Left Bank Books in the Central West End was packed in a pleasant, middle-of-winter way for Washington University alum Miranda Popkey’s reading Jan 14. Popkey read an excerpt from her novel “Topics of Conversation,” published Jan. 7, which revolves around a series of conversations between women and poses questions about the modern female experience.

Photo by Elizabeth Phelan

Popkey has a way of pausing and looking into herself as she speaks. Talking with her hands, she is a naturally engaging speaker. Whether she’s discussing the show “Frasier” or the most harrowing parts of her novel, she conveys intensity and sincerity in everything she says.

Born and raised in California, Popkey completed her undergraduate studies at Yale University in 2009 and, after working as a high school teacher, joined the two-year Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Writing program at Wash. U, graduating in 2018. During her time on campus, Popkey taught Fiction Writing 1 to undergraduates as part of the graduate student curriculum and was involved in the graduate students’ unionization effort.

“Topics of Conversation,” Popkey’s debut novel, was initially conceived as a series of short stories, and it wasn’t until Popkey spoke with author Ben Marcus that she considered writing a novel.

“[Marcus] was a really generous reader, and he thought maybe it should be expanded, he thought I should maybe explore where the voice was going,” Popkey said to Student Life before her reading.

“Topics of Conversation” features an unnamed female narrator who hovers between the boundaries of being likeable and unlikeable. The narrator makes unconventional and, at times, questionable, decisions regarding her relationships and children, but remains an intriguing and ultimately sympathetic character.

Popkey started writing the novel during the fall of 2017, as allegations of sexual assault were just beginning to be made against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. The cultural climate deeply impacted the content of Popkey’s writing; she said that the #MeToo movement “opened a space for there to be a public conversation that could parallel a lot of conversations that people were already having in private about uncomfortable experiences that they had had that [they] didn’t quite know how to push back against.”

Part of her novel concerns itself with these uncomfortable experiences and how they are placed in the larger scale of life via conversation.

Popkey told Student Life that her time at Wash. U. was crucial for the novel’s development, largely because of the workshop process.

“I could not have written this without the program, and that is a real credit not only to my professors, but to my colleagues in the fiction cohort,” Popkey said. “I was bringing sections of the novel to workshop in my second year, and they helped it immeasurably.”

The entire process took about five drafts, she estimates, some of which were written in the midst of watching “Frasier” episodes.

Speaking about the role of a writer’s experience in the outcome of their work, Popkey noted that her emotions, if not actual experiences, formed much of the novel’s substance.

“It’s my first novel. I’ve lived a sort of narrow slice of experience and I was very aware that there was only a particular slice of the world that I could honestly speak to,” Popkey said. “Writing this novel, I was trying as hard as possible to write what I’d experienced emotionally, even if all of the events are fictional.”

The novel marks the beginning of a bright, and likely lengthy, career from a brilliant Wash. U. alumna.