In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, Podcast Editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with long-time Strange Horizons contributor RB Lemberg for a conversation about their extensive work with the magazine, using poetry as a tool to refine short and long-form fiction, writing about the diaspora experience, and the comfort one can find in stories from perspectives outside one's own. Oh, and Ursula K LeGuin, of course.

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Episode show notes:

• Read RB Lemberg's work in our archives.
• Visit their website, their Patreon, or follow them on Bluesky.
• Buy Yoke of Stars, their latest Birdverse novella, which just won the World Fantasy Award!
• Pre-order We Will Rise Again, the activism anthology edited by Annalee Newitz, Karen Lord, and Malka Older.
• Find more links to their work, plus other interesting things, scattered through the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres.

Today's guest, RB Lemberg, was first published in Strange Horizons in 2010, and most recently in March of this year, with everything from poetry and fiction to round tables and articles under their belt on Strange Horizons alone. RB is a queer bi-gender immigrant from Ukraine to the US. They are an author of five books of speculative fiction and poetry, many of which are set in a shared universe, a translator from Ukrainian and Russian, and an academic. RB's books of fantasy have been shortlisted for the Nebula, Locus, Ignyte, World Fantasy Award, the Le Guin Award for fiction, and many others. It's so great to have you here, RB.

RB Lemberg: It is so great to be here, Kat. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Kat Kourbeti: You are one of the people I think of as like Strange Horizons people, you know what I mean?

RB Lemberg: I'm so glad to hear this. It's probably my favorite magazine. I think Strange Horizons and Beneath Ceaseless Skies are my two favorite magazines in the whole world, so.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I mean, I think there's few people who are so like, embedded in sort of everything that we do and all of the different departments we have. Like, you've kind of worked with everybody.

RB Lemberg: I have been very happy, privileged, and lucky to work with multiple editors at Strange Horizons across multiple departments. And so it's always such a delight to return to the magazine and to read the magazine, and thank you for this opportunity to interview.

Kat Kourbeti: It has been such a joy interviewing everyone on this podcast who has such different, first of all, different experiences with the magazine, but also different ways of coming into it, different genres and different formats that they write in. And it's all so varied, and 25 years is a long time, so there's been a lot of variety—

RB Lemberg: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: —in these interviews already, including your partner, Bogi, with whom I had a really nice chat about criticism and reviews and all sorts of things.

So I wanna hear about your work in general. First of all, you dabble in so many things. Your genre is predominantly fantasy, I would say.

RB Lemberg: You know, I love so many different things within the speculative realm, and I've even ventured beyond the speculative. But I think my heart is in the speculative realm, broadly construed, and I think within that very, very large space, fantasy is where my heart is primarily. But I've written everything: I've written science fiction, I've written horror, I've written slipstream, surrealism, things that people say are realism, but they're not really realism, essays, poetry, like really academic stuff, translations. I've really done a lot of stuff over the years and I think it's a feature, not a bug.

But yes. So I think I'm most known for my fantasy work, both within poetry and within fiction. I've written a lot of stuff set in my Birdverse universe, which is a secondary world with many, many cultures and languages and very queer, very trans, and have been running for a long time.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. We'll get to that one because I wanna hear all about it. First of all, like, you're a very curious person, you wanna find out all the things, you wanna analyze the things. In terms of format, because you've written a lot of shorts, you've written obviously novels, the poetry... what draws you to the different formats, would you say, and how do you decode if like, something that you've come up with— do you have an idea, when it starts forming in your brain and you're like, I think I want this to be that?

RB Lemberg: You know, it's such a great question and I don't know if I have a capsule answer to that. I feel—and again, I dunno if that's the actual reality of other people, but for a very long time I felt, "oh my God, other people can just focus on one or two things and you have the spread and things just happen. And what's wrong? What's wrong, RB?"

And then I started getting deeper and deeper into Ursula Le Guin's work. I mean, I've always been into her work since I can remember. Now I'm doing a lot of work connected to her actual poetry and some nonfiction that she's written, and the more I studied Le Guin's body of work and the more immersed I became in her body of work, the better I felt about my own spread, because she also did everything and she delighted in everything, literally everything. For some reason, when people think about her work, they think about novels and they think about science fiction, but she's literally written everything. And so it gave me a lot of solace to know that, hey, a lot of other people have actually done this, where you do a lot of different things and they feed each other.

So how do I know what is what? I don't, a lot of times. Recently I've just finished a short story that I sent out, and I've written at least three poems that I connected to the short story. I now teach it also, as a tool. I teach speculative fiction writing sometimes, and I tell folks about this thing that I use, which is poem outlines. I write poems to accompany the fiction that I'm writing, that help me disentangle plot and character development and emotions.

I have a few formal approaches about how to write poem outlines, and sometimes they just appear. But I think in terms of poetry, which is probably my first and truest love throughout my life, it works by lines. I am walking or doing something completely different—usually I'm in motion, Walking is usually how it happens—then the line pops into my brain and I have to write it down, and then the second line pops into my brain, and I have no idea where this is going... and then I start writing. Then I figure out where it's going, and here is the poem.

I also love epic poetry. I love the long form. I've written a bunch, mostly for Strange Horizons. I've written a whole bunch of very long poetry before I told myself "actually, these are stories! People should actually experience them as fiction as well." So I started doing more fiction.

I think my approach is fluid and it's really whatever comes, and things come and go and they morph, and as I said, sometimes I write about kind of the same idea or image I have in my mind. I would write a piece of fiction and I would write a poem and I would write another poem and I would write an essay about another thing that I'm thinking about. Once I've even written, like I've written with my latest Birdverse novella (Yoke of Stars), it was a dissertation chapter and it was a publication and it was like an academic publication and it was a whole bunch of poetry and it was a short story. And then it was an unpublished short story, 'cause I felt, "oh, it really needs to be longer". And then finally, it became a novella.

So I really think that my approach is fluid, and over the years I've not been very chill about this process, I'll be honest.

Kat Kourbeti: I mean, actually I would argue this is the chillest response I've had—

RB Lemberg: Thank you!

Kat Kourbeti: —from someone who does so much, and you're very prolific as well, which I admire immensely. No, I think it's super chill to just be like, "well, I'm gonna let it be what it is, and we're gonna find out. I don't know, I'm gonna try this."

The idea of poem outlines sounds fascinating to me and I want to try it.

RB Lemberg: Yeah, you should try it. So if you want to hear more, I can tell you, and I can tell everyone what I do.

Kat Kourbeti: I mean honestly, yeah! This podcast is very much like a little masterclass for listeners, so please teach me your ways.

So you have an idea and you're like, "I'm gonna outline it with poetry and see what comes out."

RB Lemberg: Yeah. There are many ways to do it. And I think what coalesced for me when I started—so it all began when Clarion West invited me to teach a workshop about poetry techniques for fiction writers. And I decided, "hey, I am gonna teach poetry outlines, 'cause I do them all the time", and I talk about them on Patreon, but I hadn't talked about them at that point outside of Patreon.

So I gave my students in the Clarion West class an exercise to write from a viewpoint of a character or two, and do either a boast or a lament, where a character either boasts about something they've done or laments. And everybody had so much fun and people really got into it. I think this one exercise where you write a boast or a lament, it really gets to the emotional quirk of character work. And because it's poetry, you don't have to stop yourself. You can be as over the top as you want to. You can write as purple as you want to, as outrageous as you want to, and nobody sees it too because it's for yourself, right? You don't have to publish it. You can, if you want to, but it's really just for you. So you can be as outrageously yourself as you want in a poem, or you can be as outrageously a character as you want.

And other poem outlines, again, it's an image. So a poem that I just wrote to kind of outline my short story, it was all about the vibe. It was all about the mood and the setting and the beautiful imagery that came to me that then I used, and some of it I didn't use. So in the poem, there was a tiny piano, and in this short story, there's no tiny piano because there was no room for tiny piano. But there was room for everything else I've stuffed into this poem outline, except the tiny piano, which is a bit sad. Maybe next year's story can have a tiny piano.

But I think poetry can liberate you. Poetry can really let you do, especially if you tell yourself, "I'm just doing it for me, this is really an outline, there's no perfection required, I'm not gonna revise it, I'm not gonna polish it. It's just for me to express how I feel about this piece." And then what comes out for me often is the truest, the most like vivid thing about whatever fiction I wanna write.

Kat Kourbeti: Hmm. It just kind of removes that critical voice that you might have that's stopping you because you're like, "oh, but I wanna come up with a perfect image."

RB Lemberg: Exactly. Just let it go.

Kat Kourbeti: Fascinating. I'm very curious to try that next time I'm sitting down to write something.

RB Lemberg: Oh, please tell me! Please update me. I'm very curious.

Kat Kourbeti: So yeah, so poetry outlines as a method of figuring out what an idea is and where you wanna take it. And has that ever helped you shape the story itself into like say, "oh, I think this is a short, for example, or is this something that's part of something bigger?" Have the poetry outlines actually helped you reign that in, in any way?

RB Lemberg: Yes and no. I think my own desire, sometimes the way I envision things, I want my process to be very orderly. I want to write every day, I want to have a schedule, I want to sit down and write what is in my plan. I have a plan, I always have a plan, I plan things out. And my creative brain is like, "No! Absolutely no, I will not do the thing."

It's a struggle between them a lot of times, where I somehow cling to this idea, this notion that things need—so if I've written a poem outline, it needs to unlock certain things for me. If it has not unlocked certain things for me, what am I even doing? But my process is actually a lot more iterative, and it's not at all orderly and it's not very linear.

So, when I write a poem outline, a lot of times it'll sit, it'll literally sit. There was a time when I was writing this novella in Birdverse and these two characters kept having dialogues and I've written, I dunno how many poem outlines I put on my Patreon, where they're just constantly in dialogue with each other and they argue about things and they're both very lyrical, and it's just endless dialogues.

And I don't think that went anywhere. I think that that just had to be, and it clarified a lot of things about my world and let me express what I was feeling. But in the end I was like, "actually that's their own private business. It's not actually going to be a book, or it's not going to be another additional novela." Like the things that I've written out in this one are just going to sit. And I have no idea, because maybe in two, three years I will return and I will say, "no, actually this is a novella, this is a short story, this is a book. I keep thinking about it, so maybe."

Sometimes my fiction process—again, "I have an outline, I know what I'm doing", I think over and over and then I conclude, "well, actually this outline, no, that's not where it wants to go." I just see where I'll trash the outline. My struggle as a writer is to let myself just do the process of discovery and accept that everything feeds everything (else). So if I write something about folklore two months later or two years later, it'll be incorporated into something else. Or if I write a piece of fiction, then I want to crunch some data, like, let my brain do the thing, let myself do the thing, and somehow it's a continuous struggle for me still. Still.

Kat Kourbeti: It's a good problem to have probably, just too many ideas and too much creativity in there, and too much curiosity about the world and about writing and stories. You also blend a lot of the fiction stuff that you do and the poetry stuff that you do with academia.

RB Lemberg: For sure.

Kat Kourbeti: Looking at it from, yeah, as you said, like crunching some data and like, "let's look at this actually, and what does this mean more broadly, and who else is doing it?"

RB Lemberg: Right.

Kat Kourbeti: What has that lent to your fiction and vice versa, would you say?

RB Lemberg: I really think that when I talk about it, it's years after everything has already cooked in my brain and it's coalesced and I can make a pretty picture out of the chaos, or the fomenting chaos that things actually came from. But a good example of this is a poem that's going to come out in The Deadlands, "Bay Nakht Afn Altn Mark: A Rehearsal", which is based on this modernist fantasmagorical play by Yiddish writer Yitskhok Leybush Peretz, which I've read many, many years ago in the Yiddish and then in English translation, and I realized, "oh my God, this play... it's a poem! A poem that is a play." The first time this play has ever been staged was in the 1920s in the Soviet Union, and they've rewritten everything to make it more revolutionary and more communist. And so I've read that and I've written a poem, I've written an article that's under review. I want to redo this play as a play, I wanna write a play based on the (original) play. I have started developing it. It's not developed, it might never coalesce.

Another example of something like this is actually Yoke of Stars, this novella that just came out last year and is now World Fantasy finalist. [Editor's note: it actually won the award! And a bunch of us were there to celebrate!] It's a Birdverse novella about a linguist and an assassin, and it's basically all about translation. People are there basically talking in a language that neither of them speaks as their first language. Both of them are exiles or migrants and they can't figure out how to communicate. One of the protagonists comes originally from a culture where they don't use verbs, and this idea has fascinated me since my graduate school days.

I've really iterated this idea from every possible angle, like what would it be like to come from a culture that does not use verbs, as most human languages do use verbs. Some use very few verbs, but most of them do use verbs. And so for this one, I was thinking, "well, it would have to be a culture where literally everything is different, because motion is different and their society is different, and the way they conceptualize relationships is different, and everything is different."

Of course then the idea of being in exile and coming to a completely different linguistic world, right? Like a completely different linguistic culture, which is more familiar to us, what would it do? What would it change? So these were both academic questions and very lived in questions for me as an immigrant and a person who is multilingual, and moves, you know, sometimes very uncomfortably between my various cultures and languages. And so this set of works, I feel it represents what it feels like to hop from one thing to another, and be so bothered by it that literally I need to write it in multiple ways.

I don't think I'm done writing about this, certainly not done writing about translations. So I feel my process is very messy.

Kat Kourbeti: But that's the thing though. You've touched upon a couple of things that I wanted to ask you about anyway, and one of those is the interaction of language, and as you said, the way you conceptualize the world. I mean, that is an ongoing kind of philosophy, isn't it, that a lot of people subscribe to that, like the language that we speak shapes how we understand ourselves and the world and relationships and all of that stuff.

So as a multilingual person working in all of these languages and keeping all of them fresh in your mind, it's very clearly impacted your fiction, because Birdverse in particular has an academic component, there's people who are studying, there's translation, there's all of these different cultures interacting... "How did it start?" I feel like is a really big question, but at what point did you go like, "ooh, actually I have an idea", and then this universe happened that kind of touches upon all of these things that you think about on the regular?

RB Lemberg: You know, it's such a great question, and thank you for all these really cool questions. Thank you.

I don't know if there's an easy answer. I feel like I was a world-builder before I became a writer and, I also for many years struggled with—I wanted to write and I dabbled in writing for years and years before I became a writer. And I think early in life, my fundamental struggle was with what language will I write this in? I couldn't find a home in any of the languages I tried.

During my early grad school years, I learned Czech and I started writing in Czech, and I wrote this kooky story about a portal fantasy with cats. And it was hilarious. I wrote it in Czech and I had some Czech friends who started laughing because of course I made all the grammatical mistakes possible, and they read it and they were entertained by my grammatical mistakes. But then they were like, "oh, I wanna know what happens next!" And they started writing me emails like, "we'll correct your mistakes, so please keep writing". And I don't know what happens next, I have no idea. I don't know.

So early in life, I think I had this overabundance of ideas and just no foothold in a language, which is really strange for a person who lives with so many languages, and studied a ton of languages. I studied a ton of very dead languages and loved it, and still dabble on and off. I have my very dead languages with me, and it's hard to keep all of them going simultaneously. It's not easy. I feel very sad at times, not always, but very sad at times because once I figured out, "no, it's actually English, I want to write in English," English has expanded—

Kat Kourbeti: Oh yeah.

RB Lemberg: —and it's taken a lot of space in my brain that I don't wanna give it. But it has, it has. So once I figured out that, no, it's actually English, the English choice has been helpful in so many ways, because I could do the grammatical gender experimentations that I wanted to do much easier in English than I could in my other languages, which have very rigid, morphologically coded gender systems. English used to as well, but it doesn't anymore. So I think finding English, as, yes, I'm gonna embrace this and I'm gonna write this, has really helped me.

But a lot of my Birdverse ideas certainly started before I started writing in English. I remember I went to Worldcon, my first con, years before I started writing, and somebody held a panel called How to Kill and Maim Your Characters. And I attended this panel and then I was telling my friends, I don't wanna kill and maim my characters, I just don't wanna do it. I remember spinning these ideas, like, I really struggled with "How to Kill and Maim your Characters" as a "you have to do terrible things to your characters" idea, and I remember that as a spinoff of those ideas.

I was in Berkeley as a graduate student at that point. I went back to Berkeley, I was telling my friends, "no, linguists should write articles". And this image came to me of a linguist, a queer woman, who is traveling to do field work and she's in the wood and she's about to meet these informants, these people she's never met before, they're magical people that are very different. Of course, every magic exists in Birdverse, but she's about to meet some Dream Way people. I didn't know the names back then. And she's waiting for them to come to this glade in the middle of the wood, and there's this bright sunlight piercing the canopy. It was just the sense of something miraculous, something wonderful is about to happen.

I remember this image so brilliantly, and for many years when people ask me, "well, where does Birdverse come from?" And I would say, "hey, this character, man, who is not in any book, then popped into my head when I was still a graduate student, wasn't writing any fiction, and that's where Birdverse came from. And she's not in any book." Well, now she is: this is Ulín, who is the protagonist of Yoke of Stars. So finally, there is something with her in it.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow.

RB Lemberg: But not about this particular field work. Still not about this particular field work, which was, I still don't know what the story is there.

Kat Kourbeti: Fascinating. I love that there was a moment though, for you, that there was a very distinct moment of, "oh, I think I have something."

RB Lemberg: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: And that sparked all of the things. Did you ever do field work like that? Like that character does?

RB Lemberg: No, I have not. So Ulín is an anthropological linguist. I mean, in modern terms, not in universe terms. She's an anthropological linguist and a lot of times I have a lot of trouble with anthropological linguistics. Its methods, its accomplishments, its history, its everything. And one day I will even publish something about this in fiction, but I personally did not want to do classical inter-linguistics, where you go out in the field and you meet people who are not like you, and you learn about them and you write about them. That did not ever appeal to me. I've done work with informants, but I tend to study my own groups.

So I think it's a bit different. The dynamics are certainly different, and I do less anthropological work. It's complicated, but again, I don't do that type of work and I have a lot of criticism of that type of work as a historical phenomenon, and so do a lot of anthropological linguists today, which is great, which is excellent.

Kat Kourbeti: The history of the field is not the best.

RB Lemberg: Exactly.

Kat Kourbeti: Cause there's a lot of kind of colonial aspects—

RB Lemberg: Yeah. Exactly.

Kat Kourbeti: —to it and to language and how you relate to the foreign language, and then you try to communicate and it's just, yeah.

RB Lemberg: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: I could see why, but at the same time, that makes it a very interesting thing to explore in fiction. So I can also see how you were like, "hmm!"

RB Lemberg: I have so many ideas, and many of them are large scale. So for example, the anthropological linguistics idea, I'm forever working on this book that really deconstructs it. The academic anthropological field work is not very savory, and I think the idea with Ulín's enterprise is that she's never been a mainstream person. She's never been a person coming from an imperialist or colonial culture, she's been an outsider and that has opened some doors to some more nuanced and interesting things.

And so a lot of times my work needs a larger scale because it's so nuanced, and it's not always a good thing, because it needs so much setup to actually get to the nuance of what it's doing, that it can be difficult for many reasons. But it's very worthwhile, I stand by it. I wouldn't change anything.

But for these big, anti-colonial ideas, which rely on so much history that's not US history—because I'm never writing about US history, I'm not from the US originally, so I want to lean into what am I getting out of stories that I feel I inherit, like the Russian Revolution, and the terrible and not so terrible things that happened during the Soviet regime, and how the Soviet regime treated a variety of minoritized people.

These are the questions that historically, if I go to a more close connection to what is happening in our world, that's where my mind tends to go to, or like the history of Jewish diasporas broadly construed, and constructing this very, very diasporic Jewish fantasy, which Birdverse is, which is not about any return to any place, but really about—we are diasporic, the exile happened, but we no longer even think about it. And what does that look like? What are these connections like?

So a lot of it is very big, and sometimes from all this big scale work, I wanna scale down, I wanna write a poem.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

RB Lemberg: I want to write a shorter piece.

Kat Kourbeti: And yet you still find ways to touch upon all these things in the shorter work. A lot of your poetry, a lot of your short fiction still kind of has components of Birdverse, or they're just fully in there, or expanding upon ideas and places and settings and characters and that sort of thing. So would you say that you're ever not thinking about Birdverse in some form?

RB Lemberg: You know, it would be really tempting to say, "I'm always thinking about Birdverse", but that's not true. I'm not always thinking about Birdverse. I'm thinking about it a lot, and probably every day. But my head is a very busy place. I'm thinking about a lot of things.

Kat Kourbeti: In the best possible way.

RB Lemberg: Thank you. Thank you.

Kat Kourbeti: I love to pick apart the brains of creative people on this podcast. It's pretty great. This segues very well into my next set of questions, which are about your Strange Horizons journey, which has been long. Gosh, I mean, 15 of the 25 years you've been part of this magazine, which is amazing! How did you first come across Strange Horizons in the first place?

RB Lemberg: This brings back memories, you know. Shweta Narayan and I, we've been friends for a very long time, but Shweta's introduced me to the magazine, I think, and I started reading it in 2008/9.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay.

RB Lemberg: And I was just starting to write for publication. I've deleted or destroyed everything that I've written before 2008, nothing survives. And then in 2008, my friends convinced me to try sending some of my stuff out, and suddenly I sold things. I think 2008 was the first year I published poems. I started writing short fiction, and I was reading Stange Horizons all the time because it was my dream magazine—and it remains, I love the magazine.

I was reading Strange Horizons all the time, and I sent a few works to Strange Horizons and I sold a short story, which was my first professional sale, and it came out in 2010. And since then, I've met a lot of people who sold their first thing to Strange Horizons, and that's one of the things I love about the magazine, that it has opened doors to so many writers who had their first pro sale in Strange Horizons.

So for me, that has been such a big milestone. It was a flash story that might now be reprinted. It was called Kifli, about a golem made of dishes. And finally, when Bogi and I also started talking, we talked about that story because Bogi told me that they thought that I was Hungarian because kifli is a Hungarian baked good. We were talking about the varieties of kifli, and can kifli have jam or can kifli not have jam? And it's just been such a funny conversation about Hungarian baked goods.

So yeah, Bogi was convinced I had to be Hungarian because of this story. It's such a funny story and it was inspired by dishes that I have, that my mom actually—

Kat Kourbeti: Specifically? There's something in there about purple flowers, like is that—

RB Lemberg: So the purple flowers is what the protagonist wants to have, but the plain white dishes is actually what they get. It's a story that's based on the plain white dishes that I've gotten at that time, and I still have them, and they're still known as "the golem dishes" because in transit many of them did break, and that's how kind of the idea for the story came from it. I am not a baker. It has very little to do with my life, other than this seed of 'dishes that broke in transit'.

But since then I've published a lot of work in Strange Horizons, but I think primarily poetry. There was a time when I was writing a whole bunch of epic poems that were narrative, and Sonya Taaffe was editing for Strange Horizons, and I mostly worked with her, although I've worked with a lot of other editors. I worked with Romie, I worked with Lisa Bradley, and a whole bunch of other poetry editors who've edited my work over the years. So I've published a lot of poetry in Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. You really have.

RB Lemberg: Yeah, which is great. I think I've been really happy with how my work was treated in Strange Horizons and the readership that it got. Then I had some essays and round tables and this and this, so I've really been connected to the magazine.

A few years ago, I published a poem called Stone Listening, which was a tribute to Ursula K Le Guin, my friend Corey Alexander, who passed away, and to Sonya Taaffe as well.

It basically riffs off Ursula K Le Guin's Always Coming Home which has this character, Stone Listening, who is a healer, and I wanted to write about him. He's a minor character, but he's always fascinated me. And so that poem was then translated to Ukrainian by Mykhailo Zharzhailo, and I think it was my first poetry translation into Ukrainian. I was so happy. Now there's another was just published, but this was the first, so.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I mean, that's gotta be very special.

RB Lemberg: It is.

Kat Kourbeti: To be writing in a foreign language and then get that poem translated into your mother tongue, and to be read by people back there... Ugh. That's beautiful.

RB Lemberg: Yeah. It was very touching, and remains. Every time my work is translated into Ukrainian or I do something with Ukrainian diaspora, it's just such a gift.

Kat Kourbeti: I did want to talk a little bit about Kifli. First of all, it delights me that this was your first pro sale, 'cause every time that I have another guest here whose debut we facilitated, it makes me so happy. So First Pub Club, high five, well done.

Because it's so emblematic of a lot of what you do, stuff that we've already talked about with your other work in general, and with Birdverse—Kifli has these themes of emigration, of leaving home, of the diaspora experience and of course Jewish culture and Slavic culture, the mesh that that is, or that it can be for a group of people.

I find that it's so cool, first of all, that your first pro sale encompasses a lot of the stuff you care about. I just wanted to hear a little bit about what you wanted to give to the reader as an emotional experience, as they read this story.

RB Lemberg: It's such a complex question for me because it was a very long time ago, and at the same time, that story is so dear to me and I love it so much. Ultimately it's a story about love, and it's a story about love that is problematic and messy.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, as mothers and diaspora daughters can be. I related to this a lot, which is why I wanted to ask you about it, 'cause my very specific experience resonated with this story a lot, cause I left home, my mom is of Slavic origin, and so it's very much like, ooh!

RB Lemberg: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: That whole thing where they're on the phone and it's like, "my mom listens; she doesn't listen." And it's like, yep, I felt that very much.

RB Lemberg: I love diaspora stories, and I think I've been reading so many diaspora stories for the same reasons I'm sure that you do, because they have this resonance, and I think a lot of diaspora stories are about food and love that is unspoken, because when you have this language barrier and often you have the distance barrier, it's very difficult to cross. And when you come into the American context, there's a lot of therapy speak: how you communicate and you develop communication. Hey, that doesn't always work, sorry.

Kat Kourbeti: It'd be nice, but...

RB Lemberg: Things are messy and complicated, and a lot of times diaspora stories are about food because food is how people express caring and love, and making traditional food is a very complicated thing, and sharing it is a complicated thing. And so this story I think was born out of the fact that I love food, and I love making food and sharing food, and yet there's no way to teleport it. And so in many ways my own family history, which is very complicated but also a very diaspora story, it all revolves around food that's been eaten and food that has not been eaten, and the food that was supposed to be eaten, but due to distance and migration was never eaten, and things like these.

I have a story coming out that also relies a little bit on some of these ideas of my own family history and the feels of uneaten food. It's a story that's coming out in the anthology We Will Rise Again that's been edited by Annalee Newitz, Karen Lord, and Malka Older. It's a great anthology, and my story in it is also a secondary world diaspora story. There's a moment where there's jam that grandma made and she passed away, and the jam is still sitting there. And the question is, who is going to eat the last jam? And it's a small moment in the story, but it is also a moment from my life, like, who is going to eat the last jam?

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

RB Lemberg: How will the last jam be eaten? That is definitely a moment from my own life, that I think brings together all these themes that I constantly write, because I constantly write about diaspora and I constantly write about exile. I think Birdverse is very heavy on thoughts of exile and migration, and leaving home or needing to leave home or being forced to leave home, and what home means anymore, and where are you gonna land and how are you gonna get there, and comings and goings.

