🔎 In Focus: Interview with barista, writer, and advocate Brit Alexandria
We talk about being a barista, coffee hot takes, endometriosis, and their creative writing practice.
🔎 In Focus: Interview with barista, writer, and advocate Brit Alexandria
Welcome to another installment of In Focus, where I chat with coffee industry and adjacent creative folks. It’s been almost a year since the last one, so I’m excited to introduce you to today’s interview guest.
Brit Alexandria Sims has many roles in coffee and outside it. You may know them as a writer of the blog The Non-Binary Barista, a writer at Fresh Cup, and a fantasy novel author. Based in Virginia, USA, they’ve been writing since 2006 and working in coffee since 2017 (first as a barista, then trainer & manager). In addition to the above, they’re also an advocate for endometriosis and often speak out on what it’s like being neurodivergent and queer and how the identities cross in their lives. I’ve known Brit online for quite a few years now, and we’ve often commiserated on having anxiety and depression. I hope you enjoy the interview!
On coffee
At the beginning and end of our conversation, we talked about regulars, their life in the industry, and even some hot takes.
Jenn: What would you say keeps you in coffee?
Brit: Making those connections with people I really love. I love meeting new people and always seeing who turns up at coffee shops, at trade shows, and on the internet. Just meeting new people I think is really cool. Seeing what the coffee world has to offer—I feel like it's always expanding, it’s never boring.
When was the last time this happened? What was the last connection that you thought, “Oh, this is restoring my faith in humanity?”
I have this older white gentleman that has been a regular at the shop I worked at before my current one and this one. He loves how I make lattes. He always comes with whatever book he's reading currently. Last time, he was chatting with me and asked me, “What are you reading now?” I was reading a book about millennials being constantly burned out and feeling like they have to keep hustling. And he was like, “Wow, that makes so much sense. What I've seen of your generation, like my son.” And we eventually got started talking about politics and we realized that we were both the black sheep leftist of the family and it was like, “I didn't know that that was who you were.”
Is there anything else that keeps you in coffee?
I think I really love the art of making coffee. Anytime that I have a really bad day and I have those thoughts of like, I should just quit and move on to a different career, I'll come in and make myself a latte. I love steaming milk, I love dialing in espresso, I love building recipes.
What’s your coffee hot take?
Cold brew doesn't suck.
Oh my gosh.
I have been making cold brew in a cafe setting personally for years. I competed in a cold brew competition. So when I hear these coffee pros that are like—oh, well, if you take the dregs of your coffee bags and throw it in a bowl, let it get stale for three weeks, throw an indeterminate amount of coffee into a carafe, and fill it with however much water, like I don't really like cold brew, but you know, this is how I make it”— and I'm like, yeah, of course you don't like cold brew if this is how you're making it.
That sounds disgusting.
But if you make it and treat it like any other coffee like method, like when I was making my competition cold brew. I chose a single origin Rwanda and I tested multiple beans to make sure that it tasted like I wanted to. I have a specific brew ratio, I steep it for a specific amount of time. So many big names in the coffee industry will say that they hate cold brew and that it sucks and have a very inaccurate way of making coffee. Their cold brew ratio or their cold brew recipes are not good.
Would you say that's also the same coffee hill you’d die on? Or is there another one?
I actually did see this one that I'm not alone in, but it was saying that home baristas are not experts in coffee. They are enthusiasts. It’s one thing to make a great shot with a puck screen and a $3,000 espresso machine and every kind of tool and way imaginable. But it's another thing to make a great latte while you have a delivery that you have to put away, there's customers ordering, you're trying to make conversation while you're trying to do all of this. I think there's a special honorary title of barista that comes with that. I feel like there's also a quality about baristas that implies customer service.
On their novel & writing process
I am endlessly fascinated by other writers’ writing process. I’ve described my own convoluted one and have often fallen suspect to the many pieces of writing advice out there (often contradictory!). Brit published a fantasy novel in 2021 and is currently revising its sequel with hopes of publishing it within the next year. They joke that they write fantasy for people who hate to read it. A lot of fantasy is written by men, but also, they say, “There’s a lot of description in fantasy that doesn't tend to feel necessary. It'll be like three paragraphs about a tree that doesn't even matter, whereas I care about the characters.”
The first book took Brit about 2.5 years to write and the current one in its editing phase took 5-6 years to write.
