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At its heart, Liz Kay's debut novel, "Monsters: a Love Story," is pretty much what the title says, a romance between two complicated characters: a recently widowed Midwestern poet and the Hollywood A-lister who has optioned her novel-in-verse for a movie starring himself. Both characters, Stacey and Tommy, are intelligent, strong-willed and deeply flawed, so it's no surprise that sparks fly whenever the two meet. They are, if you may, a little like Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy — except for the part where Stacey and Tommy have more sex. Kay, a prize-winning poet herself who hails from Ogden and will be in Salt Lake City on Thursday, June 9, for a reading at The King's English Bookshop, talks about the pain and pleasure of writing a novel that Harper's Bazaar has listed as one of "Spring's Hottest Breakout Novels."

Upon meeting Stacey, the director — Tommy, who plans to turn her book into a movie — asks, "So where did all of this come from?" I'm asking you the same question.

In many ways Tommy and Stacey just entered my imagination and then refused to leave, so I would be lying if I said I understood any of this as I started writing. Looking back, though, I can see how "Monsters: a Love Story" is the culmination of a number of obsessions. Most of my work revolves around issues of sexual power dynamics, so that aspect was really no surprise. I had also just finished writing a novel-in-verse, a retelling of "Hansel and Gretel" from the perspective of the witch. It's not as dark as I imagine Stacey's book to be, but it's equally feminist. From the time I wrote the first of those witch pieces, other artists were drawn to the poems. They wanted to draw her, or make short films, or write poems in response. Initially, it was a little uncomfortable for me to have other artists getting their hands on my work. Even letting other people read or perform the poems set my teeth on edge. On the one hand, it was gratifying to have my work resonate with another person so much that they wanted to engage with it like that, but on the other, it did feel like a loss of control. The idea of a character like Stacey, who clearly has control issues, dealing with that anxiety … in the context of the very high pressure of a Hollywood movie was really interesting to me.

You've been quoted as saying the book is, among other things, a meditation on gender expectations and sexual politics. Can you elaborate?

Absolutely! I'm so glad you asked. Stacey's character is almost defined by limitation, what she's willing to eat, what she's willing to say (and to whom), and while these rules feel self-imposed, they're really not. They're set by the culture, and they're almost impossible for women to navigate: Don't be uptight, but don't drink too much; don't be a boring suburban housewife, but never put your own interests ahead of your kids; be sexy and sexually available, but never express any sexual desires of your own. And Stacey's full of self-censure. She worries that she's not a great mom — though in terms of actual behavior, she's doing pretty well. She does the school volunteering and the holiday pie-making and lets them make a mess of her kitchen with their gingerbread house. Still, readers are often annoyed with her for letting her sister Jenny babysit too much, even though on more than one occasion there's mention that Stacey reciprocates by sometimes watching Jenny's kids.

Tommy is really Stacey's opposite in that there is no limit to what he feels entitled to. He's wildly promiscuous, clearly an alcoholic, physically and sexually aggressive, and occasionally cruel. And readers are so willing to make excuses for him! Which I love. We live in a culture that rarely holds men accountable while simultaneously holding women accountable for way too much, so the fact that Tommy is pretty sweet with Stacey's kids absolves him of any possibility that his tumultuous life is contributing to the ongoing crisis experienced by his 15-year-old daughter. Meanwhile, one of Stacey's sons is not doing the best in fifth-grade math and readers want her to get her life together before she ruins those little boys.

Of course, given the roles the culture has handed to them, I don't know how Tommy and Stacey could navigate their blossoming relationship in anything other than their charmingly toxic and manipulative ways.

What do writing fiction and poetry have in common? How do the experiences differ?

It sounds crazy, but fiction is much, much faster than poetry. Poetry is painstaking; it is word by word. Fiction is also, quite frankly, more fun. Dialogue alone is ridiculously fun to write, and I don't tend to use my humor in my poetry, so "Monsters" just didn't feel like work in the ways that poetry does. That said, I still write like a poet. My fiction-writing friends talk a lot about their messy first drafts, which they claim are nearly unreadable but let them get all of their ideas down before they go back to the beginning and rewrite the whole book. This sounds like a nightmare to me, just way too much work, so as I do with poetry, I polish each and every line down to the syllable as I go. It's true that in revision this meant that when a scene was cut, it was sadly a really carefully written scene. Still easier, I think, in the long run.

Who do you think would most enjoy this novel?

Well, as dark as it is at some points, "Monsters" is pretty funny, so I think it has a fairly broad readership, and many of the most positive reader responses have come from men, who have a very different take on who's the worse of the two main characters, Tommy or Stacey. The novel is definitely doing some button-pushing, so readers probably need to be a little open-minded. "Monsters" is a fun story, but it's not a feel-good story at all.

Tell us about your connection to Utah. What do you plan on doing here while you're back?

Lagoon, obviously!

I was an Army brat until high school when my family moved to Ogden, so it is the closet thing I have to a hometown. I graduated from both St. Joe's and Weber State, and my family still lives here. My husband and I live in Omaha, but we bring our three kids out to Utah for a few weeks every summer to stay with my parents and hang out with cousins and definitely, definitely go to Lagoon. We will probably also eat too much and hopefully make up for that with some good hiking. —

"Monsters" — a reading

Liz Kay will read from and sign copies of her debut novel, "Monsters: a Love Story" (G.P. Putnam's Sons, $26), out on Tuesday, June 7.

When • Thursday, June 9, 7 p.m.

Where • The King's English Bookshop, 1511 S. 1500 East, Salt Lake City

Details • To learn more about Kay and her work, please visit lizkay.net