That I think is very diasporic, but also very tied to experiences of the senses, at least when I write about them. So definitely food is a common denominator to a lot of diaspora. So it's not just to mine, because there's so much emotion around it that I don't think you can process in therapy. You can't taste—how can you explain the taste of the last jam? Or how do you explain the smell of this particular forest or that particular town or city, or village where you came from, when the words are in a different language, if they exist at all?

Kat Kourbeti: Mm-hmm.

RB Lemberg: These are complicated and very emotional questions, and I think they are at the heart of my storytelling because I'm constantly writing about comings and goings, and I don't think I will ever stop writing about comings and goings.

Kat Kourbeti: Those are the things that every writer has deep in their psyche somewhere, the stuff that matters the most that you're trying to pick apart, and you iterate trying to solve the mystery maybe, or figure out how you feel about something. And often maybe you can't, and that's kind of the point. And I always love like, writers who are conscious of it like, "yeah, it's the same question as I always have, and that's okay. We're gonna ask it again."

I relate to that whole thing with the last jam very strongly. I still have a jar of oregano that my grandfather picked when he was still alive. And I have not allowed myself to finish the oregano, it's just in the jar now.

RB Lemberg: Do you smell it sometimes?

Kat Kourbeti: Yes. Yeah.

RB Lemberg: Yeah. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. And those are the things that like, yeah, like food and smells and the feeling of a place, and especially when you've left it, and even if you go back, it's not gonna be the same, cause the version that you left and the version that you loved as a kid doesn't exist anymore, because of course it doesn't. Places evolve and change, and in some cases violently, you know? So then you come back and you're like, "oh, right."

RB Lemberg: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: "Is this home? I don't know."

RB Lemberg: Yeah, yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: You know, what is home? So I feel all of that very strongly. All of these themes are the stuff that I love to read too, because like, will it help me decode how I feel about things? A ha ha!

RB Lemberg: I think yes, yes and no. Right? Yes and no. I think, as you said, a lot of my work is very iterative. I feel that it's iterative even though it's all very different, but I feel that it does come back to a set of questions that bother me, even though I've done a lot of academic work on very different things. But it does come back to the same fundamental questions of multilingualism and silence and not being able to express what's there, despite all these languages that are available and all those things that are available. The things that are really wedged in the heart, they're not really expressible readily by any language, because they're about the feeling and they're about other senses.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

RB Lemberg: Something that is not yet said, or if it's said in one way, it can then be said in a different way. And it mutates and it becomes something else, and it evolves and it comes back to the same thing. And then again, so there's a lot of iteration in my work. And so thank you, because I feel like you expressed it so beautifully, and I'm really happy that you have the jar of oregano still with you, because I don't have the last jam and—

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

RB Lemberg: Sometimes I want to, but also I don't want to because...

Kat Kourbeti: It's a big thing!

RB Lemberg: Yeah, it is a big thing.

Kat Kourbeti: Actually I do in fact still have a jar (of jam) my grandma made, but she's still alive, so maybe we hold onto the jam.

RB Lemberg: Yeah. Let's hold on. Let's hold onto the jam.

Kat Kourbeti: Um, hold onto your jam folks!

There's a lot about language and the inability to articulate quite what you want to in some of your other Strange Horizons stuff as well. You've also talked about, in the nonfiction portion, about the importance of like having folks from different backgrounds involved creating, say, an anthology, or editing, and even if they're not of different backgrounds, like how do you frontline those narratives so that we can maybe try and articulate these things that exist, these stories that aren't mainstream, as you said?

RB Lemberg: Right, right.

Kat Kourbeti: So what has your experience been, first of all, as an editor of anthologies? And then also being edited in English, whilst you're trying to really confer a different kind of experience to a mainstream audience?

RB Lemberg: Thank you for these questions. I think when I started editing, I started Stone Telling, the magazine, outta spite. I started outta spite.

Kat Kourbeti: Spite is great!

RB Lemberg: 'Cause somebody told me that the way I write is not gonna have an audience. And I became so enraged. I'm still enraged. I'm laughing, right? For many years, I'm like, whatever.

Kat Kourbeti: Sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of all these awards I'm winning!

RB Lemberg: Yeah, I mean, it kind of did go that way, right? But back in the day, I remember hearing this, and it was absolutely devastating. And at the same time, I became just so enraged by it that I wrote to Ursula K Le Guin, that very day when I heard this.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow.

RB Lemberg: I came home, propelled by rage. I'm not very brave. I do very brave things, but I'm not actually that brave, but I was propelled by rage and I wrote to Ursula's agent and I said, "I'm starting a magazine. I'm going to call it Stone Telling, based on Ursula K Le Guin's Always Coming Home, the main character, and can I have Ursula's permission to name the magazine after one of her characters?"

And the agent forwarded it to Ursula K Le Guin and she responded and said, "hey, by the way, if you want a poem, here's a poem you can consider for publication, and you have my blessing and et cetera, et cetera." And I wrote back and I said, "I've been your fan (since) back in the day, (when the) Soviet Union fell and suddenly I read these translations," and we corresponded.

I think then I started editing Stone Telling, and I wanted to publish bilingual poetry, and people immediately, when I started talking about it—this was back in the day of Livejournal—I don't remember anybody who was among the naysayers, but people came and they gave me what they thought was constructive criticism. And one person said, "how are you gonna publish bilingual poetry when you yourself don't know those languages? You know some languages, but you don't know all languages, so how are you gonna vet it?"

Kat Kourbeti: Okay.

RB Lemberg: I said, "I don't need to control every aspect of an author's work." This has shocked people and still when I say this, people are like "What? As an editor, you don't need to control every aspect of an author's work?" No, I don't. I actually don't.

I don't need to understand every word, I don't need there to be a translation of every word. I can judge the quality of the work if it's bilingual from the parts that I do understand. I can ask other people who speak that language to read the parts that I don't understand and help me. But I don't need to control every aspect of an author's work, because as an editor, that's what leads you to reject work that you've never encountered or it's just not in your reading repertoire.

We're shaped by the things we read. And there is, in America at least, translations often are not read or things are not translated. Even people who read translations widely and who know many languages, which is true for me, our repertoire as readers is limited. We are limited to what we've encountered before. So if somebody who is completely outside of your cultural traditional understanding brings you a story that you connect with, but you don't understand every aspect, for me as an editor, that's the moment when I say I don't need to control every aspect of a story.

I'm going to do my best to understand the story experience and whether or not its home is going to be in my magazine or anthology, but I don't need to control every single tiny bit. I don't have to agree with every idea, I don't have to understand every reference, I don't have to understand—if it's multilingual—every word. I have read a lot of excellent multilingual work, where I don't understand every word and that's fine.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. And I think we do a bit of that on Strange Horizons for sure, but we are kind of uniquely placed, especially recently because our collective is so global, where we have all of these perspectives in the editorial staff that are not coming from like an Anglospheric, hegemonic (place), where we just kind of read the same stuff. Everybody kind of comes from everywhere. And I think over the course of these 25 years we've kind of kept that ethos of, "we want to platform new voices and we want to add more diversity to publishing". The way in which we do it kind of shifts according to who's on the team, but the spirit is kind of the same, if that makes sense.

RB Lemberg: Yeah, for sure. I think one good example of that is actually The Truth about Owls, Amal El Mohtar's story that was reprinted in Strange Horizons, actually I think maybe 10 years ago, and that I still reread, where the narrator incorporates Welsh and in the end Arabic that is not translated. There is an Arabic sentence at the very end of that story that's not translated that I think is fantastic. And I love that story so much and I keep coming back to it.

And again, it kind of creates this multiplicity of possible audiences: who is going to connect to a story, (and) how? I think people who speak Arabic and whose first language is Arabic are going to connect to it, and it's going to be really revelatory to have untranslated Arabic in the end. But if you are a diasporic creator, but you don't speak Arabic, you still will connect to it because you understand that the narrator is reclaiming a part of her that she felt was not touchable before, and so that's such a powerful moment.

And if you're not a diaspora person, and you're monolingual, that gives you a sense of estrangement that maybe landing in a different culture and a different language gives you. The story works, and this is just one example, but I think that's what multilingual stories can do for you, is that they create for different types of readers, different kinds of experiences that are all equally valid and important and they're striking and artistic.

So driving towards a monoculture, and a monoculture of an audience that's always your audience and has to receive your work in one way, and there is only one way to receive a work... That, to me, is not what I hope for as a reader and a creator, because each person is different and each person is going to bring something different.

So if I write a very trans heavy work, or a work that is very immersed in non-binary experiences and what it means to be trans and/or non-binary migrating between cultures—and if you are a part of that, yay, that's gonna validate you and it's gonna resonate with you on a personal level, or maybe you'll say, no, my experience is very different. There's nothing like it. Hey, somebody else had this experience.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

RB Lemberg: But if you are not, then you learn something about people who are not like you, and maybe you see the world in a different way. So, there's not a monoculture, and definitely for Strange Horizons it has been one of the main reasons I love the magazine, is how much diversity, true diversity there has been in terms of storytelling and poetry, nonfiction, and the kind of editing you folks do, and the kind of production you folks do. So, hey, it's been really an amazing run, 25 years. It's been an amazing run.

Kat Kourbeti: I know. Yeah. It's... we're sitting on the shoulders of some incredible people who came before us. Like, no single editor or single department can say, you know, "we've just manifested outta nowhere". We have such a long history of folks who care about this genre so much and they want to build just a beautiful, diverse body of work, that just tells different stories and lets people tell different stories. Some of what you have written about, in your poetry, your short fiction, in your essays with us, the round tables you've done. We can only be as good as the voices that we get to tell their stories, you know what I mean?

RB Lemberg: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm just happy to be here.

RB Lemberg: Well, I am so happy to be a part of this very rich tapestry of voices and works that you folks have showcased over the years, and it's a work of many, and I think that's what's so beautiful and so important about it. So I really hope that Strange Horizons continues forever.

Kat Kourbeti: We sure will try. Long may we continue!

Before I let you go, I wanted to ask a little bit about... just, I'm curious, I'm nosy. Here is the last portion of the episode where I ask you: what has it been like over 15 years submitting to Strange Horizons, being edited by different people, all these different departments... Have you noticed a change or an evolution or, what has your experience been like as a very long time contributor?

RB Lemberg: This is interesting because I think I've been in most, if not all, departments of Strange Horizons over the years.

Kat Kourbeti: And now on the podcast too!

RB Lemberg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've been in so many different departments, but I think it's the Poetry department that I've worked most closely with over the years, that I really view as my home in many ways. Because whenever I want to point towards a poem of mine, it's pretty much going to be Strange Horizons, even though I've published a lot of poetry over the years, but I'm gonna point them to Strange Horizons, both for my work and for other poets.

Over the years, I feel that the Poetry department has been unquestionably an extremely strong and vital part of the community. Poetry comes and goes. Now there's a lot more venues, sometimes there's less venues. There were a few years when the venues were kind of slim pickings. Not a lot of venues were publishing things that I wanted to read, and there were not a lot of opportunities for submission. Now it feels like there is a lot, and there is a lot of very cool things happening in speculative poetry right now. So it ebb and flows, but I have to say that Strange Horizons has always been a constant.

I loved Sonya Taaffe's editing. She was my favorite editor in Strange Horizons for years and years and years, and I worked very closely with her. And I also love all the other editors who have edited for Strange Horizons over the years, and have selected extremely strong work. Lisa Bradley was a contributor to Stone Telling back in the day, and a friend, and we've co-edited an anthology, and of course she's edited my work. So I love her work, and not just because she selected some of my work. And the same can be said for Romie Stott, who has selected my work and has selected a lot of other very strong work over the years, and other folks.

So I feel that I can't really say that it was an evolution for me personally, but more like, "oh, I always love this magazine." Sometimes I connect with it more, sometimes I connect with it less, but I'm just so happy that poetry has been such a strong feature in Strange Horizons throughout its history, and always paid well, which I think is extremely important in a genre that did not always pay well.

And beyond speculative poetry, I think litfic poetry does not always pay, and it frustrates me to no end.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

RB Lemberg: Because I believe that we need to be paid for our work.

Kat Kourbeti: Shocker!

RB Lemberg: I know right? And it's shocking that outside of the speculative poetry domain, litfic a lot of times you will pay submission fees and they will sit on your submissions and you pay them fees to read your work, and I find that exhausting, to be honest. I really think it's not fair and it should not be a thing, but somehow it's been a thing. And Strange Horizons has always paid, has always paid fairly, has always had very strong editorial across its many, many domains.

And I've consistently enjoyed the work that I've read in Strange Horizons over the years, and especially so for the Poetry department that I always follow. So, I don't know if it answers your question about evolution, but it's just been a pleasure.

Kat Kourbeti: It being kind of like a stable force of good in your life at least, that is an answerm and it's a lovely answer.

RB Lemberg: I'm glad.

Kat Kourbeti: Because I don't often get to talk to people who have just had that kind of experience where they've worked with a lot of editors, where they've been submitting for a long time, and in all of these different formats as well. You know, we didn't even touch upon, really, your academic stuff—

RB Lemberg: Oh, yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: That has made it into Strange Horizons in some capacity, which is also very interesting. It's just, it's great to hear that it's been a good experience.

RB Lemberg: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: For all of this time, honestly.

RB Lemberg: Yeah. This month I've submitted—not this month, in this summer, I've submitted some poems during Lisa Bradley's reading period, and I just got an acceptance for a poem that's gonna come out which I haven't even announced.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, this episode is not gonna come out for a little bit...

RB Lemberg: Okay, good.

Kat Kourbeti: Maybe it'll be out already and if not, you can look out for it.

RB Lemberg: Yes. So it's called The Ghost of Mirror in your Machine, which is about AI and awfulness of AI.

Kat Kourbeti: Excellent.

RB Lemberg: And I was working on this poem and I just, I've—2025 has just been an awful year. It's just been a horrible, difficult, challenging year for so many people and for me, certainly. And so I've been laboring hard to try to get pieces outta the door, and I've sent a story to Beneath Ceaseless Skies and I've sent this poem to Strange Horizons, and in both cases, I felt like knowing that I can submit work to (BCS and) Strange Horizons has actually motivated me to submit it, because I don't know if I would otherwise.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

RB Lemberg: Because I've just been feeling so worn out and just burned out in so many ways. I keep writing, it's just the submitting part that I'm just so worn out by. And so having Strange Horizons just existing has motivated me to finish it and revise it. I revise it many times and submit it. And the same is true for the short story that I sent to Beneath Ceaseless Skies, because I feel very similarly about BCS, that my work has been there over the years and so it's like, okay, if I can only finish it, then I can actually submit to my favorite place, Strange Horizons and Beneath Ceaseless Skies, which are my two favorite venues.

So I was like, I sent them out and just the feeling of relief, of knowing that I don't care—I mean, obviously I care if the work is accepted or rejected, but I don't care as much about the rejection as I do about just feeling I trust these folks, I know these folks, they select good work. So, I can send it off.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. And to satisfy my curiosity, this is probably kind of like an out-of-scope little question, but as part of your Le Guin Fellowship, you've been studying SFF through your academic work. Obviously you're working on something and I can't really (get into it), but we'll be here all day if you want... Can you tell us a little bit about what you're studying in an academic sense?

RB Lemberg: Absolutely, yeah. So, my academic trajectory also shifted in recent years because I've done a lot of sociolinguistics and now I'm doing a lot of work in science fiction studies, which is new. Most publications are still in various stages of coming out, I'm still working on them because it's kind of a new turn, but as a part of my LeGuin Fellowship, I'm studying her poetry and I hope to publish a book about her poetry, but it's gonna be slow because she's written poetry for 80 years. She started writing it when she was five, according to her, and she worked until her very last day on her last poetry collection, which she sent back copy edits a week before she passed away.

So really, poetry, I argue, is kind of a frame to her whole life and creativity. And there's a lot of it, and there is a lot of very deep stuff that is not really anywhere else. So at this point, I've done two archival trips to the LeGuin Archives in Oregon. One was sponsored by the Fellowship, the other by some other thing. And I'm going to Portland a bit later, and I hope to connect to some of the folks from the LeGuin Foundation. I've been in touch with them.

I've also been a LeGuin Fiction Prize finalist with one of my Birdverse books, so I feel like I'm deeply in the Ursula K LeGuin legacy at this point, and I love her work, and obviously I knew her and in many ways her work saved my life. It's just so rich and so cool. However, because I can't just do one thing, even though I'm doing 70 things, I can't do just one thing. I'm also writing another book, about LeGuin's kind of connection to some of the Soviet era science fiction, and that also emerged from my archival work where I discovered some really cool things in the archives, and that is about the brothers Strugatsky and LeGuin. Without spoiling too much, it's going to be about missed connections between these authors who knew each other. It's great.

So a lot of very cool stuff that's very new to me, and all of it is long form, so it's gonna take a while, but I hope that it's going to be cool. I think it's cool.

Kat Kourbeti: It sounds very cool. We'll definitely look out for that whenever that gets finished. It sounds like it's a deep undertaking.

RB Lemberg: Yeah. The second one I think is going to be called, "LeGuin and the Strugatsky Brothers in Conversation". Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Great. Fiction wise, poetry wise, do you have anything that's relatively recent or perhaps upcoming that you would like to plug or promote?

RB Lemberg: Sure. There's always something. So there's two Strange Horizons poems, one that came out in March that's called The Blanket, the Secret, the Dark. It's a prose poem and I'm very fond of it. And it's, I think, in the Aging Special Issue. When Romie told me, "oh, it's gonna be in the Aging issue", I was like, "oh, it really kind of is about aging, shoot. Shoot, I've been here for a while!" You know, it's been 15 years. Oh my God, you know, it really has been 15 years! So I guess it's warranted, but I really love that poem and I hope people read it.

And then I have this upcoming poem that I mentioned that may come in the fall, called The Ghost of Mirror in Your Machine. I hope people will read it. It's also a prose poem, so I think I've been on a little prose poetry kick with Strange Horizons.

And then We Will Rise Again, the activism anthology that I also mentioned is coming out later this year, and I'm so excited for it. I have a story in it, and I'm just so excited for this anthology. It's just really cool.

And I still hope that folks will read some of my Birdverse works, even though they're not fresh of the present 2025, but Yoke of Stars, my new Birdverse novella, is on World Fantasy ballot, and I so hope that people will read it. It's an unusual book, it's a bit off the beaten track structurally. I'm very proud of it.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's been an absolute pleasure.

RB Lemberg: Thank you so much. It's been amazing. Thank you, Kat.

Kat Kourbeti: And we'll look forward to reading your future work.

RB Lemberg: Yes. Thank you so much and hi to all the listeners. Thanks for listening and happy 25th anniversary, Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you so much.

RB Lemberg: Of course. Thanks, Kat.

​

In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, Tim Melody Pratt walks us through their extensive oeuvre in the SH archives, recounts meeting their life partner through the magazine, and explains how it all intertwined together into a life and career bursting with magic.

Links and things:

• Want to leave us a happy birthday message? Click ⁠here to record an audio message⁠, and ⁠here for video⁠.
• Join our ⁠Patreon⁠ for early episode access, or donate through any other way to hear your name and message in our next episodes.
• Want to meet the team? Podcast editors Kat and Michael will be at World Fantasy Con, alongside Poetry Editor Vanessa Jae and Fiction/Articles Editor Joyce Ch'ng! Come to the first Strange Horizons Tea Party in years on Sunday at 11am, and celebrate our 25th anniversary with us.

Episode show notes:

• Read Tim Pratt's work in our archives.
• Visit their website, follow them on Bluesky, and check out their Patreon to read their monthly short stories.
• Buy Tim's latest book, Starfinder: Era of the Eclipse, or the one before that, The Knife and the Serpent.
• Find further links to Tim's work and other things mentioned throughout the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres.

Today's guest is Tim Pratt, who has extensively published with us in the magazine's early days as far back as December of 2000, and has since gone on to win a Hugo Award for short fiction, garner many nominations for other awards such as the Astounding, the Rhysling, Nebula, World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Mythopoeic, and the Stoker, write and publish over 30 novels (!), and is now senior editor at Locus Magazine, among other things. It's great to have you here, Tim.

Tim Melody Pratt: It's great to be here. I love Strange Horizons. I'm happy to reminisce. Although 25 years can't possibly be right, because then I must be approaching 50, which that seems implausible. Just doesn't seem real.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I'm really not sure about the uh, timespace continuum on that one. Yeah, questions and concerns about all of that.

But first of all, I gotta say, you are such a prolific writer. I saw on Bluesky earlier today that you calculated, you've produced 286 stories.

Tim Melody Pratt: I actually looked up that number, because I knew Strange Horizons was one of my earliest sales, and the first story I had in Strange Horizons was the sixth story I had ever sold. Number six. And so then I was like "well, I wonder out of how many", because I hadn't really looked and I knew it was a bunch, I would've guessed a couple hundred. And then I went to ISFDB, the Internet Science Fiction Database, and pulled their thing down, kinda looked at it and you know, I could be off by a story or two, but it's around that. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: That's a great and crazy number.

Tim Melody Pratt: A big number.

Kat Kourbeti: But what is your secret?

Tim Melody Pratt: So this is my hobby, right? Writing fiction has always been the thing I wanted to do. I was an outlier among my friends in high school and in college to an extent, because I knew what I wanted to do. I didn't know if I'd be able to do it, but I've known from first grade as soon as I figured out, "wait, books are not just objects that appear, right? People make these. This is a job you can have." Once I knew that it was the job I wanted, and short fiction is my favorite. I love short fiction. That's how I came up in the field. Strange Horizons was instrumental in that, for my career. I published short stories; novels for me have always been— well, they pay a lot better. I like them, I enjoy getting to hang out with characters and in a world, but in turn, as an artist and as a consumer of fiction, I love short stories more. So mostly it's just keeping at it.

And then 10 years ago, I realized I wasn't really writing short stories because novels pay better, right? So I was doing a lot of novel writing and I really missed it. I was only writing stories if an anthology editor or magazine editor solicited me to write something. I thought, "this is terrible, I wanna center short fiction in my life again. How do I make it something I will actually do instead of just thinking, oh, I should do this?" So I started a Patreon, and I'm not gonna do a big plug for my Patreon, but in May 2015, 10 years ago, I started a Patreon promising to publish a story a month, because if I had people waiting for it, if I had people giving me money, then it would be a deadline and I would actually do it. And so I got back and I just uploaded, a couple days ago, my 120th story for that Patreon. I've never missed a month.

So yeah, of that 286, 120 of them are stories for my Patreon.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. It's great to have something to keep you going, and to always meet that promise to yourself and to your supporters on Patreon. And I hope we can learn from you today.

Tim Melody Pratt: I still publish in the magazines and anthologies too. The nice thing about the Patreon is as long as my readers are happy, I can do whatever I want. I can experiment with stuff, I can do more experimental fiction, can use it as a test kitchen for characters I think I might wanna write novels about. And they seem happy so far. Most of them have stuck with me all this time.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. That's great. Ooh, and we can chat a little bit about that journey of, "here's a short story that might then become something else." But I do wanna talk about your extensive presence on the Strange Horizons sphere.

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: You joined the Strange Horizons family very early. December of 2000 would've been like four months into the magazine's history.

Tim Melody Pratt: Sounds right.

Kat Kourbeti: So how did you come across the magazine in the first place?

Tim Melody Pratt: At the time I was really actively submitting stories. I had a story come out in a small, tiny magazine in 1999, and then I had a handful in like e-zines and stuff in 2000, before I had one published in Strange Horizons, which for it to come out in December means I submitted it months earlier. We did have an internet back then. It was different than the internet is now, but I knew a lot of young writers and a lot of people who have since gone on to be big writers. And I had my Clarion cohort— I went to Clarion in 1999, so we would all let each other know, "oh, there's a new market, oh there's a new magazine, they're looking for stuff."

And I was just writing a ton and had a ton of stories that I was sending out, 'cause I was just trying to break in. I wanted this to be my life and I was at the start, so I was generally pretty keenly aware of any new magazine that was paying decently, that seemed like it had legs. I mean, I wouldn't have imagined that Strange Horizons would still be standing 25 years later. Not anything against Strange Horizons, just what magazine from 2000, what e-zine, webzine, is still around? It's a very small list.

I was rapacious looking for markets and Strange Horizons turned out to be a very sympathetic market for me.

Kat Kourbeti: That's really cool. And what was your experience overall? You've published a variety of things with us. There's stories, there's poems, there's reviews, even. Do you have any stories to tell us from your Strange Horizons publication experience?

Tim Melody Pratt: Well, yeah, if I can maybe digress a little bit and give you a little meta, not just about the work but how I came to be sort of involved with the Strange Horizons sphere.

In March of 2001, so some months after I had first published something with the magazine, Strange Horizons hosted a brunch for Nalo Hopkinson, amazing writer, wonderful person, one of my favorite people in the field. Nalo was great. And I was living in Santa Cruz at the time, the brunch was in Oakland, and Nalo was gonna do a little hangout with people involved with the magazine, and then there was gonna be a reading and stuff, I think at Other Change of Hobbit, when it was still around. And they invited me because I was a contributor and 'cause I was vaguely in the area—you know, I was 90 minutes away, but I was close enough. I was down in Santa Cruz and I was like "well, do I want to go? Do I not want to go? I guess it would be fun."

I loaded up and I went up, and the brunch was held in the house in Oakland of a Strange Horizons staff member, their bookstore manager, and also a contributor who'd at the time written articles for the magazine—she went on to publish fiction there too—named Heather Shaw. And Heather opened the door to let me in. And, you know, this gorgeous, blue-eyed, incredibly harried woman opened the door, frantically running around trying to get everything ready and greeted me and welcomed me... I was just struck immediately. I don't know if it was love at first sight, but it was certainly, "I wanna get to know this person better" at first sight. And she barely noticed that I was there, 'cause she was hosting a brunch, right?

So we do the thing, we're running around, whatever. And it was a wonderful event, and Heather remained fascinating, what I could see of her, and I went home after the event and I went online and I read some of the stuff that she had written. She had an article on the same issue that I did about the works of Octavia Butler back in December, 2000. And so I wrote to Mary Anne Mohanraj, founder of Strange Horizons, who knew Heather and had been at the brunch and all that, and basically was just like, "so what's Heather's deal? Is she partnered up? Is she somebody that I could potentially ask out?" And Mary Anne was like, "as far as I know, you could ask her out."

So I wrote to Heather and I had read some of her work by then, so I was complimentary, and wanted to hang out. And eventually we did. We went on our first date to the Rose Garden in Oakland, and we read poetry to each other. I was 24, she was maybe 28. And, you know, I ended up moving in with her, I ended up living in that house where the brunch was hosted. Some years later, I proposed to her in the Rose Garden where we had our first date. We have now been married for—it'll be 20 years in October, and we have a kid who would not exist without Strange Horizons, a marriage that wouldn't exist without Strange Horizons, essentially the entire shape of my adult life.

