Calling all book lovers - it's the latest instalment of the Joanie Book Club! This month, we're sitting down with Rufi Thorpe, author of Margo’s Got Money Troubles...

Hi Rufi! Thanks so much for chatting with us here at Joanie. Let’s start things off with a bit of background, can you tell our readers about yourself?

I was born and raised in California. I write novels, primarily about how hard it is to be a person and love other people and try to be kind. I worked for years in restaurants and doing odd jobs, one summer I sold defibrillators over the phone (very poorly, I don’t think I made a single sale). My latest novel, Margo’s Got Money Troubles, is being turned into a show by Apple TV, and I got to be an executive producer and have a fancy chair with my name on it. I got to bring my mother on set, and she got to sit in the chair, and all in all, I am kind of just amazed and grateful that my life turned out like this. I have two sons, 10 and 13, who surround me with rap music and video games, a husband who is a scientist, and a very naughty bull terrier named Coco. 

Margo’s Got Money Troubles centres around a 20-year-old single mum who starts creating unique OnlyFans content as a money-making experiment. What inspired you to write this story?

I wanted to write a story about a badass. The world loves to put a woman in her place, and I cherish stories about women who refuse. The OnlyFans element specifically entered my thinking when several female stand-up comedians that I followed on Twitter started OnlyFans accounts at the beginning of the pandemic, and it was their sharing their experience that opened my eyes to the boom that OnlyFans was experiencing during that time. In the first year of the pandemic, OnlyFans went from 20 million users to 120 million users, so it was a really wild time on the platform with a lot more opportunity than there is now, but also a lot less awareness about what it even was. 

Do you have any general tips for aspiring writers? What helps you most when you’re sitting down to start writing?

My advice when you are sitting down to write is to imagine the person you love best in all the world, the person who gets your jokes no matter how weird, the person who knows you better than anyone, and then write to them, towards them, towards that understanding and grace. As confusing as this is, what actually makes your writing valuable is that it is yours, that no one else could have written it but you. The beginner’s urge is to put their work next to work that is agreed to be good and try to make it match, make it more like the work that is excellent. And that isn’t a bad impulse; you can learn everything just from carefully taking apart the work of others. But it’s easy to forget that what the reader actually asks of you is mostly that you be authentically, helplessly yourself and that you try to tell them something true that you earned by being alive. 

We’re avid readers here at Joanie, and there’s nothing we love more than a good book recommendation. Tell us – what’s your favourite EVER book, and what book did you enjoy reading most in the last year?

Favourite EVER book is hard—there are so many books that made me. I am wildly sentimental about Moby Dick, maybe because I was expecting it to be boring and hard, and then it was weird and funny, and I was so stunned: THIS book is Moby Dick?! What a weirdo Melville was! That opened up possibilities in my mind. Another Country by James Baldwin was a book I read at a time in my life when I was struggling and an addict and really not sure if I was going to make it to adulthood or, like, be okay. Reading that book felt like a hand grabbing me and pulling me out of the water, it was that visceral. 

As for things I’ve read lately, there is a banger of a novel called The Payback by Kashana Cauley, basically a heist story about a group of retail workers that decide to break into a student loan company office and erase everyone’s student debt, and it is funny and singular and weird. I loved it. 

And of course, I loved Kevin Wilson’s latest, Run for the Hills. I love everything he writes. 

Outside of work, what do you get up to in your spare time?

I love to cook, play video games and take classes with my mom, who lives next door to me. Most recently, we took line dancing, which neither of us has a true interest in, but which was remarkably fun, though we have also taken painting, jewellery making and a life drawing class.

For life drawing, they favour painfully thin models so you can see the skeleton, and it turns out old men are perfect for this. But, when they are that thin, they really have no butt cheeks, so even a slight bend at the waist and suddenly there you are - eye to eye with the crinkled star itself, and I can tell you, exchanging panicked glances with your mom in such a scenario is top-notch entertainment. 

Finally, which Joanie pieces are you loving most right now?

Well, obviously I love this gorgeous dress—there are so many gorgeous, infinitely wearable dresses (like this one and this one), although the floral suits also really caught my eye. 

Discover more Joanie Book Club-approved styles in our Book Lovers edit!