This Woman Writes: An Interview with Eva Verde
Interviewed by Megan Willis
Eva Verde is a writer from East London. Her debut novel, Lives Like Mine, was published by Simon and Schuster in 2021. They are also publishing her new novel, In Bloom, which was recently released on 31st August 2023. As a working-class woman of dual heritage, her prose deals with themes of identity, class and female rage.
Eva's other writing has been featured in Kit De Waal’s Common People: An Anthology of Working-Class Writers, and in Marie Claire, Grazia, Elle and The Big Issue. She also penned the foreword for the new edition of Goddess of Vengeance by international bestselling Jackie Collins.
If you ask me she also happens to have the coolest aesthetic, which you can see for yourselves over on Instagram @evakinderwrites. She is also on Twitter @Evakinder.
Welcome! It’s so exciting to be talking to you. Tell me, have you always been creative?
I have! As soon as I was able to read and write I’ve been scribbling. In my loft I’ve tons of old notebooks and diaries that go all the way back to the 1980s. Writing is something that’s always been with me, though not something I ever took particularly seriously – and certainly never anything that I thought could be turned into a job.
At what point did you decide to pursue writing, and what did the beginning of that journey look like for you?
As a teen I abandoned my A-levels midway through, and all my adult life in the back of my mind I wanted to correct that. So when my daughters started school, so did I. I signed up for an Open University access course, which fitted very well with real life. The fire for writing returned with real force when I bravely enrolled on the creative writing module. Prior to that, all my writing had been password protected, like a strange guilty pleasure, and the idea of sharing my work with other students felt astronomically exposing. But I had a brilliant, very encouraging tutor who really nurtured and supported that early self-belief that I desperately needed. I owe everything to that course; it made me at last begin taking my writing – and myself – seriously.
Who are your writing inspirations?
Oh gosh, so many. Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood and Sue Townsend are the first names that come to mind. I've also been lucky to be supported and mentored by some incredible women like Yvvette Edwards and Kit De Waal. To this day, I still rub my eyes in disbelief. Their books are not only brilliant, but they’re amazing role models, too; mixed ethnicity, working-class women who came to writing in their forties. I can’t even begin to describe how much I appreciated and needed that representation.
What does your writing routine look like? Did it change at all between your first and second novel?
I don’t have a routine. I’m an emotional writer and create when the feelings come, which means there’s some weeks that I’m intensely at my laptop and other times I’ve simply got nothing to give. I’ve learnt not to worry in the quieter spells, as thinking time is hugely important for writing too. Whenever I try planning a routine it feels forced, so I make the most of the prolific spells. Both my books were written like this. It’s a bit chaotic, but it does mean my heart is in everything I do write, and seeing as both books came about this way, I suppose in some strange fashion it’s working for me. I always read about writers rising at 5 am to crack out their words and feel a bit guilty that I don’t work like that. But I’ve made peace with my process. We’re all different!
Can you tell me about some of the challenges you’ve faced in your creative career?
Growing up I never thought someone like me could write books for a living. Though I knew getting published wouldn’t be easy, I’d no concept of the barriers underrepresented writers face. I certainly didn’t know anybody in publishing or how it worked, so everything’s been learnt as I’ve gone along, from the moment I woke up to taking it seriously.
The debut Lives Like Mine flew out of me. It’s quite an angry book, and both its efforts and the road to getting published were exhausting, but I believed so much in the story that the rejections in my head just translated as ‘Well, I’ll show you then.’ I really was like a dog with a bone because it only takes one person to love it, and when that finally happened I felt immense relief – it was as if my heart could at last relax! Not that it was the end of the journey, but it marked the conclusion of that perpetual hunger to be published and taken seriously. If you're a writer, or indeed any sort of creative, that validation is often so very longed for, and all the more satisfying when it at last arrives.
You write about female rage. Can you tell me why you’re drawn to this theme?
Googling what causes female rage, the first answer was ‘menopause’ or ‘hormonal changes’ – absolutely nothing of course to do with the disregard and inequality of women or the barriers and the abuses we face. Thank God for the writing really; it gives all my anger a place to go.
I’m a typical, incredibly generic stay-at-home mum of three. Though I am happy enough, I am also aware of all the boxes women are crammed into, along with all the toxicities of a patriarchal society that’s kept me contained and in place because everything’s entrenched in my worth and desirability through the male gaze. I really, really hate it. I hate how society dupes, and I want to smash that apart. But it’s all so tricky. My writing offers me an outlet and an escape as I’m less frustrated, less guilty and a better parent because it’s a vital part of who I am – not just wife and mother, roles I love, but Eva, too. A whole person; an individual.
I think the best thing I ever did was show my daughters that ambition is healthy, and they’re free to live exactly as they choose. Though what I truly despair over is their lack of true freedom, such as walking home alone, leaving themselves vulnerable, that never-ending shadow that comes from the fear of bad men. I’m never not aware of how, as a woman, life often feels like a wicked trap, a game you can never truly square or win, the world operating much like it does in the Wizard of Oz – some insignificant little man pulling all the strings of this toxic façade behind some magical curtain. It’s false, insidious and everywhere, and if my books hold a bit of mirror to all that, then good.
What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given about writing?
Dig deep and let the emotions come. Let yourself go to those difficult places because that’s where you’ll find writing gold. For the longest time, I’d skim over emotional scenes with humour by default. Only when I began writing my truth from the heart did the good things start to happen. It’s very freeing.
Finally, do you have any advice for new and unpublished young female writers in particular?
We can get so caught up in all the reasons we might fail, talking ourselves out of our dreams and ambitions – but really, why not you and your words? Self-belief is key, and so is sheer bloody-mindedness. There’s some graffiti near my house that I’d read every day after dropping the kids off at school that says, ‘DON’T DIE WONDERING’. It’s proved exceptional advice.