Jacket, Gap. Shorts, vintage Levis. Necklace (worn throughout), stylist's own. Photography by Gustavo Marx Styling by Erin Dixon Hair and Makeup by Ronnie Peterson Model: Lubomira Stefaniakova Click "Read More" for additional images. Top, Clu. Jeans, Diesel. Bra, American Apparel. Skirt, vintage Levis. Shirt, Ralph Lauren. Jeans, Diesel. Overalls, Isabel Marant. Bracelet, stylist's own.

Danny Jauregui is a California based artist.

Jennifer Egan's latest book, A Visit From the Goon Squad is a collection of short stories told in many different voices that come together to look at a group of people and the passage of time. Each story could easily stand alone, as did "A to B," which was published in Dossier and "Safari," which was published in The New Yorker. As Egan's fans know, her style varies from book to book and this collection is a testament to her wide-ranging mastery of voice and tone. She takes on the voices of so many different characters in this book- thirteen to be exact- that range from little girls to old men. The title comes from one of the characters, Bosco: "Time is a goon," and Egan shows us how people grow-up, fall in love, find success, become obsolete, stage comebacks, get old and die all in the course of one life. This is not the first book to employ this tactic of the collective narrator, but I think it is done in such an organic way where you really feel something pulling you towards these characters and start thinking about how lives are lived in groups. Egan was kind enough to answer a few of our questions about writing such a multi-layered book and what she is reading now. Katherine Krause: How did you start writing A Visit From the Goon Squad? Jennifer Egan: A Visit From the Goon Squad began as so many projects do: as a way of avoiding something else. I was having trouble approaching a novel I'd been researching for quite a while, and I was looking for an entertaining distraction. Around this time, I found myself washing my hands in a hotel bathroom on the Upper East Side. When I looked down, I noticed a wallet resting in a bag in plain view right below the sink I was using. Its owner seemed to be in the toilet stall. Having been pickpocketed and otherwise robbed somewhere around fifteen times in my life, I felt immediate anxiety about the vulnerability of that wallet. Then I thought: but there's no one in the bathroom except me. Which led to the fantasy of taking the wallet...or rather, a projection into the mind of a woman who might do such a thing. I found it exhilarating to imagine myself on the other side of the robbery equation. I decided to begin working on a story the next morning, beginning at the moment that a woman takes a wallet from a bathroom. Three years later, I finished Goon Squad. Katherine: It only took three years to write Goon Squad? Jennifer: Well, about three years, but four of the chapters in it I'd written and published some years ago as stand-alone stories. They were in a kind of limbo in my mind; I wanted to revisit them, but wasn't sure how to. Then, to my surprise and excitement, I found the new material sending out tentacles and attaching to that earlier stuff. Characters from those older stories began to reappear at earlier and later moments of their lives. So if you include the time I spent writing that older material, it ends up having been a longer process. But difficult to measure. Katherine: So, the stories didn't start out being connected to each other? Jennifer: Each one would make me curious about a peripheral character, and then I'd begin a piece about that person. For example, in the first chapter, "Found Objects," the wallet thief mentions in passing her former boss, a record producer who sprays pesticide in his armpits and sprinkles gold flakes in his coffee. When I wrote that, I meant it as a laugh line--a thumbnail sketch of a decadent music industry type. But after finishing that chapter, I found myself curious about the music producer and why he has those odd habits. So I began a story about Bennie Salazar, who turned out to be one of the main characters, and I began with no more information than the fact that he did those odd things. The chapter was an exploration of why he did them. And in the course of writing that chapter, several other peripheral characters caught my eye...and so on. Katherine: Do you have a favorite character in Goon Squad? Jennifer: It would probably be Bennie Salazer, whom I mentioned above. I loved him for his wild, neurotic eccentricities. He's also plagued by shame memories, which is something that was happening to me at about the time I began his chapter. So we have that in common. Katherine: Who was the first character you wrote about? Jennifer: First Sasha, then Bennie. Then Bennie's former wife, Stephanie, whose older brother turned out to be someone from one of the earlier stories. That one took the form of a celebrity profile, told from