Willy Vlautin at Rough Trade East

Willy Vlautin in Conversation

Rough Trade East, 17 June 2026

It was England's first World Cup match tonight, but I was far more interested in the fact that my favourite author, the incomparable Willy Vlautin, was doing an instore appearance at Rough Trade East, talking to journalist Kate Hutchinson about his new book, the wonderful The Left & The Lucky, and what a delightful night it turned out to be.

Given there was an anticipated football match on at the same time and the event wasn't sold out, I did wonder how well attended this Rough Trade instore would be but I needn't of worried, as even though I was once again the first there, the Vlautin faithful soon started to turn up, looking cheerful. And then when Vlautin himself turned up, he was carrying a guitar case so, while it was billed as "In Conversation", I was thrilled to know we would also be getting a song or two (or as it turns out, three!).

For some reason it took them ages to let us in, I think it was at least 20 minutes after the 7pm opening time listed , but once in I was happy to see there was seats and even better it started early, with Hutchinson coming out onto the small stage first to give her little introduction.

Vlautin jumped on stage and took a seat, looking very smart in his Western style shirt and jeans, holding a copy of his new book, which I am currently reading myself and only have a few pages left (I really don't want it to end and I told him so later on!).

I really can't stress enough how much Vlautin's work has meant to me. I only read his first book, The Motel Life back in 2006, because I was curious about the fact that the frontman from the Richmond Fontaine had written a book, and I was pleasantly surprised at just how good it was. Over the years I've come to anticipate every single book that he's written and I'm genuinely sad when I finish them, even though the stories are often heartbreaking. But they are also tender, full of kindness towards humanity and feature so many interesting characters, often down on their luck people who aren't often written about with such feeling and compassion.  I remember when I first read The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers I felt I had never read a book before that aligned so much with my world view and that's how I feel about Vlautin's work.

Hutchinson began by asking him about the new book, The Left & The Lucky (his eighth so far), a tale about the wholesome relationship between an eight year old boy called Russell, who comes from a dysfunctional family, and his neighbour, a house painter called Eddie, who feels so much like he's based on Vlautin himself (he later talks about how he was a painter and decorator for years right up until he was 37 years old). 

He spoke about how the men he worked with and the "jackassery" and tall tales they told, were an inspiration for the characters in the book, and despite how much crazy stuff they got up to and often were complete fuck ups, how much he loved them and chatting with them every day. "Being around that kind of people bullshitting all day long, it's really fun. Eating breakfast with a bunch of weirdos is really fun: that's why I learned early on to take great joy, that's the victory, those little things that you can attain. And I think that's in this book to the nth degree."

He reflected on the character Curtis in the book, Russell's tormented brother who takes his anger out on him, and the rage he's seen in many young men and the guidance they need but don't often get. He had an interesting analogy about telling someone to go towards the light and while they tell you of course they are going to do that, they instead run the other way and hit a brick wall, and how some people keep doing that and just can't be helped.

Vlautin clearly had a lot of love for the characters in his new book: the steadfast Eddie, the self-reliant Russell and even Curtis, who you could tell he had a lot of compassion for despite being such an unlikable person in the story. He was particularly enamored with the quirky and fun Houston, who he admitted had a far smaller role in the story initially but he quickly took over a lot of the book because he liked him so much.

I thought it was interesting that Vlautin said he always has a whole story plotted before he sits down to write his novels (which I genuinely don't know how he makes the time for given all the touring and recording he does with his band The Delines), and that other authors have said they write just to see what happens. Vlautin says that when he does that he writes himself into a quagmire that he can't get out of. He reflected that he thinks he writes that way because he's always had to be more economical with his time when writing as when he began writing stories he was working full time as a painter, so couldn't just waste time seeing where a story would go. 

Hutchinson also asked him about how his work as a songwriter and author intersected, and he spoke about how his early books and stories were often inspired by songs he had written in Richmond Fontaine, particularly The Motel Life, while Northline (his second novel)  is literally a song title on Winnemucca. Whereas his later work the stories came first and later inspired songs, because while writing them in was so involved in the story that he would pick up a guitar and write songs that came out of those worlds. It's a fascinating process and I can't imagine there are many authors that have these two ways to express themselves, although Vlautin's songs have always had something deeper going on in their storytelling.