In their words, “All We’ve Ever Done” is about the princess of the Kingdom of Dark Elves:
She goes to a meeting with the other Kingdoms within the Elvish territories and becomes friends with the children of those territories, but they're all at war. So it's a very tense friendship. And she has a lot of expectations put on her as the one who will inherit the throne, but they don't really match up with who she is as a person. So it's about “how do you be yourself when you have all these expectations placed on you,” as well as “how do you maintain friendships with people that you are supposed to hate,” and also “will they keep choosing you because they are supposed to hate you.”
What have you learned from writing the novels—was there something that you didn't expect to learn and you did?”
I saw some writing advice a while back that was like, “You really learn a lot from finishing a novel,” and it was never specific on what you learned but I do stand by that. Going through the writing process and figuring out when I get motivation, when I lose motivation, and just figuring out, “There's this last push where almost everything you write is terrible but you're just trying to finish the book.” Now that I've finished another book, it's easy to see that I’ve learned how to create plot a bit better.
Do you feel like when you're editing it a few years later that the plot you thought was good was no longer working for you?
Not as much, only because I am a serial outliner. There are some writers that start from one place and see where it takes them. I have massive outlines for my books, so I know going in exactly where the story is going to go. I don't really have any big changes at the very end. It's usually, okay, the plot is there, but I might need to add chapters.
That's interesting. I'm always fascinated by people's writing process. I dislike outlining—I am not a serial outliner. I am a “write from wherever.”
And I feel like all of us admire the other way.
Yeah I really wish I could just go serial outline.
I'm like, man, I feel like this would save so much time if I could just be, “You know what, I'm going to start from here and go,” but I have to outline everything.
Do you have to write from the beginning?
Yes, although that's more because I found that I have less plot holes if I start from the beginning and build off of everything. Every so often, I'll have scenes where I'm like, “Okay, I’m really into it now, so I'll write some of it.”
Side note from Jenn: This is the total opposite of me. I write from the middle and add wherever I want. I still have a first draft and a first edit, but I absolutely cannot start from the beginning, because it feels like too much pressure. In fact, this Q&A has been edited where I take parts of the interview and put them together in their sections, even if they weren’t spoken chronologically in that way.
How many drafts or edits do you feel like you go through?
I go through editing in different ways. Right now I'm doing a cursory—tearing the book to shreds, everything that is wrong with it. I also go through and listen to any playlists I've made about the book or any inspiration, and I'll write down all the notes of why I loved those things or why they reminded me of it. Then I'll go through the book and be like, okay, are these specific scenes hitting how I want them to? Are they matching the inspiration that I have? Then it's going through and actually fixing all of the edits. And reading it out loud because you definitely catch things better when you read it out loud. It's probably at least five or six stages of editing.
On having endometriosis & advocating awareness for it
March is Endometriosis Awareness Month, and I thought this interview would slot in well for it. Because endo is quite often categorized as a women’s medical condition, many of the statistics surrounding it reflect that. According to EndoMarch, it affects 1 in 5 women, girls, and persons assigned female at birth, with the caveat that there are an unknown number of men, intersex, trans, and non-binary people who also have it. In conservative estimations, 15-20 million people in the US have it and 400 million to 1.5 billion worldwide. EndoMarch also says:
Though you rarely hear about endometriosis in the news, it is a whole-body severe chronic inflammatory medical condition which is actually the third leading cause of hospitalization in women, girls, and persons assigned female at birth, and is among the leading causes of the estimated 600,000 hysterectomies performed each year in the U.S.
Endometriosis is diagnosed through a laparoscopy surgery. But because US healthcare can get pricey and/or someone doesn’t want the surgery, endo may be self-diagnosed by some people. Brit has not had the surgery, but the last three doctors they described symptoms to agreed that they all matched up to having endo. It also wasn’t until they told their mom about it that they learned about how other relatives had it (it can be genetic) and received hysterectomies.
What do you wish coffee people knew about endometriosis?
The biggest thing that I wish people knew is that endometriosis is what is called a dynamic disability, which is, I can be perfectly fine one day and then feel absolutely terrible, barely able to get up the next day. There is no rhyme or reason for that; my body for whatever reason has decided to do this. If I suddenly call out, or if I'm not the most energetic, or if I'm trying to make it through the day—it's not that I want to be that way or that I could have planned for it.
