ŠARI writes from Baton Rouge, where she’s pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Louisiana State University. Her poetry has been published in Grain, The Malahat Review, and Room, among others, and anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry and Poetry Daily. Her debut collection, Para-Social Butterfly, was released with Metatron Press.
ŠARI DALE: It takes a special novel for me to, like, actually finish reading it, and I actually finished reading Perfume and Pain. It was such a delight—I even bought a pen to match the cover. I think, before this, the last one I finished was Bunny by Mona Awad.
ANNA DORN: Oh, really? I also don't finish a lot of the books I start—I started that one. I liked the first third, but then I was like, "Okay, I get it."
ŠD: There’s definitely more tension in the beginning. Then—I see this in so much horror—the mechanics of the plot start poking through. You realize what's moving things forward, and it’s no longer interesting. What I liked about it so much, though, and what I like about your book, too, is how cinematic it is, like, the descriptions. I don't know, maybe it's not even the description so much as what's being described. Something that immediately struck me about Perfume and Pain, was how similar you and Astrid seem to be. You share the same initials.
AD: Yeah, that was on purpose.
ŠD: So, I'm interested in how the book seems to exist in a sort of nonfiction, but definitely fiction space—I guess I’m doing the, like, annoying thing of assuming that all fiction writers are secretly writing about themselves.
AD: Not annoying. I feel like everybody does it. And if I'm going to write a book starring a novelist who lives in Los Angeles and is my exact same age, I can't be upset if people are like, "Is this you?" I mean, there are differences between me and Astrid. I was never as crazy as she is. My drug use was never, like, on her level. But I did have an Adderall phase, and I did notice that the pill said AD on it, which are my initials. I thought it was cool at the time, but in a dark way. So I wanted to keep that detail.
Part of it, too, is that I wrote the bulk of Perfume and Pain in 2021. So, it was like COVID, right? We were all isolated, and I'm already kind of a recluse. So maybe part of the reason she's so similar to me is because I was really stuck with myself. In the early drafts, she didn't leave the house, and that's also why she's FaceTiming and on Zoom all the time. My editor thought she needed to interact with Los Angeles, so I did have her leave the house more in later drafts, but it’s still a pretty insular book.
ŠD: I didn't notice that while reading the book. Maybe I’m still stuck in that COVID lifestyle.
AD: Totally. I think we all realized during COVID that we can do a lot of interacting without leaving our houses. Or without leaving our rooms for better or for worse.
ŠD: I came out of my undergraduate program in 2020, right after COVID started. So my whole “career,” if you could call it that, has been online. I've never worked in an office or had, like, a normal job. I think I would hate it. It's too much containment, the lighting is bad, and interacting with people all the time is not my favorite.
AD: Yeah, so gross.
ŠD: Do you have mixed feelings about writing a character who’s so similar to yourself?
AD: No, I'm fine with throwing myself under the bus. The only thing that haunts me is that I've had people in my life, loved ones, who are very upset by my writing. That’s more what I regret—hurting other people. Myself? I'm like, whatever. I can make a fool of myself. People can think it's me and think I'm, like, a loser or whatever. I really don't care.
ŠD: You mention different celebrities throughout the book, too. I'm excited to talk about that—celebrity culture in an LA setting.
AD: Yeah, so Kristen Stewart's mentioned a lot. I do feel like part of being an LA lesbian is having to listen to so many stories about her. Like, "Oh, you know, Kristen Stewart cheated on her fiancé with my friend." She lives in my neighborhood, too, so I do occasionally see her. She has no idea who I am. If she did, I wouldn't have written what I wrote.
When I wrote Perfume and Pain, I thought, This one's for the lesbians. And I felt like having Kristen Stewart in it was a no brainer. Also, I'm a pretty celebrity obsessed person—for better or worse.
One thing that bothers me about LA—and that's sort of what I'm speaking to in the book—is it's very name droppy. I'm not into celebrities in that way. I don't want to be friends with Kristen Stewart. I have no desire to ever meet her or talk to her in real life. But, I think celebrities are fun to gossip about. It's gossip without the casualties, you know? I'm actually surprised my editor let me keep Kristen Stewart now that I think about it.
ŠD: She feels essential.