How this relates more directly to Strange Horizons, Heather was on staff and she was friends with Jed Hartman, who had a long association with the magazine. She had been close friends for years with Mary Anne. By dating Heather, I was in this circle, right? I never got any special privileges though, let me tell you man—I got rejected a lot from Strange Horizons over the years. The stories they published are a tiny subset of the ones that I sent to them, believe me. But that's how I was so associated with it for so long. I would go to their tea parties when Susan Groppe was fiction editor and then later editor in chief. Susan was our pal, Susan lived around the corner from us. We would watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer together, right?

So Strange Horizons, a lot of those people—not all, 'cause it's a huge staff of course—but some of the people who were central in the early days were part of my social life and my social circle. And I was never on staff at the magazine, but I did contribute to just about every department.

Kat Kourbeti: I think this is the most incredible story we've had on the podcast so far. Holy moly.

Tim Melody Pratt: Without the magazine—honestly, if I had been like, "I don't feel like driving 90 minutes" that day in Santa Cruz, if I had just hung out and took a nap, which was my other option, uh, my life? Inconceivably different, I cannot even imagine where I would be. I really can't.

Kat Kourbeti: Goodness.

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah, you think of those little moments in life, right? Those little turning points, and that was probably the biggest turning point that I can point to in my life. So thank you, Strange Horizons, I'm glad you existed.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Wow. And to still be around 25 years later so we can hear the story...

Tim Melody Pratt: It's true. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: That's incredible. First of all, meeting your partner already, in the field that you want to exist in, that must have felt like fate.

Tim Melody Pratt: It was fantastic. Certainly I had dated other people, (but) I had never dated a writer who was serious about it like I was. And you know, Heather has published a ton and she's done a lot more editing than I have. We ran a zine together for a while called Flytrap. The ability to entangle those parts of my romantic life and my committed partner life with my creative life was great. And she understands. We support each other creatively so much, we collaborate almost every year on a holiday story for PodCastle. We've been doing that for 10 years now.

Kat Kourbeti: Beautiful.

Tim Melody Pratt: It's great.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, that's really cool. I do think that having that supportive partnership, even if the other person's not a writer, is very important. But if they are as well, like they really get what is going on in your brain half the time when you're trying to problem solve or make something happen, and they can really be a part of that. And to know that you're collaborating on stuff every year, that's super cool.

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah. We did one story a few years back that we collaborated on with our son. You know, he had an idea for a story and we worked on it together and published that, and then LeVar Burton did it for his podcast. He picked it up. So my kid has all these bragging rights.

Kat Kourbeti: When you've got talented parents, it comes with the package. That's awesome.

I noticed that a lot of (your) Strange Horizons oeuvre at the very least, has mythology themes and religious themes. There's demons and angels and crossroads and bargaining for things, and personifications of concepts, and also an entire series of poems about mythical beasts called The Bestiary.

Tim Melody Pratt: Yep.

Kat Kourbeti: Can you tell me a little bit about what drew you to those themes at the time, and was there an attempt to create a collective body of work, or was that just what you were thinking about?

Tim Melody Pratt: I was really a mythology nerd always growing up, and in fifth grade I had a teacher give me a copy of Edith Hamilton's Mythology, and from there I was off. I read just tons of world mythology, I was always interested in that stuff, was always interested in personification of concepts and people being avatars, right? People being more than what they were, (that) was something that always really fascinated me.

That first story that was in Stranger Horizons, The Fallen and The Muse of the Street, was about a fallen angel and a demon who basically tried to screw with one of the nine muses, so obviously I was doing a very pantheistic kind of approach, right? All the gods exist if you believe in them, that kind of thing, which is something I got from reading contemporary fantasy and mythic fiction. Like, I was a huge Charles Delin fan growing up.

(What) I really have always loved in my default mode, and honestly as a writer, is intrusions of the magical into everyday life. Because I love that juxtaposition of, "I've got my drip coffee maker and my smartphone, and now there's an entity in my house", 'cause why would they go away if they've been around forever? They're just going to adapt, they're going to change.

I also in college dated a woman who was a pagan, who was a devotee of Aphrodite and who was a firm believer in the presence of the magical everywhere. I'm a materialist, I'm a skeptic, but I still love this person dearly. We just have different worldviews. But she talked a lot about the presence of the magical everywhere in the everyday. She's like, "you don't have to knock wood for good luck, because now the spirits dwell in everything. Sure, they used to be in the trees, but they've had to adapt like pigeons to urban areas. You can knock on whatever, knock on a concrete pillar, there's something dwelling within it." Which was a worldview that I also wrote some poems about, I think not in Strange Horizons, but I wrote a little bit about her worldview, I think in Star*Line.

So that has been and remains an ongoing fascination for me, just ways to sort of interrupt everyday reality. And that's a lot of what my stories in Strange Horizons were. I won't jump ahead and talk about other ones.

Kat Kourbeti: I was going through different points in your Strange Horizons journey and I was just noticing how there was a pervasive (theme), and that always fascinates me with writers who keep coming back to something that fascinates them and that they're interested in. I think we all do that to a certain extent, whether it's conscious or no, but I think for you it was probably a lot more consciously, "I want to explore this, I want to see how that would work", maybe.

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah, I would read mythology, or I would read Borges, I would read the Book of Imaginary Beings, I would read Gustav Davidson's Dictionary of Angels, which is an amazing book about angels and fallen angels. My first thought would always be, "what would it be like if I encountered one of them in the streets in Santa Cruz or whatever. How would that feel?"

In my fiction, I like to write about psychologically realistic people dealing with impossible things, that's really the thing that interests me. I think it's an interesting way to reveal character, because I'm a very character-driven writer. So what I like to do is make a character who I think is plausible, and then present them with something that's a real break with their understanding of reality, usually. Sometimes they know about magic already, but often I really like to do that abrupt confrontation with something impossible and unexpected, and then see what the character does. That's how I write, mostly.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, Little Gods—

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: —struck me, 'cause that kind of captures that theme. It's about a man who loses his wife basically, and then in the process of grief becomes aware of this other cast of spirits and beings and gods that exist all around, that normally people don't see. It's a really moving and very powerful exploration, I thought, of grief and of how that particular person deals with that, but also I really liked the mundane personification of these gods and concepts that can exist in various pantheons and religions and spiritual beliefs across the world. That theme just keeps coming back in your work, which I find very interesting.

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah. Some of that came from The Dictionary of Angels, which is fascinating because there were angels for everything. There'd be an angel of 4:00 PM on Tuesday. And so I had gotten to thinking about pantheistic belief systems in which there are tons of gods, and not even just, "oh, there's the family on Olympus". There could be a god of this particular bend in this river, something that has some magical powers, but it's not all powerful, right? But it has influence within its sphere. So I thought that was neat.

I had a really bad breakup and I was thinking about the messy, uneven grieving process and I thought, "wouldn't it be interesting to personify the stages of grief as deities? Like you're actually talking to the Little God of Bargaining, dealing with the oppressiveness of Little God of Depression..." And obviously the stages of grief are kind of simplistic. People do go through most of them, you just don't go through them in the progression, right? You don't go through them in order. And in the story I simplified and ran through them in order. But that's where that came from. I could have just written about somebody who was really sad about the abrupt, violent death of a loved one, but I'm a fantasy writer. So I figured out a way to externalize that.

And that story was hugely consequential for me. I think it might've been the first major award nominee to come out of Strange Horizons. It was a Nebula finalist, which launched my career in a lot of ways. Like my first story collection is called Little Gods; that was how I was able to sell it, because I had a story that had gotten some attention.

And that also, I like to think, helped raise the profile of Strange Horizons a little bit. Some of the people in SFWA, at the Nebulas, who maybe were less aware of this new magazine—'cause it was, what, 2002? So it wasn't a brand new magazine, but it was its first couple years—maybe some more people noticed it because of that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I think so. And it's interesting how the history of the magazine just—there's staff turnover of course, and there's some awards and there's a constant churn, but those kind of pivotal moments, like here's this... that's really awesome, that we were instrumental in that for you, and in so many ways, dear God!

Tim Melody Pratt: I always say me and the magazine came up together. Strange Horizons and I entered the field essentially at the same time, and we grew in prominence together. I got a lot more outta my association with them than they did with me, I'm sure. But we did, we sort of rose at the same time. And I would go—you know, they would have the tea parties at conventions (like) WisCon and stuff, and I would go and I would take part in that stuff. I would do the group readings. I believed in the magazine and I loved the magazine.

And as the years went by and the editors started to be people who I hadn't been to parties at their houses, once it expanded—this is good for the health of the magazine, but I became less centrally associated with the magazine, and I haven't published there in some years. Again, most of my short fiction these days is in my Patreon, I'm just not submitting a ton to magazines. If I were, I would still be submitting to Strange Horizons, 'cause I still think they do beautiful work.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, thank you. Yeah. I mean, someday, maybe?

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Never say never!

Tim Melody Pratt: I'm hoping to. I have a story coming out in Uncanny later this year, which is a delight 'cause I don't publish much fiction in the magazines, and I'm like, I miss being part of that conversation. It's just finding time to do a dozen stories for my Patreon and then extra stories too.

Kat Kourbeti: And the novels, and your day job...

Tim Melody Pratt: And the occasional novel. Only one or two a year. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Only! My goodness. Give us some of that juice, please! Like, what's going on up here?

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah. Don't have other hobbies. Sit in your house and type a lot. That sadly is the secret.

Kat Kourbeti: And would you say you're still writing about those themes, and those mythology things now? 'Cause I know you also write a lot of science fiction, like more "traditional", quote unquote, science fiction. What sort of themes are you drawn to nowadays?

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah. About 2017, 2016, I thought it would be fun to write a space opera, so then I became a science fiction writer. I did a space opera series, The Axiom Series, that did pretty well. And then I did some multiverse stuff, which I was doing in Strange Horizons way back in the day, like God of the Crossroads, right, multiverse story. I was always interested in that sort of thing. Even back then, I did a little science fiction—Artifice and Intelligence is one of my favorite stories I had in Strange Horizons. It's about AIs, not in the sense of chatbot LLMs, but in the sense of true artificial intelligences. I mean, it's science fantasy, let's say, it's got ghosts and stuff in it too, but—

Kat Kourbeti: The line in that one actually, that a programmer summons a real ghost for that to be the "ghost in the machine", which is the AI concept of yore... I just thought that was a beautiful conceptualization again of something living, with the tech.

Tim Melody Pratt: Well, the collision of the modern and the ancient is something that I have a lot of fun with. That story was neat; Heather Shaw, my wife and I used to give each other little challenges to write stories, and we would give each other a content requirement and a structural, like a form requirement. And it would be like, "you have to write a story about goblins and it has to be in present tense" or whatever. Just something to put the net up and give you some constraints.

And I still remember that story, she said "six scenes, three AIs". So my rule was I had to do it in six scenes, and I had to include three different artificial intelligences. Probably it's the most successful story that I did based on that little game we used to play back in the day.

Though you did ask a question; in my short fiction, I still do a ton of mythic stuff. My novels lately have been mostly more science fictional multiverse stuff, space opera stuff. But my love for bringing magic into the everyday world has not gone away, and I would say the vast majority of my short fiction is still that sort of thing.

Kat Kourbeti: Fascinating. What you said about the game that you and your wife played, (is) an interesting thing about the inherent creativity that exists within limitation. How do you start your stories—here's the question within that: do you set yourself parameters for your short fiction, and you say "I wanna do this and this, maybe with a sprinkling of this"? I'm sure that there's a variety of situations, but is there like a process you go through when you generate ideas?

Tim Melody Pratt: Occasionally I will come at something with a structural constraint as my basic idea. There was a time that I wrote a story that was based on a daily gratitude journal. "Three things I'm grateful for", I did a story in the form of that. I did a story for an anthology that was in the form of a Kickstarter campaign created by a mad genius who wanted to destroy the world. So occasionally, you know, there will be some structural stuff like that.

There are other writers who do that better than me. Nick Mamatas often does really interesting formal constraint kind of stories. Another person who, as I recall, had some association with Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah!

Tim Melody Pratt: So [shows phone to Kat]—this is my notes app with my "story stuff" notes, which as you can see, go back a while. So whenever I have a thought or an idea or an image or a "wouldn't it be cool", or I watch a movie and I think they didn't end it the way I wish I would have, or they didn't have a twist that I was hoping that they would, I will make a note. And sometimes they're a character in a situation, sometimes they are literally a line. I think I have one that just says "enragement ring", which I don't know what that is at all, but at some point it'll probably end up in a story. And so I just, I have these little things I jot down and every month I go and I scroll through it and I see if any of them are ripe or if I feel like any of them have become something that can be a whole story, or I'll take two ideas and I'll stick them together.

Like I had a little story note that was about "what if you went over to a guy's house to hook up with him and there was just a giant f***ing pit in the floor"—sorry, I don't know if we curse on this podcast. But you know, what if you hooked up and then you're snooping on the way to the bathroom and you open a bedroom door and there's just a huge bottomless pit, right? Wouldn't that be weird? And then I was like, "that's not a whole story." And then I had this other note that was about epistemology and eschatology and the end of the world and apocalypse. And if you're a materialist and you don't believe in the afterlife, then you can never know that you are dead because by the time you're dead, there's nobody to know that you're dead. Wouldn't the end of the world be the same way if everybody's gone? If there's no world anymore, nobody can know it's the end of the world. You can only know it's the pre-end of the world. And I'm like, I could have, as a freshman, gotten high and really talked about this for hours. So I jammed those together into a short story called The Pit and The Epistemologist, that I published on my Patreon last month.

Kat Kourbeti: Very cool!

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah, I've been making up stories my entire life. I get ideas everywhere, I have more than I could ever possibly write. And sometimes they're novels and sometimes they're flash pieces and sometimes they're novellas. It all depends. Occasionally I'll have a really silly implausible idea that'll fall apart completely if anyone interrogates it, but I can get away with it for 800 words, right?

Like I wrote a story about Mothman, the cryptid, (who) appears as a herald of disaster, usually there's a bridge collapse. There was a bunch of fires in Russia. I was like, "this would be a useful alert system if you could clone Mothman, and you could have thousands of Mothmans distributed across the world, and then if they would start appearing and saying cryptic things and calling you on the phone and mumbling about various disasters, this would be great". It would give you some warning, right?

This is a stupid idea. You can't write a novel about it. But I wrote a flash piece about it!

Kat Kourbeti: I could stretch this into a novel. Here's my problem: I can't keep things short.

Tim Melody Pratt: Ah, sure.

Kat Kourbeti: To save my actual life. I come up with a concept that I only want to do a short story for, and before I even know it, I've written 8,000 words, I haven't even gotten to the bit that I wanted to write the story about, and I'm like, "oh no, I think it's another book".

So you tell me this—challenge accepted! I could write you an outline.

Tim Melody Pratt: My natural length starting out was novelettes, right? Gimme 10,000, 15,000 words. Those were harder to sell.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Tim Melody Pratt: So I trained myself to write 5,000 words, 3000 word stories. I would set myself this limit, and then I struggled, but I learned—that was really crucial for my development—to vary my toolkit. I don't always need 15,000 words. Like it doesn't really need this little subplot or whatever.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay. And because you do this at least once a month, if not more, is there like a shorthand you've developed for yourself in finding that crux of a story? The twist ending, the thing that will kind of give it its potent jab that will leave the reader thinking about it?

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah. Well, when I went to Clarion in '99 one of my teachers was Tim Powers, who's an amazing writer. And Powers talked about "my lunch lady is a werewolf" stories, right? You have a story and it's about how you find out your lunch lady is a werewolf, great. Why? Who cares? Why is that important to the character? Why is that important to whoever discovers it? Why is it important to the lunch lady? What sort of thematic resonance or weight does it have, what are you trying to say? Are you trying to say something?

This is not Powers, this is me: are you trying to say something about the conflict between the wild and savage and the institutional constrained nature of school? You have to be saying something. So I will have a cool idea and then I will be like, "what does this have to do with anything? Like, why do I care?" And because I'm a character-driven writer, it's enough for me. If it changes something in the character's life or their point of view or their understanding of the world, that's enough for me.

So the classic thing to figure out, like what character you should write is, "who is going to suffer the most in this situation? Who's gonna have the hardest time?" If you send a person through a portal to another world, you can send a survivalist who is incredibly well-equipped with all of the material things that he will need to live in this fantasy world. But isn't it more fun to send somebody whose only skillset is making cupcakes? And then have them figure out how they can apply this skillset in a way that will keep them alive.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh.

Tim Melody Pratt: It's just more interesting.

Kat Kourbeti: Love that.

Tim Melody Pratt: You can have The Cupcake Chronicles. That's free. That's for you.

Kat Kourbeti: Isn't there a T. Kingfisher book about a baker witch and her familiar is a sourdough starter? (It's called A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking.)

Tim Melody Pratt: Oh, yeah. That rings a bell.

Kat Kourbeti: It's absolutely doable. I can see that being a thing.

My other question is around all of these different formats that you've written throughout your career and still are; you started writing reviews pretty early on as well. Do you think that your reviewing has contributed to your fiction writing in some way? Or do you see that as a separate world?

Tim Melody Pratt: So when I went to Clarion, we critiqued each other's stories. And the reason you do that is not because your critiques as someone who knows nothing and is a new writer yourself are going to be really helpful for the other writers. If they are, that's great, that's a nice side effect. The point is to teach you to critique your own work. The point is to let you develop that toolkit so that you can turn it on your own fiction. That's why you do it. It's not a workshop to make people into editors, to edit other people's work, the point is so that you can do it to your own work.

So in the same way that that helped my writing, reviewing certainly helped my writing. And I'm not a critic really, I'm a reviewer, right? Like say, I liked this, this is why. Try to give you a sense of the sort of things I like and the sort of things I'm just irrationally biased about. Like, I hate science fiction novels that have a big time jump partway through. You know, if we're like, "now it's 30 years later", I get mad and it's irrational. There are great books that do it, I just don't like it. So I try to be upfront about that sort of thing.

But yes, by reading critically—'cause even if you are just kind of, "I like this or don't" reviewer, you still have to have critical faculties about it. It helped me see things, especially in my novel writing, that I was like, "that's a neat effect. I'd like to figure out how they achieve that". And the cool thing about books is it's not like a stage magician doing a trick where you can't see the wires. It's all on the page. Every single thing the writer does is just words on the page; that means you can figure it out. It might be hard, it might be subtle, but you can study the text and figure out every single trick that they pulled, every technique that they used, and then you can steal it and you can use it in your own work.

So reviewing helped me develop that kind of critical faculty and that ability to go in and pillage other people's books. There's so many writers I've stolen stuff from: Joe Lansdale, Joe Abercrombie, Joanna Russ, Connie Willis... Tons of authors have things where I can point to my work and say, "I got this because I stole it from them."

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Tim Melody Pratt: To be more generous, I noticed the work of other artists and figured out how I could incorporate those techniques into my own work. Van Gogh didn't own those wild brush strokes, they just came to be one of the defining aspects of his work. Yeah, so reviewing did help. Mostly, truthfully, it was a way to get paid to read books. I mostly reviewed books that I was gonna read anyway, and hey, if you wanna gimme some money, also, I can tell you what I thought about it.

Kat Kourbeti: And at what point did the reviewing turn into a more serious position with Locus?

Tim Melody Pratt: I worked at Locus before I was a reviewer. I started there as a lowly editorial assistant in 2001. Around August 2001 I started there, so I'm coming up on 24 years this year. I'm 48, so yeah, half my life. And I just told my boss, who at the time was the founder Charles Brown, "I would love to review." And he is like, "we have good reviewers". You know, "who are you? You are not qualified to review for us."

Because I was nobody. I had published some tiny small press stories at the time, I did not impress Charles particularly. But then there was—I can't remember what it was, if it was small press horror or if it was a poetry collection or something, 'cause I read that stuff anyway—he was like, "okay, you can review this, 'cause nobody else is going to", and then I did an okay job, so I got more gigs.

I've always been a very occasional kind of random reviewer for Locus, and in recent years I have not reviewed much of anything anywhere. But it's something that I enjoy, mostly because I like the chance, the excuse to sit down and think deeply about why I liked or disliked something that I read.

Now I do these little tiny paragraph long capsule reviews, like for my Patreon. Just free, every couple months I'll be like, here's what I read, because I don't have as much time. I'm doing books, I'm doing stories, so I have less time to review. But yeah, I do enjoy it. It was meaningful to me. And again, there were times early on when, like a review for Strange Horizons, that was how I bought baby formula, right? Like—

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Tim Melody Pratt: It was nice to have sympathetic markets.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, for sure. Since then has it turned into anything kinda longer form, with the nonfiction?

Tim Melody Pratt: No. I'm really not much of a nonfiction writer, truthfully, like I don't think I'll ever write a book about writing. I know a lot of writers do, and I've read tons of them and found 'em useful, but every time I think about doing it, I just think of all the things I don't know.

I did some teaching about a year ago at Seton Hill, the popular fiction MFA program, Nicole Peeler runs it, and Jaye Wells is one of the teachers there. Like they have just a ton of great professors and they do genre fiction, they do romance, science fiction, fantasy, mystery. And they asked me to come as a visiting professor and do a thing, and as part of that, I had to teach a three hour class to grad students, and I had to do this two hour talk, and that's some of the most long form writing about nonfiction work that I've done in years. I had to really sit down and be like, "okay, what am I writing about? What do I think about these things?" And I taught character-driven fiction and point of view, 'cause those are the things I'm a really big nerd about.

Kat Kourbeti: It was Arkady Martine that I heard this from, but she said that she got it from someone at Viable Paradise—but she once told me that every writer gets one thing in their toolbox for free.

Tim Melody Pratt: That might be an Elizabeth Bear line!

Kat Kourbeti: I think it's a common adage in the genre writing circles at least, but I first heard it from Arkady Martine and I told her thank you, because it can really help you recognise what you're good at. And I would say yeah, no doubt about it, your free thing in the toolbox is characters and point of view and that sort of thing. Like, you can really make people feel real.

Tim Melody Pratt: Thank you. People compliment my plotting and I'm like, I don't plot, I create characters and then I put 'em in a situation. I see what they do, if they don't struggle enough, I make the situation worse for them, or I take another character and I have them have diametrically opposed goals and I bang them together and see what happens. That's how I write a lot of my novels. Or I'll throw in a third character with a completely perpendicular thing and just watch them intersect, watch them crash, and just everything blows in different directions, and that's my plot.

Ray Bradbury said that "the plot is the footprints of your characters leave in the snow as they run to and from their various adventures", and that's always been my approach. In my short fiction, sometimes there's not anything you could even recognize as a plot. I have been told, as some people have noted about my work, but—

Kat Kourbeti: It depends on the length and it depends on a lot of things, right? What you're trying to do with something.

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Doesn't always have to have a arc or a beginning, middle, end in that sense.

Tim Melody Pratt: A lot of this stuff is very Western story forms, and there are other ways to tell stories. This is just the sort of conflict-driven thing where a character wants something and they have to overcome struggles to get it or not get it, or discover that it's not what they wanted at all, which is usually the better ending. It's a dominant paradigm in our culture, but it's not the only way to tell a story.

Kat Kourbeti: A hundred percent. And so then my question is about your poetry.

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: 'Cause poetry is not the most common thing, I think, for a lot of people, especially in genre, and you've done a lot of it. What's your general approach to writing poetry? A lot of it is free verse, I think, from you that I've read. How do you think about poems when you're starting to write something?

Tim Melody Pratt: Absolutely. I love poetry. I was a fan of poetry from a pretty young age. In college I studied it a lot, I was a creative writing major. My thesis was not fiction, my thesis was a poetry thesis. I also was a TA for two years for a poetry class that was taught in the interdisciplinary studies department; it was a combination of Jungian psychology and poetry, because it was about going to the well of images that we have collectively in our culture and just as humans, and how you can draw on that stuff to get more power in your poetry. So that was great, it's taught by a guy named Jay Wentworth who's still around, and I hung out with him a couple years ago. Again, he was a great poet, one of my favorites, and he taught me a lot about how poetry works on a mechanical level, like how you make that stuff work. You know, enjambment and assonance, and I learned all of the metrical feet, like he taught me how to scan poetry, all this stuff that I had studied, but he was the first one who was really like, "this is how it works. This is how you disassemble the engine to see how the parts move." So once I had that tool set, it was just practice. And I have written tons of poetry, I've published a fair bit but I've written so much more than I've ever published.

And then I did some teaching, which is also a great way. When I was in college I did some teaching for mostly retired seniors, it was continuing ed stuff, and it was me and this other writer named Sean, who's—I cannot remember his last name, he was an Irish guy, Bostonian, Irish guy—and Sean would do the sort of like, "this is how you write from the well of your fury and this is how you dig into your childhood trauma to find the stuff to write about." And I would be like, "this is how slant rhyme works," right? He would do the passion stuff and I would do the nuts and bolts, "this is how you make this work," and that was how we divied it up.

But I love poetry. Like, I'm looking right now at my poetry shelf and there's so many writers I love, Sexton and Ellen Bass and Sharon Olds and just writers upon writers who did work that was so meaningful to me. And I still read a fair bit of contemporary poetry, I still go through the many used bookstores that we have here in the East Bay, and I'll browse through the poetry and pick things up.

Speculative poetry, obviously, just because almost everything I write has speculative elements. Even my thesis in college, about half of it had some sort of fantasy element. And often it would be material that I could have done a story about, or it would be material I did do stories about, but then I had a different way of accessing it. I actually won a Rhysling award from the SFPA for a poem called 'Soul Searching' that was in Strange Horizons, which is about a wizard who hid his soul away in an egg or a stone, so he could be immortal, but then he lost his humanity. It had been so many centuries, and in the story, it's sort of ambiguous: is this just a crazy person, is this a mentally ill guy who is telling these stories that aren't true? Or was he really a sorcerer whose humanity has gone away and he can't find his soul, he can't figure out where he found it?

And that was something I then wrote a book called 'Heirs of Grace' that had essentially that same premise. It was about a sorcerer who had lost his humanity by putting his soul away. That year I also won second place in that category in the SFPA, I think for a different poem that was in Strange Horizons. I can't remember, but that was cool. I still have the little plaque. What is it? The Nebulas are adding a poetry category?

Kat Kourbeti: Well there's a special Hugo this year, yeah, and we have two on the ballot. (In fact, one of them won the award!)

Tim Melody Pratt: I was thinking I need to write poetry again. I still write it some. I need to publish poetry again, now there's new worlds to conquer.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I find it really interesting that you return to perhaps even the same source material or source idea, and approach it from a different angle for a poem.

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah. Often the poem comes first. I'll try out this idea and be like, "oh, this is neat". God of the Crossroads, there's stuff in there that came up in tons of my fiction later.

Kat Kourbeti: We will link to all of that in the show notes for people to peruse. So then I suppose I wanna dive into the Beastiary collection of poems—

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: That's on Strange Horizons. So these are all different mythical creatures that you're describing. Where did that idea come from?