I imagine it's very difficult to manage that with work. What are the calculations that you have to make to make it work at work?” Very sorry for this awkward question structure.
For the most part, I have so many tools in my backpack at any given time. I have a lot of anti-nausea meds, I have pain meds, I have patches for pain, or I have a tens unit. I have a wearable heating pad that I've worn on bar that I really love. When I get really bad migraines where I can't even get up, or I'm hobbling around the house—there are days where it's like, hey, I literally cannot be there. I can't even get out of my doorway, so I need someone to cover me. That can be very hard, especially now that I'm a manager where there's less people to cover that. There have been times where I've had to go to work in that condition and hitting the knockbox every time sends shots of pain through my body, because knockboxes are terrible when you have a migraine.
Are there certain environments or environmental adjustments that you wish cafe owners would do? One example I can think of is allowing whoever's working the POS to sit instead of stand.
For a while, we were allowed to have a chair at my job and then it was taken away because people were abusing it. They were sitting down and not doing work. There are times when I have to physically pull up a chair, and most of my coworkers know that I'm not bringing the chair back just because I want to sit down. I'm feeling weakness. I physically cannot stand up unless I'm making a drink.
Between endo and I imagine having anxiety, and being neurodivergent, I would think that's really challenging to manage and explain and balance. Do you talk about all the things with people or is it more of like selective disclosures?
It's very much selective disclosures. With endometriosis, which is typically viewed as a women's disease—even though I'm non-binary, talking about endometriosis with men naturally veers into very awkward conversations. Because I'm talking about the ovaries, the vagina, the uterus, things like that. And a lot of the symptoms are located lower down in my body.
There's still parts of me that feel a little embarrassed talking about—even though it's very natural to my condition—pain in certain areas or awkward things that feel humiliating to explain. It’s a two-edged sword of I want to explain it because no one does, but I feel awkward and that's why no one does.
Do you feel like the explaining and the education are worth the awkwardness?
What originally made me think about it was hearing other people talk about it. I feel like everyone assumes that periods are supposed to be super uncomfortable, they're supposed to hurt.
On their Instagram, Brit often talks about endo and the everyday life of a barista and manager.
A last word on coffee
What is one thing that stresses you out about the coffee industry?
Some places in the coffee industry have lost perspective on the weight of coffee within the rest of the world. Yes, we talk about the C-price, yes, we talk about the conditions of farmers who are in origin regions—I talk a lot about and advocate a lot for Palestine—there are coffee drinkers in Palestine. There are aspects of whatever political kind of situation you want to talk about, whether it be the Congo, which is a coffee growing region, wars in Ethiopia that is a coffee growing region—it gets very much “Well, I just want to have my latte, I want to talk about gear. Now you're getting political. I don't need to talk about this because this is just my job or this is just my hobby.”
I think that when we divorce coffee from what is going on in these particular regions or in particular places where people do enjoy coffee and have a coffee culture—you can't divorce it from thattkpolitics. It needs to be like, yes, this is a product, it's a consumable product that we are selling, but it is also an entire industry. It is an entire culture. It's many cultures. The entire industry has weight and has connections to so many other things that I think it would do so much good if more people recognize the weight of the industry and the product.
If you would like to broaden your horizon on coffee cultures and the politics of the industry, Brit recommends following coffee farmers, importers who are in the country, and people speaking out about certain issues. An example they used was David Lalonde of Rabbit Hole Roasters, who advocates for Palestine but also “his own sourcing of trying to make sure that those relationships are honoring those people that he's doing business with.”
They also pointed out that we already do a lot of learning and associating in coffee that could be applied to learning about its politics. For example, as a barista, Brit likes to learn about roasting, but knows it’s not their strong suit and won’t ever be an expert in roasting. “You can take those ways of learning or ways of caring into everything else,” they say. “I may not be an expert in this, but this does relate to what I'm doing. So I'm going to do my best to learn about it when I can.”
In Focus is an ongoing interview series where I converse with coffee and coffee-adjacent creative people. I welcome nominations in my inbox, especially if they are based outside the US. Brit and I had an hour-long conversation where many quotes didn’t make it into here. Next week, paid subscribers will receive the bonus interview content that includes talking about their non-fiction writing and the interesting non-coffee jobs they’ve held.
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article links, recs, personal updates, and a plant feature
