Every issue, GRAZIA USA highlights Game Changers, who inspire, educate, and celebrate individuality, beauty, and style. Meet Lisa Taddeo, the author of Three Women, Animal and Ghost Lover, whose work is hitting the screen soon.
When I was a young girl before I was able to read, I would basically convince myself I knew how to read. I’m a neurotic Capricorn, so I would tell stories to my stuffed animals. When I learned how to write, I wrote lots of poems and short stories and I illustrated them.
Writing short stories has always been my biggest dream. But I had this non-fiction best seller in Three Women, and then I had a novel, and then a short story collection. So sometimes I wonder if people are like, “Oh, now she’s just trying to do short stories,” when really, I have always been doing short stories. Something I find interesting is that you can have success in one thing as a woman, but if you find success in something else as well, someone is going to think you’re trying to get one over on them. It’s so outdated and judgmental and ridiculous. My short stories are something that I’ve worked on my whole life and something I care about very much.
Someone once asked me, “Did you just write a bunch of these after the success of Three Women?” It’s weird to me that people don’t do research before they make judgments. It doesn’t make me upset. It just makes me confused, frankly. Another thing I find wild in the writing world, specifically, is when people say, “Oh, that was a risk.” A risk is performing brain surgery and deciding to do something a little different one day. Taking a risk with words on a page and how you present an idea is not a risk that someone should be talked about for. I think that art is all about risk, but “risk” shouldn’t be the word. It should be expansion or exploration.
My favorite thing is to immerse myself in other people’s art, old and new. I used to go to coffee shops or restaurants and order a coffee or a glass of wine and sit there and read. I’d bring lit mags, short story collections, and non-fiction articles. I’d have a varied reading list and things to watch that came from different genres so I could feel inspired on multiple levels. If I don’t have the chance to do that, I start to feel like I’m recycling myself in a way that doesn’t feel fresh.
My biggest fear is if I don’t have enough time to watch, listen, and read other people’s art. I’m writing a book about grief that I haven’t fully gotten into yet, because Three Women is still in post-production. That’s my next big thing, and then I have adaptations. I’m in a great position where if something drops off, there is something else. I feel super fortunate because that’s one of the hardest things about the creative world. You can work on something your whole life and then it can just end. It feels like if something like that happens, there are other forms I can go into.
Seeing my work transform from the page to the screen has been really cool, but a lot of that joy is edged with a little worrying about the real people seeing themselves, especially with Three Women. They’ve already read about themselves in the book. One of them is a consultant on the Showtime show and I’ve flown her out to watch her story being told.
My favorite time of day is in the evening after I’ve put my kid to bed, and I can go back to writing when there’s fewer emails coming through. I can just write late at night alone. Those are my favorite times to work. That’s how I escape from the grind. Writing is still my biggest catharsis and, honestly, it’s short stories that I turn to when I’m wanting to explore something in my own head.
If I could wave a magic wand, I would make people not want to control anybody else. Wanting control based around fear is what’s happening on a larger scale with Roe v. Wade. I can’t even wrap my head around why you would want to control a human that has nothing to do with your world — it’s abhorrent. It is the most offensive thing to me, but it’s a symptom of the larger feeling of wanting to control another person. People are afraid of their lives changing, so they want to control someone else’s life to stop that. People judge. They’re going to judge you, no matter what you do, even if you do everything right. Standing up for what’s right for you and being okay with being judged because you’re going to be judged anyway is probably my best advice.
-As told to Hannah Militano
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