not like I expected. We can’t sift through anything. It’s just piles and piles of mangled and disintegrated building materials. The possessions, the things shaped like belonging and the things shaped like a house are nowhere to be found.

  Afterwards, we go to a brewery downtown and watch the constant stream of fire trucks merging onto Highway 101. A few tasters into it, my husband tells me about his baseball card collection.

  *

  The opening line of How to Set Yourself on Fire: “It’s the third day of a wildfire to the east and we’re all used to the smell by now.” On the first day of the Thomas Fire, over 150 homes in Ventura burned to the ground, and that smell stuck around for nearly a month.

  I imagine the look on my mother-in-law’s face when she holds my book for the first time, thinking about the house they bought when she was 21. Will she be able to read chapter 52? Will she make it past the first page? Will she make it past the first line?

  Although I am excited to see my book out in the world, I know that I’ll never separate these things. This book, the fiery demise of that house, forever intertwined.

  Four days before I wrote this essay, authorities finally listed the Thomas Fire at 100 percent containment. It burned for over a month, the largest fire in California’s history, razing nearly 282,000 acres, evacuating over 100,000 residents, destroying my in-law’s house, and the house next door, and the one next to that, and so on and so on. What didn’t burn was left vulnerable for the deadly mudslides that followed just over a month later. But my in-laws are resilient. They’ll rebuild their house, and so will their neighbors, and their neighbors’ neighbors.

  I think about this pursuit, creating stories and writing books, and how naïve it all felt that day, galleys landing while I crouched amidst the ashes of someone else’s books. Nothing lasts forever, I kept repeating to myself, but it still felt worth it. My favorite art is always the stuff made despite the reception waiting for it. Nothing lasts forever, but my god, that short time that that it does is magic. The kitchens, the whiskey glasses against Spanish tile, the wild, barren California landscapes, the pages upon pages, the resilience of people and neighborhoods and stories. I’ll take it.

• Voices of San Diego - https://www.voiceofsandiego.org/topics/arts/culture-report-san-diego-authors-debut-novel-is-lit/

  Culture Report: San Diego Author's Debut Novel Is Lit

  San Diego Theatres is looking for a permanent CEO, you can watch sci-fi movies with a scientist at the San Diego Natural History Museum and more in our weekly digest of the region’s arts and culture news.
  Kinsee Morlan
  May 1, 2018
  Julia Dixon Evans

  San Diego author Julia Dixon Evans’ debut novel is “How to Set Yourself on Fire.” / Photo by Adriana Heldiz

  There’s a lot to like about Julia Dixon Evans’ debut novel “How to Set Yourself on Fire.”

  Early reviews of it, like the one in CityBeat this week, say the San Diego author pretty much nailed it.

  Evans’ central character is Sheila, a likable weirdo who says all the wrong things, can’t keep a job and has strange fixations.

  “She fetishizes PBS and blogs about people’s diseases,” Evans said. “And she thinks the worst often. She defaults to a dark place of self-centeredness.”

  Some of Sheila’s strange fixations are worth following. Two deaths, a box of intriguing letters and an awkward relationship between Sheila, her neighbor and his teenage daughter keep the pages turning in this literary mystery. The book also explores the often turbulent bond between mothers and daughters. And it’s refreshing to see a book use San Diego as its backdrop without playing into the clichés about our sunny city.

  “I didn’t want it to feel incredibly vacationy,” Evans said. “And I wanted someone who was maybe not entirely happy to be here, but was also never going to leave.”

  The release party for “How to Set Yourself on Fire” is happening 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 8, at Starlite in Mission Hills. A few other book readings and events are also lined up.

  Evans is the program director for the literary nonprofit So Say We All. She knows a thing or two about writing, but if you’re the type of reader who likes to feel out authors before you read their work, scan her Twitter feed. She’ll probably make you giggle. She’s also published plenty of short fiction.

  Evans said finding a story she thought could fill a full-length novel took her years. She wasn’t sure she’d found a solid narrative until the editing and publishing process finally convinced her of the book’s worth.

