Danila Botha

Danila Botha is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collections, Got No Secrets, For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known, which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, The Vine Awards and the ReLit Award and most recently, Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness. The collection won an Indie Reader Discovery Award for Women's Issues, Fiction, and was a finalist for the Canadian Book Club Awards, the Next Generation Indie Book Awards and the National Indie Excellence Book Awards. She is also the author of the award-winning novel Too Much On the Inside which was optioned for film. Her first graphic novel, Vidal will be published in Feb 2026 by At Bay Press.

Botha's new novel is A Place for People Like Us.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

A Place for People Like Us was actually a very hard title to choose, which isn’t usually the case for me. Often the title comes to me relatively early, and I use it to frame the story as I go through each draft. For example, before I’d even written the title story in my short story collection, For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known, I knew the kind of story I wanted to write, and that it would capture the theme of love lost in the collection. In this case, the original draft was told from both Hannah’s and Jillian’s points of view. I was listening to a lot of Fiona Apple at the time, and she has this amazing song, "Fast As You Can," with lyrics that go “oh darling/ it’s so sweet/ you think you know how crazy/ how crazy I am.” How Crazy I Am was an early title I considered, but I worried that it both trivialized mental health struggles and was reductive, because both women are so much more complex. Another title I considered was The World Is Dead and I’m Full of Joy, which comes from a wonderful line in a Zeruya Shalev novel, Love Life: "I said to myself, the world is dead and I am full of joy. And sometimes, the words turned over in my mouth, and I said I’m dead, and the world is full of joy, and it seemed to me that it was really the same thing, and I thought, what luck, I could’ve gone through my whole life without ever feeling this." I just worried that either it would be too abstract, for everything I wanted to express, or it would give away too much, I wanted everything that happened to Hannah and Jillian to genuinely surprise the reader. I think the title A Place for People Like Us encompasses the characters and the story so much more.

The title, A Place for People Like Us. What's in a name?

This is a great question. One of the big themes in the novel is the lengths people go to in order to find a sense of belonging, love, community and identity. I read and write a lot of short stories, and even though this is a novel, the title was inspired by one of my favourite short story collections, Jesus’s Son by Denis Johnson. The final story, "Beverly Home," has this beautiful line right at the end, which was the original inspiration: ” All these weirdos, and me getting a little better every day right in the midst of them. I had never known, never even imagined for a heartbeat, that there might be a place for people like us.” I highly recommend the collection to everyone, even to people who don’t normally read that much short fiction, it’s beautiful and brave and fearless.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

I think my teenage self would so thrilled first of all, to know that I was writing and publishing novels. I loved to read and to write from such a young age, I was always creating stories and narratives and reading novels and short stories, and as a teenager, it would have felt like winning the lottery to know that I’d really get to do this as a job one day.

My teenage self identified deeply with characters who didn’t fit in, artists who were looking for their place in the world, and characters like Jillian, who fearlessly create and do what they want to do, and are unabashedly themselves, and make music on their own terms, and characters like Hannah who overcome so much, who are steely in their determination to carve their own paths, and who are building the confidence to really pursue their artistic interests. I think I would have related to both of their desires to rebel against their upbringings, though because their upbringings were so different, of course, their reactions are different. My teenage self may also have been surprised by some of the turns in this story, but I hope she would have been entertained, and excited to know that the potential for that kind of research and imagination, and the confidence to edit and draft and rewrite existed somewhere within me.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

I love this question. They can both be challenging in different ways, and they definitely both require editing and rewriting until you get them right, but I find beginnings easier. Once in my mind, I’ve established the character’s voice, and I can hear them speaking, it’s easier to imagine where their life starts, or where the narrative arc starts. Endings are harder for me because I really try to resist the urge to tie everything up, my favourite endings are the ones where I keep wondering about the characters, where I stay invested emotionally in what could happen next to them, or the effect something will have on them. I actually rewrote the ending to A Place For People Like Us multiple times before landing on this one, and I hope it hits all the right notes with readers.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I don’t write autobiographically, so my characters are often a world apart (which in many ways is a good thing). I really like to understand try to understand characters, their motivations, their reasons, and I really enjoy doing that when they’re entirely a combination of imagination and research. I love doing this kind of research. The part that sometimes is a little bit connected to me is in their taste. I really enjoyed describing Jillian’s style, her taste in aesthetics, her taste in music. I loved imagining her apartment, her stacks of coffee music books that included Aretha Franklin, Prince and Bjork, her framed paparazzi photos of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears, her bedroom floor which was painted to look like a Jackson Pollock painting, her bathroom full of dick pic art covered in crystals. It’s not my taste exactly, but I really enjoyed riffing and researching and sometimes highlighting things I loved. I made music when I was younger, and some of Jillian’s lyrics are actually mine from years and years ago. "Believe Me" was actually one of those songs, it was really fun to be able to reuse them.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Music has always been a huge part of my process. I listened to a lot of Bikini Kill when I wrote the early scenes, especially the songs, "Rebel Girl," which is quoted in the beginning of the book, and "Liar." I love Kathleen Hanna, and her songs (including her Le Tigre songs) instantly transported me. Sonic Youth had the same effect. (I even included a band button I have of Sonic Youth’s, it has a picture of two raccoons and the words Live Fast! Eat Trash! which I have Jillian wearing on the day they see each other for the second time.)

My decision to give Jillian her name actually came from the singer Jill Scott, whose music I love, and who used to call herself Jilly From Philly at live shows. Aside from being incredibly talented, she evinces this confidence and warmth onstage that I thought would a real inspiration to Jillian Azoulay. There’s a lot of music that makes appearances in this story, from bands and artists Jillian loves (Hannah describes her voice as sounding like a cross between St Vincent and Beyonce) to what she’s listening to in the last scenes, to Bjork’s "Sun in My Mouth," which Hannah hears at the end and instantly connects them again. A lot of visual art makes appearances too. Early on, Hannah describes Jillian as looking like “a living version of the Woman in Gold painting” (that one of her roommates had a poster of). There’s also the art in the Goldwater family’s home (which includes a painting by Menashe Kadishman, whose work I love) and references to graffiti artist Know Hope, among others. Hannah wants to make movies and studies film, along with business, so there are more film references than I’d usuall make. In the first chapter, when Hannah signs a lease with someone she doesn’t know, against her better judgment, she says she feels like Ariel in The Little Mermaid, “signing my voice away for the vaguest potential of happiness.” At one point Jillian is watching But I’m a Cheerleader, a movie I loved from the late 90’s, and later, she’s watching Tank Girl, which also felt very on brand. When Hannah is first interested in Jewish culture, she and Naftali watch Jewish film and TV, including Menashe, Shtisel and Fiddler on the Roof.

Visit Danila Botha's website.

Writers Read: Danila Botha (May 2011).

--Marshal Zeringue