Cover art for the book Vivienne by Emmalea Russo

Emmalea Russo is a writer and astrologer. Her books of poetry are G, Wave Archive, Confetti, and Magenta. Recent work has appeared in Artforum, BOMB, Spike Art Magazine, and Los Angeles Review of Books.

We spoke a while back by Zoom about art, cancel culture, and her new novel, Vivienne. Below is the edited transcript.

John Hawkins: Emmalea, your novel Vivienne opens with a torrent of tweets and online vitriol—a cacophony that feels both surreal and painfully familiar. What was your intention with this visceral introduction?

Emmalea Russo: I wanted to drop readers directly into the storm—that overwhelming, disorienting space where online discourse lives. The opening mimics how information hits us now: fragmented, reactive, often cruel. Before you even meet Vivienne, you experience how the world sees her—through this distorted lens of hot takes and half-truths. It’s important that the reader feels that assault first, because that’s the environment Vivienne has to navigate when her past resurfaces.

Hawkins: The contrast between that digital chaos and Vivienne’s quiet, secluded life is striking. She’s an 82-year-old artist living in rural Pennsylvania, suddenly dragged back into the spotlight.

Russo: Yes, Vivienne represents a kind of artistic purity—someone who walked away from the art world decades ago to live on her own terms. But the internet doesn’t allow for that kind of retreat anymore. Her story explores what happens when a private life becomes public property, when art is judged not as itself but through the murky lens of rumor and moral panic.

Hawkins: This feels deeply connected to your own experience with Magenta, your poetry collection that was dropped by a publisher over your associations. Can you talk about that?

Russo: [Laughs darkly] It was surreal. The publisher had already listed the book on their site when they emailed demanding I explain my “affiliation” with Compact Magazine, where I’d published a few pieces. They........

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