  “Early on in the process, I wasn’t there yet to say out loud that I love this book and I believe in it,” she said. “But I have learned, and now I absolutely do believe in it.”

• San Diego Union-Tribune - http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/entertainment/books/sd-et-spring-arts-books-dixon-20180325-story.html

  Spring arts 2018: Meet author Julia Dixon Evans
  Author Julia Dixon Evans
  Author Julia Dixon Evans has written her first book, "How to Set Yourself on Fire." (Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune)
  Denise DavidsonContact Reporter

  Resident Julia Dixon Evans is no stranger to the written word. She’s a 2014 PEN in the Community resident and a Poets & Writers grant recipient for teaching creative writing. Currently, she is program director for the literary nonprofit and small press So Say We All. “How to Set Yourself on Fire” is her first book.

  Q: How has living in San Diego influenced your debut novel?

  A: San Diego is fundamental to this book. I’ve lived here since I was 11 years old, and I’m still always unsettled by the heat in October and November. That’s when this book is set, because that often feels like the most existentially weird time here. The way any sort of season only shows up in the very early morning or late at night. And fire: the way I’ve watched wildfires shake us to the core, and then, we gradually work around wildfire season, and soon we try to act like we’re used to a wildfire season, but we never are. Also, living in a city that’s often caricatured as some sort of beachy, perfect-weather joke made me want to kick at that a little. I wanted to set a story here without making a big deal out of it. The book is very much anchored in place but also, to me, very universalizing of San Diego: this could happen anywhere, but it didn’t, it happened here with a backdrop of insufferable autumn heat and a haze of ash in the sky.

  Q: Shelia, your main character is a bit untethered and a mess, but as a reader, you root for her. Was that your intention?

  A: I’m so glad you rooted for her! Definitely my intention. Unlikeability in characters, particularly female characters, is such a gamble. We heroize difficult-yet-lovable male characters all the time, letting them get away with all sorts of unlikeable behavior just for the tiniest shreds of vulnerability. I wanted to write a female character with very specific flaws, not things I could shrug off as cute token flaws. But I also wanted her to have things readers (and, of course, myself) could reach for. She wants, and I think that’s her most relatable core. Sheila wants to be happy.

  Q: What’s your inspiration for this cross-generational story?

  A: Harold’s letter writing style came directly from some ridiculous teenage love letters I still have, and in re-reading those, I realized I couldn’t even remember replying. I’m sure I wrote something (equally ridiculous) in return, but it doesn’t matter: my only archive erased my own contributions.

  Q: What advice do you have for unpublished writers trying to get a book published?

  A: Make sure you believe in your work before you put it out there. The road to publishing is punishing at best, and if you can’t ground yourself every so often and remind yourself, “no, I love this book and I want to share it with the world,” then it’ll be even harder to motivate to work on it after each rejection, suggestion, edit, or less-than-glowing write-up. The hardest part, for sure, is the self-doubt. It’s not the criticism or having other people’s hands in your work (because I truly think that stuff makes a story and a writer so much stronger) but it’s the way that you can take a somewhat simple hurdle or a speed bump like a rejection and let your mind downward spiral until suddenly you think: “maybe I’m not meant to be a writer.” A good editor and a good agent will fight for your book.

  Q: What makes you laugh?

  A: My kids. I know it’s a cliché but the things that come out of the mouths of small humans is wild.

  “How to Set Yourself on Fire” will be published in May by Dzanc Books. 312 pages. $16.95.

• Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-dixon-evans-b73b945

  Julia Dixon Evans
  Julia Dixon Evans

  Independent Writing and Editing Professional

  Greater San Diego Area
  Writing and Editing

  Previous

  The Episcopal Diocese of San Diego, Writers Research Group, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society

  Education

  University of California, San Diego

  Experience

  UCSD Interim Lay Campus Minister
  The Episcopal Diocese of San Diego
  September 2008 – September 2009 (1 year 1 month)University of California, San Diego
  Freelance Writer
  Writers Research Group
  July 2007 – September 2007 (3 months)
  The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
  Campaign Coordinator
  The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
  May 2006 – April 2007 (1 year)San Diego, CA
  The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
  Assistant Coach, Hike For Discovery
  The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
  January 2006 – June 2006 (6 months)San Diego, CA
  Delta Design
  Technical Writer
  Delta Design
  May 2002 – May 2006 (4 years 1 month)Poway, CA
  SKF Condition Monitoring
  Technical Writer
  SKF Condition Monitoring
  July 2000 – May 2002 (1 year 11 months)San Diego, CA

  Education

  University of California, San Diego
  University of California, San Diego
  Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Literature of the World
  1996 – 2000

  Skills & Endorsements
  Join LinkedIn to see Julia’s skills, endorsements, and full profile
  Join now
  Languages

  German

How to Set Yourself on Fire
Melissa Norstedt
Booklist. 114.16 (Apr. 15, 2018): p19.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
How to Set Yourself on Fire.

By Julia Dixon Evans.

May 2018. 312p. Dzanc, paper, $16.95 (9781945814501).

Typically, a novel's thirtysomething female protagonist struggles and overcomes obstacles to find her fairy-tale ending. Not so for debut-novelist Evans' Sheila: a character so frustrating that she's deplorable--and somehow simultaneously lovable. A depressed, obsessive insomniac who has no filter and loses track of the days, Sheila is entrenched in her cluttered apartment and unable to hold a temp job. She has, in fact, given up on most things--until she has her grandmother's secret letters. They totally consume her as she surrounds herself with them, literally and figuratively, reading, rereading, and searching for answers. Evans gets inside every nook and cranny of Sheila's head, and it's hard to look away from, like driving by a train wreck. Socially awkward to the core, Shelia and her fellow characters are emotionally detached from each other but not from readers, who will be fully drawn into Evans' world and eventually rooting for Sheila, too. With its touch of mystery, this refreshingly realistic and quirky novel is hard to put down.--Melissa Norstedt

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Norstedt, Melissa. "How to Set Yourself on Fire." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2018, p. 19. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537268046/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d3f78b59. Accessed 24 June 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A537268046

How to Set Yourself on Fire
Publishers Weekly. 265.11 (Mar. 12, 2018): p35.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
How to Set Yourself on Fire

Julia Dixon Evans. Dzanc (PGW, dist.), $16.95

trade paper (312p) ISBN 978-1-945814-50-1

Evans's offbeat and winning debut is a family mystery, a much-delayed bildungs-roman, and the story of a surprisingly touching friendship between a 35-year-old woman and her 12-year-old neighbor, whose father she happens to be sleeping with. Sheila's life is stagnant: she hasn't held down a job, not even a temp job, in three years; she's obsessed with a UPS carrier and the love letter he accidentally dropped in front of her; she constantly gets nosebleeds; and her father left her and her mother when she was 11, an abandonment she hasn't gotten over. Sheila's daddy issues are plentiful and garden-variety, but her emotional arc and eventual reconciliation with her mother shine. When Sheila's grandmother dies, Sheila finds among her belongings a shoebox containing letters from a man named Harold, who is not her grandfather and yet professes his love for Sheila's grandmother with increasing ardor. This discovery coincides with Sheila meeting Torrey, the 12-year-old daughter of Sheila's neighbor Vinnie, who has just lost her mom in a skydiving accident. Torrey, who becomes obsessed with the letters and also becomes something of a fairy godmother to Sheila, urges her to find Harold, pushing Sheila to her eventual, reluctant transformation. Torrey is a little too clever, but it's impossible not to be charmed by her and Sheila's relationship. Agent: Monika Woods, Curtis Brown. (May)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"How to Set Yourself on Fire." Publishers Weekly, 12 Mar. 2018, p. 35. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531285071/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=93d391ba. Accessed 24 June 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A531285071

Evans, Julia Dixon: HOW TO SET YOURSELF ON FIRE
Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 1, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Evans, Julia Dixon HOW TO SET YOURSELF ON FIRE Dzanc (Adult Fiction) $16.95 5, 8 ISBN: 978-1-945814-50-1

A box of love letters leads to an unlikely friendship between a socially awkward woman and a grief-stricken girl.