the point of view of a troubled, exhausted, harassed and ultimately violent man who attacks the starlet he's interviewing. When I wrote about Stephanie, that character, Jules Jones, reappeared after his jail sentence. Katherine: Which was the last story? Jennifer: The last one was the second-to-last chapter, which is written in PowerPoint. I wrote that under a lot of pressure last summer, after I'd already sold the book. I was absolutely consumed by a desire to write fiction successfully in PowerPoint. But let me tell you, it's not easy. Katherine: Was that the hardest to write? Jennifer: The PowerPoint chapter was the hardest technically. Second hardest would be "Out of Body," which is written in second person. Also very hard to pull off. Katherine: Was it difficult to switch back and forth between so many voices? Jennifer: I found it refreshing to move from one to the next, in much the same way that I like to completely change the ground rules from one book to another. But it was extremely hard to find a unique voice, and world, and mood, for each chapter. It was hard to start fresh thirteen times and still have them all add up to one big story. Katherine: Why did you choose to write Alison's chapter in PowerPoint and footnote Jules' chapter? Jennifer: I knew I wanted to write in PowerPoint before I knew what that chapter would be about. I tried first to tell it from the point of view of a different character working in the corporate world--hence the PowerPoint. But found that a corporate frame was pretty deadening for fiction. I'd also toyed with the idea of writing about Sasha (the wallet thief) many years later, but I didn't want to write another chapter from her point of view. Then it came to me that one of her kids could be the author of the PowerPoint, which gets around the corporate feeling. And I began to hear a kid of "voice" she would use in her PowerPoint, which was when I knew the gambit might work. As for the footnotes, I was trying to capture the desperate way in which writers of celebrity profiles try to elevate their pieces above the very low level at which celebrity profiles tend to operate. I felt so sympathetic to that attempt, but I also wanted to poke some fun at the result. I wrote that piece in the 1990s, when the David Foster Wallace/Nicholson Baker influence was pretty intense. There were a lot of footnotes around at that time. Katherine: Is the book about the group of people or is it really about Sasha? Jennifer: I think that's really up to the reader. For me, it's about different people at different times, and about all of them together, and about time itself. Katherine: On your website, you have some notes about the genesis of your stories- do you have one you would like to share with us? Jennifer: Sure, I'll share some notes about the last chapter, "Pure Language," which is one of my favorites: Original Title: “Reach” Where: In Prospect Park, after dropping off my son at Hebrew School, in a shrinking patch of sunlight on the grass, listening to bicyclists whipping past on the road behind me and wishing it were slightly warmer. Music: The Frames, FOR THE BIRDS History: My husband and I moved out of our apartment on West 28th Street in January 2001, three weeks after our first child was born. We made the jump to Brooklyn, a place I hardly knew except from trips to BAM. Before we sold our co-op, we learned that the two squat buildings east of us had been bought by a hotel company, which planned to build a skyscraper there. For years after we moved, nothing happened. And then, maybe three years ago, getting off the 1/9 train at my old stop on West 28th Street, I noticed construction beside our old building. The skyscraper was beginning to go up. Our apartment had four windows, all facing east; through one of them, where I’d placed my desk, I could look almost straight up at the Empire State Building. I remember that building so many different colors — a beautiful prong of New York, reminding me of why I’d come here in the first place, without family or job — with nothing more than a desire to be here. By now, that window must be covered up. Last bit of history: It was only as I wrote about Alex not having seen the original World Trade Center that it struck me in a deep way that a whole generation of young New Yorkers has never seen those buildings — their experience of the city is purely post 9/11. Which of course is a strange idea for those of us who were here before. One of my first jobs in New York involved catering for the Port Authority; taking the 2 train from the West 69th Street apartment with the foam couch, getting off inside the World Trade Center and vaulting by elevator into a vast internal kitchen, thick with foody humidity, where (in my memory, anyway) there were mixing bowls the size of bathtubs. I wore a black skirt, dark tights and a white blouse, and my job was to arrange cookies on white paper doilies