Chat #27 - Emma van Straaten
"All the time and effort dedicated into words that you end up deleting is worth it"
This interview is free to read. Paid subscriptions support artist honoraria.
Emma van Straaten is a writer of British-Mauritian heritage who lives in London with her husband and two daughters. In 2021, she won the Women’s Prize Discoveries Award and has been writing whenever she can ever since. Her debut novel, This Immaculate Body - published in the US as Creep - came out in February 2025. She is currently working on her second novel.
Find Emma on Instagram at @evswrites
30/03/2026, 19:35 - Finbarre:
Welcome to Tarot DMs with Finbarre Snarey. Emma van Straaten writes about what can happen when loneliness, desire and fantasy start to take over. Her debut novel, This Immaculate Body, follows a woman who becomes fixated on a man she doesn’t really know - her work is interested in the stories that people tell themselves about love.
To help separate fantasy from reality, we’ll be using three tarot cards that are on loan from the British Tarot Archive.
Emma van Straaten, welcome to Tarot DMs.
30/03/2026, 19:36 - Emma van Straaten:
Hello and thank you so much for having me. I’ve been so looking forward to this evening, particularly because as someone who’s hard of hearing, as well as being like a classic millennial who gets kind of anxious about phone calls and stuff, this format for interviewing is so nice and I’m kind of, I’m really looking forward to exploring kind of how this evening unfolds. So thank you.
30/03/2026, 19:37 - Emma van Straaten: My house is blissfully quiet - enjoying the calm after a solo bedtime with my two girls.
30/03/2026, 19:37 - Finbarre:
Emma, you have no idea how much I need to hear the words you’ve just spoken.
Because at the moment I’m thinking, maybe I should go back to having a podcast. And that’s something that I’ll be doing. I’ll be doing a season two of Tarot Interviews.
So it will just be a standard two people sit down and chat to each other kind of podcast. I was even dallying with the idea of having a phone line open and having whoever contact me. But you’re right.
There is something about this where you can chuck in a picture, send a text message, play a video. Do whatever you like in this environment. And it just feels more relaxed. So yeah, thank you for appreciating that.
30/03/2026, 19:38 - Finbarre:
Plus we get to see the oh-so-pretty tarot cards!
30/03/2026, 19:39 - Emma van Straaten:
No, exactly. And I also feel as an author, I’m actually not very good at talking in any articulate manner. I prefer to write and I like to edit. And so I know I’m literally talking right now, but having the option to text and think about it or even delete voice notes and start again is just truly freeing. So yeah, huge fan.
30/03/2026, 19:39 - Emma van Straaten:
That’s not to say not all authors are articulate in person, just me specifically. Obviously, I know so many authors who are just wonderful public speeches and interviewees as well. Just me.
30/03/2026, 19:40 - Finbarre:
Like yourself, I have two tinies, and about this point in the evening, being articulate is something that requires extra effort.
Right, we’ll get the cards to do the speaking for us.
Before we start with those, do you have a deck with you? And if you do, could you describe it?
30/03/2026, 19:44 - Emma van Straaten:
I have three! The Soprafino Dellarocca was bought for me by my husband - I’m a tentative dabbler and this deck is quite prescriptive (? probably not the right word) and each card has some guidance words on them. The other two are painted and designed by my aunt-in-law, Cilla Conway, who has ten or so hand painted decks and oracles she has created. These two are the most beginner-friendly! I’m not sure which to use! I’m excited by your mention of the deck borrowed from an archive which makes me feel the Dellarocca might be a pale imitation so maybe one of Cilla’s? I also feel attached to them as I became her admin assistant during my second maternity leave and helped her ship decks around the world!
30/03/2026, 19:45 - Finbarre: The Shimmering Veil is the one my eye is drawn to and it has a resonance to it that reminds me of the Thoth deck by Lady Frieda Harris. All a fabulous selection there!
30/03/2026, 19:46 - Emma van Straaten: Gorgeous! In that case I have The Shimmering Veil to hand.
30/03/2026, 19:47 - Finbarre: It gives me a slight crackle of electricity down my back when I see it, so be careful handling those potent cards and don’t drop them whatever you do.
