Natasha Stagg Still Doesn’t Feel Like a Real New Yorker
In her new novel ‘Grand Rapids,’ everyone’s favorite Downtown author tackles the question: So where are you really from?
- Written by: Delia Cai
I meet Natasha Stagg at Lucien. The Manhattan bistro, which will inevitably heave with downtown’s taste brokers by nightfall, is charmingly quiet, as is much of the East Village during the true locals’ hours. But this is how it works, New York myth-making. It’s always depended not only on a good neighborhood joint, but also on that specific type of writer who can decisively animate such establishments with their personal lives, social circles, and not a little literary essence.
And for nearly 15 years, Stagg has been this generation of New York’s preeminent scene-setter. After moving to the city with an MFA and all the usual attendant dreams, the Michigan-by-way-of-Tucson native embedded deeply within the downtown factions of magazine-making, fashion, art, and advertising; she published her first novel, Surveys, about a young Arizonan’s rise to influencerdom in 2016. But it was via her essay writing, as collected in Sleeveless: Fashion, Image, Media, New York 2011-2019 and Artless: Stories 2019-2023, where Stagg established herself as a star witness to the city’s cultural milieu, investigating phenomena such as It girls, the Me Too Movement, and branding as a condition of modern life.
In 2020, Stagg began publishing regular personal missives on her Substack newsletter, Selling Out, which often included dishy, night-in-the-life reports from the parties, bars, and visitations to Lucien that composed her own social life. And so the New York Diary Substack wars began, with Stagg unquestionably in the lead. Is it all an act of canny self-mythologization from the writer who wrote perhaps the early book on internet fame—a branding consultant tapping into her own self as a character for the age of the parasocial cosplay? Or is it simply, as Stagg and I wonder over lunch, the inevitable avenue for how a writer is supposed to connect with anyone else these days?
This fall, Stagg’s new book Grand Rapids, published by Semiotext(e), is not only a return to novelistic form, but also a kind of existential return to Stagg’s own origins—though you’d be hard-pressed to get this out of Stagg via small talk these days—as a teenager growing up in Michigan. It’s about girlhood, grief, and life in a flyover state amongst various “Dirt Cities”—essentially, the limbo-like malaise of wanting everything to hurry up to the fun part.
On this particular afternoon, Stagg wears a baby-pink T-shirt and that fresh-from-NYFW glow, having just walked in the Eckhaus Latta show days before. She orders the salade niçoise, and then sits perfectly still so that we can speak about Grand Rapids, New York, and everything in between.
Delia Cai
Natasha Stagg
You write a lot about New York in your nonfiction work. What was the novelistic appeal of not setting this book in New York?
I started this book not that long after I’d moved here in 2011, so it felt more natural. But it’s funny what people end up thinking of you. I think the last book that I published was so New York, and then I did an event at Metrograph where they helped me pick which movies to play, and one was New York, New York. And I was like, Oh, people really think of me as New York. But as someone who isn’t from here, you never truly feel like a New York person.
Instead, Grand Rapids is set in the titular city— “Bland Crapids,” as one character calls it—where the protagonist, Tess, spends a pivotal summer as a 15-year-old. You were born in Tucson but lived in Grand Rapids during high school, so it makes sense that this novel feels like a revisitation of girlhood, though maybe not the pink bows, schoolgirl outfit, charms-on-our-bags type. Rather, Tess’s summer is very raw and surreal. Almost anti-girlhood in that sense.
I guess girlhood is not ribbons and bows, realistically. I reread The Virgin Suicides while I was writing this book; I was like, I wonder if it holds up. And I think it does; it’s also set in Michigan. But that book is from the perspective of the chorus of men who once idolized these women who then died before they became women, who became frozen in time. It’s a fantasy of girlhood. That’s why it’s such a popular movie—so beautiful and dreamy. I think it’s really good at showing the boys almost seeing the messier parts, but then they’re shut away from that.
And it’s actually such a grisly story; I remember reading the part when one of the girls falls onto the spiked fence, and how Eugenides describes the sound as something like a burst watermelon. Not cute. Still, did you have nostalgia for that period of your own life while inhabiting Tess’s teen worldview?
Yeah, I have nostalgia—I’m sure everyone does—for a time when you wanted to know what was going to happen to you so badly that you were willing to make any change in your life to speed up that process.
We’re told the story of this summer via Tess’s narration as a woman now in her twenties. There are a few times when she addresses the reader—or someone—directly. Is it supposed to be clear who she’s talking to?