AD: I guess the difference is that you never actually meet Kristen Stewart in Perfume and Pain. In Exalted, my previous book, there's a character named Bella Hadid, who the main character does meet. I had to change her name, so I changed to Stella Shahid. Then in my upcoming book, the main character dates Jake Gyllenhaal and people think she's gay and he’s her beard, because there’s this rumor he's closeted. They made me change that. Probably because I'm, like, calling him gay.
ŠD: Do you—I mean, again, I don't want to assume that you're, like, the same person as Astrid—but, do you have a favorite, Real Housewives franchise?
AD: Well, if it’s of all time, New York. Hate the current New York.
ŠD: Interesting.
AD: Are you a Housewives person?
ŠD: I am a Housewives person. I've been loving that there's, like, four different franchises airing right now.
AD: It's a good time of year for us. Yeah, I’d say my favorites of all time are early New York, then early Atlanta. Then early Beverly Hills. But now I would say Salt Lake City.
ŠD: Really? I haven't been able to get into Salt Lake City, though I will say last season’s finale was one of the best. Receipts, proof, timeline—it was such an incredibly meme-able moment. I would love to hear your thoughts on the new Real Housewives of New York. I've been into it. A little bit. Quite a bit.
AD: Really?
ŠD: It's just, like, the glossiness of it.
AD: The earlier seasons are better, though—the women didn't know how big Housewives was going to be. There wasn't Instagram and TikTok, so it wasn't meme-ed and reproduced in the same way. The best housewives are people like Ramona Singer or Vicki Gunvalson who are just, like, fully themselves. They don't hide anything. They say whatever. They’re exactly how they are on camera as they are off camera. Even if it's monstrous.
ŠD: I have this fixation where I need reality TV playing at all times. Like if I'm like working—whether it's on an essay or a poem—I need women screaming in the background or I won’t be able to focus.
AD: I have a couple of friends like that. I have to have music at all times. I can't have just silence. Even when I fall asleep, I fall asleep to audiobooks.
ŠD: Do you have, like, specific types of audiobooks that you listen to, like, to fall asleep?
AD: Well, I love a domestic thriller. I love a British accent. There are so many good British thriller writers. Like, I adore Lisa Jewell. I'm not into detectives. I don't want a detective. I want a lying husband. A big secret. A liar or a cheater. I don't love murder. I mean, often there is murder, but I'm not into gore. Just mind games and stuff.
ŠD: To bring it back to Perfume and Pain, I want to ask you about writing an LA novel. There was a period of my life where I only really wanted to read things set in LA. I was, like, really into Eve Babitz and John Fante. Bret Easton Ellis, who I noticed you have an epigraph from in the book—when I started writing, I remember reading Less Than 0 and being like, "Oh my god. Writing can do that? So cool."
AD: That's how I feel about Brett Easton Ellis. I wouldn't even say I’m, like, a huge fan of his writing. But I remember when I first read one of his books—like, Glamorama or something—I thought the style was so cool. And I love that he writes in the present tense, and it’s sort of affectless. There were all these references to movies and music, too. It just felt so much hipper than really anything I'd ever read. So, yeah, I had a similar draw to LA writers. I had a big Joan Didion phase. John Fante, too.
I grew up on the East Coast and I always kind of fantasized about California. I just needed to get away from the East Coast where everybody cared about the wrong things. Ivy League colleges, the stock market. I just wanted to live in California where I could be free and people cared about, like, movies, and it was less serious. And, I'm a big Lana Del Rey person, too. My next book is essentially Lana Del Rey fan fiction.
ŠD: Oh my god—it's coming out in 2026?
AD: 2026. I was literally going through it this morning making sure I didn't use the words “cigarette” and “vape” too much. There's so much vaping in this book.
ŠD: Love that.
AD: I try not to smoke anymore, but I’m not always good at it. But, yeah, Lana Del Rey, she—like me—is from the East Coast, made a career mythologizing California. Southern California in particular.
“Video Games” came out when I was, like, 23. I was living in Northern California at the time. I started writing books that were set in LA when I was still living in the Bay Area. There are really interesting tensions here that work well in fiction. This tension between it being this dreamland where everything's beautiful and easy. But it's also a desert—there’s drought and fires. Earthquakes. Then there's the seediness of the entertainment industry and a lot of crime.