for luncheon meetings in the Port Authority offices. Naturally, I hated it. But I do find myself remembering that job, now and then. Katherine: What are you listening to right now? Jennifer: Well, my husband brought home a Madeline Peyroux CD last night and I was wild about it. He's in the theater, and is actually the source of a lot of the new music I end up liking. Katherine: How many hours a day do you write? Jennifer: When I'm generating new material, I try to write 5-7 pages on a legal pad a day. I write by hand. Sometimes I can complete that job in an hour or two; sometimes it takes all day. Editing I can do for much longer periods. But honestly, I feel terribly far from all of it right now. I'm dying to reconnect with that part of my life. Katherine: Do you have any rituals for writing? Jennifer: Not really. The fact that I write by hand makes it easy to write anywhere. If I'm looking for a big new idea or direction, I'll often go to a coffee shop. If I know what I want to do and just need to get to it efficiently, I'll stay home. I try not to stop for very long once I start, because I'm trying to enter a sort of unconscious state outside of rational thought or planning. That's where the good stuff comes from, for me. Katherine: Could you provide a list for our readers of some favorite books of yours for summer reading? Jennifer: Well, I don't really think in terms of "summer reading," because I tend to like the same kinds of books all year long. But here are some ideas: -The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins: fantastic gothic thriller. Impossible to put down. -The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton: one of my favorites of all time. No one has more piercingly examined the relationship between beauty and commerce. -Middlemarch by George Eliot: Such a glorious novel, and so strange. Better every time. -Anything by Harold Q. Masur. His 1940s mysteries are unbelievably stylish (his "detective" is Scott Jordan, an irresistible--to women--lawyer). I believe his books are all out of print, but they're worth tracking down for the sheer fun of it. Katherine: What are you reading now? Jennifer: David Copperfield. Can't believe I've never read it before. It's fantastically inventive; Dickens' sense of how to put a scene together is thrilling. Katherine: What do you want to read next? Jennifer: Bleak House. I read this years ago but I don't remember it well. I've gotten really interested in 19th Century fiction, and plan to focus mostly on that for the rest of this year. Katherine: Who are some of your favorite authors working today? Jennifer: Joyce Carol Oates, Don DeLillo, Robert Stone, George Saunders, Jhumpa Lahiri, Susan Choi. Katherine: What is one book you always refer to or read again? Jennifer: Traditionally it's been The Image by Daniel Boorstin, which was published in 1961 but essentially predicts, in accurate detail, the mass-media saturation of American culture and its bizarre consequences. That book should be required reading for every person living in America. But now I have a new one to add to the list: You Are Not a Gadget, by Jaron Lanier. Lanier invented the term "virtual reality," and was one of the early true believers in the positive power of the internet. Now he feels that things have gone badly awry, most of all because the Internet has ended up stifling creativity (and draining income from those who create) rather than spurring it. It's a fascinating, necessary read. Katherine: Who are some of your favorite artists working in a different discipline? Photography, painting, mixed-media, etc... Jennifer: Well, I love Bill Viola, and his work has had a real influence on me over the years. I've been following the painter Vincent Desiderio for a long time. I've enjoyed the video installations of Toni Dove. My friend Eva Mantell stunned me recently with some strange and exquisite leaf rubbings that are so complex you have no idea how they were made. And another friend, Magaret Boyer, is doing fantastic large-scale color prints that remind me of a Cindy Sherman sensibility unleashed in the domestic realm. Katherine: If you weren't a writer, what would you be doing? Jennifer: Good question. I could see myself as a doctor or an archeologist--both things I wanted badly to be at earlier points in my life. If I were a doctor and didn't have a family, I would like to work with warring or refugee populations. I'd love to know that what I'm doing is directly helping people. That's not a feeling you have often as a fiction writer. Katherine: What are you working on now? Jennifer: Blabbing about this book, mostly, but I'm fantasizing (hopefully the first step toward action) about writing another piece involving some characters from Goon Squad. Most of all, I want to tackle that big project I wrote Goon squad to avoid. I feel ready to approach it, finally--I hope it's still out there, waiting for me.

