Author and filmmaker Miranda July.  Photo credit: Todd Cole.

Miranda July made her directorial debut with "Me and You and Everyone We Know," a film that focused on characters trying and often failing to make connections and find love.

The filmmaker, writer and performance artist has often been compared to the tentative misfits who populate her work. Instead of basking in the aura of an auteur, July thrives on a process that does not let her get too comfortable.

“I consider it one of my tricks that I never have to go from one medium to the same medium,” July says. “I guess I’m tricking myself into being perpetually a beginner at each medium.”

July’s latest medium is the novel. Her longform fiction debut, “The First Bad Man,” is a strong example of her distinctive voice. The narrator of the story is a lonely misfit who is forced to make connections and step outside of her internal world. It’s a theme that July has explored in every medium from film to a smartphone app called “Somebody.”

“There’s something really old, I feel like in all of us that really defends tooth and nail our own version of loneliness,” July says. “There’s this sort of perpetual cross purposing.”

Listen to the interview: Miranda July on The Steve Fast Show

Follow Steve Fast on Twitter @SteveFastShow