Of ‘Optimism’ and NextDoor fame: Excerpts from a live Q&A

Talking with Lafayette author/Purdue professor Brian Leung on his latest collection, ‘A Terrifying Brush with Optimism’

• Support for Based in Lafayette comes from Purdue Convocations. Just Announced: Purdue Convocations' blockbuster 2025–26 season is here! Featuring Lauren Daigle, Tom Segura, Beetlejuice, The Book of Mormon, Jim Brickman, Wynton Marsalis, STOMP, Kinky Boots, Mrs. Doubtfire and so much more — this lineup brings Grammy winners, Broadway hits, jazz legends, and unforgettable live shows to West Lafayette. Single-show tickets are now available!

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OF ‘OPTIMISM’ AND NEXTDOOR FAME: EXCERPTS FROM A LIVE Q&A

Thanks to all who filled the aisles at Second Flight Books a week ago Tuesday for a conversation I had with Brian Leung, as the Lafayette author/Purdue professor’s collection of works, “A Terrifying Brush with Optimism,” was released.

The event was a bit of an experiment, one concocted a few months earlier on the top level of the County Parking Garage in downtown Lafayette, about six samples in at the annual Tap for TAF craft brew event. With his latest on the way from Sarabonde Books, why not try a live Q&A?

For the most part, we stayed on task, I think. People stuck around. Books were signed. It’s a format I’d like to test drive some more for BiL readers, if you’re game.

Brian Leung discusses ‘A Terrifying Brush with Optimism,’ his latest collection, in a conversation June 17 at Second Flight Books in Lafayette. (Photo: Laura Kendall)

Here are some excerpts from our conversation where we talked about Leung’s latest – the first since in 2023 novel, “All I Should Not Tell” (C&R Press) – what’s so terrifying about optimism, his fascination with the NextDoor app and the writing process.

We started here …

Question: In skiing, there’s a fine art of calling out “single” in the lift line – going up, meeting someone and having about a two-minute ride to introduce yourself. So, you're on a ski lift, what’s your story? Or just maybe act like it’s Boiler Gold Rush – what’s your name, what’s your major, where are you from?

Brian Leung: I am a professor in the Department of English. I am here today as a civilian. And on that ski lift, I would say, I hate skiing. I would also say that I am not only a professor, but I am a writer of literary fiction. And what motivates me to write fiction is because I care about people a lot. The way that I express that is by writing about people who fail us, and how then we can figure out how to continue to care about those people who fail us. And, also, how we fail people and how we can live up to their expectations. Some of you, if you know me from NextDoor, know me as “Dad Joke Guy.” There is humor in my writing, for sure. I'm coming up close to two minutes here.

Question: OK, we’re going to get on the B Lift next and head to the next peak.

Brian Leung: I really try to express with my fiction how much I care about people and hopefully how we can take care of each other.

Question: So, “A Terrifying Brush with Optimism.” What, in your mind, is optimism. How do you define it?

Brian Leung: I think that's a shifting target. Right now, what I feel like, is that I meet enough people in my daily life and through NextDoor to know that it's not OK to give up on those days that we feel that are our worst days. There's gold there. The vein of gold is there. We just might not have gotten to it yet, right? We haven't gotten past that one chip more. And generally – not always, but generally – I have found that to be true in my life. I've had moments of despair, even in the 10 years I lived here in Lafayette, and kind of lost myself and then had to remind myself, oh, wait a minute, I love the people here. Why am I not more optimistic about how my life might be in this state and in this community? This book is “new and selected,” which means it's my career, plus new stuff. And when I read it, I think, gosh, Brian, you're consistent on that – that has been a theme that's been running through your life. It's like, find that vein, find that optimistic thing.

Question: What's terrifying, though? What is the “terrifying brush?”

Brian Leung: Well, do you all feel sometimes the kind of weight that comes at you, that you feel like you don't have the strength on that day, that you can't muster the strength to push back on that thing that's coming at you? It could be the news. It could be family situations. Those things are terrifying, because you don't know how you're going to feel in 24 hours. I shouldn't say “you.” I don't know how this is going to be in a week for me. My dad, last year – I’m half-Chinese – went back to China, and apparently was in the hospital for a month. But his wife didn't think to tell us that he was in the hospital in China for a month. So, he comes back and we find out, and they're shocked that we would even want to know. That's my relationship with my dad, and it was very hard. It was so hard. And that was terrifying, because, what's the outcome of this moment? Well, he's still my dad.

Question: With the book, “new and selected” means a swath of your career. How did that get put together? How did you choose?