Tim Melody Pratt: Jorge Luis Borges, Book of Imaginary Beings, a fascinating book describing mostly things that Borges made up. They're stories in a sense, right? They're prose and they're short, but they don't have any of the sort of shape of traditional stories. They just very poetically describe these strange, imaginary things. And I mean, also, I'm like an old D&D nerd. I would look at monster manuals and beastiaries, and I always thought that stuff was cool. I loved medieval beastiaries.

I was in Europe a couple years ago and I got to go to like the Prado and some of the museums in Spain, and my favorite thing is looking at people who painted a lion based on having had a lion described to them once. Or there's a great painting commissioned by a guy who went overboard as a cabin boy and got attacked by a shark, and he commissioned multiple paintings of this experience, and the people painting the shark had never seen a shark before, right? These are sharks with like nostrils just above the mouth, like just weird things. So that kind of thing always interested me, and cryptids. I love cryptids. I've written about Bigfoot, I've written about Mothman, I've written about Batsquaches, the Goatman... the stuff I find really interesting, like something that you glimpse and then you make up what it's about.

So I had been interested in mythological creatures and I'd written stories about Behemoth and Leviathan and stuff like that, and the one that I remember really well (A Bestiary: Engulfer) is about the Norse dragon The Corpse Eater, the one that gnaws on the roots of the world tree. There's a part in that poem where it talks about how every person is a world, there are monsters underneath the world... by the transitive property, right, there are monsters within you. And so dealing metaphorically, psychologically, with stuff about just being a person in the world and struggling with things through the lens of these mythological creatures—'cause this stuff, people make this stuff up, right? And there's a reason that we personify the danger of dying in a shipwreck. "Oh, there must be monsters. There must be a Kraken. There must be Leviathan." Or that we imagine the universe started as a droplet of water that had a fish swimming in it, whatever it is. There's some sort of psychological depth to this.

And so I would just take those images and really just reflect on what do they make me think about in my own life? I think there's one about Spiderwoman (A Bestiary: Ts'its'tsi'nako), about a figure that moves between two worlds, which is something that I thought about a lot.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I like that first line, actually: "Imagine a woman, imagine a spider. Imagine the woman is a spider."

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah. The sort of Spiderwoman imagery. You know, and looking back, these are not cultures that were my culture. Maybe I shouldn't have been quite so cavalier with them. I used to write a lot more about living religions than I do now, treating them mythologically, which in retrospect is not the most respectful thing. In my defense, I was 25 most of these times, and was just gobbling up everything I could.

But the notion of this mythical spider moving through different worlds as one, that's always been very powerful to me, because as an artist, you get to do that. As an artist, you can find a place in every strata of society. You are equally at home in a squat where people are super high doing a poetry reading that nobody knows about, as you are in the house of the chairman of the NEA or whatever. And I'm like a poor trailer park kid from Eastern North Carolina, but I've gotten to experience all kinds of things because I'm an artist. It's enabled me to have access to all these strata, and I belong in all of them. Some of them I'm more comfortable in than others, but as an artist, you belong and you should see as much of it as you can, because it enriches and enlivens your art.

So specifically that poem, that stuff was on my mind. I don't even know how much comes across in that poem about that, but that's the sort of stuff I was thinking about.

Kat Kourbeti: Generally speaking, I think that people should be able to write about cultures and places that aren't their direct experience as long as it's well researched and respectful and done well. I think that should be completely open for people to do. It's when that doesn't happen where you run into caricatures and harmful stereotypes and things that are just like, why do that? And I don't think that any of the poems that we publish certainly would do that, 'cause otherwise I don't think we would've taken them.

Tim Melody Pratt: Strange Horizons has always been good about this stuff, yeah. I don't think I did a particularly bad job, but I—as a person who it will not shock you to hear is not strictly gender conforming, seeing well-meaning people who aren't steeped in a particular culture or, say, subsect of society, still blundering around and doing stuff accidentally—I'm very aware of the things that I don't know. So I'm more cautious now than I used to be about that stuff.

There are probably very few religions that are really safely dead, right? There are still people out there worshiping Zeus and Aphrodite. But as (far as) Western sort of cultural history, I'm happy I can write about the fae folk, right? I have been to London once, but my forebears are from there; I have connections to Appalachia where a lot of those stories have transmogrified. So there are things that I feel more comfortable talking about than others, but no, I don't think I was particularly monstrous in writing about monsters.

Kat Kourbeti: You did write, what was that other poem? Making Monsters, from 2004. It just fascinates me that you kept coming back to the Beastiary concept. Did you submit each poem as a new thing? Like, "hey, I've got this new idea?"

Tim Melody Pratt: I think I had sent a couple and then was like, "oh, I think these are connected." And so then every time I wrote something that was like that, I was like, "hey, do you guys want this as part of the thing?" And I can't remember how many there were ultimately, but yeah, I didn't intend it to be a series, it was an emergent property. "Oh, I keep writing these poems about monsters. Wouldn't it be neat if we did them as a suite?"

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I think I'm counting seven on this list. Yeah, that's not a bad number at all.

Tim Melody Pratt: That's good. Pretty solid. Could have done a whole book! I was so busy and I still am busy, but, oh, maybe someday.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Do other works of yours that say, aren't strictly speaking in this collection, fall within that thematic scope?

Tim Melody Pratt: Probably. I would need to look at a list of my poems to say which ones, but yeah, I imagine there were times Strange Horizons didn't want something that it went somewhere else. Wouldn't shock me.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. So perhaps a book is not that far off. And dare I ask, what are you working on now?

Tim Melody Pratt: Well, right this minute I'm on deadline for a roleplaying game tie-in novel. My rule for taking work-for-hire jobs is, "would my 14-year-old self have been delighted by this?" And they are, truthfully, a lot of fun, and the fans are a ton of fun too. And it introduces my work to a lot of readers who might not otherwise read my work.

I did a Forgotten Realms novel back in 2012 and a thing I made up ended up in Baldur's Gate 3, in the video game, which I didn't know until somebody pointed it out to me. But a drug I invented in that book is a thing that gives you a little boost and then messes you up. That was fun, that's my immortality. But I have been doing some writing for a company called Aconyte that does gaming tie-ins, and I am doing writing for Paizo that does Pathfinder and Starfinder, so I have a long association with them. So right now that's the project, but that's due in a month, and after that's turned in, I'll take a couple weeks and play video games.

But then the next thing is a novel called The Jewel in the Comet that is a sequel to my book, The Knife and the Serpent, which came out last year, which is a multiverse space opera, kinky genderqueer adventure novel. I'm super excited about that. I have notes and notes that I'm really excited to turn into an actual novel. So that's the next big thing. Otherwise just yeah, writing stories.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. So is there anything super recent or something that's coming up soon that you would like to plug or promote?

Tim Melody Pratt: Knife in the Serpent is the latest, original thing. That was last June, I think, is when it came out. I had a series for Arkham Horror, the Lovecraftian Game, a trilogy called The Sanford Files. The second book, Herald of Ruin, came out last year, and The Twilight Magus, I think they just did a cover reveal for this week. And John Coulthart, the World Fantasy Award-winning artist, has done all the covers and they have this beautiful, uniform, very baroque look. It's the twenties, so it has this very art deco feel. I love the covers so much. So that's coming out, and then in summer I have a Starfinder book, so it's spaceships and elves. It's great fun to jam that stuff together.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I've played a bit of Pathfinder. And I've definitely played Arkham Horror, so I will look all of those things up 'cause they're very relevant to my interests.

Tim Melody Pratt: They're fun. I'm a board game player, I'm a role-playing gamer from way back when, so when I got the opportunity to do that stuff for Aconyte, I was pretty excited to do so.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I do like what you said: "would my 14-year-old self be happy to read this?" Such a big part of finding the joy in things, and writing what makes the most kind of inner you happy. Ah!

Tim Melody Pratt: Yeah. Absolutely. Ideally it should be fun. It's also work, I take it seriously.

Kat Kourbeti: For sure.

Tim Melody Pratt: These bills plump up the kids' college fund, which is coming. But yeah, I mean, I say no to jobs that I think won't be fun. Well, unless they offer to pay me a lot.

Kat Kourbeti: I think that's fair.

Tim Melody Pratt: You find a balance.

Kat Kourbeti: So thank you so much for spending some time with us and telling us all about your Strange Horizons journey, and my goodness, your marriage, your life. Thank you for being a part of Strange Horizons for so long!

Tim Melody Pratt: Thank you for being part of keeping it going. That's great.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you so much, and we'll look forward to all of your future work.

In this special episode of Strange Horizons at 25, Senior Podcast Editor Kat Kourbeti and Editor Michael Ireland welcome current members of the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective for a series of interviews to give you a glimpse behind the curtain of each department and to celebrate 25 years of this pioneering speculative fiction magazine.

A big thank you to Arturo Serrano, Proofreader; Dan Hartland and Aisha Subramanian, Senior Reviews Editors and hosts of Critical Friends; Hebe Stanton, Senior Fiction Editor; Romie Stott, Administrative Editor and Senior Poetry Editor; and Gautam Bhatia, Co-Ordinating Editor and Senior Articles Editor, for joining us for these interviews. Happy 25 years, one and all, and here's to many more!

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm Kat Kourbeti.

Michael Ireland: And I'm Michael Ireland.

Kat Kourbeti: And it is our privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres.

In fact, today is our official 25th anniversary issue. So it's a bit of a special episode, actually.

Michael Ireland: Did you bring the cake?

Kat Kourbeti: I forgot the cake. Ah, I knew I was supposed to bring something to this recording so that I offer you cake virtually! Let's pretend I have cake and let's pretend it smells amazing.

So, yeah, so today is our 25th anniversary issue on the Strange Horizons website. Every department's doing a little something to celebrate, and this is our contribution. What a year it's been.

Michael Ireland: It has been a long one, but also very, very quick.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it's surprising. We launched this particular bit of the podcast about a year ago, and I'm kind of astounded that we've only made it to 15 episodes of just this, because we're also doing so much else. So it's just been really difficult to cram it all in.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, no, we've implemented obviously bringing the fiction podcast back as well as this, and the Critical Friends episodes are coming out fast— uh, and I was gonna say Fast and Furious, but it's not Fast and Furious.

Kat Kourbeti: They're not so furious.

Michael Ireland: And then we've also got the Writing While Disabled episodes as well. So the feed has absolutely kicked off this year, and there's gonna be much more to come as well.

Kat Kourbeti: Indeed. Yeah. What's it been like for you? Like you joined us right before it all just kind of kicked off, actually, so how's this year been for you?

Michael Ireland: Yeah, so I joined, what, two years ago at this point? I'd say the last 14 months have been a bit of a wild ride for myself personally, because I think we first met at Worldcon, is that the first time we met?

Kat Kourbeti: In real life? Yeah.

Michael Ireland: In person? Yeah. And then since then, I think you're getting sick of my face because we have spent a lot of time together and that's been great. That's been one of the motivators for me as well, is that we spend a lot of time outside of Strange Horizons doing fun stuff together, a lot of experiences all around the world at this point. It's really nice to have that connection with you. I'm not sure if any of the other departments get the amount of fun that we do, especially with the amount of in-person events that we go to as well, but that's been a good motivator for me because I like to have that connection, to be able to stream ideas with you of things I want to do on the podcast, things that are going on outside of our (working) lives. And it's like I've gained a friend, as well as just a colleague within here, and that's been just, yeah, a lot of fun for me.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah!

Michael Ireland: Well, a lot of reflective things there, because it's changed my kind of perspective on what the space is, what the genre is, because I've always been more of a consumer, but since joining Strange Horizons and becoming a peer with a lot of my favorite writers and just getting to talk shop with them and understand what those are— like even the Strange Horizons at 25 episodes, I've listened to all these cheats that they've got, like a master class.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, thank you! That's what I've been saying. It's like it's a little masterclass, a little hidden lesson within each episode of just like, how all these people do what they do best and what we love them for.

But I'm right there with you in that this has been a fun year because of this great working relationship. You've helped bring the podcast to what I always thought it could be, but I needed someone to tell me it was possible. And so you just came in and you were like, "all right, well, what do you want?" And I was like, "well, I kind of want all these things." And you're like, "all right, so let's do it." "Okay, great!"

And we've been to conventions together, we've met all of these people, and yeah, at this point it is a little worldwide: we went to Seattle, we went to Belfast, which is in our country technically 'cause we're both based in the UK, and then a couple of other UK based things, Easter Con and whatnot.

So yeah, it's been a really great time, just having someone in the department that I'm not just texting across a time zone, you know. Being able to chat together and being able to reach you and being able to meet up in real life and just talk shop has been really good.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, with the way that we do things as well, I think it's the neurodivergence for both of us, is that we'll be having a conversation on Slack, a conversation on Discord, a conversation on WhatsApp, all at the same time, about different things.

Kat Kourbeti: The chat is across all of the apps and somehow it makes sense. Don't ask me how.

Michael Ireland: Yeah. But it's nice to have that, if there is something that crosses my mind, and the same with yourself, we've got the accessibility with each other to be like, "here's an idea, or here's a thing, or is this a problem?" And then we're there for each other immediately, and it's really nice to have that reassurance, to know that we're not just going through this...

Kat Kourbeti: In a void. Yeah. That often happens, I think, and I've had experiences like that even in my time on this mag, just because of everybody being like really disparate, where it's like, "all right, so we wanna do this... yes?" And then it can be crickets for a while, and then it's like, "yeah, okay, cool." "...Okay, great!"

It is a strength of this magazine that we are from all over, but there are challenges, and sometimes they're really felt, especially because in a department such as this, which is quite in flux and there's just a lot going on, not really being able to coordinate in real time as much was definitely harder, I will say.

But yeah, we've got a lot of really fun things on this feed now, and that's thanks to you arriving and pulling up your sleeves and being like, "all right, I'm ready, let's go."

Michael Ireland: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: So thank you for that. It's been a joy to listen to all of these new voices on the podcast, the narrators who have come in and are helping us bring all these stories to life that we haven't been able to in the last little bit, and then also just having all of the other stuff. The variable feed has been really fun and new, and not many podcasts really do that.

Michael Ireland: Yeah. I enjoy the fact that it does work, because I would challenge myself to try and see how we can make things work, that it does become enjoyable for us, because we get to do so many different creative things now where it feels like the podcast department is a (real) department. Even internally, it feels like we've had a voice over the last year, which is really nice, and people are engaging with us outside of our own department. Because obviously if you're just dealing with your own stuff within there, it's hard to bridge that gap between departments sometimes. But it feels like that has been a big strength of ours over the last year, just getting the ideas and things like that from the other departments, and I feel like that's just gonna keep growing stronger as we celebrate that 25th anniversary.

Yeah, it's been nice having that challenge for myself, you know? I never know if I'm gonna be able to do it or not, but the fact that I'm like, it's on the table, like, here's the things that you want to do, here's my ways of trying to work them out, that constant collaboration that we've got— because there's things that you will take charge on, there's things I'll take charge on— but we're never out of sync in that sense. Always checking up, making sure either of us needs a hand in either way, of being able to push and pull in the directions that we need each other, to make sure that we are keeping happy as well as getting nice new episodes out.

Kat Kourbeti: Busy, but also happy. Like, it's very important to enjoy what we're doing, A, 'cause it's a volunteer job and if it's not fun, why are we doing it? But I think that also translates to what the listeners are getting and hopefully it all comes through.

We've got some really nice interviews with current staff for you today, so instead of looking back at the contributors side, we've spoken to some people who are on the team right now, from all different departments, to see A, how does it all work and come together? B, how are all these people feeling about their time on the magazine and especially now celebrating 25 years, and just for readers and listeners to get a glimpse into what it takes to put this magazine together. Because there are so many of us, we are from all over, and that's what makes Strange Horizons what it is.

So we'll cue up some of those interviews for you now and we'll be back with you once they're done. Enjoy.

Arturo Serrano, Proofreader

Arturo Serrano: I am Arturo Serrano and I'm a proofreader at Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: And how long have you been on the Strange Horizons team?

Arturo Serrano: About a couple years.

Kat Kourbeti: That's cool. What's it been like being part of the team thus far?

Arturo Serrano: It is frankly an honor. During my interactions with the team, I have noticed that we have people from literally everywhere. And it is one of the few occasions when I have been part of collaborative efforts where I don't feel strange being the one from my country. Because I have been part of other editorial teams, and most of the times it has been mostly American people or British people, and I always felt like the one weird kid in the cool kids group. But at Strange Horizons, I can feel more relaxed, because the team is truly global and there is an atmosphere of true welcoming and acceptance of people from all origins.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, absolutely. I feel the same way. We all get to work together and see what everybody thinks and what we wanna build together. It's really special and really fun.

So what do you do as a proofreader?

Arturo Serrano: Each month, the team of proofreaders receives a series of assignments. The team of proofreaders is about half a dozen people, and we are split in groups. Each month, a number of proofreaders is put in charge of the stories, another is put in charge of proofreading the poetry, another team handles reviews, and it cycles every month. There is a style manual: we take as reference the Merriam Webster dictionary, we take as reference the Chicago Manual of Style, and we have developed a very structured process for marking the bits that need to be corrected, escalating that to the next highest person in the team. And it is also very structured in terms of deadlines, because all the articles and stories have a set deadline. We already know in advance when each article is set to be published, so that helps us distribute our workload over the month.

Kat Kourbeti: And do you have a favorite thing, a favorite sort of section to proofread?

Arturo Serrano: I like reviews, because when we review poetry, for example, it takes more effort to identify which variations in punctuation or spelling are part of the poetic intention instead of a mistake. Sometimes that happens with stories too, but with reviews, which are basically nonfiction in normal prose, it is clearer to identify when a mistake is a mistake.

Kat Kourbeti: I hadn't thought about it that way. That does present a challenge. Do you have to then communicate with the poetry editors or the poet directly, when that happens?

Arturo Serrano: We mark the article, the pieces that we consider might perhaps need to be corrected, and we escalate that to the supervisor of proofreaders. I don't know how often on their end they end up contacting the author, but I suppose it must happen on occasion.

Kat Kourbeti: I can imagine. Yeah. Just kinda like, did you mean this, is this intentional?

And what has your experience been like? The last couple of years on Strange Horizons have been quite eventful. We won a Hugo last year, we were up for another one this year, and to be part of that, has that kind of put a pep in your step? What has that felt like to you, to be part of this team right now?

Arturo Serrano: I think the practice that Strange Horizons has adopted and persisted in adopting, in naming the entire team in lists of eligibility and lists of finalists for awards, creates a stronger sense of belonging. When Strange Horizons is nominated, or is mentioned for any purpose, I inevitably get the feeling that some of that was caused by my effort. And I'm sure every one of the other departments gets that same feeling, because the magazine goes out of its way to recognize every single person who participates.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I think we blazed the trail for that, for sure, and I'm glad to see other teams do that too now because it does take all of these people to do all this. It's a lot of work.

Arturo Serrano: It takes a global village.

Kat Kourbeti: It really does take a global village. Yeah. So I suppose the work carries on— are you working on anything this month?

Arturo Serrano: This month in particular, we are assigned reviews. I have already checked the posts for this week, so that basically leaves me free to do my other stuff until next week.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay. And what is your other stuff? What are you working on right now?

Arturo Serrano: I am a reviewer and editor for Nerds of a Feather. I am also part of the team at the Galactic Journey, I am finishing my degree in creative writing, I have recently joined the team of volunteer translators for Global Voices, and I am in the initial stages of planning my second novel.

Kat Kourbeti: That does sound like a lot of work, but it's all fun though. It all sounds like fun stuff. What are you working on in terms of the reviewing and writing about science fiction and fantasy?

Arturo Serrano: You mean at Nerds of a Feather?

Kat Kourbeti: Yes.

Arturo Serrano: There is mostly a degree of freedom that we give all the contributors in deciding what they want to review. Sometimes I browse lists of upcoming books and suggest them to the team, but it is never mandatory. Each member has their own specialties and their own obsessions, and we like to celebrate each one's obsessions because that way we get to hear about movies and books and games that are usually not mentioned.

Kat Kourbeti: And can you tell me what your novel is about? Is it in any way related to your first novel or is this a completely new project?

Arturo Serrano: Oh, it is different. My first novel was an alternate history. The second one, I'm planning a time travel story. I have this idea of a sort of "congress of centuries", a place where representatives of each century meet to debate how time travel is to be used, because in many stories of time travel one finds the problem that time travel messes up more than it fixes, and the story becomes the story of how to clean up the mess.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes.

Arturo Serrano: So in the one that I'm planning, there is this whole process of deliberation to try to use time travel responsibly, and to see whether it is at all possible to use time travel in a way that messes up as little as possible.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Arturo Serrano: I am still trying to figure out how to handle the complication that the characters are going to be replaced every time they do something. So how does one maintain a cohesive narrative?

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, the format will have to be, the structure even, less dependent on a specific character's journey and more the collective journey. It sounds like fun. I will read this when it's out.

Is there anything you'd like to say to the team of Strange Horizons and to the readers and the listeners? For our 25th anniversary.

Arturo Serrano: I love that this era of science fiction has been called the Rainbow Age of science fiction, and I especially love that Strange Horizons has positioned itself as one of the showcase examples of what makes the Rainbow Age what it is.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you, that's beautiful. And yeah, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to give us a little message. Really excited to talk to one of the proofreaders finally, and to meet you, even though it's from very far away.

Arturo Serrano: Thank you for having me.

Kat Kourbeti: My pleasure.

[You can find Arturo's website, and ways to follow him, here.]

Dan Hartland & Aishwarya Subramanian, Reviews Editors & Hosts of Critical Friends podcast

​And here I am joined by the lovely Reviews team, who you might also know as the Critical Friends team. Hello friends.

Dan Hartland: Hello.

Aisha Subramanian: Hello.

Kat Kourbeti: Do you mind introducing yourselves and telling us a bit about what you do at Strange Horizons?

Aisha Subramanian: Do you wanna go first?

Dan Hartland: We always do this. I knew that was gonna happen. Like, we just defer to each other. Yeah, I can go first, but would you like to go first instead?

Aisha Subramanian: I could, but what about you? (both laugh)

Dan Hartland: I'm Dan Hartland, and I'm one of the Reviews editors here at Strange Horizons.

Aisha Subramanian: I'm Aisha Subramanian, I am also one of the Reviews editors at Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: And how long have you guys been with the magazine? A while, I think, right?

Dan Hartland: Yeah, I think it's 10 years. Is it? I think it is. I think we started in January 2015.

Aisha Subramanian: Yeah. 2015.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow.

Aisha Subramanian: Yeah. That's terrifying.

Kat Kourbeti: What's that been like?

Dan Hartland: Yeah... (both laugh)

Kat Kourbeti: Giggles.

Dan Hartland: The only viable response to that is laughter.

Well, of course we started in January 2015 with our late friend Maureen Kincaid Speller. So we were originally a trio, and Maureen was the senior one of the three, so she just told us what to do really, and we did it. And of course, with her passing, we kind of wanted to carry on in order to do the work that we think she would've wanted us to do, although I would not wish to presume that we've achieved that aim. She's probably like somewhere going, "oh, these guys!"

But yeah, so it's been, I dunno what your experience is, Aisha, but it does feel as if it's been a kind of, there was "with Maureen" and then there was... "not with Maureen."

Aisha Subramanian: Yeah, I think the dynamic obviously shifted quite a lot. As you've already seen, Dan and I both take being told what to do very well, and telling each other what to do is complicated. But yeah, I think I possibly felt more involved in some ways in like, the adminy decisions when Maureen was around. Now I defer to Dan for a lot of things, which is a bit unfair to Dan.

Dan Hartland: Yeah. I don't know why!

Aisha Subramanian: But it has changed a lot.

Dan Hartland: Yeah. I think it has. I think we had a plan when we started, which I think we followed through on. But because it was a plan that the three of us put together, it's then taken sort of some thought to fill in, and you can't—

Aisha Subramanian: Yeah.

Dan Hartland: —fill in the gap. The things we wanted to achieve, you probably remember them completely different. And if Maureen was able to answer the question, she'd remember them differently too. But I think we wanted to diversify the reviewer base even further. Like our predecessors, Niall Harrison and Abigail Nussbaum, had done great work in that, foundational work, really. Like we would've been nowhere if they hadn't done that stuff. But we sort of pushed that further.

We also wanted to diversify what was reviewed, and that is in terms of who wrote it, but also what they are writing. I dunno, did it get weirder? I would say that we're quite interested in the literary edges of all this stuff. We do a lot of core genre, but we'll also do kind of stuff that's really, not just curling the edges, it's just a screwed up ball at this point.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, but that's been fun though. I think as a reader myself of the reviews, it's been great to have that diversity of, not everything is the traditionally published novels that you will find in bookstores. There will be reviews of Japanese light novels and manga and even films. Like we're taking it to just like the story level of "everything is valid and your opinions are valid, and I wanna hear about them". And by extension, like, for me, I'm like, this is great because a lot of this stuff either I wouldn't have heard of, or it's perspectives I hadn't heard or seen before, and it's been really great to just have that, and have a market for it. It's been lovely to see that expansion actually.

Aisha Subramanian: I think part of the sort of commitment to weirdness and diversifying what we're publishing is also the literary edges of the genre, but also the literary edges of what you can do with a review sometimes. So if you're doing something formally very weird, or unexpected or just full of footnotes— because we do love a footnote— we're interested in playing around with that, and playing around with the forms, and seeing what we can do there. And that feels like that's something that Maureen really encouraged and that we tried to continue, and sort of play along with.

Dan Hartland: Yeah, I think so, I hope so. The form question is really important, I think, and as Aisha and I have hopefully already demonstrated humorously, I think if you pushed me to name our approach, it would be "consensual". Like we're trying to reflect a community as broad as possible within a department, and what we want is not to set a Strange Horizons review format. I'm sure there is— like, we are quite long, so we tend towards longer than shorter; we tend towards analytical more than we do summary. So there are sort of characteristics of the SH review, but on the other hand, if you wanna come and you write a review purely in footnotes, you can; if you wanna do choose your own adventure, please do; if you wanna do a "proper academic thing", you can; if you want to do something almost essayistic, please do. And we also publish almost reader report-y reviews too.

So hopefully what comes out of that is as polyvocal a blend as two editors can achieve, 'cause we're obviously bound by our own interests. We get loads of emails in saying, "can you please cover this book and can you please cover that book?" And we will offer books out that appeal to us to some extent, although hopefully also trying to think outside the box, but we also invite our reviewers to tell us what books they've been reading and what books they think we should be covering. So again, we try to plug the gaps. We try to be open.

Kat Kourbeti: And you've been doing criticism specials as well, which kind of really expand that just by sheer volume of words, which is great as well. Have those been fun to put together, stressful to put together, a bit of both?

Aisha Subramanian: Yes (laughs). Fun, stressful, both.

Dan Hartland: I would go as far as to say, I don't think it was our idea. So I think I'm right in saying we were just told by Gautam (Bhatia), "you're gonna be doing a criticism special now". And like just the one, like "you'll just do it one year, see how it goes. Like we'll just do that one special, like we do other themed specials". And we're like, okay. And then we did that one and it was like... "it's gonna be annual now."