30/03/2026, 19:47 - Finbarre: Ready for your first one?
30/03/2026, 19:47 - Emma van Straaten: Yes!
30/03/2026, 19:50 - Finbarre:
First of all, this is the deck we’re using for April. The gloriously gilded GOLDEN ART NOVEAU TAROT
30/03/2026, 19:51 - Finbarre: So that makes the first Anchor card of the month, naturally, the…
30/03/2026, 19:51 - Finbarre:
So Emma, you’re speaking to a strange man from Nottingham who has just given you The Fool as your first card.
What impressions do you get from it?
30/03/2026, 19:53 - Emma van Straaten:
That is fascinating. I was trying to work out which card it was because as I haven’t yet explained, I’m kind of a novice. I think Lucy Rose used the term softly spiritual. And so I’m kind of very interested but very unlearned about it all. So I was looking at this and thinking it’s a card pulling me in all these directions and I couldn’t make sense of it.
30/03/2026, 19:54 - Emma van Straaten:
He’s kind of going somewhere, but he’s at the edge of a cliff. And his expression, his kind of body is propulsive and moving forward, but his face shows kind of reticence or, and displeasure is the wrong word, but kind of not all is quite right. And he’s kind of got his possessions on his back in a tiny little bag, but he’s quite richly dressed. Kind of nothing about it makes sense. And then when I understand it, it’s the Fool. I guess that falls into place a bit more
30/03/2026, 19:54 - Emma van Straaten: And of course the penny has dropped re April Fool’s!
30/03/2026, 19:55 - Emma van Straaten: That’s really interesting as I do feel this sense of push and pull creatively at the moment
30/03/2026, 19:55 - Emma van Straaten: Striding forward to meet a cliff edge!
30/03/2026, 19:56 - Finbarre:
Normally, I’m an incredibly intuitive reader in that often I won’t read guidebooks. In fact, I probably won’t use traditional meanings in the personal readings that I give. But I was curious about the guidebook on the Golden Art Nouveau Tarot, and it describes the fool as someone who embarks on a journey of life with a light heart and a spirit free of expectations.
Each adventure he encounters along the path has potential for joy, and his faithful dog tries to want him away from the cliff’s edge, but he’s heedless of the danger. His very innocence may keep him from harm.
Right, so that’s that one, but I’m more interested about the question that comes to mind about your work.
So, if I think about the fool and what it means to me, I’m going to ask you, when you began writing This Immaculate Body, what did you not understand about where the story would lead you?
30/03/2026, 20:00 - Emma van Straaten:
This Immaculate Body started from a place of being very interested in voice. I’d recently read Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh and this is back in kind of 2019 when I started writing it and the idea of having a singularly unappealing female voice was really interesting to me and I that was kind of something I set out to explore.
However as I wrote it I didn’t understand how various parts of my identity would kind of fall into it. I didn’t set out to make it about race or being mixed race, and I found out that that is what the book sort of wanted to be about.
So I didn’t really… before embarking on writing a novel, my first novel, I didn’t truly understand and maybe this is a debut novelist thing, particularly, but I didn’t fully understand how much of kind of my own being would pour into it. Not in kind of a basic “Oh I’m the main character” type way but just kind of the lens through which I see the world.
I mean it kind of sounds obvious now but at the time the lens through which I see the world was this kind of middle class mixed race person brought up in a kind of largely white environment and how much that would color the work.
30/03/2026, 20:02 - Finbarre:
I can only imagine that the heady days of when your book first hit the shelves are something of a blur.
Do you remember how it felt when you first saw somebody else reading your book?
30/03/2026, 20:06 - Emma van Straaten:
Goodness it was such a long time ago it was a year ago now and when it was published not many of my friends had actually read it and so there was this period where kind of it all went quiet where they all kind of bought their copies and read them and it felt very exposing again because it is kind of that confessional first novel and I do write about things I haven’t really talked about that kind of reflected my own upbringing and kind of some of my own issues I had with my my body and ethnicity and stuff growing up and so yeah it’s very nerve-wracking and yeah I just felt exposed.