Watching Jibz Cameron perform as her infamous alter-ego, Dynasty Handbag, feels like being invited to a private party in the mind of your artfully delusional great-aunt. Part clown, part id, part Real Housewife of Miami, Dynasty Handbag gracefully dashes between the lines of manic sub-conscious neurosis and external performativity, usually to reeling comedic effect.  Frequently employing pre-recorded text, Dynasty’s signature conversations-with-herself is taken to new levels in her current show, VERTititGO, wherein the elastic actress expands the character of Dynasty into six different personae (including a boxing flower and a profoundly gentle bear). The play is part of Dixon Place’s annual LGBTQ HOT! Festival, though the only thing gay about this show is Jibz herself.  Either way, VERTititGO shouldn’t be missed. I recently got to talk up the affable Ms. Cameron, and— hoping to capitalize on her seemingly sub-conscious all-access-pass— I asked her to draw me a picture while we discussed process, anxiety, breasts, and bears. Ivy: So tell me everything. How did Dynasty come to be? Jibz: I had been writing these really simple little songs on my Casio. And I started talking to myself in between sets. Ivy: And that whole thing of the two voices was born. Jibz: And also I was married at the time, and I was having a really hard time in the marriage, ending, and I was sort of working out a lot of my shit with that. I think the looks, of Handbag, came out of that. The first show I did was called Miami Divorce Funeral Vacation, or something like that. It was sort of a retired divorce, bitter, that kind of thing… I was sort of making fun of myself because I was there, like 26, and divorced. It was a lot more tame [than now], and a lot more self-deprecating. She wasn’t quite as busted. Ivy: Your performances really come out as all id.  Right? Jibz: Well, yeah, people say that she’s pretty much all sub-consciousness. I would like to somehow access a part of my consciousness that isn’t filtered through what is going on right in front of me, in the world, or history, or my fear and anxiety—and I try to do that. But I don’t know that it’s really possible. But it is where I like to go. Because it’s the most interesting. And you can feel it too in your gut—whether it’s really true, or whether you’re creating something that’s meant to do something else besides tell the truth about something—it’s like nahhhh, I’m just doing that to tell a joke or whatever. She is less of a character and more of a vessel. Ivy: It’s a person layered over another person or something. Or an under-layer. The cool thing—and this doesn’t feel super-conscious but is certainly there—is this idea of beauty—like you said, "she used to be less busted." And it’s an amazing thing, the moment the lights come back up and you bow and up comes the gorgeous Jibz Cameron. And the whole show, you’ve been something else. Jibz: Aw, thank you. Ivy: The one fortuneteller character is pretty foxy. Jibz: Well, that was the closest I’ve ever come to having someone be kind of beautiful—but in my mind, she doesn’t look that way. In my mind that lady has what we always called yam tits. Ivy: Like, banana tits? Like super curly tits? Jibz: No, like hippie lady— Ivy: Oh, empty wallet tits. Jibz: Yeah, empty wallet tits. Empty crystal sacks. There were a lot of ladies in my childhood like that woman. I’m not interested in looking… I’m not interested in representational ideas of beauty. I mean, for me.  Obviously, if I’m watching Meryl Streep or Isabella Rossellinni it’s not like, a problem. Ivy: Well those women are also sort of most interesting in spite of their beauty. Or not just because of their beauty. Jibz: Not beauty in the sense of like, really-skinny-big-tits-why-is-that-attractive, but rather, [I’m interested] with the things around us that are meant to mean beauty. Like with the outfits that Dynasty wears or whatever—like somebody thought that this would represent her in a certain way. Ivy: Signifiers. Jibz: Yeah, all the signifiers. I mean, everything is signifiers. Ivy: Even in the name, isn’t it? I mean the name is the person, is the bag, is the vessel. So this show is part of a gay festival. But Dynasty Handbag is kind of sexless, right? Jibz: Thank you. Ivy: Did you ever study clowning? Because clowning, in the sort of Shakespearean sense, has that idea that clowns are pre-sexual, existing before sexuality. Pure. Not acting like children, exactly, but existing in a time before sexuality; innocent. Jibz: Yes!  And also with clowning, there’s not a whole lot of ulterior motives. You just wanna get what you wanna get, which is what everything is about. Especially in theater—how are they gonna get what they want? That’s the story. And if there is sexuality, it’s like, really exaggerated. And then the joke becomes about how ridiculous it looks trying to be sexual. Ivy: How long have you actually been doing Dynasty Handbag? Jibz: It’s been a while. I think since 2001? I was in a band called Dynasty, and I had written these songs, and then the band fell apart.  And I still had all these songs and that’s how it became the handbag—portable, on the boom box— Ivy: Ohhhhh. Jibz: But then I ended up re-forming the band with other people. I was the singer and I played keyboards. Or I banged on them. And I was also an actor, and working in plays. Like, regular plays. Ivy: You went to art school, but you also went to acting school? Jibz: I did, I went to ACT, for two years. I had realized after I graduated from art school that I was in self-denial about my love of performing. It’s very hard on your ego, and I never really fit in with the theater people. When I was a teenager, I was so negative—such a hater—and like, getting up onstage and saying, "lalala I’m an actor!" There is a level of self-confidence required that I just didn’t have. Ivy: And then a level of self-confidence that has to be broadcast, like, constantly. Self promoting-- walking into every audition room with that attitude of just “I’m your guy!  