Aisha Subramanian: Everyone kept sending us pitches for the next one, before we'd said that there would be a next one. So... kind of had to.

Kat Kourbeti: At least your work's done there at that point.

Dan Hartland: I will say that like, it's great because there is a kind of mini —and very mini— but there is a mini boom of spec fic criticism at the moment. So it's nice to be able to provide a platform for that, and also our reviews are, as I mentioned, they do tend analytical, so it's nice to have one issue a year where we can give people even more room than we usually give them to do that thing.

We've also tried to use the issue as a way of bringing new people in, giving that extra space, or using that extra space to persuade people to come and write for us. It's a bigger hook to catch people on. So yeah, it's been a really great way I think of affirming the reviews department whilst also expanding it at the same time. It feels like both, it feels like just an extension of what we do anyway. And also, something else.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, just kind of like a natural little annex, if you will. But yeah, no, I think they have been fun. Sorry to hear that there has been stress involved, but special issues will do that (laughs). I feel like every time I've worked on one, there's always just a lot going on at the same time. They are fun when the work is done, for sure. So we'll look forward to the next one, which I think is in January of '26, if I recall.

Dan Hartland: Yeah. We're trying to forget that, but I think so. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: And what about Critical Friends, which you guys started as a new podcast on the main feed. It was the first step in diversifying our podcast feed, which now has four different shows on it, which is really fun. But how did that come about and what's it been like for you guys?

Aisha Subramanian: I can't remember why that came about really. I think it was just that we spent a lot of time, the three of us, talking about criticism and... why not have an audience?

Dan Hartland: Yeah, I think that's right. I think 'cause we just had an ongoing chat, where sometimes we talked about Strange Horizons, but most of the time we just didn't, and talked about other stuff. And at one point, I think one of us just said, "podcast?" And then someone else said, "podcast!", and that was it. I think Maureen was really keen to do it, especially keen to do it. Any opportunity to talk about books, she would just jump on.

The thing that always surprises me, I dunno about you Aisha, is when I get an email and I get them often, saying, "ah, I really enjoyed listening to that episode. That was great. Please do more." And I'm like, "Really? Are you sure?"

Aisha Subramanian: The one that weirds me out is when people who you know in real life listen to it. It's very concerning. I found out that my friend's nephew is a fan of the podcast and I was just... I remember your first birthday. That's ridiculous.

Dan Hartland: And it's nice to be able to, again, to talk about the different formats, like Critical Friends has had many different kind of models. It started as a three-way conversation, we've then had kind of interview episodes, we've then had guests, we've had themes, we've had just Aisha and I talking about a thing we've just read. And then the last couple have been, like the one we did on SF in translation, where I just get two reviewers to come in and talk to me about the things that they're thinking about. So it's just a really nice way of hopefully reflecting a little bit the kinds of conversation that the reviews we hope can start.

Because the review isn't— this is how I see it: a review is not the end of a conversation, it doesn't put the full stop on the reading. "Okay, that's what that book means. Next!" It's much more, "what do you think?" And so in a way, the podcast is a way for us to try and give the reviews some legs, to let them fly a little bit further. I dunno whether it works, but that's the idea.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I think it definitely works. I was very pleasantly surprised by adding a new thing to the existing feed. At the beginning, I wasn't sure. "Oh, do we maybe make a new feed? We could create like a new account? Like, what should that be?" And then it was like well, I'm sure that the people who listen to the fiction and the poetry would be keen on this, and if they're not, they can skip that episode, whatever.

And actually it's helped to keep the feed going a lot of the time and B, like you say, brought new people in, because having those conversations where it's a little more loose and a little more casual and perhaps a little more approachable, and it's less of a scary thing of "let's talk about analyzing literature", you know, where a lot of people won't necessarily wanna do that and like, read a whole thing 'cause they maybe think they're not capable of understanding, or whatever.

It actually expands barriers, just kind of knocks them down and goes like, "we're just talking here, just talking about this thing that we read." And in fact, your first episode that was just like, "what even is SF criticism?" It's like, "well, yeah, actually, what is it? Great question!"

Dan Hartland: I feel like that's the question of every episode, we still don't know!

I'm really glad you say that thing about approachable though, thank you. Because I really hope that it is, because it can and should, in places and parts, be quite a high minded discussion, but I also think if it can be fun and accessible, then that is I think quite important, to use a word that does also sound forbidding.

Especially in some of the more recent episodes, I felt my role is "ask the stupid question", and see what comes back, because don't assume anything. Keep it at that kind of initial, "let's just poke around, let's poke this thing and see what happens." So yeah, that's great, thank you.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, no, thank you. And I'm glad it's going strong and more regular, and those new formats are fun. If anything, it's opened up my sort of, not expectations, but possibilities for what the podcast could be.

'Cause when I inherited the department, it was very much, "we just do the fiction, poetry, the way it is on the page, no frills, day and date, go". And after a certain point it was like— first of all the rhythm was relentless and very hard to keep up, but then also there was a sense of like, "is that interesting?" And not just for listeners, but also for the folks who work on the podcast, it's just doing that same thing.

And by injecting Critical Friends into that, it was like, that just means the podcast doesn't have to be what it's always been. We can think outside the box. And that gave us the opportunity to think about things like Strange Horizons at 25, which this interview is a part of, and once that project is over... new things. The sky's the limit really, and that reflects Strange Horizons, I think. We just kind of do whatever we feel, and sometimes that means we break new ground.

Aisha Subramanian: I think that is part of the whole— we occasionally call ourselves an anarchist collective, when people ask about the organization of the magazine, and that is how this works. And sometimes it does seem to work in ways that are surprisingly harmonious. I know when it comes to controversial moments in science fiction, most of us are pretty much on the same side of things. We mostly have the same broad politics, the same broad tastes, the same broad interests. So it's never quite chaotic, even though it is. It's conversational.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It's very interesting, in fact, how the magazine seems to attract folks with the same kind of ethos without like explicitly necessarily asking for that. Like it's never in the volunteer calls, it's never, you know, "you must be of a certain persuasion or have a certain sensitivity to these issues in order to be a part of this team", but the people who say, "yes, I would like to be on this team" are people who see the work and they go, "I wanna be part of that, that sounds great."

And yeah, we don't always coordinate with each other, in fact the departments can be a little siloed— you know, we're all, like you say, anarchic, we all just do our work and we hope that we're building a similar or the same thing— but when we do, we all just seem to come together and be like, "I like what you're doing. I like what you're doing. Oh, that's great." It's really cool.

And what has this last year been like for you? We won a Hugo on the eve of our 25th anniversary year, and now it's been a full year of work since then. What has that felt like and been like for the Reviews department?

Dan Hartland: I think, especially when you're running the Reviews department, I'm very conscious that reviews aren't necessarily a weather making thing, right? So we help conversations happen, I hope, and we provide hooks for conversations to begin, I hope. But we're not like the Fiction department, right? We're not like the Poetry department. These are the places where the artists go to do their art, and then we're over on the other side throwing stones at it, right? On that level, I think any given year in the Reviews department is shaped by what stuff are you getting in, and what are you gonna make of that?

And I've found this year really interesting, because it has been so multiplicitous. There hasn't been— and someone will write in or whatever, but here's my thesis so far— there hasn't been a single book or text that you can say "that's 2025 right there, that's the thing that we will all remember this year for". There hasn't been really a single theme necessarily. I tend to think that themes last for longer than a year, but there hasn't been a trend or anything that you can say "that's 2025". And so what we've resulted in is a year of real kind of breadth of stuff, which has been great. We've had reviews of Jurassic World, and we've had reviews of obscure —that shouldn't be obscure— texts in translation that are really challenging.

So what it's felt like in the Reviews department is, "oh my God, we have to get three reviews of 2000 each out every week, wah!" But it always feels like that, so the other side of it is, I'd like to think that it's been quite a polyvocal year again.

Aisha Subramanian: Someone would need to sit down and actually count things, which probably won't be me, but I don't know if people are writing to us more or submitting more, but I get the impression that they really are. And I don't know if that's something that's come about around the Hugo as well, that there's possibly an audience of people who wanted criticism and saw us win the Hugo and were like, "oh, okay, this exists, maybe there is somewhere I would send work".

But I remember when we first took over Reviews, there were weeks when we were scrambling, and sending out emails to people who had reviews due to make sure that they got things in on time, so that we would have those three reviews. And I don't think that's happened for months.

Dan Hartland: Yeah, that's right. I mean, just to sort of peel the curtain back, we are scheduled a month in advance now, which is just, as Aisha says, that was unknown like—

Aisha Subramanian: It was such a luxury to even be a week in advance.

Dan Hartland: Yeah. Yeah. And for a lot of literary magazines, they're already six months in advance. Maybe it feels like, "oh a month? Really, they're running at that pace?" But for us it feels like, "oh yeah, we can sit back here." Because genuinely, Aisha is right, early years it was not just chasing people for outstanding reviews, but chasing people saying, "you don't happen to have a review, do you? Like, just like lying around, that you could give us...?"

Aisha Subramanian: "I know we gave you till like next week, but by any chance..."

Dan Hartland: Yeah, yeah. And so I do think, again, maybe it's partly to do with the mini boom. There are other places as well, there's like Ancillary Review of course, there's Typebar, there's Speculative Insight. So you get a critical mass and then the writers are thinking, "oh, I can write this stuff", and then they're looking for the platforms for it. Maybe that's part of it.

I'd like to think as well, as Aisha says that it's something to do with what we've been doing and people think, "oh, actually they seem cool". But who knows? All I can say is, yeah, we are really lucky, and we've always been lucky with the writers that we get. We wouldn't be here without them.

But yeah, the fact that we have more of them than ever as well is just, yeah, super double-plus good.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, no, it's been great. I'm glad that the Venn diagram of all of the factors has conspired to give you a lot to work with. It's probably all of the things, and that's great. Being able to see, say, someone's voice in a review that they might think, "oh, maybe I could also write a review, because if they can do it, maybe I could do it".

Reviewing obscure things that it's like— you know, I interviewed someone very early at Strange Horizons at 25 who wrote reviews of light novels because, and I quote, she "enjoys trash". And it's like, well, yeah, but trash is great though!

Dan Hartland: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: It's a big part of our media diet, and I think that it deserves a critical look, and it's great that we don't discriminate in that regard. And so yeah, a reviewer might see that and go, "yeah, you know what, I also like this other thing. Maybe I could send in something." And so I hope that keeps happening, because it's awesome.

It's awesome to see just what people think about stuff. A lot of the time it helps me personally like, pick out things to read I might not have thought about. Or, you know, looking at my TBR not really feeling inspired, and then I'll see a review and I'll be like, "oh yeah, actually, do you know what? I already own that, I'm gonna read that next." So great, and I hope that it keeps going.

Dan Hartland: I would really like to say one thing, and I think this was something that Maureen felt. Like, if you'd have asked Maureen what were the plans, I think she might have said way back in January 2015, in a way that Aisha and I might not have done at that time, but do now— she would've said, "I want to create the next generation of reviewers". I want to use and abuse Strange Horizons as a guerilla operation for breeding new reviewers, right? Just for growing them in vats.

I really think anyone that wants to write a review can email us. We really want new writers, and we take the time if they want help, or just publish the thing if it's perfect first thing. Whatever you are reading, we want to see it, because the whole point of this is that we need reviews always, and we will only have a sustainable reviewing culture if we have reviewers all the time. And I would say that's probably the other mission of the department. Yeah, we've still got the vats, they're still bubbling away.

Aisha Subramanian: But also criticality is a moral and ethical mission as well as a way of sustaining the reviews department. Which obviously is the main goal of creating more reviewers, but still, there's also an ethical component to it.

Dan Hartland: Yeah, exactly. I would say that the Strange Horizons Reviews Department is part of the wider Strange Horizons family, first and foremost— although absolutely 'cause we're this anarchist collective, our departments are semi-autonomous, they do their own thing, but I'm glad we all feel that we're also part of the family— but also it's then part of a wider, not science fiction, but literary critical community, and it's just part of that. And we would not demur from being a small part of it, but hopefully as Aisha says, the purpose is not just that we keep having three reviews a week, but that there is something underpinning that which is of wider value and gets wider audiences.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, thank you guys so much for taking the time and chat to me today, and really look forward to seeing all the lovely things coming from your team and the podcast, of course.

Dan Hartland: Thanks, Kat.

Aisha Subramanian: Thanks, Kat!

Hebe Stanton, Fiction Editor

Kat Kourbeti: I'm here with Hebe from the Fiction department. Would you like to introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do at Strange Horizons?

Hebe Stanton: Yeah. Hello, I'm Hebe Stanton. My pronouns are they/them. As Kat said, I'm one of the Fiction editors at Strange Horizons, so I acquire stories for the magazine, I edit stories, work with authors, and do all that good stuff between receiving fiction submissions and getting them onto the website.

Kat Kourbeti: And how long have you been at Strange Horizons?

Hebe Stanton: Okay, so there were two parts to this. So I started up for Strange Horizons as a first reader in I think either 2020 or 2021. I did that for about a year, I think, so that was doing the first pass over the submissions that we get. And the editing team at that point promoted several of the first readers, and I was one of those first readers, so I've been doing this for— again, what is time? Time is a flat circle. Part of this was during the pandemic, so like when time did not pass— so, three or four years, I wanna say. Maybe. That sounds too long. Yeah, something like that.

Kat Kourbeti: In a relative sort of way, I agree with you. I think I joined the team in 2020 and... yeah, I don't know, man, it feels at the same time like a century and also like no time has passed at all. So who's to say? But yeah, you've had the experience of being a first reader as well, which is very interesting to jump from that to being one of the people who makes the decisions.

What was it like, first of all, joining as a first reader and learning what the process is and how to pick stories really, to send up?

Hebe Stanton: That's a good question. I had obviously been reading the magazine for about five years. So I feel like I already had a decent handle what a Strange Horizons story looks like. And obviously there's a lot of variation in what a Strange Horizons story looks like, but there's a vibe that you can sort of navigate by. Reading submitted short stories can be quite different to reading published short stories for a number of reasons; there's also the difference between what you like as a reader and what would be a good fit for the magazine, so there was that to refine through.

But really, yeah, it is just experience, just getting to know what you see a lot, very common sort of story shapes or story concepts, and refining as you go along. And of course, stepping up and being able to be like, "oh I can actually take the stories that I really like and... make them published!" That's a sentence. That has also been a joy as well, but I've enjoyed it all the way through. I wouldn't say that being a first reader was less of a meaningful thing to do than being editor. Like, they're just different.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, for sure. And we need those first eyes, because my goodness, we get a lot of submissions. I think it's great to have that bigger a team to be able to do all of that. And I can see a lot of the time, in the credits that we started to do in the fiction, that you are also the first reader. So do you go through the slush still yourself?

Hebe Stanton: Yeah, all of the editors obviously read the stories that the first readers pass up, but we also read from the general submissions, just to help out and, yeah. We all read all the things.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. So I know that we open up submissions just a few times a year, it's not always going. But what is that like, when the submissions are open and everything comes flooding in?

Hebe Stanton: Firstly we're usually only open for a very short period of time. We have a story cap, which for general submissions, it's usually a thousand. We've been playing a bit with what kind of stories get submitted this year, and the caps have been a bit different, but yeah, generally for general submissions anyone can submit to, it's a thousand. And yeah, it doesn't take us very long nowadays to hit that cap. Like, it used to be that you could count about three days of being open, now I think last time it was less than 24 hours.

I guess it feels quite intense, just because there is often a lot of people asking questions during that period that you sort of have to answer straight away because there's a time limit. But like also it's not a long enough period to feel like really overwhelming. You know, there's one day when we want to make sure that people are answering emails like, regularly and reasonably quickly, but apart from that I wouldn't say it feels that different to sort of normal business.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, okay, well that's good at least. And maybe that's the secret that we've figured out as a market, 'cause you hear some horror stories out there from other markets that I'm glad that we don't have that much of, like, say AI submissions and things like that, where it's like actually quite reasonable, maybe because of all this.

Hebe Stanton: I think I've said this in various places before, but because we have very short opening periods and we have that submission cap, and we're only open a couple of times a year, we're not a very good target for AI spammers, just because the return on investment doesn't make sense, you know? Like, you have to target really closely to know when we're open and that's just not the model that these people are operating on.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Hebe Stanton: Yeah, luckily we have avoided most of the onslaught.

Kat Kourbeti: So there's quite a few Fiction editors in your team. What's it like working with everybody across time zones and all of that? How does the cake come together, if you will?

Hebe Stanton: Firstly, time zone's always fun. We are quite distributed. There are some challenges that come with that, but like generally, I think certainly I've got used to thinking, "oh this person's on PST and this person's on ET, when can I expect them to be around and see stuff?"

I think the most interesting thing, in terms of having a range of people on the staff, is just to see what the different things that people prioritize or, what each of us is looking for in a story. And that's slightly different. I know Kat Weaver for instance, and also Aigner (Loren Wilson) I think, they're both very much looking at precise, elegant, streamlined language. And I can definitely admire that and I can go, "oh, this is a very tightly constructed story", but I generally lean more lush or ornate prose style than they do, and obviously we have different focuses in terms of what we like thematically.

Like I was saying earlier, there's an SH range, like, it's all in the sort of Strange Horizons range, but it's just interesting. You have to put yourself a little bit in other people's heads to be like, "this story isn't for me necessarily, but it might be for someone else. I should pass this up for someone else to look at."

Kat Kourbeti: So do you get to know each other's tastes only through seeing what they choose to publish, or is there a process through which you guys get to know each other to say like, "usually I look at this or my preference is this, so if you see anything like that, send it to me"? Is there anything that specific for you guys?

Hebe Stanton: So I think it's a combination. Obviously, we do see what each other publishes to some extent—we'll have at least two editors agree on a story that it should be published. We also have conversations about the stories that we're taking and the stories that we're considering. We'll often say "I don't like this because this particular thing bugs me in stories generally", or you know, "I enjoy this about this story".

And sometimes we have larger like, policy discussions? Like, what particular themes are we interested in seeing in the next year? Are there any specific things that we don't see very often in spec fic that we are looking out for, or are particularly interested in publishing?

So yeah, there isn't like a specific structural process. It's not like we have a little questionnaire that's like, "what do you like in your stories?" It's more just a process of working together, seeing what we all say about things, and having those conversations organically throughout the year.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, that's really cool. And what has this year been like for you? Especially since you were at Glasgow when we won the Hugo. And what has followed in terms of the attention to the magazine and perhaps the fiction that's being sent our way? Have you noticed perhaps a difference, or the same?

Hebe Stanton: I would not say actually I've noticed a big difference, because of those very short submission windows.

Kat Kourbeti: Hmm.

Hebe Stanton: Yeah. I mean, it was wonderful to be at Glasgow when we won our Hugo after, what was it, 10 years? And the energy at the con was just wonderful. Like, you know, so many people came up to me and said, "we've been rooting for you, we're really happy that the magazine has won." That was delightful, and it was delightful to see all this outpouring of love from the community.

I don't know that I've seen a huge difference in the year since in the quality of the attention the magazine is getting, because I think we've always had that kind of quality of attention, and people have always rooted for us in the community, I think. But yeah, it's always lovely to get recognition of the work that you do and similarly, I've seen quite a few of the stories I've edited and also stories that we have taken as a team, have been getting recognition of various kinds. It's really nice to see that you've helped shepherd something into the world, and get that attention on it.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I think that's the most rewarding thing, when I've seen someone come through here, and maybe it's their first sale or among their first, and then you hear about them getting a book deal and it's like, "hey, that's great! I just read you here like, last year! That's amazing."

Hebe Stanton: One of the things that I really love most about doing this with Strange Horizons is the number of new authors we work with. It is always a delight to be able to accept somebody's first story, or first pro story, because I think new authors are often doing very interesting and exciting things that we might not have seen before, and it's just nice to be able to shepherd something great into the world that might not have had the same opportunity elsewhere.

Kat Kourbeti: Exactly. And like you say, the spectrum of what is a Strange Horizons story is quite wide, so a lot of things fit in there very nicely.

Can you tell us anything about the novelette period that just ended? 'Cause we don't often do longer pieces of work. So what led to that decision?

Hebe Stanton: I think we wanted to run a submission period rather than solicit, because that kind of seems like a nicer way to do things, and it's quite hard to place a novelette, so I guess offering that opportunity in a way that more people could access, I think was the goal behind that. But yeah, I'm really enjoying diving into the novelettes, it's a length that I vibe with. I think it's still got the sort of clarity and focus of the short story, you can still do some very striking images in a novelette, but there's a bit more space to expand on the characters, on the narrative, to tell a more developed arc. A short story's a moment, or very crystallized, very stripped down sort of form. Having a little bit more meat on the bones is also fun to work with.

I'm also excited for our Indigenous submissions period, which is coming up in November, just because I personally would like to see more indigenous stories, and also just in the world generally. I think that would be good, so I'm hoping to get some really interesting submissions.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. That's exciting. Since this episode is in fact being recorded the week before it goes out, I will put a link to the page with the information for folks to have a look at that. But I'm excited to see the fruits of your labor in the special issues, but also just in general. You guys do the core work that we are known for, and you're all great, so thank you so much for everything you do at Strange Horizons.

Hebe Stanton: Thank you for what you do on the podcast. I think the Strange Horizons at 25 podcast has been a really good way of highlighting what we all do.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it's been a fun little look back. It's not gonna go on forever so it is, you know, just capturing the moment and looking back a little bit. But I'm glad that we get to do these for this little anniversary issue, and we'll see where time will take us.

But yeah, are you working on anything yourself outside of the magazine, like your own writing perhaps?

Hebe Stanton: Sporadically, I would say. I have a personal blog of reviews and science fiction criticism, so I'm exploring ways to get back into that and reenergize that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I do enjoy your reviews actually. They can be very cutting, which I appreciate. Honestly, I like a reviewer who doesn't mince their words.

Hebe Stanton: Thank you.

Kat Kourbeti: So everyone go check out Hebe's blog, and thank you so much for taking the time to chat to me, and all the best for the anniversary and beyond.

Hebe Stanton: Thank you very much.

Romie Stott, Administrative Editor & Senior Poetry Editor

Kat Kourbeti: And I am here with Romie Stott, who is a Poetry editor and our Managing editor. Hello!

Romie Stott: Hi. Although actually the title we came up with is Administrative Editor. I think it overlaps a lot with Managing Editor, but kind of at the same time that we got rid of the Editor in Chief role, we were like, we'll just kind of make our own titles.

And so Gautam was like, "I'll be the Coordinating Editor since what I do is figure out how the departments are going to work together", and I was like "I'll be the Administrative Editor since what I'm doing is a lot of paperwork."

Kat Kourbeti: Fair enough. I've always been a little confused by it because it's like, in essence, there isn't an Editor in Chief, but the responsibility is kind of like divvied.

Romie Stott: Yeah, and we've done that before as a magazine. There was a time when we ran with two Editors in Chief simultaneously. I actually wasn't there for that, that kind of perfectly overlaps with my little hiatus, where I was off in Italy doing all kinds of stuff, and then I came back and so, it actually works really well.

I mean, kind of in the same way with the rest of the magazine that since it's volunteers and since we're 25, we like to have everything happen in depth and with backup people, because sometimes you wind up having several months where you're, I don't know, working on a dissertation or doing caretaking for a sick relative or working on a novel that you have coming out. So as much as possible, we try and make sure that no one is indispensable.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, you've been with the magazine like a long time now, haven't you?

Romie Stott: Yeah, it has been a long time. I think I've been with the magazine for about half of the time that it's existed.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. On and off, and with gaps and all that, but still, big chunk of your life.

Romie Stott: I had time to be published by the magazine one time before I was on staff and could not submit anything.

Kat Kourbeti: Such is the fate of the volunteer, unfortunately. What has that journey been like for you? From joining in and seeing the magazine kind of change and evolve through this time?

Romie Stott: Well, you know, I've spent most of my time in the Poetry department, so more of what I've watched that's been interesting to me has been to see how things outside of Strange Horizons have changed. Strange Horizons was one of the first kind of web-first publications, where it wasn't like we were publishing print, then have a website on the side. The website's always been our real thing and our focus, and 25 years ago there really weren't very many places doing that at all. There were a few, and pretty much all of them have folded at this point. So it's more like when I look back, I think some of the other magazines that I thought of as really our peers that kind of peeled away, and then I think of the magazines that I think of as our peers now, which didn't exist then and kind of rose up.

Since I, at this point, I'm doing a lot of the logistics, when I'm talking with the editors of those magazines when we run into each other at conventions to be like, "oh, how are you handling this internally?" And it's kind of interesting because a number of them will quite openly be like, "oh, well we copied your model". I'll be like, "well, but you do it really differently than us." And they're like, "oh yeah, like we changed it in this way and this way and this way". And so I find that I'm often trying to bring in innovations that have come from them where they're like, "but we got it from you." And I'm like, "but we don't do that." And they're like, "but we perceived that you were moving in the direction of doing that". So that's more what I've seen is, those kinds of shifts in the landscape.

For example, when Strange Horizons started, having a big volunteer staff was pretty innovative, and it still is somewhat. But the model of "we're not gonna pay the editors" was a real political statement at the time, because we were just coming out of— you know, again, 25 years ago— we were just coming out of seeing over and over these scandals, where there were magazines or writing contests or things with submission fees where the editor was getting paid and the writers weren't. So it was just this vampire kind of publishing industry of, you're doing it for the exposure and you're lining the pocket of the person who's reading the submissions. And Strange Horizons was like, we're doing the opposite. Like we don't pay editors, period. We always pay writers.

And now it's kind of circling back around to, 'well, but it's not equitable, we need to be paying the editors because now you're privileging the viewpoints of the kinds of people who can afford to be volunteer editors". And that's been a big push from Clarkesworld and from Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and I really admire what they're doing in that space, but then also being somebody who's been around for this long being like, "yeah, but I know why we did it the other way", and I don't know that we're ready to abandon that.

Similarly, in poetry specifically, I think back to a lot of the magazines that I really miss that were doing only speculative poetry. I mean, Goblin Fruit, I miss so much, or like inkscrawl, I miss, like— there were a number of them that I read that are just not around anymore, 'cause the editors moved on to other things, and because it is still financially difficult to do this, and that was before you had Patreon and things like that. Being a donation funded magazine was really difficult before you had the infrastructure of Patreons and Kickstarters and that kind of thing. It's still difficult, but it was even more so.

It's also been interesting to see, like— I don't know, about 10, 15 years ago, we were still standing up for the idea that speculative poetry counted as literary poetry, that it didn't need to be just kind of doggerel. I know that there are people who really love the poems in the Lord of the Rings, but I know that most people just skip them, and I am one of those most people. And there was kind of this history of thinking of science fiction and fantasy poetry as being that, when what I and the other poetry editors at the time and still were seeing was, "oh, but the internet is so much a part of people's lives now, science is so much a part of people's lives now, but also, what are the mythic figures they're drawing on?" Mythology in itself we're willing to say is speculative poetry, but people are writing poems about Superman, and we all understand that that's culturally significant.

