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Miranda July is known for her prolific and expansive body of work, which includes performance art; her films Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), The Future (2011), and Kajillionaire (2020); and her books No One Belongs Here More Than You, It Chooses You, and The First Bad Man. Most recently, her 2024 novel, All Fours—which follows an unnamed 45-year-old married perimenopausal artist who embarks on a road trip and undergoes an intense sexual awakening—has become a galvanizing cultural phenomenon, sparking countless group chats and book club discussions. The New York Times called it “the first great perimenopause novel,” and Starz has acquired the rights to adapt it into a TV series. July has kept the dialogue going with her Substack chat, where her fans swap wisdom on subjects like divorce, polyamory, and hormone replacement therapy.
What was it like to be a part of the Pacific Northwest arts scene just after the riot grrrl movement?
Girls were still making bands and living in named houses, you know, like “The Curse,” after menstruation. We had a studio in the basement and I was briefly in a band called the Need. But more than that, I think the very do-it-yourself ethic was perfect for me, because I had just dropped out of college and didn’t want to be taught, and my chosen art was filmmaking and performance. I think starting Joanie 4 Jackie, which was an underground movie distribution network, was my most riot-grrrl project, in the sense that it was creating an institution in opposition to existing institutions for film, which were so patriarchal.
Technology has changed so much since you started Joanie 4 Jackie. Do you see anything that reminds you of that same DIY spirit today?
I was actually just looking yesterday at a Joanie 4 Jackie pamphlet, and I was arguing then that because of the new invention of video—which, remember, was a clunky video camera, not a phone—we could now make videos, short movies in a much more colloquial and interpersonal way. You could make a video just for one other person, which was kind of an artistic and weird idea [at the time]. When I actually look around at the number of movies I shoot every day [on my phone] and send to friends, and that they send to me, I feel like that is still filmmaking. I feel like we’re in the infancy of how that shapes art and the industry.
In All Fours, the narrator starts a weight lifting regimen, and I know you’ve said in the past that you worked with a trainer while writing the book. How has lifting affected your life?
I still do it—twice a week, for six years now. I think it was the very clunky beginning of wondering if a more embodied life was possible. Literally building strength, having the body be more capable of the things it does every day, was a first step in that direction. It’s actually a very subtle, slow thing, to truly shift from the brain, to just having experiences and enjoying them and understanding them in a physical way. I’m still figuring that out.
You’ve worked in so many different mediums during your career, is there a discipline you’ve never tried that you’d like to?
I would say the discipline of no discipline is what I’m exploring now, which is to say after much relentless rigor, I find that there’s all these unworked muscles and they don’t have anything to do with trying. These other parts of myself need to catch up. It’s a little like in the book—I’m following in her footsteps, more or less, giving this new girl a chance.
How is that manifesting in your life right now?
I mean, it’s huge. It’s kind of like this ongoing release, like when you get bodywork or massage, and suddenly you’re crying and you have no idea why. I’ll have a lot of instances like that, but it’ll just be some ordinary experience, like tasting food or something. I really lived as if I was in the Olympics or something, 24/7, everything focused on work. Pretty much anything you might think of in life is new to me, [other than] making something. I love to make things, I’ll always do that, but I’m glad I’m not 97 and figuring this out.
Where did that work ethic and inner drive come from?
I found that that was a world I could control, and it was very tied to fantasy, making fantasies real. As a kid, you cope by having fantasies in your head. At a pretty young age, I graduated to “Oh, if you work really hard, you can make them for other people, so they can see them.” And what could be better than that? Because it’s already your escape, and you’re giving them your escape as an internal world. And then to not be totally alone in that, to actually connect with other people through it in a real but limited way—I mean, how beguiling. What’s not to like there?
It seems like the search for connection and intimacy is a throughline of much of your work. What do you think brings you back to that topic again and again?
On the one hand, it’s right there, it’s easy to connect. But on the other hand, it’s completely elusive to me. I am only just beginning to realize how easily I absent myself when real connection is on the line. I think in different ways, we all do this. Often, it’s with the things we think we’re the best at—I mean, I’m great at intimacy! No one’s better at intimacy than me! [Laughs] But truly, you could be working so hard on that that you’re not actually risking anything.
You’ve cultivated a really supportive and intimate community on your Substack, what inspired you to start it?
I was getting so many DMs and emails and messages from women about their lives, each of them feeling that they were unique and alone. And I was like, oh shit, I’m the only one who can see that none of you are alone. I was in this weird position. I felt like the support operator—how do I put these people in connection with each other? The Substack came out of that. This idea of the “All Fours group chat” has come about through a combination of media and the public. I was still seeing that there were a lot of people who did not actually have a friend group that they were texting about these issues and who longed for that. I think every writer I know has a mixed relationship with Substack, so I’m still wrestling with it, but as far as the chat, I love it. I’ve always wanted an ongoing hangout where people could ask the most intimate questions and share advice. It’s just great. The chat feels very pure to me, in a grassroots feminist sense.
All Fours is fiction but shares many parallels with your life, which has led many readers to assume it’s autobiographical. What does it feel like to have strangers think they know everything about your personal life?
I really set up the book playfully around the idea of conflating the narrator and the author; I did that to create a certain kind of energy. And thus, of course, people do what they should, which is [think] maybe this is all true. That only bugs me when I’m like, oh god, it was so much work to make that story, it was the best fiction I’ve ever written, and I’m so proud of it that; when I realize that probably 75 percent of people just think it was my journal, I get a little deflated. But I have to laugh, because I went out of my way to invite that. Or at least, I’m not going to try to prove to you that it’s fiction, because that’s tacky and beneath me as a fiction writer.
What’s your favorite outfit right now?
I don’t know that I have one, but I’m going to Portland for [friend and artist Isabelle Albuquerque’s] show at the lumber room, and I was packing for that and wearing a silk scarf. I felt like I was sort of cosplaying a rich bitch or something, wearing a giant silk scarf folded in half in a triangle and then tied so it’s hanging over one shoulder. It was the maiden voyage of this scarf idea. We’ll see if I feel like I can pull it off outside of my house.
I know you keep a record of your dreams. What’s the most interesting dream you had recently that you’re willing to share?
I was making out with someone, and I was surprised that his uvula was dangling by a thread, but I went with it, a new kissing experience. And then it broke off entirely and ended up in my mouth, and I handed it to him, and he put it back nonchalantly by swallowing it.
See Miranda July in Conversation with Emily Nokes at the Moore Theatre on November 13, 8 pm, all ages.