Brian Leung: Sarabande Books, who was the publisher of this, was my first publisher. My first book came out in 2004. That was about four years outside of graduate school. They came to me as a kind of 20th anniversary idea. They wanted some from that original book, and then maybe a travelogue of what I've been publishing since in short form. They asked me for a proposal. I said, Can I start with a piece of nonfiction, which leads the book? They were like, Well, it’s supposed to be fiction, but OK. And then, Can I also do a novella instead of a bunch of short stories? Which is atypical. That's really the big “new” in this piece. And they were cool with it. Because what I wanted to show is, here's where I started, here's the voice I had, and here's where I am now. In the novella, those of you who care to read the book, you probably hear more Brian voice that you are familiar with – you know, this Brian voice – than you will in those earlier pieces, which are so beautiful, because I loved beautiful sentences then.

Question: As you're going back and deciding, OK, here's what I'd like to highlight, as you read the things that you were publishing 20 years ago, are you uncomfortable? Do you say, I wish I had …? Do you say, I wish I still could …? I mean, how do you look at your older work and how it stacks up with the Brian today?

Brian Leung: I had a creative writing teacher, Kate Braverman, who told everyone, in every three years of a writer's life, you're kind of writing who you are in that space of three years. I think it turned out to be true. Early on in my career, I was, I think, just trying to tell the world, this is who I think I am. Mid-career – gosh, mid-career, I mean “new and selected” does kind of make you venerable all of a sudden – but mid-career, I had this comfortable space where I felt like I could talk about me being biracial or write about those topics being biracial. Talk about and write about Asian-American history, LGBTQ history, all through fiction. Now in this third quarter – hopefully there's a fourth quarter – I feel like I've arrived in this space where my lens is really widened out. The novella, for example, that's not a Brian character. It's a Brian sensibility and more of a commentary on contemporary culture, not necessarily locked into my Asian-ness or the fact that I'm a man married to a man in Indiana. Although if I write about that, do not write me and say, Hey, you said you were over that.

Question: What, then, becomes the oldest piece picked for this book? And how did you select it?

Brian Leung: “Six Ways to Jump Off a Bridge” is the oldest story in there. I think actually it is the story that can reflect the Kate Braverman influence period of my life. Kate Braverman was a hugely famous Southern California writer – wrote some spectacular fiction. “Lithium for Medea” is one. And “Squandering the Blue,” if you're looking for a great short story collection from the 1990s. That one is probably the oldest in this book, and also it was that place where I was really, intentionally wanting to connect myself to my Chinese-American heritage, but also with an understanding I was living in a kind of biracial moment.

Question: It's not totally optimistic, as I read it. Or am I misreading things?

Brian Leung: I think it is. No spoilers, but this character is a Chinese-American man whose wife has passed for some years, who hasn't spoken to his daughter for nine years. It's very anachronistic, because there's literally an answering machine with a light blinking. It's on his wife's birthday, and he has this idea that he doesn't want to actually listen to the message, because maybe it's his daughter remembering that it's his wife's birthday. He hasn't spoken to his daughter in nine years, and he doesn't want to listen to it because he doesn't want to find out it's not her – which is a real tension in the story. Then, the “jump off a bridge” part is he has this beautiful view, but over the course of all the years he's lived in this space, there's a bridge within his view where people have leapt and he has been witness to that. Doesn't sound very optimistic, does it, right? I feel like the ending, which I'm not going to share with you, shows this man finally realizing his own failures in the care of his wife and the care of his daughter and maybe, just maybe he can listen to that message, and maybe something will come out of that.

Question: I'm always fascinated, whether it's reporters, writers, anyone who's dealing with any kind of short form, long form, how do they catalog ideas as they come? Is it on scraps of paper? Is it a Word document? Is it a detail or plot point? How does that come together for you?

Brian Leung: One example is this story. I was on a trip with my dad in China and my sister, who's full Chinese from my dad's second wife, and we were walking across this 600-year-old bridge, and it had no guardrails. They were about this big. (Holds his hand below the knee.) I looked down, and the ravine was very deep. I thought, in the course of 600 years, somebody may have – somebody had to have – jumped off this. More than one person must have fallen or whatever. So, in my journal, my traveling journal, I literally wrote: Six ways to jump off a bridge. When I was going back through that, that just stuck out to me as a title.

Question: In this book, there are a number of two-page entries, there's a novella, there's in-between. When you get an idea like that, do you say, OK, this bridge is going to be worth 27 pages? Or this idea is going to be worth a full-length novel? How does that hit you? Is it in the writing, or is it in some other phase?

Brian Leung: I think that's just instinct. There's a really cute story, it’s like one page, it's about this guy who is on a flight who opens up the emergency exit thing and he falls in love with one of the little cartoon characters who's illustrated there. And I'm saying, Oh, I've got to write a story about this guy. I literally wrote it on the plane. It's adorable. It’s a little bit weird, I'll be honest with you.