ŠD: This is making me think of Mulholland Drive. David Lynch did such a good job of capturing that, like, the eeriness. That's probably what I like so much about Brett Easton Ellis’ books, too. So glamorous, but someone could die whenever, wherever.
AD: It often feels that way—living here, I mean. I feel like that every time I drive on the freeway, like something terrible is going to happen, but I do love it here. It's funny when places do that to you. It doesn’t feel safe, but I kind of like the adrenaline. New York can be a little bit like that, too.
ŠD: I’m so ill-traveled. The only US cities I've spent any measure of time in are, like, Seattle—just because it's so close to British Columbia—and, I guess, Baton Rouge and New Orleans now. When I first came here, I think I went into shock with the, like, liquor laws. They have these, drive through daiquiri shops, so I was, like, is it legal to drink and drive?
AD: Maybe it's not technically legal, but everybody does it?
ŠD: Maybe. I don’t know—it’s a special place. What other movies could you see Perfume and Pain in conversation with? Like, what are some of your aesthetic influences?
AD: That's a good question. Have you read Halle Butler? She has three novels: Jillian, The New Me, and Banal Nightmare, which came out this year.
ŠD: I have read The New Me, actually.
AD: Yeah, she just writes very angry protagonists, but in a really funny way. And I really love that voice—a girl sort of ranting in her own head. I mean, I'm on Twitter all the time. I love an interior rant. I really like Ottessa Moshfegh, too. My Year of Rest and Relaxation is one of my favorites from the past ten years. In terms of movies, I really like Sean Baker’s films visually.
ŠD: He did Anora most recently?
AD: He did, yeah. He did Tangerine, which takes place in LA, Starlet, which also takes place in LA, Florida Project, Red Rocket, and I think there's one other one. So, I’d say his films visually. Then Patricia Highsmith is in the book, and I love her. She’s the vibe. There’s murder, but it's more about the lies. It's glamorous, not too gritty. She's just a master of tension. Oh, I really like, like, Euphoria, too.
ŠD: RIP. Well, maybe they’ll do a third season.
AD: I hope so. I love the show’s visuals. I even liked The Idol, Sam Levinson’s other show that the Internet was so weird about, saying it's, like, the worst show ever. I loved it. If you like Euphoria, you might like it. It's similar. Not perfect but very entertaining. I love anything that reminds me of a music video because I love music. If I had any musical talent, I’d be doing that. Also, it's about a pop star who's having a nervous breakdown—that's catnip to me.
ŠD: What do you listen to while writing?
AD: I have to listen to music without words. Ambient, classical. When I was writing the book coming out in 2026, I listened almost exclusively to André 3000’s jazz album, which is all instrumental. It’s very dreamy. Alice Coltrane. Aphex Twin. And then I listen to music with words whenever I'm not writing.
ŠD: What are your favorites?
AD: Lana Del Rey. Always. I'm having a big Billie Eilish moment, too. I love her voice, and ever since Lana brought her up at Coachella, and she covered “Video Games”—I don’t know if you saw it, but she said that she worships Lana. So, I had to start listening to her. I liked Brat, but I’m kind of over the discourse.
ŠD: Yeah.
AD: The Cure just came out with a new album that's really good. So I'm, like, all over the place—Ariana Grande and The Cure.
ŠD: I'm the same. I tend to gravitate towards really intense hyperpop, but then, I’ve been getting into, like, country music more since moving to Louisiana. Very corny of me.
AD: I had a massive Taylor Swift phase, which I never thought would happen.
ŠD: But then you became afflicted?
AD: Yeah, I was hanging out with a 7-year-old who kept playing it. And, at first, I was like, "Turn this off." But then, at a certain point, I was like, "Wait, this is really good." And then I'm suddenly listening to it when he's not around. So I'm really all over the place. There isn't really a genre I don't like other than opera or, like, metal, but that's really it.
ŠD: I wish I was cool enough to like metal. I've never really found, like, a metal album that I can really listen to. Usually, it just gives me anxiety.
Okay, another question—so online writing communities are a big thing in this book. That’s how Astrid and Ivy meet. And I'm, like, wondering, how online writing workshops and communities have been for you. Do you still partake in them?
