Meet the Author

Daria Lavelle writes fiction, most of which features some pretty impossible things. Born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and raised in the New York metro area, her work explores themes of identity and belonging through magic and the uncanny.

Her debut novel, Aftertaste, a dark comedy about food, ghosts, and the New York culinary scene, will be published in May 2025 by Simon & Schuster in North America, Bloomsbury in the UK, and around the world.

Her short fiction has appeared in Dark Matter, The Deadlands, Dread Machine, and more, and her work has been shortlisted for prizes by The Masters Review and The Molotov Cocktail Zine.

She holds a degree in Comparative Literature and Creative Writing from Princeton University, and an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, with a focus on Speculative Fiction. When she's not inventing worlds or distorting this one, she enjoys opera, escape rooms, and One Night Ultimate Werewolf. She lives in the Garden State with her husband, their hyperactive golden doodle, and their three magical children, who are in training to learn how to make stuff up, too.

Q&A (with Maura Struk)

Any writer will tell you that there are some characters that stick around long after your last revisions are off to press. For your reading pleasure, check out my answers to the questions Maura, of Aftertaste, is dying to have answered.

  • DL: I first got the idea for the book in 2013; at the time it was just a single scene, this chef hosting a few strangers in his Hell’s Kitchen apartment for a dinner party, where the guest of honor is this ghost who appears and tries to eat their food. (A version of that scene actually makes it into Aftertaste, except by the time I wrote it, I actually knew that the chef was Konstantin, what his motivations were, what the diners wanted, etc. etc. so it was a much stronger take.) Aside from that one scene, though, I didn’t start properly writing the novel until 2020, when I was in my MFA program at Sarah Lawrence and decided I was going to try and finally tease out the story in my novel class. I wrote it through the pandemic, through the war in Ukraine, through graduating in 2022, and worked on revisions through 2023 with my agent before we went out on submission. So…10 years, with 2-3 of active writing/editing?

  • DL: I…okay, yeah. I’m a pantser. It’s my life’s goal to be a planner—and I do have a sort-of outline for the new project I’m working on! But while a lot of writers start with plot or with character (those are the two big ways in that you usually hear about) I always start with the concept. What draws me into narrative is a big, high-concept idea, and so once I get that, I trust myself to fill in the blanks of who and why and how. I need the what.

  • DL: Not an afterthought!! I knew Kostya was going to fall in love with you from the first time you appeared on a page. (You’re impossible not to fall for!) And I knew love and a love story was at the core of my big concept—food is the mechanism that brings spirits back, but the reason they return is love. Love defying death is sort of the point!

  • DL: I’ve known my whole life this was what I wanted to do. I was fifteen when I decided I was going to be a writer, and I sat down as a high school sophomore and wrote my first novel. It was this awful fantasy quest, but I made it through all 150 pages, and I was so convinced it was a bestseller that I printed it out and sent it to Tor as an unsolicited manuscript. They sent me back my SASE a couple weeks later with this photocopied “Dear Author” letter (which I still have!) because the novel was unspeakably horrible. But I just kept writing. I went to college for writing, submitted short stories everywhere, took tons of workshops, and even tried to publish a few YA novels once I graduated. A lot of people would have thrown in the towel after the first couple of manuscripts didn’t get acquired, but every rejection only seemed to make me more stubborn. Like if that one wasn’t it, how much better can I make the next project, until no one can say no to it? I can honestly say I’ve written in, like, 20% of the coffeeshops in NYC at this point; I’d go every day, after working long hours at my job in advertising. I’d be there from 7 or 8 until they kicked me out to close, tucked in a corner with a coffee and my own little world. And I knew when I started Aftertaste that it felt different to me. Like really special. So yeah, got into writing at fifteen. It just took me…(checks notes)…twenty years to get here.

  • DL: I mean, there’s a LOT of me in Konstantin. (And you, for that matter, ahem.) Someone recently pointed out to me that the way scenes of Aftertaste appeared to me, fully-formed, at random, over the course of many years, waiting for me to string them together into something that made sense—that’s exactly how Kostya gets his aftertastes. But I think that’s what we do as writers—take pieces of ourselves that we hate or love or are curious about and let someone else maximize those parts for us. Like trying on a new life. And when we do it right, you guys take on lives of your own, and do things we don’t always expect. (That whole thing with you at Brink was one I didn’t see coming until there it suddenly was, on the page.) It’s truly been such a privilege to write you, Maura. Thanks for letting me into your head.

  • DL: It’s been my honor. Now I can’t wait for you to haunt other people’s thoughts for a change. :)

  • DL: Guilty as charged, I’m afraid. I live for a double entendre! But just now I hear another character banging on my proverbial door, insisting I open up. Let me go see what her deal is, and how I can make things infinitely worse before I make them better. (Writers, amIrite?)

    I’ll see you soon, M! Give K my love. And thanks for all memories. <3