And so we were having to constantly stand up for the idea of "this is valid as literature, even though it has these science fiction and fantasy elements", and then there was the much harder fight of actually going to science fiction and fantasy readers and being like, "you should be reading poetry; it's not bad in the way that you maybe thought it was. There's a space for you and it's doing a different thing, and it can be opening kind of the emotional fantastical out to you." And I think we've been really successful about that, and it's the thing that I am most personally proud of Strange Horizons for, is the fact that we are publishing fiction and poetry and essays and book reviews.

So you might be showing up at the page to read a short story, but then you're like, "oh, okay, I'll take a chance on this even though it doesn't seem like my thing, because I'm excited by the little hook that's on the menu". And I think that in the same way that we help readers discover new writers and new voices— which is, again, so much a part of what we care about— I also feel like we're letting people expand into sort of sub genres and side alleys that they're like, "I'm not usually this kind of reader, but I'll check it out".

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I mean it's a big part of what sets Strange Horizons apart from a lot of other speculative markets, because poetry is so much at the forefront of what we do. I certainly hadn't considered speculative poetry, like as a writer, as something that I could potentially branch out to or even try, really, 'cause I hadn't written poetry in a long time until I read some in Strange Horizons and I was like, "wow, that's so simple and so effective, look at all this stuff that people are doing!" Especially the stuff with the strange formatting and the strange interactive web elements. There's a lot of stuff that Strange Horizons really pushes the boundary of what you even think poetry might be, which is great.

And then to see things like the Speculative Poetry Hugo this year is just a great part of that journey of speculative poetry being really recognized, and I think there's even a bit of a boom in it right now.

Romie Stott: Yeah, and I mean, props to our web team and also to the poets who think it's possible, because yeah, sometimes we're publishing stuff that's in formats that we could not be doing in print. We've published poems where it's a spreadsheet that you can reorganize. We've published poems that you click and it animates and transforms.

And— hopping over to the administrative editor side, that's been a kind of continuing conversation, of how do we deal with the fact that we are technology forward and technology moves along. Like we've had to make some kind of internal rules about how long we'll support something, because it might be in a version of Java that we can't run anymore and it breaks. And like, how many attempts are we gonna make to repair it? Versus at what point do we say, "okay, this is just an archived piece and we'll describe what it was like, but we can't host it anymore". Because, you know, ideally we would have a permanent archive, but in some cases we run into kind of a technological limitation there.

And I'll say there are also some styles of poem that are harder for us to do than a print magazine. Something that I run into is, if there's a poem that requires very intense visual formatting, you know, the sorts of poems where it's like, "oh, it matters that it's forming the shape of a keyhole. Oh, it matters that it's forming the shape of a balloon", that is quite challenging to do on HTML because again, we are looking for maximum accessibility and people are reading on different size screens, and we are a volunteer staff and we're not running multiple versions of the website that like check, this is the version for iPhone and this is the— we have one version, 'cause we don't have time to make a bunch of versions and we just have to kind of do the best fit. We're also concerned about, is this still compatible with a screen reader?

So yeah, sometimes there are some poems that people send me that it's like, are you sure that you've thought about who's gonna be publishing this? 'Cause it's not gonna look like what you sent us. And people have been very like, "oh yeah, of course we know". It's like, "okay, just we might have to change some line breaks." Not because you were wrong, but because it's gonna run off the page.

Kat Kourbeti: I am fascinated by that, by the formats that might break because technology moves, because I certainly have been guilty of this where I've thought, "this will be here forever, right? Like, why would this not work after a while?" And then you see websites break because stuff needs to keep updating. So that's really fascinating and a little sad, but... what do you do right?

Romie Stott: Yeah, I mean, shout out to the Internet Archive. Like, there have definitely been websites that I've had to go back and be like, can you show me what it looked like in 2007, maybe?

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

And for yourself, poetry has been your love, and the thing that you still do for the magazine. What was it like taking up more of the logistics stuff as your journey brought you this way? Was that quite a challenge?

Romie Stott: Well, that was always a natural fit for me, like in my life outside the magazine, my graduate degree is in film, I'm a film producer. All of that stuff is actually closer to really what my aptitude is most of the time, and I sort of wound up stepping into it in a backup capacity with our previous Editor in Chief, Ness (Phin Rose), which is kind of why I was able to then bridge it when Ness stepped down, because I was already getting called in as a backup, I'll say partially by virtue of being based in the US. Like, we have such an international editorial staff, but legally the magazine is based in the US, the bank accounts are in the US, so you need to always have somebody in the US who can do things like physically show up in a bank if need be. Ness was also US based, but I was the backup, and it was partially because of having worked in the international film scene. I was normally pretty able to troubleshoot getting money to somebody in a country that we didn't usually get money into.

Some of the more exciting logistical times for that have been— there was one time I needed to get money to someone in Cameroon and we could not get money into Cameroon, but I could at that time get money into Nigeria, and I knew somebody who lived on the border of Cameroon who just like drove it in. There was another time that we needed, after a fund drive, somebody had just gotten some postcards from us, and the postcards were physically in like Washington, DC area, and we needed to get it into Australia, but it was during COVID and Australia had completely locked down international mail. You could not get mail into Australia for a while. But my cousin's brother-in-law was in the Australian government and was visiting him in Texas for Christmas, so I got the postcards to Texas, which were then handed off and hand couriered in the luggage of an Australian government worker back into Australia, who then put them into the internal Australian Post.

So it's a lot of logistics behind the scene like that, that I actually find really interesting. Like on a simpler note, one of the rewards that we delivered this year was a book that we did need to get into a war zone in Ukraine. But that just meant the postage was expensive, that wasn't actually that complicated. I'm trying to think of any other— oh yeah, there was a time when we had a reviewer who was based in Libya, and again, with international sanctions, I was not gonna be able to send any dollars into Libya. So we just had to kind of hold it in escrow until he was, I think in Germany, and then we could say like— it's stuff like that.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. But it does sound like your background as a producer helped you troubleshoot there, 'cause that's a lot of what producers do.

Romie Stott: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, but that's kind of fun in its own way, right?

Romie Stott: It's actually my favorite part, like, it's not speculative, it goes into more like espionage thriller—

Kat Kourbeti: A little bit!

Romie Stott: —but it's like, it's pretty fun.

Kat Kourbeti: That is pretty fun. Oh, that's so cool.

So you've taken the helm of being the signature person now, but it's kind of a tandem role, right? Like the poetry still is something that you get to do.

Romie Stott: Yeah, with the rest of the Poetry department.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Romie Stott: We really are an even-handed staff within the Poetry department. I mean, all four of us are doing the same amount of reading and accepting and deciding how things run so, about three months of the year I'm very intensively being the Poetry editor, and the rest of the time I feel very, very confident about the decisions of everybody else. I mean, we're all around all of the time, but we make sure that it's something that gives us a lot of breathing room to pursue our own, other projects.

Kat Kourbeti: Which is great, and it also kind of gives the Poetry department its own personality— like we all, every department kind of does that, because it's all quite a equitable sort of thing and every editor gets to pick their own things, but it's really nice to know that you can count on your team.

Do you guys get together very much, virtually or otherwise? Or is it just kind of like texting, emails?

Romie Stott: I mean, I think we're all actually like very sociable and pleasant people, but like there, there is that sort of quiet bookish, scribbling in an attic, lowering down muffins in like a hand basket aspects to like being a poet. So we all, I think, are pretty comfortable with taking care of our own work, like the, a lot of the peace of it is just basically being like, I'm gonna leave you alone, you're gonna leave me alone. We actually like each other, but we also like that we are sitting quietly in separate rooms.

Kat Kourbeti: That is the quintessential image of the poet right there.

Romie Stott: Yeah, unfortunately we are completely that. Again, we're each pretty fabulous and fascinating in person. But I dunno, there is something nice about having a really quiet space, and also, again, not second guessing each other. If an editor accepts something, they've just accepted it and that's it. So knowing that you can say, "I like this kind of poem, send it to me", it's gonna go through. Nobody's gonna say, "well, but that's not my favorite". Doesn't matter.

And I think that's a lot of what I find exciting about it, is not just the fact of having less workload, it's being able to also enjoy the poetry in the magazine as a reader, because it's not stuff that I've fought over or worked over or had to like pick. It's somebody else whose taste I really respect a lot, said, "hey, read this". I'm gonna read that.

Kat Kourbeti: And then I suppose the other question is, what has this last year been like for the Poetry department, and perhaps you can tell us a little bit about the general attention the magazine has gotten in the last year, 'cause certainly since the Hugo win, but just, you know, also because it's our 25th anniversary and it's quite a long time we've been around... what has this last year been like for you?

Romie Stott: I definitely can't speak for the Poetry department as a whole on this, because again, we're very head down, get your work done, independent study, like as a team. I felt really glad to see the Poetry Hugo happen. It was fairly personally affirming because it was a poem I accepted, that won. So it's like, ha ha! The industry at large agrees that I am making choices that please the industry at large!

But it also, like, yeah, I already knew that was a good poem. They were all such good poems. It's like it's my job to pick favorites, but it's also so hard to pick favorites because there's so much exciting stuff that's out there, including a lot of the stuff I reject, 'cause we can only take so many poems. So it's also exciting to see those things then publish somewhere else where it's like, yeah, I knew that was good. Like we couldn't take it, but that poet's great. I think I would've been thrilled for anybody winning, because there's so much exciting writing going on, and it's also so encouraging to see people deciding to start writing poetry that didn't really think of that as possible for them.

And I think social media has been very good for poetry because it's so easy to share a poem, or to just like read your daily poem, like as a way to like pep yourself up. So I think poetry reading is really at a high right now, and I've been glad to see it because it's fun to play with language, and it's fun to think about how to intensify the way that you're expressing something, or how to say it in a way that's vivid, that's not a cliche, that gets to the heart of it. And I think a lot of those skills then translate back into prose writing very well, so it's really a virtuous circle. I think a lot of the writers that I like do both. There are some that do one or the other, but I think it's really common, so it actually feels much less siloed. It doesn't feel like, "oh, and here are the poets". It's like, "oh, and here are the poets who are, in many cases, the same people who are the fiction writers".

And I also like funny poetry quite a bit. This has been a year that I've felt that that's really been needed. When I see something that makes me laugh, it's such a relief. And being able to still have all the connections, just knowing that people are still writing and are still sending things in, and are still to see and treasure little moments. I think that's a very sustaining thing, as it was during COVID, and as it is kind of anytime we have political turmoil. Even if it is a sadder, angry poem, you know, the fact that you're responding with a poem is itself, I think, really beautiful.

Meanwhile I'll say in my personal life, it's just been a really hectic year. I've had a lot going on, but then I also— my first novel came out, Nothing in the Basement, and I've also been back and forth to New York a lot in development on a couple of stage musicals. One of them went up briefly in May, and then the other one, I'm actually about to head down on Monday to do another kind of preview of. So it's been a little bit of fitting Strange Horizons in around that, and my day job, and my family.

Kat Kourbeti: And all the creative stuff, but it's great that it's all going well. Very excited to hear about the musicals. Are they speculative in any way?

Romie Stott: They are, they're both speculative and I'm not the music writer and I'm actually not the lyricist, I'm just the book writer. So one of 'em is a 10 minute musical that went up in May that is called First, Contact, and it is about, that NASA has received a signal that they think might be alien, they haven't actually confirmed it yet. And they're like, "so everybody be calm, we're reporting that this has happened". But of course people are not calm, so it's about kind of a conversation that happens in a bar after that.

And then the full length musical, which is the one that I'm heading down on Monday to work on some more, is called The Lady Takes The Mic, and it's a musical that's actually about a failed musical from like 30 years ago that everybody's kind of reminiscing about in a piano bar. We just like setting things in bars! But Death and Cupid are also there, and everybody just kind of accepts that they're just bar patrons who are dressed like this essentially, but they do have supernatural powers and are able to do things like take us back and forward in time, or take us into what people are thinking.

Kat Kourbeti: Are we talking togas or?

Romie Stott: We're, we are! We're talking Death in like a, a big old—

Kat Kourbeti: Robe?

Romie Stott: Huge robe with a scythe that he does have to like, check at the coat check. We are talking Cupid with wings and little underpants, and like a little tiny gold bow that he treats like a purse.

Kat Kourbeti: Excellent. Oh, I hope I get to see that someday. That sounds delightful, and congrats on the novel also. It's a lot of work to get to that point.

Romie Stott: Yeah, it is a shorter novel, so it's a very easy, comfortable read. I kind of tell people, if you're looking for something for your book group, that they will actually finish in time, it's a shorter little novel.

Kat Kourbeti: I love a short novel personally, the same way that I love novellas— excellent length, 10/10.

Romie Stott: Absolutely. I think especially when you're kind of writing horror, and this is horror— it's nice because filler is not scary. No disrespect to Stephen King, who I love and who writes huge door stops. He could do it; I don't know that I could write something that stays scary for that long.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. So, yeah, I mean— 25 years, uh, long may we reign?

Romie Stott: Yeah!

Kat Kourbeti: Do you have any hopes or wishes as we go into year 26?

Romie Stott: As administrative editor, what I'm always really looking at is just sustainability. So I'm just always trying to get revenue regularized, trying to make sure that we stay— I want us to keep the balance of being idealistic and being ambitious, but also not getting burned out. Because we could very easily churn through people because we can just say, "oh, well, but it's constantly evolving, we're constantly changing" and it's like, yeah, but we've made some great stuff that has then caused like mass resignations 'cause everybody's too tired. So unfortunately it's my job to kind of always push for the boring stuff, to be like, "let's just keep moving forward in a very smooth and predictable way."

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I think I've been guilty of coming up with some great ideas, and then you're like, "yeah, but can you do that though?" And then I'm like, "hmm, she's right. No, I couldn't." I'm definitely the very excitable, you know, "shiny new idea, must explore it" kind of person, and then I don't think about future me who's gonna have to deal with the actual logistics of putting all that stuff together until it's all happening. And then I'm like, "oh no, I don't have the time for this."

Romie Stott: Yeah, I mean, same. So do we all, which is why there has to be somebody at the magazine to be like—

Kat Kourbeti: "Guys!" And I thank you for that. I think it's crucial to strike that balance and I do think that we're all working on some cool stuff going forward, but it is important to just keep in mind like that it is real people doing this stuff, and it does take time and effort and all of that.

Romie Stott: Yeah I think if I was picking my title again, it would just be Wet Blanket Editor. Wet Blanket editor, that's me!

Kat Kourbeti: "Will not blanket say yes to everything," and I respect that.

So thank you so much for taking some time out of your day to talk to me and to share a little bit about your experience of Strange Horizons, and look forward to seeing more of your edited poetry and all of the good stuff.

Romie Stott: Yeah, we have so many cool poems lined up. I'm so excited by everything that we have coming up. It's some really good things.

[You can find Romie's website here.]

Gautam Bhatia, Coordinating Editor

Kat Kourbeti: And I am here with Gautam, who is our Coordinating Editor, which is an unusual title. Is that your favorite title?

Gautam Bhatia: It is the title.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Gautam Bhatia: And just to give some background on that: when our last editor in chief, Ness, moved on a few years ago, we decided that it was more in keeping with the anarchic flat structure of the magazine to not have an Editor in Chief, but to divide up some of the administrative roles among ourselves.

So mine was that of Coordinating Editor, which means that the primary task is to make sure that the weekly issue is published, which is actually quite easy because the work is done by all the departments. I just have to read it once at the backend, make sure that there is nothing egregiously off somewhere, which has never been the case, and then just hit publish.

So that's about it. Other than that, the work involves doing the magazine's public facing tasks, liaising with award committees, getting into fights with the Hugo committee every year about the masthead, and just doing all of that correspondence. And in a certain way also, just mediating internal conflicts within the magazine, which again have been very few. It's not really been required, just a couple of times perhaps. And finally, to oversee the Fund Drive, to ensure that it's working and again coordinating basically, in the classic anarchist formulations, administration of things, and not a government of people. Just like that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, someone has to pull the strings together, because there's so many of us.

Gautam Bhatia: But someone has to hit publish basically. Just think of it that way.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Someone has to hit the big red button!

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: And that's not all that you do, because you never gave up your original position at the magazine, right?

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah, I joined the magazine in 2016 as one of the four new Articles editors, and then three or four years later, when at that time Ness was the head of the Articles department and Ness became the EIC, then I became, I guess we called it "Senior Articles Editor", just overseeing the department. And then when Ness moved on, I became Coordinating Editor, but I stayed on as an Articles Editor as well. So that's been nine years in that position.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. Nine years is such a long time. It's almost half the life of the magazine, like, getting there. I think both you and Romie are among the longest serving folks, and so it makes sense that you're also overseeing things, because you've just seen it all basically.

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah, it's been a while. (laughs)

Kat Kourbeti: What's it like sharing that kind of managing, coordinating position with someone? I'm assuming it's a good thing to be able to share that load.

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah, for sure, because Romie handles the finances and I have no head for finances at all. I just know that we have a budget and that you have to stick to it, and that we need to raise money every year in the Fund Drive. That's about it, but the banking stuff is handled by Romie. And it's fluid, so if for whatever reason I'm not around on a Monday, Romie can publish, and does publish the issues. Sometimes, we correspond together in certain contexts. Like right now we are corresponding on a Japanese special issue with the Japanese editors, so Romie is telling them about the funding, finances, answering them about structure of the issue, things like that. So it's a very good thing to share that load.

I will say, I think that Romie's role is far more strenuous than mine, because handling the accounts I think is a lot more effort than hitting publish.

Kat Kourbeti: There is no hierarchy here—

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah, yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: And I feel like that's the point. It's just different. It's different stuff.

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: So in this nine year tenure, how has the magazine changed? Has there been a journey? Do you feel like you've seen things come and go?

Gautam Bhatia: One is when the staff keeps changing, because of course we have volunteer roles, right? Attrition is quite high, and understandably people have lives to live and capitalism, you never know when something comes along. But the magazine's core values have always, I think, remained constant.

I think our biggest point of pride's always been that we have been and continue to be many writers' first sale. So in that way, doing what we can to mitigate some of the gatekeeping that really, I think, taints this genre. So I think that's continued, and just making sure that we are progressive as a magazine and that we have no tolerance for racism, misogyny, any kind of anti trans behavior, any of that. Anti genocide, of course, it's also very important. So I think we've remained that and we've done that, and you know, (at the) last Hugo Awards spoke for Palestine from the stage.

So yeah, I think that's just been our consistent stand throughout, and the people in the magazine have always reflected that. I think the new thing that's happened during my time has been our geographic special issues. So from Palestine, to Mexico, to Brazil, to Nigeria, to Southeast Asia and so on. I think they do two things: one is that they let us spotlight to the English speaking genre world, areas, places, people that otherwise might not be spotlit, and then introduce new writers to people, but also they help us take stands on issues. A science fiction magazine has a very tiny scope for actually meaningfully intervening in the world, but when we can do something like a Palestine special issue at this time, that is something we can do. And so this geographic special issue lets us do something with respect to what's happening around us.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It's been certainly a point of pride for me, since my joining the team in 2020, you know, putting a little bit of something towards the podcast part of it has been so much fun. And just, yeah, like you say, taking a stand in the current climate and especially watching others kind of not do that, it's been great to be part of a magazine where we all really care about this stuff here.

How do those ideas happen, for the special issues? Have you spearheaded any of them? Or do they come from other places?

Gautam Bhatia: So it really depends. For example, the Palestine special issue, one of our former editors, Rasha, was just lamenting, and rightly, the absence of focus on Palestine in genre space. And I said, why don't we do a Palestine special issue? And that's how it happened.

And one issue that I spearheaded myself and conceptualized was the extractivism special issue, Science Fiction and Extractivism. In fact, there's a personal story there that the person who is now the person I'm with, who at that time was not the person I was with, was the one who suggested Extractivism and gave me a bunch of readings, and the entire issue was actually conceptualized around the readings that she gave to me. So I acknowledge her in the introduction.

But otherwise, it was a democratic process, right? We solicit suggestions on the Slack for next year's special issues, because we have to fund them using the Fund Drive, the stretch goals, and then we just pick three or four and we go with them. So it's just a crowd-sourced set of ideas.

Kat Kourbeti: In which case the geographical diversity of the staff—

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Helped with that, which is great. Super cute to hear that there's a little like, romance story hidden in the Extractivism special issue!

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah, actually, we had fallen out of touch for a few months for external reasons, and the day the issue came out, I emailed her and I said, "look, this is all inspired by our readings". And so we began talking again and we have never stopped talking after that.

Kat Kourbeti: I love hearing stories like this, and I love that this isn't the first or only time that Strange Horizons has fostered love in some capacity. I think one of the next episodes that will air in the Strange Horizons at 25 series is an interview with Tim Pratt, who met their wife because of a Strange Horizons party. I love hearing stories like this because it's just the meeting of people with similar ideas, and just how that can blossom into the real world. How lovely.

And also, yeah, I mean, I really liked that essay about the Expanse in that issue.

Gautam Bhatia: Yes!

Kat Kourbeti: Which is one of my favorite science fiction series ever, and just to see that kind of analysis on it? Fantastic. Highly recommend to anyone who hasn't read it. We'll link that in the description there.

Watching all of that happen over nine years and you've still been doing the articles editing stuff... What has that journey been like for you, going from volunteering as a writer to taking up more responsibility as an editor and then now, just adding on top of that plate?

Gautam Bhatia: I think it's been good. It's been so incremental. So I began by reviewing, just being a reviewer, 2014. So it's now been, I think 11 years since the time I submitted my first review to Strange Horizons. Abigail Nussbaum was the editor back then. And then I was added to the Reviews pool and I began to review more frequently.

In 2016, they opened up for Articles positions. I applied because I really enjoyed working with the Reviews department and just felt that this was the right place for me to be at. And then I spent three years in the Articles department, then two or three years as Senior Articles Editor, and then Coordinating Editor.

So it's just been this very slow process where I just learn more and more about the magazine and as my roles change, so it's never felt as if anything is rushed. It's always been very nicely paced.

Kat Kourbeti: That's great. And of course it's not just you running the whole Articles department either. You're sharing the load with more Articles Editors.

First of all, I mean, I love the stuff that you guys do in the Articles team. How does it complement and/or juxtapose what happens through the work of the Reviews team?

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah, I think on many occasions, Reviews and Articles deal with the same subject matter, but from a different lens and on a different scale. So one of my favorite articles that I edited was a cold pitch about Orientalism in the works of Guy Gavriel Kay, and for me that was very important because as a teenager, as a child, Guy Gavriel Kay was a foundational influence on me, and epic fantasy works.

Then at some point, unfor— this is why you should not follow your favorites on Twitter, because then you find out about their politics and this ruins the whole thing— so unfortunately, he turned out to be, have quite bad views on— and this is far before genocide, this is the mid 2010s, but of course at that time there was still like violence and there was still massacres that Israel was committing regularly in Gaza and in the West Bank. And his views were basically repugnant to me, and so I stopped reading him because... you can't do it. But then actually this essay really made me understand all the latent, not just Oriental, but anti-Arab undercurrents of Guy Gavriel Kay's work, which made so much more sense after that.

So while Reviews would be, you know, reviewing specific works, and sometimes of course Reviews also does more big picture things, we compliment each other in that Reviews is the focus, and then we are like the wide lens.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I've really enjoyed seeing the analyses that come out of the articles and the kind of broader picture looks at genre, from all different perspectives and in all different kinds of situations. It's been great.

And how does the Articles department work? Like how do you divide the work amongst yourselves as editors?

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah, there are three of us right now. So what we do is that at the beginning of the year we divide up months amongst ourselves based on who is free when, and we take one month slot each in the Fund Drive, because we have no December issue. And then Samovar, the translated magazine, takes up three of the slots.

It ends up being roughly three to four articles a year for each of us, and then the columns, which come in regularly, and then it's up to us. So we can commission, we can take it from the cold pitch, that's up to us, each of us.

When I joined there was a mix of articles, conversations, round tables and interviews. Over the years, I think we have moved more towards an article focus, essay focus, and I personally like that. I think it gives you the scope to explore ideas in depth. And of course we still do interviews, we still do conversations. I personally enjoy articles and essays the most, so yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: And how would, like, a new person who would like to get in touch with you to perhaps pitch something, what's that process like for new folks entering fray?

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah, unfortunately our email addresses have been down for the longest time now, but they can always pitch us individually. My email address is on the masthead, it's just my name, Gautam dot Strange Horizons @gmail.com. I know that because I just had to disclose that for a US Visa application, so I had to write down the email address. So if they email me with a pitch, that's how they find us.

Kat Kourbeti: So with all of that said, you've watched the magazine's sort of both stay the same and also evolve over this time— what has this last year been like for you, as we celebrate 25 years, and you know, with a recent Hugo win and all of this stuff, what feelings does that evoke in you?

Gautam Bhatia: I think the longevity of the magazine is incredible, especially because our funding is entirely crowdsourced every single year. And when I joined, I think that we were already at that time one of the longest running online magazines, and now of course we still are because it's been nine years since then. So I'm just very thankful for just how long we've been around, and doing what we are doing and the way we're doing it. I think it's something that we never take for granted because in this world, in capitalism, like when the money will dry up, who knows, right? So just grateful for every single year and 25 years is, you know... yeah, hopefully 25 more and then 25 more, until the heat death of the universe, you know? (laughs)

But yeah, the thing again is that as the Coordinating Editor, it's pretty much the same thing year on year, so it's just like, you're grateful for surviving and thriving one more year. And of course doing new things and planning new things, and hopefully we'll have a book out at some point, things like that. So you know, tallying all those things is always a highlight.

Kat Kourbeti: It's been really fun seeing the response from people to stuff that we do, the whole time I've been here, but especially this year, I guess because you don't think about time until it just hits a milestone.

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah, yeah. It creeps up on you. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: So it's just been really great to see how much what we do has meant to people.

Gautam Bhatia: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: And as a closing thing, we were recording this, I think a couple of days after your actual birthday, so—

Gautam Bhatia: Ah, yes. Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: Happy belated birthday!

Gautam Bhatia: Thank you! Thank you.

Kat Kourbeti: And so as we go into year 26 and beyond, what would you like to say to the team at Strange Horizons and to the readers and listeners who are reading and/or listening to this interview?

Gautam Bhatia: I think it's been a great journey, and I think it's important to just hold on to the really core principles and values that make us who we are, both for the team and for those who read us. And we'll always try and do that, as long as we're around, we always try and make sure that we hold fast to these principles in a world which seems to value them less and less, especially with the genocide on, something that you really feel that you're powerless to really stop. But at least in your own little sphere, it's even more important to make sure that we are continuing to articulate those principles and values.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. Thank you so much for taking the time to chat to me today. It's been a pleasure.

Gautam Bhatia: My pleasure as well. Thank you.

[You can find Gautam's website here.]

​​Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, so that was all of the interviews that I recorded over the last week or so, just in advance of this issue. And it's been really fun to get to talk to everybody from all of these different departments, some of whom I'd never actually had a conversation with before. It was really lovely.

