A Coffee Date with Liz Johnston

Author of THE FALL-DOWN EFFECT

Paint a picture of your favourite coffee shop for writing. What makes it perfect to you? Is it the corner table, the barista who knows your name, the way the light hits at 2:00 PM?

I haven't written in a coffee shop since grad school, I don't think. But yes, the light's important to me, access to power outlets (even though I now have a laptop that could probably go most of the day unplugged), decent chairs and tables. Can't have interesting conversations happening too nearby, even if I've brought headphones, so it's better if it's not too popular a place. I'm not fussed about the quality of the coffee or baked goods, so that makes it easier to find a quieter spot.

You’re at the counter. The barista knows your order by heart. What are you getting? Be oddly specific.

Just a plain black drip coffee. Decaf if it's after three p.m.

You're sitting across from me now, coffee (or other beverage) in hand. Tell me a bit about yourself and your latest book.

I'm a writer and editor based in Toronto, though I grew up in the small town of Revelstoke, B.C. I'm on the editorial board of Brick, A Literary Journal, and I've been publishing essays and short stories in journals and magazines for over a decade. My debut novel, The Fall-Down Effect (Book*hug Press, April 2026), spans thirty-one years in the lives of siblings Sylvia, Fern, and River, who grow up surrounded by forests and who each try to protect those forests in their own way. The novel explores protest, climate change, and fractured family relationships, asking what we owe people in our lives when we are fighting for a greater cause.

You notice I'm scribbling your social media handles and website on receipt paper (old barista habit). What should I write down so readers can find you?

My website is liz-johnston.ca. I'm on Instagram (@liz.d.s.johnston), Facebook, and Bluesky (@lizjohnston.bsky.social). I also have a pretty irregular (in terms of frequency) newsletter on Substack (@lizdsjohnston).

I'm that friend who always asks 'what should I read next?' What are your top three current reads that you'd practically force into my hands, and why is each one consuming your thoughts?

I'm about halfway through Kate Cayley's Property (Coach House Books, 2025), and I love the scope within the seemingly tight focus of one day, one street. The writing's beautiful, and each character is so real, so flawed and sympathetic at the same time. I read Kagiso Lesego Molope's We Inherit the Fire (McClelland & Stewart, 2026) this past winter and highly recommend it. The novel takes place at the end apartheid in South Africa, and I can't think of when I last read such a challenging, complex, utterly compelling mother-daughter relationship. For a third pick, I'll shout out Hollay Ghadery's The Unravelling of Ou (Palimpsest Press, 2026) because, wow, who knew that such rich, deeply felt narration could come out of a sock puppet. I guess there's some difficult mother-daughter relationships there too!

The coffee shop WIFI just went down, so we're stuck here talking. Tell me the weird, unexpected, or completely ridiculous path that led you to become a writer.

I've always written stories, but in high school, I also had acting dreams. I went to theatre school, then moved to Toronto. (Strange to think I used to want to perform. Getting up on a stage gives me such anxiety now. Maybe that has to do with the difference between playing a character and standing up there as myself, reading my own work, or maybe I'm just a different person now.) After a few years in Toronto working as a barista—yes, I've been one too—and telling myself I was saving up for headshots I never got, I went back to school to do a BA and then a master's in English. When I set out on the master's, I thought I'd follow it up with a PhD and live an academic life, but somewhere along the way I realized I didn't want to analyze other writers' stories so much as I wanted to tell my own.

I’m timing you with my phone’s stopwatch. You have exactly 50 words to describe your writing ritual or process. Go!

Approaches to narrative are more complicated than a plotter-pantser binary, but for brevity’s sake, I’ll call myself a pantser. I feel out the story as I go. I edit as I write too, inefficient as this may be, fiddling with sentences when I might later wind up cutting whole storylines.

The person at the next table is eavesdropping on us. Let's make them regret it. What's the weirdest research rabbit hole you've fallen down that would make them raise an eyebrow?

I vaguely wondered about what kind of a file the RCMP might start building on me when I was researching some of the things my more radical activist characters in The Fall-Down Effect get up to: area-denial tactics, bomb-making, that kind of thing.

As we're leaving, you turn back and say something that will stick with me forever about writing, creativity, or life. What is it (no pressure)?

It's so much pressure, in fact, that I stand there a moment with my mouth agape, unable even to say goodbye. Then I remember the Bashō quote (as rendered by Robert Hass) pinned up behind my desk at home, with thanks to Michael Helm for sharing it: "If the horror of the world were the truth of the world, there would be no one to say it and no one to say it to." Then, embarrassed that this might come off too somber, even if hopeful, I blurt, "Don't let the bastards get you down," and scurry out the door.

Get The Fall-Down Effect here.