Alejandro Varela, author of The Town of Babylon and Middle Spoon and UW MPH alum, joins Megha Ramaswamy to discuss how Babylon came to be, its connections to public health, and his path from MPH to fiction.
We rarely get access to the inner lives of people who, even in queer communities, are often ostracized for their nontraditional lifestyles. That's what makes Middle Spoon, by Brooklyn-based novelist Alejandro Varela, such a delight.
Alejandro's is an essential new interpretation of modern queer love told with sensitivity. The narrative refuses easy categorization—the narrator is a mess—and is packed with some elegant, philosophical writing.
In this interview with the Queens Gazette, Alejandro talks about his deep roots in Queens—from childhood memories in Jackson Heights and Flushing Meadows Park to how the borough's immigrant communities and vibrant diversity continue to inspire his writing.
Alejandro Varela's "Middle Spoon" is an obsessive exploration of mental health, polyamory, and the desire for our pain to be witnessed.
In a new interview with Pamela Avila, Alejandro discusses Middle Spoon uses heartbreak within a polyamorous marriage to offer a wider critique of social conformity, capitalism, and the stigma around grief.
"I'm recommending this book because it's funny. It's irreverent. It's smart. It's about relationships and the different ways we have relationships, the different ways we have family, and it's about hearts getting broken and healed again."
Eric Newman speaks to Alejandro Varela about his latest novel, Middle Spoon, exploring how we think about love beyond the romantic couple and navigate the faultlines of intimacy, desire, race, and class. They dive into the cultural discourse around polyamory and how capitalism shapes modern love, discussing the challenges of thinking and writing through heartbreak, and how grief and love can make us unreliable narrators.
In this episode Brett sits down with author Alejandro Varela for his book, 'Middle Spoon'. They discuss polyamory, the universality of heartbreak, humor that comes from anxiety, unnamed narrators, playing with biases, and a singer who will be your father figure.
In this spoiler-free conversation, host Jason Blitman talks to author Alejandro Varela, about his book MIDDLE SPOON, the October Gays Reading Book Club pick with Allstora.
Audiobook Review by Jerry Portwood. "These days, it can seem as if polyamory has caught on with surprising alacrity. But when you dig deeper, most people quickly reply: 'I could never do that; I'd be too jealous!' Left unsaid is that they probably wouldn't have much sympathy for your split with a lover if you already have a happy marriage, kids, and a great life. Alejandro Varela takes on the nature of queer love and open relationships with sly humor and panache. Part epistolary email breakup novel, part social critique of liberal, bourgeois values, Middle Spoon investigates the messiness of heartbreak in all its contemporary complexity."
Book Review by Susie Dumond. "What we don't talk about as much in our visions of a free love utopia, though, is polyamorous heartbreak... That's what Alejandro Varela asks in his poignant, funny, delightfully eccentric new novel Middle Spoon... Our dude is a mess. And I adore him. For all his eccentricities and insufferable quirks, I can't get enough of him... Middle Spoon playfully explores the anxieties, joys, and uncertainties of modern queer love while also confronting the difficulties of trying to be a good partner, parent, and person in today's chaotic world."
"The unnamed narrator of Middle Spoon has a loving husband and two incredible kids—and he's nursing a heartbreak no one in his life seems to understand. While his husband is supportive of him being polyamorous, he doesn't see why he's so hurt by the breakup with his boyfriend. To try to process, the narrator writes endless unsent emails to his ex. These transcripts skewer modern 'rules' of love and heartbreak."
"This novel is a spiral, carrying readers down, down, down into the uncomfortable depths of heartbreak... I love Varela's style, which manages to capture a certain guy (read: hand-wringing, over-educated, PMC elder Millennial flirting with socialism) in a light more precise and endearing than certain snider peers have chosen. Our protagonist feels, lives, and thinks through his ethical dilemmas in the macro-world even as he flops around tortured in the mini-one... A very human and painfully contemporary project."
"Varela has delivered an epistolary polyamory novel about a queer couple in Brooklyn. In it, the letter-writer has a fascinating need to calculate the incalculable—for example, measuring the grief of a breakup. Varela's analysis of gay life in New York is delightful, and just this side of withering."
"Alejandro Varela charmed us with his 2022 debut, 'The Town of Bablyon,' which became a finalist for the National Book Award. His new novel, 'Middle Spoon' (Viking) ponders the difficulty of living through a breakup from a lover when you've already got a spouse, kids, and a seemingly perfect life. Nobody but Varela could pull off this decidedly modern examination of polyamory, family, individual neurosis, and pop culture. A multifaceted gem of a novel."
"The narrator of this polyamory novel has a husband, two children, a comfortable life, and a hot young boyfriend. But the boyfriend dumps him, and heartbreak is difficult to navigate as he butts up against a world that still doesn't fully have the tools and language for polyamorous relationships. The story is full of heart and humor."
"Middle Spoon playfully explores the anxieties, joys, and uncertainties of modern queer love while also confronting the difficulties of trying to be a good partner, parent, and person in today's chaotic world. It's playful yet deep, contemplative yet hilariously entertaining. You'll love spending a few hours in the head of this unforgettable protagonist."
Middle Spoon was selected as one of IndieBound's "Indie Next" books to read, based on nominations from independent booksellers across the country!
Book Review by Thane Tierney. "Alejandro Varela's funny, perceptive literary love story poses uncomfortable and universal questions about the nature of relationships and how best to navigate them. In one of his earliest emails, the narrator ruminates: “Maybe there’s something worthwhile in unorthodox relationships and atypical family structures. Maybe the world should adapt to us and not us to it.” His nearly unshakable faith in the viability of this belief forms the beating heart of this funny, perceptive and ultimately gratifying love story. "
"It's all about the melodrama, the trials, and the trouble of a particularly messy polyamorous open relationship in Varela's latest, a triumph of wit, wisdom, and emotional awareness. This is a writer who knows about and is unafraid of spotlighting the complex inner trappings of contemporary unorthodox queer couplings."