Sheila, the protagonist of Evans' debut novel, appears to be at an all-time low. At 35, she keeps leaving her temp jobs. She sleeps strange hours and spends most of her time in the shared concrete courtyard outside her apartment where she hears everything her neighbor Vinnie does. On top of this, her grandmother has just died. Sheila is not a conventionally likable character, but her incredible oddness makes her interesting. She has a knack for off-putting responses and laughing at precisely the wrong times. When she learns that Vinnie's ex-wife has been in a terrible accident, she asks him for the details. "I'm just a sucker for the gore," she says. Eventually, this accident brings Vinnie's 12-year-old daughter, Torrey, to live with him. Soon, Sheila is getting to know her neighbors as people. She shows Torrey a box of love letters written to her grandmother, letters Sheila did not know existed until her grandmother's death. The two become obsessed with the letters and the man who wrote them. The friendship that develops between Torrey and Sheila gives the book its real heart. Torrey matches Sheila's extreme immaturity with her own wisdom, and their bond feels unexpected and fresh. The characters are stronger than the plot, however, which unfolds predictably. The letters themselves--which have such a powerful hold over Sheila and Torrey--are overly sentimental and melodramatic. Perhaps this is the point, but so many of them are included it begins to drag the book down. And Evans includes a few narrative elements that feel gimmicky and don't quite land.

Memorable characters are the bright spots in a forgettable plot.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Evans, Julia Dixon: HOW TO SET YOURSELF ON FIRE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959977/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=112b4eb7. Accessed 24 June 2018.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A528959977

Norstedt, Melissa. "How to Set Yourself on Fire." Booklist, 15 Apr. 2018, p. 19. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537268046/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d3f78b59. Accessed 24 June 2018. "How to Set Yourself on Fire." Publishers Weekly, 12 Mar. 2018, p. 35. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531285071/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=93d391ba. Accessed 24 June 2018. "Evans, Julia Dixon: HOW TO SET YOURSELF ON FIRE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A528959977/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=112b4eb7. Accessed 24 June 2018.

• Medium
  https://medium.com/the-coil/book-review-julia-dixon-evans-how-to-set-yourself-on-fire-cetoria-tomberlin-78103f843adc
  Word count: 731

  Mystery & Mental Illness: On Julia Dixon Evans’ ‘How to Set Yourself on Fire’
  Evans’ characters battle depression and search for their own identities while solving a family mystery.

  Julia Dixon Evans
  Novel | 312 Pages | Reviewed: Paperback
  978–1–945814–50–1 | First Edition | $16.95
  Dzanc Books | Ann Arbor | BUY HERE

  In her debut novel, Julia Dixon Evans gives readers an unlikable heroine who’s half-heartedly trying to solve a family mystery. Shelia is a mess. She’s drifting through life in her mid-thirties, getting fired or quitting temp job after temp job, occasionally stalking a stranger, and treating her mother fairly contemptuously for no good reason.

  But a tragedy happens: Her grandmother passes away and leaves Shelia with a secret. A shoebox of letters from Harold, a man Shelia’s never heard mentioned before. The letters range from casual kindness, to obsessive pre-occupation:

  “I must know. When can I see you again? When can I see your face and speak with you? I am not supposed to be a lonely man. My work keeps me very busy and engaged. My friends are sociable and loyal, though not as geographically near to me anymore as they used to be. But being so geographically near you but not being able to spend every waking minute with you feels incredibly lonely. I want to take everything I can get. You simply must find someone to take care of Ellen one morning and come over for a cup of coffee.”

  (p. 135).

  Harold’s words are moving, but the story is one-sided. Shelia doesn’t have her grandmother’s responses. All she knows about their possible liaison is that it ended.

