5 Questions with Carla Sosenko
The author of "I'll Look So Hot in a Coffin" on why your mess deserves the page
What happens when you turn your inner monologue into a memoir? For writer Carla Sosenko, it meant confronting her past, her body, and leaning hard on humor as a survival strategy.
She didn’t set out to write a body memoir. She just couldn’t not write it. Living with Klippel-Trenaunay syndrome—a rare genetic condition that causes port-wine stain, lymphatic malformations, and limbs of different sizes—meant a lifetime of never quite fitting in, and almost never seeing anyone like her reflected in the media.
In her new book, I’ll Look So Hot in a Coffin (Dial Press), Sosenko offers a funny, raw, and unflinchingly honest look at self-image, shame, and surviving your own brain. She’s candid about everything from getting liposuction at eight years old and working in lifestyle media to the cruelty of strangers and how the Ozempic craze fits into all of it. More importantly, by sharing her story, she hopes to make others feel less alone—and more empowered to tell their own.
After two decades, two agents, a stack of rejections, and a lot of persistence, the book was finally released in May—rolling in hot with a lot of hype (including early praise from Harper Bazaar’s “The 28 Most Highly Anticipated Books of 2025”). Here, she answers five questions about her process, finding her voice, and what she’d tell other writers ready to put pen to paper.
Q: Your book offers a very intimate look at the internal and external struggle of finding self-acceptance and joy with an unconventional body. What was your relationship to your reflection while writing this book? Did it shift in any way?
What a great question. I didn't notice any sort of shift while I was writing. I think even though my book is a memoir, I was sort of able to remove myself from the material and connect with it first and foremost as a writer. It almost felt like I was writing about a character, someone else, not me.
When you write a memoir you're in this weird position of being both the subject and the creator, and I think I sort of naturally gravitate much more toward caring about the writing itself. It just feels like material, so I'm able to live outside of it. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing—for my writing or mental health.
I will say that since the book's release, I have felt much more conscious of my body. Not in a negative or positive way, just aware of it in a way I haven't been in a long time. I didn't see that coming, and it's very much not conscious. I can't easily point to an exact reason why, like, "Well, now that the book is out there, naturally there is more attention on my body, so it makes sense that my awareness would shift." I mean, that's true, but I haven't fully unpacked what's happening yet, or tried to figure out why it's happening. It's a bit disorienting.
Q: How long did it take to translate this idea into a finished book? What was the process like and is there anything you wish you'd known before starting?
Oh god, such a long time. The first time I had any inkling that I wanted to write about my body was in grad school, when I was working mostly on fiction and playwriting. I tried to do that thing where you write fiction that's not really fiction, but I was only 25 and hadn't worked through any of my body stuff yet—and I was also a baby writer, so didn't have most of the skills I needed—so there was no way I was going to writing anything meaningful or good.
In fact, I remember being in a novel workshop and mentally giving my protagonist K-T but not putting that on the page, so the character had all my insecurities but no discernible reason for them, so all my classmates found her perplexing. In my head I was thinking, "I know something about her that you don't." Then I tried to revise and gave her K-T, but I was absolutely not ready for that. I could go into a workshop and listen to people talk about the work and completely separate myself from it, but I remember one day after class somebody trying to talk to me about it and I was like, "Nope! Nope! Abort!"
After that it was really picking up the book and putting it down over and over. Signing with an agent, doing the book proposal, she couldn't sell it. Giving up for a couple of years, signing with another agent, she couldn't sell it. On and on. I honestly thought I was done with it but just couldn't let it go, and the stars finally aligned. I found the right agent, who understood the work—Lindsay Edgecombe, at Levine Greenberg Rostan, who is amazing—and then the right editor and team (Annie Chagnot and later Emma Caruso at Dial), and that was it. Just 20-plus years of trying and failing and trying again.
The moral of that story is to KEEP AT IT. Just keep writing. Take breaks, but then keep going. I think even in my most pessimistic moments I knew deep down somewhere that I would publish my book. I didn't know what that would look like—maybe I would self-publish—but I knew I didn't really have it in me to give up.
Q: Was there a point when you thought, ‘This is too much. I can’t publish this’? What helped you push past that moment and stay committed to telling the truth as you saw it?