30/03/2026, 20:07 - Emma van Straaten:
It was less stressful thinking about strangers reading it, weirdly.
I’d been really worried about my mum reading it, but it was actually fine.
But yeah, strangers had really unleashed their problems with the book online. When it first went out and I was kind of obsessively refreshing Goodreads, which I know every single author tells you not to do, it’s a very bad idea.
I would read all these kind of really tragic, mediocre, “It was fine type” reviews, which kind of wounded much more than the one stars. “This is terrible” ones. I don’t really know why. I think it’s because they see that I tried and didn’t kind of meet the mark rather than someone just deciding it’s absolutely not for them. I think it’s terrible.
30/03/2026, 20:09 - Finbarre:
I’m just picturing the devastating indifference of a three-star review. Speaking of three, that’s the first card down.
We’re on to number two, and this is the Wild Card. This could be anything.
Of course, it’s not going to be the full deck, and it’s not going to be the card that my last guest picked for you, but anything goes.
So, as I always do this in the moment, I start shuffling the cards. Say when, or stop, or whichever word you fancy. and we’ll pull the card out.
30/03/2026, 20:10 - Emma van Straaten: Incredible segue there- looking forward to my second card!
30/03/2026, 20:10 - Emma van Straaten: And… stop!
30/03/2026, 20:10 - Finbarre: You get the…
30/03/2026, 20:10 - Finbarre: Oh.
30/03/2026, 20:11 - Finbarre:
30/03/2026, 20:11 - Finbarre: The Five of Cups. One that is never invited to parties.
30/03/2026, 20:12 - Emma van Straaten: Hahaha 👎🏽👎🏽👎🏽
30/03/2026, 20:12 - Emma van Straaten: I never said: what a gorgeous deck it is! So very beautiful. I could look at each card indefinitely.
30/03/2026, 20:14 - Finbarre:
I see what you’re doing there, Emma von Straaten. You’re flattering the deck. You’re appealing to its better nature, but it’s too late. The card has been placed upon the table, and the five of cups is a card of, you can tell from the picture, it’s one of grief and disappointment, an emotional fixation on something that’s been lost.
So we have the three cups that are spilled, but two still stand behind the figure, and the sorrow isn’t the entire story.
30/03/2026, 20:19 - Emma van Straaten:
I actually really love this card. I find it kind of almost soothing to look at. I don’t really know why. But I just love the kind of shining, dark cape against the incredibly intricate background. And the kind of hulking figure gazing at the castle in the distance that’s across the river and seems impossibly far away.
And like the devastation of the cups filling their wine, but also the kind of the hope in the two cups that are still upright, but the kind of impossibility of the fact that if he moves, they’ll surely fall over too.
I’m not really sure how to read it in relation to myself. Kind of the most obvious kind of interpretation really is this, I feel it’s inevitable comparison that you find yourself doing between, well, I find myself doing between me and other authors, books being published, kind of people, whether it’s like, you know, the size of someone’s advance or kind of the material side of things, or whether their books are better than yours or, you know, sometimes you do get these, I sometimes feel angry when I read an incredible book, because it’s just so amazing. And so it’s not my finest moment, but it’s kind of wonderful, because they’ve written something of such power and beauty that I’m just, I can only be in awe of it.
30/03/2026, 20:23 - Finbarre: I know what you mean about feeling anger, resentment and absolute envy about experiencing a masterpiece. Everytime I see a painting by Peder Mork Mønsted (a Danish chap from the early 1900s) I get cross. But look at this art. Wretched.
30/03/2026, 20:23 - Emma van Straaten: Creatively it could imply a need to upend the final two cups to get anywhere. A freeing thought!
30/03/2026, 20:23 - Finbarre:
30/03/2026, 20:24 - Emma van Straaten: Sublime
I’m digressing again, so I’ll segue and say that this picture is obviously trying to keep me on track.
Ba-dum-tss.
Right, question time.
For the Five of Cups, I would like to know which failure you’ve experienced revealed a hidden value.