AD: Yeah, they’re like my Sapphic Scribes. Twitter has gone downhill, but when I got into it, it was 2016. I’ve been on there for, like, a decade. I met a lot of writer friends through there and Instagram, too. I mean, we've talked on Instagram. So I would say social media is like my Sapphic scribes. And I know there's obviously a lot of downsides to it. I recently had to get an app that locks me out of Instagram for most of the day because I was getting a little compulsive.
ŠD: Relatable.
AD: But it's been really good for my writing career. I've met so many writers I admire and we end up becoming friends in real life or if they live in a different place, we just, you know, talk online or text or whatever. But, as you know, being a writer can be very lonely. So having people that you can talk about the experience with or even just exchange writing with is really nice.
[GOSSIPING]
ŠD: My mom wants me to start writing romances. Maybe that'll be my thing—I'll become a Harlequin Romance writer.
AD: You never know. You've had multiple books of poetry published, right?
ŠD: Just the one.
AD: But still, like, that's cool. You must have been really young when you published it.
ŠD: Yeah, I guess I was in my early twenties when I wrote it. It wasn't published until I was, like, 25, though. I feel weird about those poems.
AD: If it makes you feel better, I feel that way about all my books—like, "Ugh. I never want to open it again." But I think it's normal to feel that way, and it's probably a good sign. I think it's weird when people aren’t cringed by their own writing. I'm like, "What? You're, like, proud of it?"
ŠD: What are you, like, proud of your life's work? That's disgusting.
AD: Are you writing—sorry, I'm asking you questions now—do you have another book in the works?
ŠD: Kind of? I've been working on a collection of poems about hysteria for a hot minute, but it's difficult. It's very ekphrastic.
AD: I don't know what that means.
ŠD: It's like basically writing in response to art. So for me, like, paintings and photographs of mentally ill women. I like the concept, but I find the actual, like, writing very challenging. There's this question of where you’re situating yourself in relation to the artwork. Are you in it or just viewing it? Hopefully, having to finish a thesis will force me to work on it. Are you familiar with Chelsey Minnis?
AD: That sounds familiar. Wait, let me look this up.
ŠD: Baby, I Don't Care is very Perfume and Pain coded. It’s one of my favorites. She's so glamorous and has all of these ridiculous Old Hollywood images.
AD: I'm literally adding to cart right now.
ŠD: Please do. I, like, recommend her to everyone. Then there’s this other book, Gurlesque, with a forward by Ariana Reines, who I really like. She just came out with a new book, too. I remember reading her first collection, The Cow, and thinking, "Holy shit." Then there’s A Sand Book.
AD: I have that one.
ŠD: Wait, I did want to ask about your, like, writing process, too.
AD: My process is that I get a spark of an idea. Normally, it's the character. For Exalted, it was a cynical Internet astrologer who starts stalking someone based on his birth chart. Then for Vagablonde, all I had was a lawyer who wanted to be a rapper. I just go with that idea and write the first draft really quickly, like, in a month or two. Then I basically revise that for a couple of years.
I like writing the first draft fast because it's kind of a manic state for me—it’s a high. I don't know what's going to happen, and I'm writing to find out. I purposely write it that way because I want people to read it that way. To feel like they have to turn the pages and get to the end. I want that urgency to come across. The only time I keep track of how much I write in a day is when I’m worried about myself. Like, "Is this normal? Do I need to go to the hospital?" I do have phases where I can't get myself to write a sentence, but, all my published books have just poured out of me.
ŠD: That's amazing. I can't relate but love that for you.
AD: Poets don't work that way.
ŠD: I get the vibe that you're not a rigid structure person—where you, like, blueprint everything?
AD: Definitely not. But sometimes I will blueprint after because outlining beforehand can be a bit stifling. I have actually tried outlining before, and I don't stick to it. So I'm just like, "I'm not going to even bother beforehand." But sometimes afterwards I will outline and retroactively move stuff around. But, I feel like the first draft really has to be in that fun, playful, illogical state of mind.
ŠD: As someone who's getting more into fiction, that's reassuring to hear. Sometimes I feel like I have to have it all figured out beforehand.
