Vendela Vida’s fourth novel, The Diver’s Clothes Lie Empty, is about a woman who travels to Morocco to escape her life. Just as she’s checking in to her semi-shitty hotel, someone steals her backpack. Her passport, her wallet, her computer—anything that could identify her at all—gone. After an absurdly bureaucratic and emotionally galling search for her belongings, the protagonist decides to take on the identity of another woman, initiating a journey of self-discovery through other selves. As a writer of fiction and screenplays, a founder of and contributor to the Believer magazine, and a cofounder of the nonprofit 826 Valencia, Vida has made a living hopping in and out of other selves. In anticipation of her reading at Elliott Bay Book Company on June 18, I called her to ask about the intersections of life and fiction.
First of all: Is “Vendela Vida” your real name?
Yes. My mother is Swedish, and Vendela was my grandmother’s name…