  While Shelia is on-again/off-again with trying to figure out what the letters mean in terms of her grandmother’s happiness, she also develops a friendship with her neighbor’s daughter, Torrey, a young girl who’s recently lost her own mother. They bond, not because Shelia is a responsible or dependable adult, but because of proximity and Shelia’s inability to remember Torrey is a young girl when she’s speaking to her. Torrey is a romantic and finds the letters too compelling not to investigate. More often than not, she’s pulling Shelia along to the library for research. Shelia hasn’t read a book in years, and she’s understandably wary:

  “‘The only things we have going for us are our skin and our bones. Our ancestors, the shit we live in, the world — none of that is ours,’ I say. I feel incensed. ‘It’s not something we can control and it’s not something we’ll ever benefit from. The only inheritance I have is me.’”

  (p. 150).

  It is difficult to tell, sometimes, if Shelia is trying to cope with her own childhood disappointments (Her father left their family when she was still a child.) or if she might actually have a medical condition. She gets nosebleeds, passes out, and loses time regularly, but these symptoms only tend to appear when the going gets tough. Shelia, assisted by Torrey, has to find the answers she wants, but she also has to find something stronger to which to tether herself than to her lifelong fear of abandonment.

  For me, Shelia’s self-destructive tendencies make her the most relatable character. She’s an average person whose life never really found a purpose beyond simple existence. She knows there are better ways to live your life, but she’s not motivated, in the beginning, to make the effort. Her depression seeps through the pages like the fog of inaction surrounding her life. It’s painful for those familiar with the disease and illuminating for others previously unable to understand.

  At first, I cringed at some of Shelia’s antics, but as the story moves along, it’s clear her actions are a smoke signal for help or, at the very least, attention. Her most redeeming quality, by far, is her honesty with herself, the only person to whom (besides Torrey) she seems capable of not lying. Despite her unkindness at times, her unlikability, I admire that she sees her whole self, faults and all. And she challenges the people in her life to like, or even to love, her, regardless.

• Foreword Reviews
  https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/how-to-set-yourself-on-fire/
  Word count: 358

  How to Set Yourself on Fire

  Julia Dixon Evans
  Dzanc Books (May 8, 2018)
  Softcover $16.95 (312pp)
  978-1-945814-50-1

  How to Set Yourself on Fire is a brooding tale of memory, emotional malaise, grief, and voyeurism. Languorous, thirty-five-year old Sheila steals her dead grandmother’s shoe box, filled with 382 letters, and discovers a secret past. The cost is her own disenchantment. This candid portrait of depression examines an “ancestry of pain and blame” with blistering effects.

  At the start of the novel, Sheila is adrift in a California rental. Haunted by her parents’ long-ago separation, she is jobless and holding fast to a few remnants that remind her of human contact. These include a fleeting exchange with a UPS driver that blooms into one-sided obsession, and overheard conversations between her neighbor, Vinnie, and his daughter, Torrey. Biting, focused scenes reveal how minutia defines Sheila’s days.

  Chapters alternate between the quixotic letters her grandmother received from a neighbor, strained conversations between Sheila and her mother, and Sheila’s newfound friendship with the preteen Torrey and her father. These disparate threads converge around the lies and insensitivities that separate people, and the mutual need that draws them back together.

  The plot wisely avoids drawing a straight line from past trauma to her present-day troubles; much is left unsaid about the intervening years that left Sheila so numbed.

  Amid dark themes of failure, Torrey stands out as an anchoring presence. Her friendship, which remains free of judgment, allows Sheila to begin finding a way back from her self-sabotaging habits.

  This unsettling exploration of a troubled mind braids passion with stagnation, and the power of family ties with the need to evade them. Sheila’s struggle to break away from her own hurt doesn’t end with the book, which offers a thoughtful portrayal of the slow path home. Here, even the most isolated individuals find meaningful connections. In a beautiful turn of events, the hope that Sheila had longed for was always near.