No, I think that is intentionally left vague. One point I was like, Wouldn’t it be funny if she was addressing a first date? And if this entire novel was said out loud at a bar or dinner. It would be just the worst possible first date.
That makes sense, because there’s a part early on when Tess says, “I suppose I’m telling you all this because you asked. That question, Where are you from? The coded proposition: prove it, something, depending.” And she goes on to talk about what a loaded question it is to ask. So Grand Rapids itself works well as a novel-length answer.
For some reason, I’m constantly thinking about the fact that we ask each other where we’re from. Almost every day, or every time you go out, whenever you meet a new person—they ask you where you’re from. It just happened to me the other day, and I was like, I can’t do this anymore.
Why does it matter where I’m from? So many people do grow up in a few different places, often because their family changes within their childhood. Either parents get divorced or one of them gets a new job, or something happens to change the dynamic. Death, too. Or honestly, it’s just the world that changes. You’re from the very specific time and place that you’re from, and all the multiple changes that occurred during your lifetime. And it’s crazy to ask that question.
It's funny that even in our supposedly globalized society, we’re still like, But where is the geographic origin? I need to check the tag on your shirt!
I think of people I know who are from a wealthy suburb in Connecticut, and so every day somebody’s like, Where are you from? And they have to say, Okay, you got me. Usually it’s kind of a thing that they have to live down.
Because people often ask the question in an attempt to find out something else, too. When I went to college at the University of Missouri, I met so many kids from St. Louis, who were constantly asking each other which high school they attended. Because the nature of the school system and the neighborhoods there was such that it was a way of asking, almost point blank, So how much money did your parents make?
I don’t think that occurred to me either until I went to college, because I went to the University of Michigan, so there were tons of people from Detroit. When asked about where they were from, some would say, “Detroit.” And then they all eventually learned that you’re not allowed to say you’re from Detroit. So then they’d all have to end up saying, “I’m from Bloomfield Hills,” or Grosse Pointe, or whatever suburb that they’re from. And it was funny to me. I’d never even been to any of these places, but I knew their names, and I knew which ones were more wealthy than the others.
Do you ever do the thing where you just lie and invent a new backstory? Especially with a stranger whom you know you’re not going to see again.
I wish I was good at that. I think unfortunately, if I try to abbreviate, it ends up just being more trouble because I’m like, I’m from Arizona, and they’re like, where in Arizona?
Do you prefer the other go-to question, the “what do you do?”
I mean, nobody likes that, probably. Do you? I think what I don’t like about it is that I can say a short version, but it never really covers it. Sometimes I say, I write ad copy. If you’re asking me what I do for money, that’s the answer. But then maybe a friend standing next to me will be like, And she writes novels! Then they want to know what kind, and I don’t want to talk about that every day of my life.
In those situations, I sometimes feel apologetic, like Oh, we don’t have to get into all that. Very polite of you, but…skip.
Right. It feels like if anybody would like that question, it would be us. But I don’t. It makes me feel like such a narcissist if I’m like, I sit at home and I put my thoughts down.
What do you think of the current “lit it girl” discourse? I can’t tell if it feels new or if it’s just a different version of the idea of a woman who is a writer and also a socialite, and we judge her for that. But then again, we also want writers who have fun.
It’s like the problem with feminism in general: We want to be able to embody that thing that is sort of female-invented, but we also don’t want to be told that that’s the only way to be a writer and a woman. At the same time, there are so many writers who are not known for their looks or going out because they’re reclusive, and that’s why they chose to be writers or whatever, but they aren’t seen as fabulous. There’s not a way to show images of them in some Instagram account.
I sometimes wonder how much of the annoyance with the “lit it girl” is jealousy, the sense that someone we admire can’t be good at both the interior and exterior aspects of life. If you want to be a writer, okay, stay inside and observe and be a wallflower. But you’re telling me you’re also great at parties, wear amazing clothes, and get invited everywhere? To be honest, I feel this way about a lot of writers. It’s like, How are you the nerd and the cheerleader?
I am the same. I don’t think of myself as that at all, and instead, I’m mad at other people for being that, and then my friends will be like, People are mad at you for being that. You never see yourself as that thing, because there’s always somebody younger and better at it whom you can be jealous of. But I never wanted to go more in that direction. I guess I never want the writing profession to be a social thing. Unless you’re an on-the-scene journalist, I don’t think socializing should be necessary. It is so cool to me that some writers never leave their house.
For those kinds of writers, it suggests to me everything they need is up here, in their minds, and that must be amazing.
