The Seventh Week clarion west writers workshop • fall 2011 INTERVIEW Ramos Kiely by Photo Hiromi Goto: Interrupting Expectations BY NISI SHAWL ’92 Hiromi Goto Hiromi Goto, a Japanese-Canadian writer, all of these places without my writing. I range of people than I’ll ever meet in my won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award for her also get to meet so many amazing and lifetime. This is a kind of magic. 2001 novel, The Kappa Child, and the Carl wonderful people, and my circle of friends Brandon Parallax Award for her 2009 YA novel, Half World. A former writer-in-res- You’re active on Twitter, with the handle idence with the University of Alberta, Simon resolution in @hinganai. What does “hinganai” mean? Fraser University, and the Vancouver Public Library, Goto will teach the second week of narrative fiction is Hahahahahahaaaa! It’s Japanese for the 2012 Clarion West Writing Workshop. someone who is coarse or vulgar (there are overprescribed class implications as well!)….When my sisters and I were young, my mother and What do you like about your life as a grandmother tried very hard to raise us as writer? Is it what you imagined it would be? “proper young ladies.” They often told us and peers expands beyond the local to the how we were “hinganai.” I think it’s hilari- I came to writing because I loved to read global. Being a writer also means that I can ous. And I’m a proud hinganai adult! and thought it would be most remarkable work from home and have a lot of solitary to actually make something that I loved. time to think, read, research, and imagine— As it turns out, I am very grateful for all I really need and value this time alone. I am What effect does tweeting have on your the world travel that has come with my also so thrilled that my words and thoughts professional writing? You also blog—is publications. I’ve been to five continents; are moving around in the world beyond my there a relationship between blogging I don’t think I would have ever gone to physical self, communicating with a broader and writing professionally? THE SEVENTH WEEK |FALL 2011 | PAGE 1 I joined Twitter recently in order to have both successful and failed. Then there is fall into this kind of binary thinking, we an online presence. I like how it links me a kind of death. The story is over.W here imagine ourselves as not like them. I think to sites I wouldn’t have found on my own. is the reader’s place in this? Purely as of “good” and “evil” (if we set aside moral I can also interact with folks easily and spectator? What of the author/reader value) in a way similar to Kinsey’s ap- lightly. I began blogging just two years ago. relationship? What of the narrator/reader proach to sexuality. There is a spectrum, we I’m a total noob, not like someone like Liz relationship? What has been your part in move around it. In writing Darkest Light, Henry (http://badgermama.com). Having the experience of the text? I was drawn to the challenge of really get- a website and blogging has brought work It is important, I think, that readers ting into the head of someone who could my way—workshop gigs, readings, etc. So have space to have agency in their reading, be very bad….Someone like you and me. totally beneficial professionally. even if they are also, simultaneously, im- A human and a monster. I don’t spend as much time styling plicated. Therefore, I feel that stories that the work as I would fiction that is go- have ragged ends or bumpy beginnings, or ing to publication. It’s a different kind missing finales or a hole in the middle… Your first session as a Clarion West of expression—I’m a little more casual. I these things can interrupt expectations, instructor is coming up in 2012, but think there’re tons of fabulous things to be and something else must be placed in the you’ve taught at several other writing done with new media venues. I’m looking space that is left unwritten. People may workshops. What can they do? How do forward to the next gen of young writers read stories/texts like these as, perhaps, you teach them? really exploring the elastic possibilities of “unfinished” or having missing pieces. Or creative expression unbound by physical they may have a form or shape that is truly When workshops are working, participants limitations (like my brain). unfamiliar. Sesshu Foster’s Atomik Aztex can boost their skill level and learn some- includes an author’s note before the story, thing new. At their worst, workshops can telling the readers looking for plot to, make you feel really bad, and/or you learn In a recent Twitter exchange, you wrote, instead, go to Huck Finn! very little. Or they make you feel good and “I feel that resolution in narrative fiction you’ve also not learned anything new. I is overprescribed. Find that uber-con- believe we learn by doing. I encourage the cluded stories highly consumable, but Jillian Tamaki’s many gorgeous illus- development of the poetics of language/ contained.” Would you care to elaborate trations of Half World give your book sound as an effective tool for writing fic- using more than 140 characters? a sort of comic or graphic novel feel. tion and playing with content and form. What was it like to see drawings of your Instead of focusing on crafting “the perfect I think there are two broad modes of world and characters? story,” I like to encourage independent engagement with a text. The more popular thinking, risk-taking, and play. one is a mode of consumption. The second My editor at Penguin Canada asked me if mode is of interactive engagement. A I’d like to have illustrations in the novel. highly consumable text follows strongly I was thrilled with the idea. I am a very You talk in other interviews and on your identifiable features and does not stray visual writer—I can “see” the stories in my blog about Octavia E. Butler. What was from the form—stylistically and structur- mind much like I view films. So it seems a her importance to you? ally, the text does not disturb. Nor does the very natural extension to see illustrations content. Readers can comfortably engage of the novel. It’s funny—when I first saw She serves as a role model. She was an with this familiar text, their curiosity Jillian’s depiction of Melanie I was a little African-American writer writing SF stories engaged via causality and plot. It is satisfy- startled. “That’s not what she looks like,” I with African-American characters with ing. It is entertaining. But very, very rarely thought. Now it’s as if Melanie has always complex/complicated lives. Her integration does it require the reader to actively and looked like Jillian’s illustrations of her. of the scientific speculative seemed highly intellectually stretch from their place of believable, interesting, and plausible rather comfort. One of my sisters exclaimed, “I than mere window dressing, and she deftly don’t want to read to think. I think enough Online summaries of Darkest Light, the included elements of race and diversity in at work. I want to read to relax.” Many companion book to Half World, suggests her novels in a normative way. I admire how people may feel this way. Tightly shaped that it’s an even darker tale than its pre- she handled race—on her terms. and concluded stories fit nicely into con- decessor. Is it? sumer reading. There are times when I seek “a relax- I am always fascinated by how different How many stories are there in the ing read,” but for the most part I’m not story venues choose to depict a character universe? that interested in reading narratives that or person who “is evil.” As social animals, re-establish normative idea(s/ls). A tightly we have a lot invested in identifying As many as the stars…. constructed, plot-based story is a highly potentially dangerous persons around us. consumable art form. It exists as a mini- But I find that we tend to flatten their life with its arc of challenges, outcomes, identities. What gets me is that when we THE SEVENTH WEEK | FALL 2011 | PAGE 2 It’s personal. that possible. Each dollar helps make that happen, every year—not just for the I’m here to talk on behalf of Clarion West eighteen students of the workshop, but for about being grateful and excited. It’s part hundreds of other writers as well. When of my role as board chair to thank you for you support Clarion West, you help us your support, and it’s always a pleasure make that kind of difference. because CW matters to me. I believe Your support changed my life this the work we do transforms writers’ lives summer. That matters to me. It’s personal. and expands the landscape of speculative And I thank you with all my heart. fiction. I believe that our graduates have created some of the best work in the field, that our instructors are gods and goddesses of the art, that our staff and volunteers And now let’s talk about excitement! From the Chair are the most passionate and hardworking We have a stellar set of instructors in place people I’ve ever met, and that our donors for the 2012 workshop: Mary Rosenblum, Y ELLEY SKRIDGE B K E are unparalleled in their generosity.