AD: I think a lot of people feel that way and get stuck because of that. That British thriller writer I mentioned, Lisa Jewell, she's written, like, five bestsellers, and her books feel like they're expertly plotted, but I listened to her on a podcast, and she said she writes the same way as me. She doesn’t know how her characters are going to act. She doesn't know what's going to happen. I think there's something to that—just following where your mind takes you in the first draft and staying surprised.
ŠD: Having fun while writing is underrated. When I write to entertain myself, it usually turns out better than when I write to entertain others. Okay, I heard a rumor—well, I read an article—that there's potentially a Perfume and Pain TV show in the works?
AD: It's potential. It's been optioned, but nothing's been written or filmed. It hasn't been sold to a streaming service or studio. I had my second book optioned. So I've been through this before. I try not to get too invested in the TV and film stuff because it's a lot of people telling you they love you and you're amazing and then, like, nothing happening. And it also moves at a really glacial pace. Like, five years between something being optioned and it starting to film is very fast.
ŠD: That would be, like, painful.
AD: I don't even think of it as happening. Film and TV stuff is so up in the air. There’s the whole adaptation plot in Perfume and Pain, which is kind of the story—that was inspired by my experience with my second book being optioned. Just feeling like an alien in those situations. It's awkward to have these meetings when the book and the character—based on me—thinks Hollywood is ridiculous. It is very meta, but I just try not to feel too invested in it.
ŠD: Do you have a dream cast?
AD: I do, but I have no say. My dream is Kathryn Hahn for Penelope. Then Rachel Sennott for Astrid. I think she'd be good, and she can play a lesbian because she's done that in at least two movies. Then for Ivy, I want Alexa Demie. That’s exactly how I imagined the character. Then Otto, the gay best friend—he’s based on my friend, Aaron, who was very happy with the portrayal. He’s always like, "Who's going to play me?" He wants Harris Dickinson, who is really hot.
ŠD: We'll manifest it. I have a few quicker questions—what is your perfume of choice at the moment?
AD: I'm glad you said at the moment because it changes all the time. Right now, I would say Ichnusa by Profumum Roma. I had a green phase over the summer. It smells like grass and fig.
ŠD: If Astrid were a Kardashian sister, which one would she be?
AD: I want to say she's Kendall—just because she's awkward and, like, a lesbian. I mean, I don't know if Kendall's a lesbian, but she's the most lesbian out of them.
ŠD: I could see that. Kendall's an interesting one. She doesn't try as hard as the others. She never seems like she wants to be there, but maybe that’s just her face. Cocktail of choice?
AD: I'm a beer drinker, like Astrid. Can I say an IPA?
ŠD: You can definitely say an IPA.
AD: If I'm drinking beer, it's an IPA. If I have to do a cocktail, I’ll do a Negroni.
ŠD: Do you have, like, a specific IPA?
AD: I love Lagunitas. I love Stone IPA. Three Weavers—this LA brewery—has a good one. As long as it's not hazy, I'm probably going to be down with it.
ŠD: Okay, I love that. Yeah, I’m not really a beer drinker, but the way that you describe beer in Perfume and Pain did, like, have me wanting to drink one immediately.
AD: Great. Someone else has said that to me. I'm like, Oh God, I'm creating an army.
ŠD: But it was so good—it the golden bubbles. So pretty. Never thought of beer as pretty, but I love it.
I'm a firm believer in judging books by their covers, so, when Anna Dorn’s third novel, Perfume & Pain, appeared on my Instagram feed late last spring, with its candy wrapper colors and Harlequin-esque illustration, I was, already, a fan. Equal parts hot and hilarious, this sapphic romp through Los Angeles more than lives up to its lustrous exterior. Dorn survey's cancel culture, the complexities of fame, and lesbian love and dating in a witty, wildly entertaining voice—months later, and I’m still considering starting a t-shirt line featuring quotes from the book, including, but not limited to “The most feminine thing about me is my lack of upper body strength.” I had the pleasure of chatting with Dorn in November ‘24 about Lana Del Rey, The Real Housewives, the process of writing Perfume and Pain, and much more.
Volume 15.1, Winter 25
Perfume and Pain: A Novel. Anna dorn, Simon & Schuster , 2024. 352 pages.
Šari Dale