It would be really cool if I could stay at home and do nothing and just write. I like to socialize, but I also think I need it to get ideas.
What’s the appeal, then, of chronicling so much of that socializing on your newsletter? Is it kind of because you’re totally off other forms of social media?
That whole aspect of my life is truly like a social experiment gone wrong, maybe. It’s showing that no one can escape this desire to share. I came late to social media in a way but then became invested in it and wrote about my investment in it and then felt so oppressed by it that I was just like, This sucks. I’m going to leave. I got rid of Instagram and Twitter at the same time.
I joined Substack in 2020, but it could have been any other functional newsletter platform. I was just thinking, if I create an account at some newsletter thing and put all my friends’ email addresses in it, and then people can organically sign up to be part of it, then I will not feel like I’ve completely abandoned society. And then I have the opportunity for people to get in touch, which is very important because I write for brands, and so they need to have an email address. It was truly functional, but then of course it became monetized way after, and it’s made my life not as fun. I really don’t love it, to be honest. The idea that I could be making money by oversharing has made me feel self-conscious about a lot of stuff.
Were you ever a blogger back in the day?
I had a LiveJournal in college. That was like before any of us were trying to “get followers.” There were your friends whom you met online and some of your real friends who followed it, but otherwise you created this little embryo of your writing life there. Were you?
Yeah, I was really active on this site called Quizilla, which is basically a pre-Wattpad. I remember I once used the real names of people I knew from youth group for a story, and one of them found my writing because he’d Googled his own name. So he printed the story out and brought it to church to show everyone. I don’t remember if I came clean, but I do remember being so mortified by a collision between my online versus offline worlds.
That kind of happened to me, too, when I was writing in my LiveJournal. I was just like, no one will ever recognize themselves! And then when somebody asked, “Why did you write about an interaction we had?” it shook me to my core. I really thought of it as something so separate.
I would argue that, considering how diaristic your newsletter is, and how rooted it is in the very real places you go to, it allows the reader to cosplay a little—like, oh this is what it feels like being out with Natasha Stagg! Is that wild to hear?
It is weird to imagine that parasocial aspect of just writing or podcasting or whatever you might do, and how it ends up influencing someone you’ll maybe never talk to. I’m not trying to be influential, and so many people actually are, so I’m sure for them, it’s even weirder. I can’t imagine what it’s like when people come up to them and are like, I bought everything you’ve ever told me to buy.
The way that I’m writing on Substack now, by the way, feels like a continuation of this column that I had for Spike. That also ended up being pretty diaristic, which wasn’t my intention; I wanted to write about topics of the day, but then it was like, Sorry guys, I’m going through it right now. It started getting super personal.
I remember writing a lot about spending time on the Upper East Side, and then one day, I talked to somebody who had just moved to New York. They were like, I read your column. You made me think that the Upper East Side was very cool, but it’s really not. And they were kind of accusing me of misleading them. I was like, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to tell you to go hang out on the Upper East Side! I don’t remember why I was up there. It was probably a doctor’s appointment, not something very cool!
There’s so much social capital in romanticizing places for people. I’m obsessed with this interview with Rick Steves, for example, where he kind of cops to ruining Cinque Terre because he was the one who really started talking about it and made it a thing. That’s an extreme example, of course. But it makes me think about our prevailing obsession with not only travel but the locations of our lives, because it’s the one aspect of the human experience you can’t replicate online. A person can only live in one neighborhood at a time or be in one place at a time, and so we want to know about these other places: What’s this neighborhood that I’m hearing is better? Should I go there?
I’m obsessed with thinking about that. It’s also this idea that TikTok New York is so not equivalent to what it’s like to live in New York. If you move here to start a TikTok about living here, then you have to be sort of a Wizard of Oz about it: Yes, it’s so beautiful here in the West Village, but then you’re going home to your shithole apartment. There’s always some veneer.
But there’s the other side of it too, where people who have beautiful homes in fly-over states and places where you can have a lot of space for not that much money, and they must feel so jealous every day of these New Yorkers, while we feel jealous of their homes. Everybody’s just in this community of making each other jealous. The trad wife thing feels like a reaction to people romanticizing city life. But then you can see through the other romanticization, too. As a city person, you’re like, you must be bored.
Delia Cai is a writer and editor living in New York. She writes the media and culture newsletter Deez Links.
- Written by: Delia Cai
- Images/Photos Courtesy Of: Natasha Stagg
- Date: September 24
