» Interview

To Bury a Secret: A Conversation with Brian Alessandro

Julian’s Debut

Brian Alessandro

Rebel Satori Press

$21.95

Publication Date: March, 2025

Leona Strong: How did your education in clinical psychology influence the creation of your character Julian in Julian’s Debut?

Brian Alessandro: I pursued an MA in clinical psychology rather than an MFA in creative writing because I wanted to better understand the interiority of people. I thought it would give me a different vantage point as a writer, and I believe it did. When writing a story, I find that I start with a theme and subtext and allow the plot or characters to develop from there. It was certainly the case in my creation of Julian Sorrento, who is partially based on me. I began with Julian’s passive-aggressive personality, his accommodating nature, his martyr complex, and my intention is to always analyze and dissect the behavior and personality. My interests mainly reside in perception and the many ways we react to trauma, in all its forms.

Leona Strong: This book combines three distinct elements: the primary prose, excerpts from The New Yorker essay that launches Julian’s journey, “The Mighty Meekness,” and the cable series script, The Touring Barbarism!, that Julian writes throughout the book. I’m curious to know how this came about. Did you craft these pieces chronologically as you wrote the book, or did you write each thread separately, then weave them together?

Brian Alessandro: “My Mighty Meekness” was based on a true short memoir I wrote about my family, friends, and ex-boyfriends, which was published in the online journal, Exquisite Pandemic, in 2020. I wrote the fictionalized version of that, Julian’s essay published in The New Yorker, using the same title, and the novel simultaneously. I wrote the screenplay, The Touring Barbarism, separately. I love books that combine styles of writing, ergodic, or more specifically, multimodal literature. I wanted to do something like that here, and since I am a journalist and screenwriter as well as a fiction writer, it was fun to mix formats.

Leona Strong: As a writer who has penned screenplays, plays, and fiction, in addition to journalism, was creating a book that combined all of these forms the realization of a dream? Do you prefer one genre of writing over another?

Brian Alessandro: It was a joy to combine these different forms and see how they complement each other. Fiction writing is my favorite, for sure, though they all offer different rewards.

Leona Strong: How closely do you identify with Julian, the main character and narrator?

Brian Alessandro: For better or worse, I very closely identify with Julian. He isn’t meant to be heroic or sympathetic, or even likable. I don’t prioritize likability when I write characters, but I do need for them to be honest and interesting. I think Julian is interesting, if not always honest. I hope that I am not as meek as him, nor as spiteful or deluded.

Leona Strong: I read your Instagram posts from November 2024 in which you say that many of the people you have fictionalized in Julian’s Debut “are family members, writers, filmmakers, and acquaintances that have in some way left an impression.” Given the book’s storyline, I can’t help but wonder if you think people, particularly your family members, might recognize themselves? If so, as with Julian, do you worry about the consequences of this?

Brian Alessandro: I am both worried and excited to see who recognizes themselves and how they will react. Not everything in the story is true, but there are kernels of truth even in the most outrageous fictionalized behaviors and events. Then again, my good friend Edmund White once said if you want to bury a secret, publish it.

Leona Strong: On page 30, Julian says, “Living inside someone’s head and sharing their experience with readers was a kind of intimacy that compelled me to write in the first place.” Would you speak to this and if the same holds true for you as a writer?

Brian Alessandro: It does! Writers and readers are in conversation with each other. Literature allows for greater intimacy than most other art forms because the entirety of the writer’s perception and soul is being conveyed through voice to the reader, who is tasked with listening and interpreting. It’s as though the reader absorbs the transcription of the writer’s mind.

Leona Strong: Meekness is a common theme within Julian’s Debut. What does meekness mean to you, and do you feel Julian overcomes his meekness by the end of the book?

Brian Alessandro: When I wrote the real essay, “My Mighty Meekness,” in 2020, I intended to also investigate meekness journalistically as a virtue, as a form of strength. I am working on my dissertation for my doctorate in psychoanalysis now, and the focus is on the interplay between masochism, martyr complexes, trauma, and resilience with plasticity and morality as connective tissue. I believe and hope to prove with my doctoral work that truly the “meek will inherit the earth.” There is a benevolent, constructive, transformative, and even Buddhist energy endemic in passivity.

Leona Strong: Many of Julian’s relatives accuse him of writing the initial essay and subsequent screenplay and book as ways of getting “up there.” You hit this very hard. Julian seems to eschew this characterization, but also admits that he would “sell out his mother if it meant a big TV or movie deal.” Do you read this as character change, or is this something he’s always wanted but just wouldn’t admit to?

Brian Alessandro: It’s important to keep Julian’s motive ambiguous, even contradictory, and complex. Does he sell out his family for profit or out of spite, or is he truly misremembering events? Memory is highly subjective and fallible. Every time we remember an event, we revise that memory and conflate and combine it with other memories of the event, so that when we recall something that has happened to us in the past, it has already been extensively reinvented.

Leona Strong: I wouldn’t call Raul and Julian’s relationship healthy, yet they seem to have an undeniable connection. What are the challenges of writing about relationships?

Brian Alessandro: Raul is an amalgamation of two ex-lovers and one ex-friend. I think writing about relationships is a tricky affair. It should be honest, and with that honesty there needs to be something raw and ugly and even embarrassing to capture the full picture. I am grateful for all my relationships, especially the ones that have left me bruised.

Leona Strong: Are we reading the book that Julian is writing and ultimately published in the book?

Brian Alessandro: That is a fascinating insight, but I will remain coy about it. I want each reader to decide for themselves.

Leona Strong: I would love to know if the trouble Mary has in India is based on a real incident. If so, how did you learn of it and what really happened?

Brian Alessandro: I spent three months in India in 2008 with friends throughout the country, and they often spoke about Western academics meddling in personal affairs, causing trouble. Mary is the embodiment of the well-intentioned Western researcher upending an ancient culture by prying. She is not based on any actual person I know.

Leona Strong: Julian believes that writing is like painting portraits. Do you intend a connection between this and Raul and Julian’s penchant for museums?

Brian Alessandro: I do! For Julian, writing is about constructing abstract portraits. It’s not dissimilar to how a painter paints a portrait with oils or watercolors. I even used the self-portrait of Egon Schiele for my cover.

Leona Strong: What would you say are the primary themes of Julian’s Debut? Any takeaways you’d like the reader to leave with?

Brian Alessandro: I wanted to write a book that explored the ethical complexities of memoir writing and autofiction. What are the moral implications of writing about other people? Also, it is very much about the dangerous nature of memory, how the past continues to shape us, and the division between public and private personas.

Brian Alessandro has written for numerous publications including Interview Magazine, Newsday, Kirkus, The Gay & Lesbian Review, and many others, and is the author of three novels, The Unmentionable Mann, Performer Non Grata, and Julian’s Debut, as well as coauthor of Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story: The Graphic Novel and coeditor of Fever Spores: The Queer Reclamation of William S. Burroughs.