30/03/2026, 20:26 - Emma van Straaten:
I feel like in writing, all wrong terms that you take are ultimately good.
And even if you end up deleting reams and reams of text, although obviously I always save them in a document just in case, but I never actually end up using them. That’s just a strange superstition.
All the time and effort dedicated into words that you end up deleting is kind of worth it because in a way, the only way it could have gone, like your brain had to go that way in order to find the right track.
I’m simply kind of skipping it, I think would end up, well, maybe it’s a lie I’m telling myself, but I feel like it is worthwhile.
30/03/2026, 20:27 - Emma van Straaten:
I don’t know if you can call those failures, but I guess in terms of being a writer trying to have a product at the end of it, it is a failure to write words that aren’t used.
But I do truly believe that writing them improves your work.
It’s another or not they actually make it to the finished product.
30/03/2026, 20:31 - Emma van Straaten:
Why has instagram just served me a 5 of cups jumper
30/03/2026, 20:31 - Emma van Straaten: That distant castle! 🏰
30/03/2026, 20:32 - Finbarre:
Do not underestimate the researching abilities of Heresy Research!
You know, it doesn’t look like a real thing. That looks like a jumper I would like to exist.
If I was to say to my wife, could you knit that for me? That would take a year, maybe. I recently asked my wife to, I say recently, it was last year. I asked my wife to knit me a jumper. She said, I’ll do anything. And I requested an 80s crisp packet design. Which took her a while.
So yeah, a hill with a tour on the top. No, I don’t think that’s real. But, you know, 130 likes can’t be wrong, right?
30/03/2026, 20:33 - Emma van Straaten: please say you have a photo of your crisp jumper??
30/03/2026, 20:33 - Finbarre: One moment
30/03/2026, 20:34 - Finbarre: So, this was the packet we took as inspiration
30/03/2026, 20:34 - Finbarre:
30/03/2026, 20:34 - Emma van Straaten: omg
30/03/2026, 20:35 - Emma van Straaten: an excellent crisp btw
30/03/2026, 20:35 - Finbarre: … and here was the jumper before it was put together. I’ll post this so you can see both sides
30/03/2026, 20:35 - Finbarre:
30/03/2026, 20:35 - Finbarre: She made it with wool! And sticks!
30/03/2026, 20:36 - Emma van Straaten: Oh my goodness!! The talent of your wife!!!
30/03/2026, 20:36 - Finbarre: I married well. I just have to wear that jumper all the time now.
30/03/2026, 20:38 - Finbarre:
Emma, somehow we’re on the third and final card, the gift card.
And this was given to you by Marie Waller, who’s the editor of the Ghost of a Smile Substack. And the card that she picked out for you was this one.
30/03/2026, 20:39 - Finbarre:
30/03/2026, 20:39 - Finbarre: The Seven of Pentacles there. Have you seen this one before?
30/03/2026, 20:40 - Emma van Straaten: No!
30/03/2026, 20:42 - Finbarre:
This is the card that’s telling me that I should be getting my ass into gear to do some gardening in a few weeks time. It’s a card of obviously cultivation. It’s a card of contemplation of an outcome that hasn’t fully arrived yet. So it’s normally when effort has been sustained over a period of time and you start to wonder if it was all worth it.
So it can be a card of anticipation and uncertainty as well as abundance, if you’re lucky.
30/03/2026, 20:45 - Emma van Straaten:
Well, this one is perfectly timed, and I think quite a hopeful card for me at my stage in the next project, my next novel.
I’m really enjoying, again, I think I mentioned it again, the aesthetic of these cards is so pleasing to me because my second novel is partially set in the 14th century, and this is a kind of heavily stylized, idealized, beautiful version of the medieval period. And so this character could be one of my characters, and that feels nice to see kind of visually, yes.
There’s been a lot of sustained effort, slow and steady, and everyday writing to try and get to the point. And I quite like the look of these kind of coins on, on the bush, not kind of from a monetary perspective, more just like they look so heavy and like ready to drop.
