NEW GLUE INTERVIEW: ALLIE ROWBOTTOM

"My misery loves to be pet on the forehead and told that everything’s going to be okay, even if my misery knows that’s an empty promise."

Allie Rowbottom is the author of Jell-O Girls and Aesthetica. Her next novel Lovers XXX, about 80s porn stars (very graphic book trailer available on Language Arts), is forthcoming in June of 2026. Allie's essays and short fiction can be found in The New York Times, Elle Magazine, Vanity Fair and so forth. She has a PhD in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston and lives in Los Angeles.

1) What is the first thing that burned you?

ALLIE ROWBOTTOM: The first is too much of a downer for an opening answer so I’ll go with the second: Michael Zickler, 6th grade, the trampoline party at my dad’s house where he refused to hold my hand. And this after I had made the impulsive choice to write “I LOVE MICHAEL ZICKLER” in permanent ink on my bedroom wall. I covered it thereafter with a Romeo and Juliet movie poster. Mortifying and tragic!

2) What do you smell like?

AR: Jammy the bulldog’s pee (he’s a dribbler and a lapdog), Mane n’ Tail Shampoo, and Regime des Fleurs Jade Vines.

3) What do you feel is more true: Every crazy person is a movie, every movie is a crazy person, or neither?

AR: Neither!

4) How does your heart feel?

AR: Full and free because I’m in love with Jon and the life we’ve built together. Floppy because I have a relatively benign heart condition; it’s chill atm but may someday kill me.

5) What was it like to ride in your parents car as a kid? What about now—or equivalent?

AR: In his twenties, my father was an aspiring Formula One driver. He apprenticed for some successful teams and raced to acclaim, apparently, on the small New England regional circuit. He was about to relocate to California to pursue his dream on a larger scale when his alcoholic father went into crisis and forestalled the move. Then my dad met a woman. Her name was Bibba, and she did not want him to drive. Too dangerous, she said. He married her anyway, got divorced, got into selling cocaine, then used cars, then wholesale auto parts, and never made it to California. Dreams dashed, classic self-sabotage, which manifested, unfortunately, in road rage. For the whole of my childhood, my dad souped up his car then drove like death was chasing him. The sound of the radar detector he used to evade speed traps still haunts my dreams.

My mother, for her part, had a habit of falling asleep at the wheel that became so chronic she would pull over and ask me (an unlicensed child) to drive us home.

6) Does your misery love company?

AR: My misery loves to be pet on the forehead and told that everything’s going to be okay, even if my misery knows that’s an empty promise.

7) What does a potato chip mean to you? What does it taste like?

AR: One summer, when my mother was recovering from a liver resection to address the return of the cancer that eventually killed her, all she ate were Lays potato chips, hand to mouth out of the giant yellow bag. That’s what they mean to me.

8) What does touching feel like?

AR: Depends on who I’m touching.

9) Do you belong to and on Earth?

AR: At the moment, yes I do.

10) What is your first memory and what does it mean to your work?

AR: I’m two or three. Outside the yellow house on Water Street in the early evening, wandering the edge of a sandbox full of cat turds. I find a small amethyst crystal. I think how magical it is that I’ve found this crystal, like it’s a special sign from the universe just for me. Which is how my life and my work can feel when I’m taking brave paths, as if everything I find along the way is miraculous and mine to keep.