  Reviewed by Karen Rigby
  March/April 2018

• Vol. 1 Brooklyn
  http://www.vol1brooklyn.com/2018/05/10/catching-aflame-a-review-of-how-to-set-yourself-on-fire-by-julia-dixon-evans/
  Word count: 1047

  Catching Aflame: A Review of “How to Set Yourself on Fire” by Julia Dixon Evans
  By Matt E. Lewis On May 10, 2018 · Add Comment · In Book Review, Featured, Lit.

  evans-cvr

  When I first met Julia Dixon Evans, I was struck by her dedication and commitment to her craft. Having worked with her as both as a writer and an editor (for States of Terror Vol.1 and The Radvocate magazine, respectively), she is a rare combination of talent, persistence and creativity. She has organized vast efforts around writing and her community, which has led to some of her excellent work to be featured on countless websites and publications. She has helped helm the literary horror journal Black Candies with Ryan Bradford, which started small and has grown into a vast force of talent to be reckoned with. In addition to her duties with the literary non-profit So Say We All and as the mother of two young children, she has created the stunning new novel How to Set Yourself on Fire. Even though this is decidedly not a horror novel, Evans still uses the masterful dramatic underpinnings I have seen in her previous work which lend the story a similarly thrilling tone. The atmosphere taut with tension, secrets and lies, How to Set Yourself on Fire exudes the quiet menace of an explosion waiting to happen, a fantastic debut charged with the static of a Santa Ana wind.

  Sheila’s experience is that of a life raft, drifting aimlessly between meaningless temp jobs while her obsessions fuel her daily purpose. From one of these former jobs, she keeps a found letter as a totem, a heartfelt letter from a UPS driver to an unknown woman. Memorizing the letter, tracking down the man but never approaching him, handling it until the page is soft and worn – these are the hallmarks of her behavior. She languishes in a sunbaked courtyard of a San Diego suburb, absent-mindedly listening to the skype calls between her neighbor Vinnie and his estranged wife. PBS plays in the background, the intellectual yet toothless programming providing a perfect soundscape to while the warm days away. A dirty teacup, partially filled with blood, sits remembered but undisturbed by the bed. In Sheila’s life, Evans has captured a quintessential Southern California reality. The ennui of a place people love to visit for a holiday, while most of the residents remain stuck in a holding pattern, a beautiful purgatory where the past is too easily forgotten, trampled underfoot like fallen Jacaranda petals. Sheila is about to find herself in one of these situations, where she must fight to keep the memory of the past from being obliterated by the jasmine-scented haze of the present.

  Sheila’s grandmother, Rosamond, has just died. Her family unit isn’t as tightly knit as others, but her grief stems from the place of not knowing Rosamond that well – her grandmother’s quiet nature and later, a degenerative disease have blown out most chances for connection between the two. Rosamond did, however, allude to an old shoebox that she wants Sheila to have, but the shoebox is swooped up by Sheila’s mother before she has a chance. Sheila and her mom already have a strained relationship (demonstrated through little affects like answering “It’s Mom” over the phone when Sheila has already addressed her as such) and adds to it with the petty indignity of switching the funeral flowers from her grandmother’s choice (sunflowers) to tulips (from Rosamond’s wedding bouquet, a marriage alluded to as joyless). Proclaiming “Fuck the tulips”, Sheila steals back the shoebox from her mother’s house and starts a journey of discovery about her grandmother through the letters it contains – or rather, an insight into the author of the letters, Rosamond’s former neighbor, Harold Carr.

  Harold’s language in the letters is a relic even in his own time, their flowery affectations having more in common with Victorian flourish than mid-century Americana. He makes clear his passionate obsession with Rosamond, a trait that Sheila clearly identifies with, which becomes the tipping point that starts her down the path of the mystery of their dynamic. “(Harold) may be an adulterer, or at least a hopeful adulterer, but he is so pure in heart,” Sheila tells herself. “He isn’t the one hanging by a thread. I imagine being Rosamond. I imagine being the same mess I am now, but all vintage, nineteen fifties style. I imagine hanging by a thread, fifties style.” Both aspects fascinate her – Harold’s extreme vulnerability and Rosamond’s unknown responses, whether they reflect an untapped reservoir of emotion that she never presented to her family, a clue to a personality left quiet.