And I’m at a kind of interesting point where I’ve written my second draft, and this is the point at which my, hopefully, my agent will take it and see if we can make something of it, really. But as an author who has so little to go on beyond like my own thoughts, my own encouragement, and my own kind of sense that what I’m writing is like worthy, I’m not going any further. Hopefully it would be good to have some, an answer either way, really, whether you say it’s good or not.
I like, I like the pause for contemplation, and that is, that’s very much where I feel I am at the moment.
30/03/2026, 20:46 - Emma van Straaten: It’s comforting to see where I feel I am reflected so fully in this card!
30/03/2026, 20:48 - Finbarre:
Your message just gave me an idea for your last tarot question.
So, the Seven of Pentacles would like to know:
Apart from communication with agents, what is it that makes you impatient?
30/03/2026, 20:49 - Emma van Straaten:
I think I am guilty of feeling too impatient about kind of the next thing already. I’m already kind of trying to nail down a third book when I’m not even finished with the second, the idea of a third book, can I add? Just so I kind of feel the safety of having something in my back pocket as well.
So I guess I’m impatient in that sense, kind of both propulsive, like trying to move forward when actually it probably would do me better to settle into the second book properly and give it due attention and time.
30/03/2026, 20:51 - Emma van Straaten:
It’s also something I’m trying to take into my daily life, this kind of desire to not be impatient for the next thing.
It’s so easy to go through the week kind of wishing for the weekend.
And then when you’ve got your darling little children at home all weekend as well, kind of waiting for the weekend to be over.
So you can kind of, they can go to school and to nursery and you can have the time to think of them.
And so I think this is a useful card to bring into their kind of home life as well.
So the Easter holiday just started and I’m determined to enjoy sick girls being at home and spending time with family rather than wishing them away.
30/03/2026, 20:54 - Finbarre:
You mentioned previously, Emma, that you have the enigmatic and the slightly uncanny Shimmering Veil Tarot.
It’s time to unleash it, to open the box, to pull one of the cards out, whichever one feels right to you.
And this will be the card that you pass on to the next person.
Could you take a picture of it and we’ll see what it is?
30/03/2026, 20:55 - Emma van Straaten: I HAVE A CONFESSION TO MAKE FIRST
30/03/2026, 20:55 - Finbarre: Oh?
30/03/2026, 20:55 - Finbarre: Oh no.
30/03/2026, 20:55 - Emma van Straaten: I dropped these immediately BEFORE you sent the above message
30/03/2026, 20:55 - Finbarre:
Oh. Oh dear. Whoever’s gonna get that card is gonna be in trouble.
30/03/2026, 20:55 - Emma van Straaten: I dropped them in my excitement after you chose them, then you sent the message saying not to 😭
30/03/2026, 20:56 - Emma van Straaten: What have I done?!
30/03/2026, 20:56 - Emma van Straaten: Ok I will pull now. After apologising to the cards (which I already have!)
30/03/2026, 20:58 - Emma van Straaten:
30/03/2026, 20:58 - Emma van Straaten:
30/03/2026, 21:00 - Finbarre: Funnily enough I have a felt Selkie hanging off my microphone.
30/03/2026, 21:02 - Finbarre:
30/03/2026, 21:02 - Emma van Straaten: I was hoping for one of the mysterious/sinister figures rife through the rest of the deck! The whales seem quite peaceful. I hope they bring the next interviewee clarity or perspective!
30/03/2026, 21:03 - Emma van Straaten: I love her!!
30/03/2026, 21:05 - Finbarre:
I’m possibly revealing too many of my secrets here. If I’m ever feeling nervous in a work meeting, or if I’m talking to a complete stranger and I get butterflies, I either end up talking to the Selkie, Mermaid Batman, or R2-D2 on my webcam there.
My Selkie there was bought from Nottingham’s Dark Arts Market, which I can thoroughly recommend if you’re ever in town.
Emma van Straaten, it has been an absolute pleasure having you on Tarot DMs. I’m about to disappear and read a story to my tinies, and I hope you have a splendid evening.
30/03/2026, 21:07 - Emma van Straaten:
Thank you so much for having me. This has been really, really fun. I have loved it.
Yeah, have a lovely evening!