Honestly, no. I find the act of revelation to be really liberating. It's a much healthier place for me to be than just sitting on all of it. I'm not someone who necessarily goes deep into my emotions with many people in my everyday life. I am very outgoing and open, and I have wonderful, close friendships, but I don't actually work through my feelings with other people very often. I do that through writing, so I sort of can't not do it.
Writing is too important to me—and I like the sound of my own voice enough—that unless I were worried about hurting people or doing harm in some way, then no, I never considered not going forward. Part of it is that I've had some practice, with personal essays I've published, but obviously I willingly wrote those essays, so I clearly gravitate toward airing things out. The only worry I had was whether anybody I love would feel bad reading the book—specifically my parents, who I adore—so I think it took me longer to write those parts. But once I had them down, no. I had to keep going.
“The moral of that story is to KEEP AT IT. Just keep writing. Take breaks, but then keep going.”
Q: Did you ever worry about being too funny (or not funny enough) when writing vulnerably about things like shame or longing? How did you strike the balance?
I don't really consciously think about how I'm writing while I'm doing it. Writing may be the one thing I do in my life sort of mindlessly—and I mean that in a good way: without judgment or thought, I just...write. That probably sounds like a flex, but I'm actually much more impressed with writers who can consciously impact the way they write. Especially with the kind of writing I'm currently doing, I think the voice—and the balance of levity with shame—is a reflection of how I am in my real life. It goes back to that whole question of "do I reveal this or don't I?"
For me, hiding has never really gotten me anywhere; it just creates more anxiety. I keep thinking about trying to go back to fiction, and that scares the hell out of me. I want to be able to write a great novel, and it seems like the absolute hardest thing to do. With my book, you're really just hearing my personality and voice. So I never worry about being too funny and definitely don't worry about not being funny enough, because I am conceited when it comes to my sense of humor. I'm pretty confident that I have a good one and that anyone who disagrees is wrong.
In my real life or on the page, if there's a question of whether it's inappropriate to be funny in a certain situation, nine times out of ten I'm going to go for the joke and cross my fingers. I would much rather use humor when it's slightly inappropriate than look back on a missed opportunity.
Q: What would you say to someone who’s afraid to write their own mess onto the page?
JUST DO IT. It's your mess. For one thing, you can write it down and never show anyone. But let's say you decide you want to—you can. You just can. It's not as easy as I'm making it sound, and there are people with much more complicated stories than mine, who would face real repercussions for writing down, say, something potentially embarrassing for their family or something that could endanger their career. Those are real things to take into consideration. But that's certainly not something to worry about at the beginning.
When you're writing, you're just writing. You're not doing anything to anybody. When and if you decide to make that work public, you'll have to think about things and figure out how to want to handle them. Do you want to talk to your family first? Do you want to make a pros and cons list of reasons you should or should not try to publish?
I have a friend who passed this advice down to me that she heard from someone—it was in the context of flaking on plans, which is something I do often—and that is, "Given the choice between guilt and resentment, choose guilt." I think about that all the time, and I think it applies to writing too.
The other thing I would say—and this applies to all first drafts of anything—is don't worry too much about what the finished product is going to look like. Just write. Writing can be pretty thankless—it's so solitary, with no guaranteed publishing contract at the end—so if the thing you're writing is important to you, that's reason enough to just keep going. Write the mess and let it be messy. I think most of the real work comes in revision.
BONUS: What's next for you?! Are you working on another book or was there anything that didn't make it in that we can expect to see coming soon?
I have pie-in-the-sky aspirations. I would love to adapt my book into a one-woman show, and that's something I've started talking to a friend about collaborating on. I would love to see the book adapted for TV. I'm working on a proposal for a second nonfiction book right now, and like I said, I dream of writing a novel, I just have to buck up my self-confidence in that department. I may need to take my own advice there and just sit down and write, and not worry so much about how it's going to look in the end. Basically I just always want to be writing. I am my most joyous and fulfilled when I'm writing, so if I can find a way to keep doing that for the rest of my life, I will be a happy girl.
I’ll Look So Hot In A Coffin is available at bookstores everywhere now. Pick up your copy here.
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I can't wait to read this. Going to purchase immediately. The idea of hiding causing more anxiety resonated so strongly - I find it easier to overshare than not. Perhaps because I'm afraid of being "caught out"? I'm not sure, but how reassuring that other writers feel the same