"'I wouldn't have thought it possible for me at this age and at this otherwise fruitful moment in my life to plumb a new low,' says the narrator of Varela's second novel. He is a 43-year-old living in Brooklyn with his husband and two children. It's an open marriage, and the narrator has been recently devastated by a younger lover, Ben, ending their relationship. The novel is told in a series of intimate, funny, thoughtful, occasionally unhinged letters to Ben."
Colleagues and admirers of Edmund White reflect on his legacy.
What does it mean to navigate a country as a visitor while building a future for the next generation? On Breaking Books @isabeljojournalism sat down with @drovarela to talk about his powerful short story collection, The People Who Report More Stress.
Alejandro's forthcoming novel Middle Spoon mentioned as one of the "Books to read in September 2025" on TODAY!
The Millions's Year in Reading interviews Alejandro. "YIR gathers together some of today's most exciting writers, thinkers, and tastemakers to share the books that shaped their year."
In this episode, Annmarie and Alejandro talk about social justice, online dating, and whether writing fiction can help foster the collective liberation of our society.
The People Who Report More Stress is a Publisher's Weekly Best Books of 2023!
In the first ever episode of "Los Bookis," AGG and Sergio Lopez sit down with Alejandro Varela, to discuss his latest book, "The People Who Report More Stress." They dig deep into his work, his job at the US Open, outings to gay bars as a young man, capitalism v. working class issues, what Alejandro would be like if he was on the apps, what we should be advocating for at all times, who he wants to play Eduardo and Gus if there was a movie adaptation, and how he wants to be remembered.
Alejandro Varela's The People Who Report More Stress is a master class in analyzing the unspoken…. Varela illuminates our society's Gordian knots with a seemingly effortless wit and empathy.
"It might seem reckless of me to deem National Book Award finalist Alejandro Varela's The People Who Report More Stress one of the best story collections of the year when it's the first I've read. But here's the thing: Varela's collection does everything right. The interconnected stories vary greatly in subject and style, but all deal with the anxieties of people living in the margins."
Alejandro Varela is a singular voice, a brilliant fiction writer whose work is wholly original, managing to be both important and completely entertaining.
The National Book Award finalist illustrates the fallacy of American social mobility in "The People Who Report More Stress"
Alejandro discusses The People Who Report More Stress, his new collection of interconnected short stories that examines the impact of stress and anxiety on those living on the margins and the ways that—in a society defined by hierarchies—success does not translate to health and happiness.
"The People Who Report More Stress is a smartly curated collection that gets better as it goes along, building to the epiphanies missing in the earlier stories. Varela's witty, observant prose lifts each of these stories, even if the premises are decidedly grounded in real world and contemporary concerns. There's a wisdom and lightness to Varela's work that nudges us toward the conclusion that our divisions, while there may be many, can be mended."
"Alejandro Varela's new story collection [The People Who Report More Stress] is a prismatic engagement with class, race, and identity."
"With biting humor, a sharp eye for the weird details that define places and relationships, a delightful sense of play and a lot of heart, he examines the intersecting lives of a group of mostly queer and Latinx New York City residents."
"The Town of Babylon," a debut novel by Salvadoran Colombian Alejandro Varela, follows a queer man confronting his past during his 20th high school reunion in his suburban hometown. Varela's second book, "The People Who Report More Stress," a short-story collection, will be out this April.
"Varela follows up The Town of Babylon, a finalist for the National Book Award, with a searing collection about gentrification, racism, and sexuality. […] Varela provides invaluable insight on the ways stress impacts the characters' lives, and how they persevere. Readers will be floored."
The Town of Babylon was longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Award!
The Town of Babylon made it into a few year-end best-of lists! The Boston Globe's best books of 2022, Los Angeles Public Library's best of 2022: fiction, Library Journal's best literary fiction of 2022
"I first read Alejandro Varela's National Book Award finalist debut, The Town of Babylon, back in March. When I reread it on audio a few weeks ago, I was struck by how well, and how truthfully, Varela captures the interlocking stories of complex communities."
"Alejandro Varela's National Book Award–nominated The Town of Babylon has that same deep sense of body and place, but all wrapped up in a landscape that isn't."
Nisha Chittal, managing editor at Vox, reviews The Town of Babylon.
Watch Alejandro read an excerpt from The Town of Babylon.
Amy Sutherland interviews Alejandro for the Boston Globe's Bibliophiles column.
"The Town of Babylon is Alejandro Varela's smart, tender and very queer debut novel."
Twenty five books, spread across five categories, were named on Tuesday, including fiction, nonfiction and poetry. The winners will be announced next month.
"Varela took some time to chat with me about issues of mental health, the myth of meritocracy, and the importance of dismantling systems of oppression."
"All illness, including mental illness, is exacerbated by a lack of community, by feeling alone."
Public health and fiction share a desire to elicit reactions… both examine experiences in order to better understand human motivations and actions, as well as the systems that dictate our decision-making.
In an interview with Executive Editor Alexandra Watson, Varela discusses the inspirations behind the novel - his experiences growing up in a white-majority suburb, and how studying and working in public health illuminated his writing and understanding of the "American Dream."
"The Town of Babylon is a big-hearted, intricate, and daring debut novel that creates a fully-realized, imperfect hero who confronts our country's great failings while discovering the fragile beauty that lurks beneath the surface of human connections. There is an assuredness to Varela's writing, a quality usually observed in authors who have a dozen books to their name. Simply put, this is perfectly crafted novel from a truly talented writer."