It's really fun to meet people from all over the world who are part of what you do. It's a strange experience, I think, for most people.

Michael Ireland: It is, it's a very strange place, but it is really nice that we do get to speak to the other teams, and get to see the faces and all the things that they enjoy as well, because we get to see all the amazing work that they put out. But it's really nice to just sit back and have a chat, and let them talk about how they've been doing it, and how they're doing.

Kat Kourbeti: And some of them for a very long time too. It's kind of astounding to me, how long each of them has kept going and then just how all of that feeds into this, which I hope that readers and listeners have also appreciated and enjoyed. And then, yeah, we have plans also going forward, both for this podcast and the podcast in general, and... outside the podcast, question mark? So tell the listeners where we're gonna be pretty soon.

Michael Ireland: So we have World Fantasy Con around the corner at the end of October, in the town of Brighton in the UK, and Kat and myself will be in attendance along with some other team members of Strange Horizons, and we may have an age old tradition coming back, which is... get your cups at the ready, get your kettles on your back (?), and fill a cup up, 'cause the Tea Party's back!

Kat Kourbeti: We're bringing the Tea Party back, that's right. A lot of writers that we've interviewed on Strange Horizons at 25 have said how big a part of their connection to Strange Horizons was, in the early days at least, of the Tea Party usually held at WisCon. And we thought, wouldn't it be fun to bring the Tea Party back?

And so with World Fantasy Con happening in our backyard this time in the UK, we thought we could do that. And so we're doing it, we're gonna have a lovely little social meetup, basically, it won't be structured like a panel or anything like that, but those of us from Strange Horizons who are going will be in attendance. We'll bring some lovely, delicious tea and maybe cake? I don't know, whatever I can find around Brighton, probably.

Michael Ireland: We'll bring the cake.

Kat Kourbeti: And so, yeah, so if you're coming to World Fantasy Con and you wanna meet us and also the rest of the team, I think Vanessa Jae from Poetry is coming, and Joyce Ch'ng from Articles is coming— and they're also gonna be in Fiction, I think, starting next year.

So please come and meet us and have a cup of tea and we'll have a lovely time. It's gonna be great.

Michael Ireland: It's gonna be a lot of fun. You'll get to see the chaos that me and Kat usually bring to these conventions.

Kat Kourbeti: Quite a bit of chaos. Organized, lovely, delicious chaos, but chaos nonetheless.

Michael Ireland: Yeah. I'm trying to put some of that on you, 'cause I know I bring the chaos and I'm like, "but Kat can't hold me accountable."

Kat Kourbeti: I will bring the tea this time. In fact, there's a lovely tea company that's Brighton-based that's my absolute favorite, and they have a big store opposite the convention hotel, and that is just destiny. It's just fate. I'll bring an assortment and it's gonna be delightful.

Michael Ireland: Perfect. And what does the future hold for the Strange Horizons podcast?

Kat Kourbeti: I mean, a lot of the same lovely stuff that we've been doing. The fiction will continue as it has, and hopefully with even more aplomb. We have new voices joining us, there's gonna be lots of lovely stuff happening. And we're not stopping this, even though I know I said initially September to September, but the fact is this wasn't enough, and I already have way more episodes recorded than I know what to do with, so we will do 25 episodes for 25 years, of Strange Horizons at 25.

So we'll finish that, wrap it up lovely in a bow and then— because this has been fun and because I've had a lot of authors say that this has been fun to listen to and that they'd love to come on, you know, people who were part of just the great big Strange Horizons family— I don't think we're stopping the interviews, it's just that we'll have to re-frame them, 'cause it will no longer be the 25th anniversary, you know, we have to let the podcast move along as well.

But there will be fun interview stuff as well, going forward. We're still looking for a new name for the podcast, so if anybody has ideas, send them to us. We're open to your suggestions.

And then we have some plans, which we're not fully ready to make announcements yet, because we have to figure out the timings and things... But I suppose suffice it to say that those of you who have been missing the poetry podcast can have something to look forward to in 2026. Vague announcement in the ether. Not announcement. Vague... just vague.

Michael Ireland: That's a teaser.

Kat Kourbeti: Vague teaser in the air.

Michael Ireland: We should have done it in rhyme.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, no, God! I mean, can you tell I'm not really a practiced poet? We should have had Brandon (O'Brien)!

Michael Ireland: Yeah, I was gonna say, get Brandon on the phone.

Kat Kourbeti: Should have had Brandon write us a little something.

By the way, if you're listening to this and you were not present at the Hugos, watch the fantastic poem that Brandon used to introduce the Poetry Hugo with, because it's a delight and I really genuinely think he should be nominated for a Best Related Work Hugo next year, because oh my goodness, I cannot stress this enough, it was a thing of beauty.

Michael Ireland: So good. And he also— that was the introduction to (a poem from) Strange Horizons winning the Poetry Hugo.

Kat Kourbeti: We could not have known that, but yeah.

Michael Ireland: A nice little bonus for the 25th year.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It really truly cemented Strange Horizons as one of the markets— speculative poetry has loads of homes for it, but we've been here for a very long time and championing this particular format, and what an amazing recognition that was. Just truly made me very happy.

So thank you for joining me today. As you like to say, "it's been emotional".

Michael Ireland: It has been.

Kat Kourbeti: And yeah, I look forward to everything else we're working on. It's been and continues to be a blast.

Michael Ireland: There's gonna be many more (things) to come from us, and the rest of Strange Horizons as we fly off into the future. Is that what we're doing? We're flying off?

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. To 26 and beyond.

Michael Ireland: To 26 and beyond. 26 is gonna be a good year, you know that?

Kat Kourbeti: I hope so. Yeah, I think so.

Michael Ireland: I mean that for 2026 and the 26th year for Strange Horizons, both of them. It feels like it's just still starting.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It absolutely is only the beginning of, at the very least, what we are trying to do on this podcast. But we're also just on the general journey of the magazine, which continues to do great work all across the board. We have some great special issues coming next year. There's all sorts of fun stuff being planned that we just got funding for through the Fund Drive, so it's just gonna be a great year.

Michael Ireland: And yeah, if you're ever at any of the events or you ever want to talk to us, we make it fairly easy for us, where we're usually at all the conventions, at least myself and Kat. And we're on Blue Sky, I think that's one of the main ones as well as Instagram, that you're really gonna get all the updates about what's happening throughout the next year from Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, you can obviously follow the magazine on both of those, those are our two main platforms. You can find Michael and me on there as well, and as he said, usually, the two of us will be at— not all the conventions, but possibly the big ones, you know, like, if it's UK based, we're probably there. If it's Worldcon and it's attainable, we're probably there. And if it's not us, someone from the team probably is. The good thing about being so global is that we're spread everywhere, and chances are someone from Strange Horizons is at your local con.

Michael Ireland: That's not, that's not a threat.

Kat Kourbeti: We are numerous and mysterious and you can't know which one of us are from Strange Horizons, but we are among you and, uh, you should know that.

And a big thanks, in fact, to everyone who's come out to talk to us at Seattle and other cons, who came to say hello, thank you and hey back, and it's been great to meet everybody. So we look forward to meeting even more of you. If you're coming to World Fantasy, please come say hi, and next year at other cons and stuff. And if not, on social media. Come say hey, tell us about your favorite episode. We'd love to hear about it.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you so much for listening, and to all of our colleagues for taking the time to chat to us. A full transcript of this episode can be found on our website, Strange Horizons dot com.

Michael Ireland: Strange Horizons at 25 is a project helmed by Kat Kourbeti and Michael Ireland in collaboration with the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective. The music you're hearing now and at the beginning of the podcast was composed by Michael Ireland and Andrew Gorman.

Kat Kourbeti: Until next time,

Michael Ireland: —stay strange. (quietly)

Kat Kourbeti: Silly goose.

Michael Ireland: Yeah.

In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, editor Kat Kourbeti chats to author Debbie Urbanski about her 2018 Strange Horizons publication and the 13 years of submissions it took to get accepted, writing in the gray areas between genres, and what it means to be artistically honest in your work.

Links and things:

• Want to leave us a happy birthday message? Click ⁠here to record an audio message⁠, and ⁠here for video⁠.
• Join our ⁠Patreon⁠ for early episode access, or donate through any other way to hear your name and message in our next episodes.
• Want to meet the team? Podcast editors Kat and Michael will be at Seattle Worldcon! Come to our Table Talk on Wednesday morning, or to our live episode recording on Friday evening, grab a ribbon, and tell us about your favourite Strange Horizons stories, poems, or special issues.

Episode show notes:

• Read Debbie Urbanski's story, Some Personal Arguments in Support of the BetterYou (Based on Early Interactions)
• Visit her website, or follow her on Instagram and Substack
• Buy her book, After World, or her short story collection Portalmania
• Read Andy Sawyer's Strange Horizons review of After World
• Find more links to her work and other things mentioned throughout the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres.

Today's guest is Debbie Urbanski, who was published with us in 2018, and has since gone on to publish a debut novel, as well as a collection of stories. She has been long listed for the Otherwise Award twice, among other nominations, and has written short fiction for F&SF, Lightspeed, and so much more. It's great to have you here, Debbie.

Debbie Urbanski: Thanks for having me, and happy 25th.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you so much. It's very exciting, because you don't really think about the longevity of a magazine in your day to day. You're just doing it to do it. But time ticks by, and it collects, and somehow... 25 years.

Debbie Urbanski: And it's huge, yeah, that you guys are thriving right now.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, thank you.

Debbie Urbanski: Yeah. Really important. Fabulous.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, I appreciate it.

Did you read Strange Horizons much before submitting to us?

Debbie Urbanski: Yeah, and I did go back to prepare for this. I was curious the first time I submitted to you guys, and it was in 2005. So I had submitted for 13 years before I got the acceptance.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. Okay. Wow. It's so interesting how diverse the experience is of people on this podcast, because you really just get the whole gamut. So 13 years of submissions, that's a lot.

Debbie Urbanski: I got some really nice personal notes from various editors along the way, starting with Jed (Hartman). And then when the acceptance finally came, it was a rewrite, so like a conditional acceptance.

Kat Kourbeti: Interesting. Ooh, I wanna hear about this, 'cause I don't think I've heard very much in that vein from people yet.

So let's talk a little bit about the story first. It's called Some Personal Arguments in Support of the BetterYou, Based on Early Interactions. And it's kinda sorta a product review, kinda sorta a diary, it's a mixed bag. Can you tell me a little bit about the process of writing the story?

Debbie Urbanski: Sure. So I was interested at the time to experiment with form. The straightforward story wasn't really feeling like a good fit at the time, so I wanted to try writing something that was like a product review leaning towards essay, and there was a lot of stuff in my life that I wanted to explore in a fictional way too.

I was interested in like, what if the partner you're with is the right partner, but not perfect. Or you know, what if you really want your partner, but you want your partner to be different and the partner can't be. Kind of those situations and yeah, I imagined what if there was this other android, who could fulfill everything that your partner needs in your relationship?

Kat Kourbeti: It is "positive" ultimately, I guess, in terms of reviewing the product, but I think that there are some moments that there's doubt about whether or not it's a good product and/or perfect. 'Cause even the main character is a bit conflicted sometimes, but ultimately, I think swivels around, would you say?

Debbie Urbanski: Yeah. I was interested in the point of view of someone who thought this would be a good thing for their relationship, and I found that to be really heartbreaking as a human being, that this character couldn't be accepted for who she was. And she decides to kind of disappear, in a way, from her life and think her family would be happier without her, which is really sad, and obviously it's not a good product.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, like she keeps saying like, "no, I think it's great that people can choose to buy a better version of themselves and have it around and it can do things." But then at the same time, she's like, "hmm, I'm not sure about you marketing this to marginalized communities. Maybe don't do that."

So now that we've touched upon it a little bit, tell me about the draft you sent in and how was it different?

Debbie Urbanski: The revision ideas were really thoughtful. The big one was asking, it was Lila (Garrott) who I was working with, and she wondered why asexuality in particular, which is how the narrator identifies, why asexuality isn't considered normalized by that point. 'Cause she thought there's a lot of good work being done in the ace community. Is it taking place far in the future or is it taking place now in just an alternate reality?

I decided to try and address that through saying the technology developed really fast, making it more set in the present than in a hundred years from now. Because I agree, like a hundred years from now, hopefully we'll accept people as they are, fingers crossed, in relationships as well as in general society.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I think that would've been my next question because I couldn't place when it was meant to be set, but I got a vibe of now because at the beginning it said, "you'd think we'd be able to go to Mars before we can edit our memories, but here we are," and it is in fact a little spooky that you wrote this in 2018, and now there's a lot of stuff being done that we really didn't think even back then we could do, and we can, and it's crazy how fast a lot of things have been flying.

So then you've decided to go ahead with those edits, but it didn't really change the themes or what you wanted to tell with the story.

Debbie Urbanski: No, and I think that's a sign of good editing, right? Where it still is your story, but makes more sense to the reader, more accessible. I think that would've been a distraction point. I think Lila was right. That wasn't really my intent to suggest the future will be just as hard as it is now for some.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, some of the phrases in there, you know, she says that she's of an older generation and "oh, well I'm not comfortable wearing the badge of my identity on my sleeve and doing all this pride stuff" basically—she doesn't say it in those words, but basically. It just really had me thinking about that and about the place of ace-spec people in the LGBT community and how, first of all, a lot of the time they're not welcomed by the LGBT community, which is nonsense. And at the same time it's about how you feel, right? And if you don't feel like you are part of that community, then perhaps trying to shoehorn you in there and just be like, "you're the A in the LGBTQIA"... If you don't wanna be a part of that, then where does that leave you as a person, floating in the world?

Debbie Urbanski: I think I was—I still kind of am interested in generational differences. I identify as asexual and I figured it out in like the 2000s, 2010s, which I think was a really different time. You know, it was a lot of Googling and just asexuality.org, pretty much. I was really struggling when I wrote this story with kind of the queer joy approach, which was great—I was really happy for those people. I just felt like, "man, I am in a tough situation right now in my experience. I can't get it to fit in with how other people are expressing their experience."

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Leaps and bounds have happened since the early 2000s, even in terms of how we talk about things, let alone studies and research and so on. And these are themes that you touch upon in your other work, and we'll get to that in a little bit.

But just to kind of wrap up the Strange Horizons portion of the experience, of doing the edits and sending the rewrite in, and then that was probably that?

Debbie Urbanski: I came to genre writing a little indirectly where I grew up reading a ton of genre. My dad's really into film, like 16 millimeter film, so we watched a lot of old sci-fi movies. Then I got my MFA in poetry, went that route, but I still really loved reading genre and so when I started to write it, I was less confident than with the literary fiction world. It was really affirming and exciting for me to get to be in Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: And we do publish poetry also, so if you ever write any spec poetry, you know where to find us!

Debbie Urbanski: I went in my records, it shows I was rejected on some of my poetry as well, but they were the nicest rejections. The person recommended other places for me to send, which I thought was so generous. Yeah, kudos to you folks at Strange Horizons for caring about the people who submit.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, for sure. A lot of the time our editors are writers themselves and so they know what that process is like and what it takes to send your work out in the first place. And especially I think in the poetry world, there's a lot of care to find the right venue, and these are the people who will know what other venues there might be. So that's great, I'm glad to hear that, but again, don't stop sending things. You never know!

I guess I wanna ask now a little bit more generally about your genre work. Where do you think you kind of land, genre wise, in your general work? Is it more sci-fi? Your novel is science fiction for sure, but then some of your short stories are more magic. So like, what's the vibe genre wise for you?

Debbie Urbanski: I like mixing things up a lot. I was interested in—I still am—horror more recently, and I think I like taking parts of genre that I love and try doing something different with it. So with my novel, for instance, post-apocalyptic fiction is one of my favorite genres. I don't totally understand why, it's like my comfort reading. Like I just, I'm really happy when I read post-apocalyptic fiction.

Kat Kourbeti: Yay. The world is over!

Debbie Urbanski: It's like a relief kind of!

I camp and hike, and I studied medieval history, so there's a nice intersection, I think of all those things in post-apocalyptic. You know, it's usually post technology and survivalist sort of stuff. I wanted to play around with that and try and write a really serious, realistic, super detailed story about someone who doesn't survive, essentially, for the novel.

Or for even the Portal stories, I wanted to write about people who aren't able to go through the portals. I really love portal stories too, just like traditional ones, or like The Chosen One stories. I wrote something for teens about the chosen person's friend, because I was thinking that's a really hard position to be in—

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Debbie Urbanski: To be in a supporting character role. What I like doing is mixing things and playing around.

Kat Kourbeti: And you said you had a sideways entry into genre writing, but would you say that's where you live now, in genre?

Debbie Urbanski: I think probably to the detriment of my career, I still am all over the place. So while I was working on the story collection, pulling it together, I was writing these experimental essays that are really tough to place. One of the essays is called The Constraints of Fiction, (about) just how I felt like everybody from editors to readers to reviewers was telling me what a story should look like, and how I kind of wanted to break out of that.

I have a good friend whose son died by suicide and I met him nine months after that happened, and I was frustrated that the only skill I had, which was writing, could do nothing to help my friend. So I wrote a story where I imagined, it's kinda like an essay story, imagined trying to bring his son back through writing, which of course you can't do.

So I'm still in this nether world, maybe intersectional world.

Kat Kourbeti: That's a good place to be. You say the detriment of your career, but at the same time, I think it's more honest to keep all of that in play because that's you, and what you're interested in and what you enjoy and what you think about. So it's not exclusive, I don't think. I think it's more artistically honest to play around with all the things.

Debbie Urbanski: That's a beautiful framework, thank you for that. Yeah, that's true. For my next project, it's a weird time 'cause I finished these Portal stories that have been occupying me, kind of about personal stuff, finished my novel, and it finally feels like I could write about anything, but I don't know what that anything is! And I've been—ugh.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, if you don't have something kicking around, you then just open the windows in your brain and let something else in.

Debbie Urbanski: Something will come, I think.

Kat Kourbeti: Something will come.

Debbie Urbanski: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: I believe it. You've also written a lot of different sort of formats. So where do you feel comfortable? Is it short fiction mostly, or novels? Or obviously a combination, but how do you operate as a writer, in terms of the length of things that you plan to write?

Debbie Urbanski: I wrote my novel because I wanted to have a story collection, that was my motivation, and I was trying to find an agent. And all the agents were asking, where's your novel? So stories are my first love for sure. Post-apocalyptic is my comfort genre, stories are my comfort place.

It's interesting that there's such hesitation in the commercial publishing world. I mean, my publisher was great and agreed to publish my collection. I'm so grateful. At the same time, there's not a big expectation for collections, and it's difficult to try and get them to the world. But I feel like stories are so perfect for our attention spans now, and to address all the stuff that's going on everywhere.

Kat Kourbeti: I find that really interesting. So maybe we can pick your brains about writing short and how you approach a short story, because it can be just such a personal thing to each writer, how the plot forms and how the characters form. Like in my case, I can't keep things short to save my life. I really wish I could, it's something I have to very consciously work at, as opposed to people like you for whom it's more of a natural sort of process. And I'm always fascinated with people's methods and with people's different ways of thinking about story.

So maybe you can walk me through sitting down and you're like, "I'm gonna write this story, I have an idea." First of all, do you outline it out first, or do you just kind of sit down and write and see what happens?

Debbie Urbanski: It's a bit of a chaotic method that I do, and I applied this to novel writing as well, which is probably why my novel took eight years to write. But I tend to write a little bit free association, in fragments or in chunks, and then I actually print everything out and then tear it up and then I reorder it on my floor.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh wow. Okay.

Debbie Urbanski: With the windows closed and kind of staple things together. You could probably see that in the Strange Horizon story a little— 'cause—

Kat Kourbeti: It is a little fragmented, yeah!

Debbie Urbanski: Yeah. And I'm interested in the order of things, changing that around, and my mind just doesn't think in a linear fashion.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay.

Debbie Urbanski: I think it would be easier if it did, but kind of what you were saying before, you need to be honest with who you are artistically.

Kat Kourbeti: Exactly.

Debbie Urbanski: My mind's like, it is just...

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Debbie Urbanski: All the things at once.

Kat Kourbeti: So going back to your Strange Horizons story then, because that is very fascinating: it is fragmentary in places, and that's why I said that it feels like a diary almost rather than a product review the whole way through, 'cause I think a product review would just be like, "here's what happened and that's my experience, five stars, everyone should buy one".

But this one has little snippets and little scenes and little thoughts even, that maybe don't have a specific incident, but it's like, "hmm, I was thinking this", and then there's another section. And you don't see that very much in short stories, not super often, like that many different little jumbled thoughts, but it made sense for this character. I didn't think, "huh, this is really scattered". I just thought it makes sense for this character to be having all of these different thoughts, because it's quite a difficult and emotionally charged thing that she's going through.

So would you say that is reflected in your other short fiction as well?

Debbie Urbanski: I think at one stage in the writing process, I'm sure, yes. Sometimes I do try and do the transitions more, smooth things over, or I go through phases where I don't want any breaks, so I try and have a single scene.

One thing I like about the story form is I think it allows me to play with form and not exhaust the reader to such a degree. One of my favorite stories I wrote was a bunch of dictionary entries, of words that I made up from the future, and the person's trying to write a dictionary and explain what's happening in the world.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay.

Debbie Urbanski: But that format was perfect for me because I got to have little definitions, and I got to include some(thing) personal, if I wanted, and kind of develop things as it goes through the alphabet.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. Yeah, okay. Again, finding ways for that thinking to work with a format that you're making up. I feel like that is also perhaps coming from your poetry background, because poetry can be whatever you want.

Debbie Urbanski: That's great, yeah, that's super interesting.

Kat Kourbeti: And now that I know that you've done an MFA in poetry, I'm like, this is making sense actually, because you don't have to write a poem top to bottom, and it doesn't always have to follow a form. Some forms do, there's types of poems that do have rules you have to follow for it to make sense and so on. But not everything is.

I'm like, "ooh, but you're doing this with prose, that's interesting."

Debbie Urbanski: My gosh. Thank you. I'm gonna think about that more too, it's really cool. I don't write poetry actively anymore, could get a little melancholy about that, but I like thinking that it's still in my work.

Kat Kourbeti: It's kicking around in there because if it's something that you did so much for a long time, even if you stop doing it, I think it influences your method at the very least, if not the way that you even think, on a more minute level, in the phrases and the way that you think about language. Like, poetry can really make you think about the layers of language, if you will. It's part of you no matter how deep.

Debbie Urbanski: This is such a comforting interview. Thank you. I'll just write down some of these wonderful things you're telling me.

Kat Kourbeti: We're here to big up our writers. It's what we do here. We like to big up our writers and we like to see them thrive. And I'm happy that eventually, you got an agent and all that, but I was sad to hear—I was listening to another podcast you did with Scrivener, and in there you were talking about how you had to go through three agents in order to find the right fit for this book, and I suppose eventually everything else that you'll end up doing. And it really struck a chord with me, because I've had more interviews on this podcast and elsewhere talking to folks who have had similar experiences that are not often talked about in publishing.

The narrative tends to be, "I found my dream agent immediately and they believed in me and we were a perfect fit, and then they found me an editor and a publisher and it was so great". And we don't hear the stories that are about, "actually, it wasn't the right fit and it wasn't immediate and I had to work at it."

So I wanted to ask you if you have any advice for other writers who might be facing similar situations, who might not know what to do?

Debbie Urbanski: That's a great question. I will also say—so in addition to the agent, my novel is orphaned, which isn't often talked about either. That's when a publisher/editor buys your novel and then the editor leaves and you get reassigned to another editor. And I had to Google it when it happened to me, 'cause one of my friends was like, "oh no, like an orphan situation", but it's another thing that I think I wish we talked about more.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. Yeah.

Debbie Urbanski: I do think using the writing community in any way you can is really helpful. For the past 15 years, I've formed my own writing groups and writing communities. I'm in one now of Simon & Schuster authors who are publishing at the same time, it's something we organized ourselves. And then I'm in an accountability group. So even if you're not part of that yet, you could reach out and find people through organizations, or read a short story by an author you like and send them an email. They've turned out to be good friends of mine sometimes, I've met people that way. That really helped me get through the disappointments and the length of time it took for me to get my novel into the world. More established authors could be very generous with their time or at least pointing in the right direction or saying like, yes, I've been through this. Yeah, I encourage people just to reach out or form their own community if they're not part of one.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, 'cause there's just so much that we don't consider as aspiring writers, or aspiring authors. We think it's gonna be a linear journey and then it's just up, up, up. But in fact, there's all of these bumps and all of these things that could happen that we're certainly not expecting when we start out, and then when it happens, sometimes it's hard to be prepared.

So I'm glad that you found a community, and I'm glad that there's a little circle formed, even of people at the same publisher, 'cause that's also important, to be around the people with a similar experience, exactly where you are right now, which can be hard.

So... I suppose the next question is, what's next? Are you thinking more short story collections? Your short story collection had a theme, and even if not every story is the same, premise wise, there is a theme kind of linking everything together. What about a collection of stories from your other publications, like stuff that's been out that perhaps is not about this one specific theme. Would you do a kind of more general one? Or do you believe in the themed collection?

Debbie Urbanski: I would love to have multiple collections out there, and then also to have a collection of my experimental nonfiction. But my editor and my agent both thought, in today's marketplace, that themed collections have a better chance of getting read. I have like 50 stories or something to choose from. I like them all, so I was not the right person to choose which ones went in the collection. My agent and my editor were a big help. Someday I would love to have another collection out there. I think I'm supposed to write a novel next, first.

Kat Kourbeti: Fair. And as you said at the beginning, I don't know if we were recording yet but you said that you're not sure where the next idea will come from. I'm looking forward to whatever that is.

Debbie Urbanski: I'm thinking whales or non-human points of view. I've narrowed it down. Or oceans maybe.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. One of the previous guests on this podcast, Jordan Kurella, one of his poems with us— orry, I think it was a story in fact—in which the character(s) is a plural, it's a first person plural point of view, and it's the Four Winds, which is pretty fun. We'll link that in the show notes also. I think we have a few on Strange Horizons that you could trawl for inspiration there.

My next question is, let's talk about the post-apocalyptic comfort novel that you wrote, in which I guess humanity is gone. Is that a spoiler to say?

Debbie Urbanski: I wanted it from page one to be clear.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay.

Debbie Urbanski: Yeah. So hopefully not (a spoiler).

Kat Kourbeti: And then the narrator is this AI that's telling our story, or the story of the book. So can you tell me a little bit about how that is the comfort, and where the idea came from for that?

Debbie Urbanski: I will say my book is probably not comforting to most people. I just talked with the animal rights book group who had read it, and they had a really interesting read on it. For them, I think it was more comforting 'cause they were very non-human species centered, and the earth ends up okay in my book, so I do hope that balances out a little bit of the bleakness.