Question: I can vouch for that.

Brian Leung: But to answer your question, there's not a novel in that. But it’s like in your yard, you don't expect the flower to last all summer. Some flowers just are there for two mornings. It doesn't make them less beautiful or less important over all the flowers that last longer in your yard. That's, I guess, how I think about when I'm writing something long or something short – it’s just, what feels right? You just develop an instinct. I don't shoot for novels. I've written four. That's not my goal. It's, what's the flower of the morning, and is it going to last or not?

Question: Is the next great American novel going to start on NextDoor?

Brian Leung: We can take a poll right now: How many people want to read 80,000 words of dad jokes?

Question: Explain to me what it’s like to be NextDoor famous?

Brian Leung: If you don’t know what NextDoor is, it’s a social media app. I can't remember how I found it, but when I first entered it, I was, of course, excited that many of my neighbors in the South Ninth area and beyond were there. I was noticing how so many of the posts were about people being suspicious of people walking through their neighborhoods. Like a lot of suspicion. I'm not there, so I can't say that it's not legitimate. I just thought, hey, let's, once in a while, talk about our yards. One time I just posted this thing about, go to your junk drawer and describe one thing that you don't remember what it's for, but it's still there. Because those are things that neighbors should probably be talking about. I mean, that's part of the optimistic thing, right? What are the joyful things that we have in common? And then, because my husband is tired of me, I do think of these stupid jokes – they're very stupid. But I put them on there, and people can tell me how stupid I am. But it's also kind of a play, right? It’s a play space. Although there's a lot of important stuff going on there – dogs get returned, people's packages get in the wrong place. There's that kind of function.

Question: That place they’re building might be another Cheddar’s …

Brian Leung: I just feel like it's a space where a light thing can come up, and we're not complaining about the city or something like that. I'm not diminishing all of those, all of those concerns at all. And I contribute sometimes to those conversations. But for my own thing, generally my brand is, OK, be joyful and optimistic, and here's a little light thing. You're going to come across it randomly. It's not like I'm sending it to you. So, it's like that little flower – it just blooms in that moment, and then it's gone tomorrow.

Question: Your characters are not always what you’d call sympathetic. I got to talk to (songwriter) Steve Earle a week or two ago for a Q&A. I liked what he said about characters in his songs: “People don't care about what you feel and what you think. They care about what you think and what you feel that they can relate to, that they've experienced themselves. It's about the common experience. This job is about empathy. That's the main thing.”
What’s your approach to writing characters, especially dealing with ones that are not necessarily sympathetic?

Brian Leung: So, you all, neighbors, you can disappoint me today, but I won't hold that against you to tomorrow. This is how I think about my characters. When I'm writing them in the moment, they may seem irredeemable, but I know that tomorrow they're redeemable. They may not live up to that. So, Tommy, in the novella, oh my gosh, you're not going to like this guy. He's a problem. He's an alcoholic. He's unrepentant about it. He's got this amazing support system that he just rejects, rejects, rejects, and they don't give up on him because he disappoints them today, but maybe tomorrow. And that's optimism. If those of you who choose to read the book – you can write me on NextDoor – the ending is not satisfying, but I do think it points to tomorrow.

Question: We’ve talked a little bit about this in the past, but is the life of a writer, the life of an author, something you would recommend?

Brian Leung: I would recommend the life of a writer who doesn't expect to be published. If writing and publishing is your objective, I sometimes feel like that's more about your ego than it is about just focusing on the art. I know that sounds squishy. Historically, since the 1960s up to now, our major universities have had a major impact on providing a space for not just faculty writers, but student writers to have a supported space where they could write. And at the student level, most of those students do not go on to publish their work. But they can. They have four years of discovering what they want to express. It has a huge impact on their writing ability, I will say – not just fiction or poetry, whatever, I mean, literally, if you're a nurse or a cop or whatever. I've been fortunate enough to enjoy that. But the fantasy of being a writer and the only way to feel successful is to be published, I would recommend against people doing that. If you're a writer and you have a writing group and three people read your work, awesome.

Thanks, again, for support for this edition from Purdue Convocations. Just Announced: Purdue Convocations' blockbuster 2025–26 season is here! Featuring Lauren Daigle, Tom Segura, Beetlejuice, The Book of Mormon, Jim Brickman, Wynton Marsalis, STOMP, Kinky Boots, Mrs. Doubtfire and so much more — this lineup brings Grammy winners, Broadway hits, jazz legends, and unforgettable live shows to West Lafayette. Single-show tickets are now available!

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Tips, story ideas? I’m at davebangert1@gmail.com.