I’m the greatest!” Has Dynasty ever had to audition for anything? Jibz: No. I would never do that to her. But I have. [That is, Jibz Cameron has.] It doesn’t work. I just don’t come across well in that situation. Ivy: You got some grants on this show, right? Jibz: Well, I got a commission—they have one commission that they do for the festival. And so they asked me to do this show. And so I wrote it, and actually, the night before opening night I had to just re-do a lot of it. Because it just wasn’t working the way I had rehearsed it. And this was really new and really hard for me, this process. Usually I don’t open myself up to critique while I’m making something so much—I just bang something out and I’m like: "if you don’t like it? Bleh." I don’t really go back into it that deeply. I make it, then move on. But here I had a lot of people telling me things, and of course had Kate Valk [of the Wooster Group, who was the Artistic Advisor on VERTititGO]. Ivy: How did that come about? Jibz: Well, when I first came to New York, I interned at the Wooster Group. And then a million years later I was doing the Room For Cream [Live Lesbian Soap Opera @ LaMama], which was like, the most fun ever, and she came on and played my adoptive mother. Then she got me an audition for a Wooster Group show, which was so exciting I couldn’t even sleep or breathe. I ended up not being right for the part, but it went to Francis McDormand, so, you know, it was cool. And when I got this commission they told me I needed to work with someone, that I needed a director of some kind. And I was like, no way, I don’t know how to do that. And so I just asked her! And it was just a crazy progression of being an intern, like, sweeping the floor thinking: “Someday!” Ivy: Dynasty is an inspiration to interns everywhere! Jibz: Yeah! And now I even have interns! Ivy: A little cabinet of mini-handbags. So what did Kate really do for you? Jibz: Kate really helped me find the subtleties with the characters. And she really helped me find the shape the writing, and we worked a lot with the Detective’s voice—and that has changed a lot. It’s still changing. Ivy: But that’s largely pre-recorded, right? Jibz: Yes. And I’m still re-recording it, as I keep finding new things in the character. Ivy: This is really a pretty big departure than anything you’ve ever done before, with Dynasty Handbag, right? I mean, did she ever represent other characters before? Jibz: No! Yes, this has been all new; usually the other characters are the ones on the voice-overs. Ivy: Right, so here we’re actually getting to see them. Jibz: Exactly. That was what I wanted to do. Structuring it was the hard part. Ivy: Well sure, like writing a proper play is a whole different bag. And that’s really what this is—a play, with characters and a story and an arc. Jibz: Yes, tell me about it-- I’ve never had to deal with that before—story. Before, it was just “whatever, this is just my weird thing and whatever blahhhh.” But now I’m like, really grappling with my ability to tell a story. Because I feel confident in my ability to play these characters. But structure, I struggle with. Ivy: But it feels so right, now--where it begins and where it ends. Jibz: Well it does, now. But I had to go through so many ideas that were not working. Ivy: What is the story with the bear? Jibz: The bear is… well, my girlfriend bought a house upstate. I was up there, working, all by myself, and I was looking out the window. And a bear just came walking through the yard. I knew they were up there, but the way that it was walking, it was just like—no big deal.  I mean the deer and the turkeys—they all have an awareness of where they are, they’re kind of freaked out. But with the bear, it was like: “What do I have to worry about—I’m a bear.” And I just started reading about bears, what they’re about, what they’re really doing. And they’re really, just all the time, they’re looking for food. And we’re all just looking for things to survive. And you know, they don’t sit around and have anxiety about, “how will I get my needs met?” Just very immediate. Put things in perspective for me. And the only time I feel like I’m in that moment, without anxiety, is when I’m doing this stuff, performing. Dynasty Handbag performs her new work, VERTititGO, at Dixon Place, 161A Christie Street, NYC, tonight, Friday July 23rd and tomorrow, Saturday July 24th @ 7.30pm. Photographs by Danielle Top, Drawing by Jibz Cameron

We've been seeing a lot of Byrdie Bell lately, whether it's in the Club Monaco lookbook (shot by Garance Doré and also featuring Dossier associate creative director Alec Friedman) or on Purple Diary. The actress/model/girl about town is definitely adorable, especially so in the following images, shot by Marley Kate and styled by Allison Miller. And the word is that she's also as sweet as she looks. Click "Read More" for additional images. Panty, Topshop.  Hat, Byrdie's Own. Shorts, Vintage Wrangler. Bodysuit, The Lake and Stars via Urban Outfitters. Shorts, Quail. Bikini, Topshop. Top, American Apparel. Bikini Bottom, Topshop. Makeup and hair by Nicole Heffron

Deciding what to make for dinner can be hard. Here are two things that may help. One is to consult this website, the other is to watch the video of our friend Ithai preparing some roasted duck below.