The author of Pizza Girl talks about what she learned during her own wayward summer delivering pizzas, as well as the complexity of grief and the irresistibility of voyeurism.

Pizza Girl, Jean Kyoung Frazier’s explosive debut novel, everything changes on a Wednesday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. Our nameless narrator is eighteen, pregnant, and feeling adrift as she stumbles through her days as a Los Angeles pizza delivery driver, all the while grieving the death of her alcoholic father and avoiding the smothering ministrations of her loving mother and boyfriend. When a suburban housewife named Jenny Hauser calls in with a peculiar order for a pepperoni and pickle pizza, Pizza Girl’s collision with Jenny sends her tailspinning into a psychosexual obsession with dangerous consequences.

In just 193 wry, propulsive pages, Pizza Girl hurtles through the dark waters of obsession and addiction, as our dysfunctional Pizza Girl downs Miller Lites while studiously avoiding any semblance of forward motion. Yet at the same time, the novel bristles with biting wit and optimism, each page a feast of Cheeto-fingered heart, humor, and lyricism. Esquire spoke with Frazier about what she learned during her own wayward summer delivering pizzas, as well as the complexity of grief and the irresistibility of voyeurism.

Esquire: Where did this novel begin for you?

Jean Kyoung Frazier: It sounds so goofy, but I found the voice of this pizza girl in my email inbox. I was dating someone at the time who thought it was insane that I had about 50,000 unread emails in my inbox, so one day I went through and started deleting. I found emails from back in 2009 that I had sent to the first love of my life. Those emails were just so painful to read. They were beautiful. They were long and flowery, and I didn’t even recognize the person that had written them. I wasn’t that person anymore, and there’s something really tragic about that. At the time, I’d been thinking of doing a pizza delivery novel, and then I realized, “This is the voice. This is how I write this character.” In some ways, the novel is a love letter to my eighteen-year-old self.

ESQ: Tell me about the summer when you yourself delivered pizzas. What was that time of your life like?

JKF: I was twenty years old, and it was a really interesting summer of my life. I wasn’t pregnant or becoming obsessed with a woman twice my age, but I was definitely feeling a little lost and adrift. I was working three jobs at the time, and I picked up the pizza job because I could do it late at night. It sounded like an easy way to make a little bit of extra money. I didn’t think about the job in the moment as much as I did after the fact. As time passed, I began to think about how it was such an interesting way to glimpse into people’s lives. It’s almost cinematic, the way a door opens and you get a snapshot into a person’s life. It’s impossible not to make judgements. That’s the nature of being alive—we’re constantly judging. Read Rest of Interview Here