  This occurs as a drama of the present is also unfolding. Vinnie’s ex-wife has died in an accident, and his tween daughter Torrey arrives to live with him. Surprisingly, Sheila and Torrey end up bonding over the letters, and the pre-teen encourages her to keep investigating what happened to Harold & Rosamond to counteract her fleeting focus. Little does Torrey know that Sheila has also begun an affair – with her father, whose flaws she has overlooked to form their own bond.

  How to Set Yourself on Fire is literary fiction with a bite – it has layered characters, unique language, and a gripping storyline. But more so than the book, what I enjoyed was seeing how far Julia’s writing has come since I met her. She’s a perfectionist when it comes to her work, and this book is proof of that: it’s lean and uses detail as a seasoning rather than a crutch. It has broad appeal in the best possible sense – with taut storytelling, mysterious circumstances and compelling characters, it’s easy to fall in love with it. The thing that I enjoyed most about How to Set Yourself on Fire is that such a phenomenal work will be Julia’s introduction to the rest of the world, who will get to see the talented person that I have known her to be. It is the start of a literary career that will be nothing short of incendiary.

  ***

• San Diego City Beat
  http://sdcitybeat.com/culture/the-floating-library/julia-dixon-evans-brings-the-heat-in-%E2%80%98how-to-set-yourself-on/
  Word count: 486

  Julia Dixon Evans brings the heat in ‘How to Set Yourself on Fire’

  Local author poised to break out with tender, but incendiary mystery

  by Jim Ruland

  April 30, 2018

  6:15 PM
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  setyourselfonfire.jpg

  How to Set Yourself on Fire by San Diego writer Julia Dixon Evans begins in a crowded apartment complex in an unnamed city in Southern California where the messy lives of its inhabitants spill onto each other.

  Sheila is a young woman in the grip of unhealthy habits. She can’t hold a job, her mother is worried about her, and her romantic interests descend into obsession. Her last “relationship” was a one-sided affair in which she stalked a UPS driver. Her neighbor Vinnie is a divorced chain-smoking taxidermist struggling to parent his tween-age daughter long distance via Skype.

  Then a pair of deaths disrupts their already disrupted lives. Sheila’s grandmother passes away, leaving behind a trove of lost letters from a lover who is not her grandfather and Sheila never knew about. Did her grandmother have an affair or are the letters a chimera, a distant echo of Sheila’s unhealthy infatuations?

  Sheila finds an unlikely ally in the pursuit of these mysteries in Torrey, Vinnie’s daughter who has come to live with him after her mother’s sudden death. With some misgivings, Sheila accepts Torrey’s help in solving the mystery of her grandmother’s secret romance.

  “I feel a fire inside, a spark. I’m almost certain this is a terrible idea,” Sheila narrates.

  The novel takes place during fire season and opens on “the third morning of a wildfire to the east.” Fire imagery abounds in Evans’ prose and Sheila is something of an emotional fire starter. Her restlessness propels her into all kinds of awkward situations.

  “The only things we have going for us are our skin and bones. Our ancestors, the shit we live in, the world—none of that is ours.”

  In spite of Sheila’s quirks, How to Set Yourself on Fire is a novel full of humor and heart. Here she is reflecting on her neighbors’ propensity toward sitting outside in the small courtyard their tiny apartments share: “I wonder if they sit outside all afternoon and evening because there’s a deconstructed mountain lion or something hogging the living room floor.”

  Though she has a knack for making a mess of things, by unraveling the mysteries of her family’s past, Sheila begins to make strides toward a more promising future.

  Julia Dixon Evans will be celebrating the release of How to Set Yourself on Fire at Starlite on Tuesday, May 8 at 8 p.m.
  May 2, 2018 Issue

  by Jim Ruland

  April 30, 2018

  6:15 PM

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