But yeah, I was reading a lot about extinction and started thinking about other species' extinction. It was in a great book called The World Without Us. I like reading nonfiction too, and so that one, it's a scientist journalist who kind of describes in great detail what happens if we all disappear. And a scientist mentioned, humans are gonna go extinct eventually. I just took that as a thought experiment. AI came in a little bit later as a narrator, because the book was really fragmented like we were talking about, that's how I think, and one of my agents wanted a cohesive whole around all the fragments.

Kat Kourbeti: Interesting. Yeah. I think something else that you mentioned in that Scrivener podcast episode was how, because you work with all of these fragments and then you bring it all together eventually and you move things around and you shuffle—I find that very interesting because of the non-linear aspect. Because even in a book like this where you aren't telling a story—there is a narrative and a through line, but the drafting and the formation of it doesn't have to be that from the beginning—and I think that's a mistake that a lot of writers make at the beginning of trying to put something big together, where they're like, "oh God, I can't write from the beginning to the end!" and they freak out and they stop.

And I say "they", I mean me—I've done this. So it's just fascinating to see how this method is in fact just embracing the natural discovery of things, and then putting them in an order that makes sense, and taking it from there.

Debbie Urbanski: I find when something's not working in a story, it's often form related for me. Like I haven't found the form yet or the point of view, or the structure. So that's really how a big part of my revision is. Sometimes it is me taking like a 15,000 word piece and reducing it to 1500 words, and it works much better.

Kat Kourbeti: I just made a face, dear listeners who can't see me. I was just like, "what?!"

Debbie Urbanski: Yeah. I highlighted the stuff I really thought was working, and then I just got rid of the rest of the stuff and it became like, this lyric essay.

Kat Kourbeti: Huh!

Debbie Urbanski: Which is a form I like too.

Kat Kourbeti: That's cool because again, you're just not constrained. I feel like a lot of us go into writing and we think "I've read books, I know what books are like, or I know what a short story is because I've read a bunch of them, so I guess I'm just gonna like, do that". I suppose it goes back to what we were saying earlier about being artistically honest: if it's not quite doing what you want it to do, saying what you want it to say, if it follows that form but it's not working, then what are you doing even? So I'm learning from you here.

This is why this podcast is in fact a free masterclass for me and also anybody else who wants to listen to a bunch of writers talk about the way that they do things. Which is why I like to pick people's brains about how they do stuff.

So then at the end of the revision, you've put the whole thing together, you've formulated the structure and everything and it's final. And then come the editors and the agents and everybody else who asks you to rework what you've already spent a lot of time like, reworking. What is that process like? Or what was it for this book, anyway?

Debbie Urbanski: I think along the way I always had to ask myself what my goal was, and it was to get a book published, and I was interested in working with a Big Five publisher if the opportunity arose, to see what that experience was like. I think I'd be very comfortable at a small indie experimental press, but I thought, okay, I'll give it a try.

One of my agents who I was just with briefly, wanted humanity to survive in the end, not such a bleak ending, or I heard a lot of "make it more like Station Eleven", and those comments I knew, you know, maybe it would've helped sell the book, but I just... Station Eleven already has been written. I'm not interested in providing another Station Eleven to the world.

With my current editor who I really love, his approach was trying to put in footholds or just making things more accessible. He did think of how we do have a reader and we want the reader to finish the book. Honestly, that's not how I think. I wanted the book to be difficult for the reader, just 'cause of the material. So we found this compromise that still felt really true to my book.

The orphaned version that didn't work out, there is a version floating around where I had to take away the AI narrator and put a human narrator. So I did one big rewrite, but then I was like, no, this is not my book anymore.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Is it a challenge? Yes, and the mileage will vary from reader to reader and whether or not they find comfort and/or if they like the premise that it starts with. But it's just so interesting to hear about editors and the people involved in the creation of this book, just not quite getting that and there being a version that's very different. But I'm glad you didn't have to compromise that, because it is very much at the heart of this book that there isn't a human narrator. That's the point. And then, yeah, how did the narrative voice of the AI narrator form in your head as you were writing this?

Debbie Urbanski: I knew I wanted there to be some kind of development over the novel. I was interested in a narrator who didn't know something and then learned something by the end. So my first try, the AI narrator didn't know how to tell a story, so was struggling trying all these different methods. There was a page in hieroglyphics at one point and my editor pointed out this is not very interesting for the reader to read, in a nice way. We don't need to read someone who isn't a good writer or who can't write. It's not pleasurable.

We decided that the shift was going to be the narrator understanding or developing more feelings for affection, caring for the person that they're writing about, which I think happens to all writers, right? As we spend time with our characters. Or actually it happens to everyone all the time, like when you spend time with anyone, generally you're gonna start caring for them more.

So yeah, that's how I settled upon the voice. I did read some books about AI and my husband's a programmer, so just kinda, I thought about how an AI might describe a room, and they're not gonna just describe humans in a room; they might resort to counting things or describing the temperature, or the body mass index of people instead of...

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. So that's what find fascinating, like the practical implications of having a narrator who doesn't have a person's, you know, the way you notice things will be different and the way you describe things will be different. And so in practical terms, how that manifests in a voice is fun.

Was it fun to play around with that sort of thing?

Debbie Urbanski: It was really fun, yeah. I love having a particular point of view, or even an extreme point of view. Sometimes in my early work, I tried if I was in a situation to write the story from the other person's point of view, or the person who's hard to relate to their point of view. I find that a lot more fun than someone we already know or someone you understand. It's a good way to understand someone you don't, to write a story from their point of view.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I do find the (novel's) premise distressing, but at the same time like, it is about examining problems without man in it, if that makes sense. So like, how is the world then changed or like, how can it bounce back from what we've done to it?

I read a great self-published book, I think, and I forget how I came across it, but I remember at the time of reading it that I was first of all, engrossed, and second of all, fascinated with some of the world building in which the premise was "orca whales are telepathic and they open a portal under the sea—they want to open a portal under the sea so they can leave."

Debbie Urbanski: Whoa.

Kat Kourbeti: And they're finding it really difficult because of sonar and other stuff that's like polluting the water and they can't talk to each other and they can't hear each other. And somehow the human narrator is affected by what's going on with the orcas and plot happens. I think it's called Exodus 2022, which I think gives you an idea. I read this way before 2022 and when the year came by, I was like, "huh, what if all the whales left?" You know, just like... (bye!)

But that book really asked those kinds of questions of like, "you've been in charge of this planet and you've botched it, so like we're outta here." And the presumption that we are at the top of the food chain, quote unquote, at the top of the hierarchy of things on this planet and how that's just such an arrogant view of the world and us, and instead of being part of something, we are placing ourselves on top of it.

While that book, I think takes in fact quite a downturn in terms of how the planet does, in comparison to yours—

Debbie Urbanski: Sure.

Kat Kourbeti: —but those were the questions at the heart of it. And reading about your book, I was like, oh yeah, those are the questions that we have to ask now, because we are at a precipice. We really are at a turning point and have been for some time, but especially right now.

Debbie Urbanski: Yeah. Like what are we trying to save when we're talking about climate change? Often it seems like we're prioritizing humans, which might seem obvious to some people, but I think there's another point of view where all living creatures are super important. How could we save more?

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Would you say that you write solar punk at all? Or that sort of sci-fi?

Debbie Urbanski: So my understanding, someone was trying to describe that to me. Is it usually hopeful? Does it tend to be?

Kat Kourbeti: I guess so. So solar punk tends to envision positive outcomes from now, but like where a turning point might—how can we reverse things or how can we find positive solutions to climate change and/or human society. Like how we've structured the world is harmful, (so) how can we envision alternatives that might not be that?

But I do think that humanity does play a part in it, so definitely not this novel.

Debbie Urbanski: Yeah. I've had some interesting discussions about the place of hope versus hopefulness in the future. There's a lot of both activists and regular people who find it really important to keep a positive outlook about the future, and hope. And I totally get that and I'm really glad those books exist, but I also feel like it's important, like with Portalmania and asexuality, to show both queer joy and also what happens when it's really difficult. I did feel like I wanted to show an extreme situation with extinction to hopefully get people thinking (about) what's at stake.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, absolutely.

So the most recent thing from you is in fact Portalmania, which at the time of recording I think just came out.

Debbie Urbanski: Yep. Two weeks ago today.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh. We'll put a link in the show notes for everybody to go check that out. And I suppose this might be a hard question to ask and feel free to refuse me, but do you have a favorite child from within this collection of short stories?

Debbie Urbanski: I thought you were mentioning about actual children!

Kat Kourbeti: No, I would not presume to ask you this!

Debbie Urbanski: I have two children.

Kat Kourbeti: No—among the several children included in this collection of short stories, is there something that you know, is dearer to you or something that captures that artistic honesty we've been talking about?

Debbie Urbanski: There's a longer story called The Dirty Golden Yellow House, and that's the most recent story I wrote. So there's not a lot of agency given to the women, intentionally, in the book. Just that's how I was feeling at the time. But this was the first story where I felt like, okay, I'm gonna let the female character be able to do something, and maybe it's not the right thing, but she's gonna do it. And it's an angry story. I also let myself be angry about a lot of stuff in there, so it ranges from like, reviews online about my stuff that got into the personal, which was yucky, to just our inability to talk about certain topics.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Debbie Urbanski: I got a lot outta my system in that story. It is something that had been building, and it was like this big release to write it, which was nice.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, that's very cool. Yeah, there's a big power in how the fiction can be therapeutic and an avenue for catharsis for writers. We do call it "cheaper than therapy." Although... is it?

Debbie Urbanski: Oh man. Yeah. Never do your hourly rate as a writer. Right?

Kat Kourbeti: Let's not examine the actual math, how much that costs per hour. We're just not gonna go there.

I'm glad that did that for you. And we'll check that story out and the rest of the collection linked in the show notes and in the transcript on the website.

Thank you so much for joining us! Where can we find you online?

Debbie Urbanski: So I'm on Instagram. I post photos of portals occasionally, it's been my latest project. It's @debbieurbanski, and then I'm on Substack, I think it's Debbie Urbanski there too. And I have a website, Debbie Urbanski.

Kat Kourbeti: Search for Debbie Urbanski and we will find you!

Thank you. Thank you so much for spending your time with us and all the best in your writing journey. We can't wait to see what else you come up with.

Debbie Urbanski: This has been such a great conversation, so thank you, thank you so much.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you!

In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, editor Kat Kourbeti talks to Mary Robinette Kowal about the fractal nature of story structure, how writing is really kind of like cooking, and the joys of writing to please the teenaged version of you.

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Episode show notes:

• Read Mary Robinette's work in our archives.
• Listen to the audio of the Portland Strange Horizons 10th Anniversary Reading event on her website.
• Buy The Martian Contingency and pre-order Apprehension/Red Star Hustle (part of a Saga Double with Sam J Miller)
• Follow Mary Robinette on Instagram or visit her website to sign up for her monthly newsletter, The Mary Robinette Gazette. Both places abound with talking cat content!
• Find more links to her work and other things as you read the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it's my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres.

Today's guest is Mary Robinette Kowal, whose first publication with us was in 2006. She's a celebrated author with multiple Hugo Awards, the Nebula and Locus Awards, the Astounding Award, as well as an audiobook narrator, and a puppeteer. She also has a rather famous talking cat, Elsie. It's great to have you here, Mary Robinette.

Mary Robinette Kowal: It is nice to be here.

Kat Kourbeti: So welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining us. You write in a lot of different genres, you work in a lot of different fields. I'm always really fascinated with writers and artists who do all the things. As I've said on this podcast before like, these sorts of careers fascinate me. So I'm super excited to talk to you today about your career, and how Strange Horizons came into it.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I was reviewing some of that, like prepping for this, because it's been a minute.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. That's why we're doing this podcast is that, we realized that it's been 25 years—

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: —and that really made me go, "a what now?" And going back through the archives has been just tremendous.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah, you doing that made me realize that I'm 20 years out from my first sale. That is math I had not done.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, you don't think about these things. You keep moving forward until such time as there is something that requires a flashback.

Let's talk about your work in general. What genres do you write in? Because it's so varied, what would you define it as?

Mary Robinette Kowal: I write all over the map. So I come out of puppet theater, and puppet theater tends towards the fantastical just because we can. I've read science fiction and fantasy growing up, so I tend to write in all the genres that I enjoy reading. I'll do hard science fiction, soft science fiction. Historical fantasy, contemporary fantasy, contemporary science fiction, weird slipstream stuff. I'll do all of that. I will very occasionally dip over into horror, but I don't do a lot of that because I'm not comfortable reading it. It's not a place that I enjoy putting my brain for a long period of time.

With puppets, when people ask me what style I do, I'm like, if it's a dolly, I will wiggle it. And with genre, I feel like if it's a story, I will tell it.

Kat Kourbeti: Which I appreciate immensely. Yeah. I relate to the whole horror thing, like I appreciate it and I can read it in short bursts, but not fully, which is very strange for me because a lot of my compatriots from Greece, like, folk horror is all they write. And I'm like, no, thank you.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. And sometimes I'm okay with it, like you know, Dan Wells' "I'm Not a Serial Killer", totally fine. Sometimes there's a piece of short fiction, like when Ellen Datlow is editing something, she's one of those editors that I have always loved what she selects, but I have to be real careful even in short form with her.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. She has a knack for some great stories, but they won't all be in my wheelhouse personally as well. Yeah, definitely.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. Live rent free in my head.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Not always in a good way either.

Mary Robinette Kowal: We had rats living in our attic rent free, and I didn't like that. So it's often like that with with horror.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: But all of the other forms, like one of the reasons that I like puppetry and also gravitate towards science fiction and fantasy, is because they both feel like the theater of the possible. Looking at the what if. And I like looking at what's possible. Possible doesn't always have to be a bad outcome. Sometimes possibility is, what if we imagine a good outcome? And that's shocking, especially in today's age.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Nowadays, that's brave, for sure.

I work in theater and I write about science fiction theater, and a lot of the time the art form lends itself to sci-fi and fantasy, especially because you invite the audience to imagine anyway, and so the shorthand is already established. The minute someone walks through the door, they're already imagining something that isn't on stage, really. And that always fascinates me, how well that works together with genre.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. It's great.

Kat Kourbeti: So how has your approach to genre writing and to the various lengths and formats, how has that evolved during your writing journey?

Mary Robinette Kowal: When I first started off, I describe it as, I could write a really good beginning and a really good middle, and a really good ending to three completely different stories that happened to have the same set of characters. So structure was the thing that I had a really hard time with. I understood how to communicate with an audience, I understood character. Again, coming out of live theater, the structure is provided for you. So your job is to figure out the character and how that character inhabits the world. Your job is to communicate with the audience. And those things translated shockingly well to writing, but structure was like, whoa.

So I spent a lot of my early career trying to figure out structure. A lot of my early stories I outlined heavily because I was trying to figure it out, even in short form. And as I get deeper into my career, the thing that I'm enjoying is that I've internalized a lot of those lessons, and that frequently I can just write it without having to think about it.

I can just chase the emotion, which allows me, I think, to have an experience that is more comparable to what the reader is going to experience. 'Cause the reader's not thinking about structure, the reader's thinking about the emotion, the ride. And that's the way I wanna be able to write.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, that's awesome. And was that like, a very... structured way of learning that?

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. Actually it was. When I was an intern at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, Georgia, my mentor had me doing a style called tabletop puppetry, which is—you'll learn that the terms in puppetry are extremely complicated: a tabletop puppet is a puppet that is worked on a tabletop. I know, it's really confusing there. But it looks like an unstrung marionette, and so my job was to walk it around the table. And you're doing it by yourself, so you're doing this thing called a swing step, which again, very complicated: you swing the leg and you step, swing step.

What my mentor had me do was walk the puppet around the table for about 45 minutes while he talked to me. And what he was looking for was the moment when I was able to start carrying on a conversation with him, without watching the puppet, and have the puppet continue to walk smoothly, because that's the point when I have internalized how that motion works. And then he had me turn around and do it with the other hand.

And what I took from that is that you can practice techniques individually, and take time to internalize something because the goal is to not have to think about technique when you're on stage and acting. You just wanna think about the connection with the audience, you just wanna think about the emotions, you wanna think about the art, and not the technique. And so what I have been doing very consciously with my writing is, if I wanna try a new technique or if I want to push myself on something, I'll put everything else into easy setting, and then focus on that one area.

I will sometimes do exercises that are just to practice. Today's a day where I'm gonna think about sensory detail, so I'm gonna bank a bunch of sensory details. There's a exercise that I got from CL Polk, which is for anxiety—five things you see, four things you hear, three things you touch, two things you smell and one thing you taste. And I'll be like, I'm just gonna bank the details of this room.

And then sometimes I'll do things where I think, I just wanna practice dialogue today, and I will just write a back and forth between characters. Sometimes I think, I'm just gonna practice finding the story, and so I'll run myself through exercises for that. So I've been doing that, trying to internalize things, and when I sit down to write now I make a choice about, is this going to be a day where I'm going to outline and plan the structure ahead of time, or is this gonna be a day where I'm gonna see how much I have actually internalized and just try to free write?

Kat Kourbeti: Do you identify then as a plantser, best of both worlds?

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yes. I'm also an ambivert.

Kat Kourbeti: All the things, both the things, all the time.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah, I write science fiction and fantasy. I just—

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh, too complex Mary Robinette. Now, come on.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I know.

Kat Kourbeti: And you also write a lot of different lengths, or you have done in your career generally. I find that witchcraft, personally, and I would like you to tell us your ways, or rather, how did you find moving from one to the other? 'Cause you started in short fiction and then you gradually went longer, I think.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Well, this is a yes and a no. I actually started with novels, but I didn't publish any of those.

Kat Kourbeti: Uh-huh. Okay.

Mary Robinette Kowal: In fact, my first Strange Horizons story is a scene from my first novel. There's a couple of sentences in there that I'm pretty confident I wrote when I was 16, 'cause it took 10 years to write that first novel, which no one will ever read.

Kat Kourbeti: But I guess we've all read a bit of it.

Mary Robinette Kowal: You've read a bit of it, yes. You have read the bit that is not starring my D&D character in a plot that is the combination of A-Team and Battlestar Galactica from the eighties, but not the good parts.

Kat Kourbeti: Gotcha. That's fair.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I hadn't learnt structure yet. Yeah.

So for me, I think that story is story, and that writing techniques are fractal, that techniques that work on a sentence level, work on a scenic level, work on a chapter level, novel level, series level.

Again, coming out of puppetry, one of the things that you're taught is that there are principles of puppetry, and once you know those principles, you can pick up any puppet and at that point, it's just learning the technical tricks of that specific figure. What I find with writing is that it's the same thing. Once you understand kind of the principles, the sort of underlying science of it—for people who are not puppeteers, it's like the book Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. Once you understand, "oh, this is how these things interact", then it's just a matter of adjusting. So using cooking as an example: if you've ever looked at a recipe and it's "oh, but that's gonna make too much food", so you cut it down, the proportions remain the same. It's just the amount of ingredients; you don't need as much flour.

So when I see people moving from novel to short story and having problems, or from short story to novel, what I see happen is that they keep the amount of ingredients, but they don't keep the amount of proportion. This is why you'll read a short story that is really the opening chapter of a novel. It's got novel pacing, but if they were keeping the same proportions—let's say for ease of math, a hundred thousand word novel, and your first chapter is like 4,000 words. That's, what, 4% of that novel? So when you go to short fiction, you can't write 4,000 words of opening. But that's what people will do. What you need to do is you need to write "4% is that opening". And that's where people start to have problems.

So if you've got—again, for the ease of math, because I'm a writer and not a mathematician: if you've got a 10,000 word story, that means that your opening is about 400 words, which is about two pages.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Little over two pages. And that's not what you see when you watch people make that transition. The same thing goes the other direction, and this was where I had a lot of problems when I started publishing novels is that, I would stick the landing and I would get out, because I was writing a short story ending and I wasn't adjusting the amount of ingredients that I was putting in. And so all of my endings felt rushed, and it took me a while to figure out why that was happening.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I find a lot of the time people are used to the opposite thing where it's like, they think in long form kind of pacing and everything else, and then it's the condensing that they find trouble with. So it's interesting that it also works the other way around.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I know people who can write short and cannot go longer, but it's both directions.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: But when you get into the heart of what it is, both of them work. And the other thing is, you can be often a lot more adventurous with short fiction because you don't have to sustain it, because it's not something you're gonna experience for a long time. Continuing in the vein of cooking, if you go to a restaurant, there are times when the appetizers are so interesting and then the entree is like, meh. And I honestly think it's just because with the appetizer there's a little more room to take risk, because you aren't going to be eating that flavor for an entire meal. So you can do something a little bit bolder, you can spend a little more money on ingredients that are a little pricier. And that's, I think, similar to what happens in a short story. It's like, yeah, I can do this thing where I'm gonna really play with form, I'm gonna write the entire thing in second person, plural, future tense. And it's great for short fiction. If you've tried to read a novel that was written that way...

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I don't think I could. Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: You have to be really on top of your game to start doing that kind of thing. And so that's the sort of things that I think about when you're moving between short fiction and long fiction. It's like, what are the tools you get to play with? In long fiction you get to have all of the ingredients, it doesn't matter. I am making a savory dish, but am I gonna put in a little bit of vanilla and sugar? Indeed, I am.

Kat Kourbeti: Play around with it. See what happens. Yeah. Adjust the flavors. I love that metaphor.

Mary Robinette Kowal: A little bit of vanilla and sugar, by the way, will really make your spaghetti sauce sing.

Kat Kourbeti: I've never put vanilla in mine. I think I might try. I've definitely done cinnamon before, 'cause where I'm from in Greece, it's commonly like, a little pinch will really zing things up. So yeah. Vanilla next time.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I'm gonna try cinnamon. Cultural exchange.

Kat Kourbeti: I love that!

Mary Robinette Kowal: While we're talking about writing.

Kat Kourbeti: And I'm learning about writing. This is kind of a little masterclass all in itself.

And so would you say you have a favorite format or something you're drawn to more nowadays?

Mary Robinette Kowal: No.

Kat Kourbeti: Fair.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah, it's very much the, what am I not doing right now?

Kat Kourbeti: I think that's completely fair. And if anything, I really appreciate the modular nature of your approach to writing, because that then makes any format approachable. It's not like you're confined or trapped by anything. You're just kind of like, yep, that works, what do I wanna tell today? So that's fascinating.

So now let's talk a little bit about your Strange Horizons story, which—

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Was this your first pro sale? Or almost? Maybe, almost.

Mary Robinette Kowal: It's almost. I think my first pro sale was actually to an anthology.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay.

Mary Robinette Kowal: So I think this would've been my second pro sale.

Kat Kourbeti: Alright. Still early days though, yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah, it's very early days. The thing that I like about Strange Horizons... So first of all, let me set the stage.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes, please.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Kids these days. When I started writing and started submitting things, it was still, you had to send paper manuscripts in the mail. And if you wanted to publish online, all the established professionals were telling you not to do it, that no one took it seriously. But I'm like reading this stuff out of Strange Horizons and it's amazing fiction. It was also a very simple submission process, and I was like, they're doing interesting things. Like the fiction is interesting, it's challenging, it is often approaching genres in different ways than I had been seeing.

So I was extremely interested in Strange Horizons, and sent in a story. That is not the first one I submitted to Strange Horizons, but it is the first thing that was accepted there. Oh, actually that is my first— sorry, I just looked at my, that's my first pro publication. It may not be my actual first pro sale, but it's my first pro publication.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh. That's awesome.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: I have a list of authors on my spreadsheet for this podcast for "First Pub Club", so you're a member of that, which is neat. It's so cool.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. So I was very fortunate when I was starting that the places I was selling to, everybody was kind, which is not always the case. But it was such an easy process. And I had been a little intimidated.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. As a new writer as well, I'm sure.

Mary Robinette Kowal: But yeah. Just being able to do everything electronically, I cannot stress how exciting that was. In fact one of the side effects of Strange Horizons existing and doing such good work— there was a magazine, Shimmer Zine, that ran for a while, and Beth Wodzinski and myself and a couple of other people put that together, and people were telling us not to do an online component and we were able to point to Strange Horizons.

And so because there was so much pressure to have print, we wound up doing a hybrid approach, where it was print and an online magazine, but it was because Strange Horizons existed that we felt brave enough to venture into that space.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. Yeah, it's interesting how the tables have turned.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: 'Cause now people start zines all over the shop, and thinking about print is unthinkable for a lot of people, 'cause it's just, it's expensive, it's difficult. Where do you sell it? How do you distribute? It just becomes this whole big thing.

And just the evolution of the field has just completely upended that expectation.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. Because if you can't—like now when I'm looking to go sell something, I still love Asimov's and F&SF because I grew up reading them, but I really think twice before I send them a story, no matter how much I love them, because they don't have an online presence that is in any way accessible.

Occasionally they will cross post something, but I'm like, this story goes to a very small, like, I can't point anyone to it. 'Cause once it's published, once that print thing is off the newstands, that story just doesn't exist essentially.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. And it's such a shame that like, that has to be a consideration for you as a writer. You have to think about "how many people will be able to even read my story". That's wild.

Mary Robinette Kowal: It's so different from where it was.

Kat Kourbeti: My goodness. And so what was your experience like with the submission? So you sell a story, and then what happened? Did you have to edit it down quite a bit or was it more or less what you sent?

Mary Robinette Kowal: Please remember that we were talking about things that were 20 years ago.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely.

Mary Robinette Kowal: What I remember about it is that I was surprised at how few editorial notes there were.

The ones that I got—I think Jed Hartman was the one who was editing me—that they were mostly questions. Which I have now learned that the best editors just ask you questions, and give you room to figure things out. It was, as I said, very gentle, super easy process. I should have gone and looked in my email archive, to really be able to answer this. I think that we just did one round, that he sent me some questions, I answered them, I sent them back. And then, there's the copy edit stuff later.

But yeah, it was very easy.

Kat Kourbeti: That's really nice to hear. I think not much has changed in that department in 25 years. I think that's the general approach we still have, which is let the story work for itself, and if we can prod it a little bit, then great. But otherwise, I don't think our editors are in the business of fully changing a story, or really guiding it with a heavy hand, if that makes sense.

Mary Robinette Kowal: If you're buying a story because you like the story and the author's voice, the more you insert yourself, the less it becomes the thing that you bought.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Tell me a little bit about the background. We touched upon it a little bit that this may or may not have been part of your first novel.

Mary Robinette Kowal: It was definitely part of my first novel.

Kat Kourbeti: So tell us a little bit about that. However much you want to share, without retreating into yourself again.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Into the past!

So I was an art major in college and Portrait of Ari—in hindsight, I think one of the reasons that it sold was that the piece that I pulled out of the novel was a piece that pulled the most on my own personal experience. That was not the only thing I submitted to Strange Horizons, because I did submit things after that too, but I think that what was going on with that one—it begins very late at night in an art studio, and Ari and her boyfriend, whose name I can't remember, are in the studio, and he cuts himself with an X-Acto knife, which is a thing that actually happened a lot when I was an art major, and every now and then, like a friend of mine got really bad cut. I never got a really bad cut, but I had some that frightened me, because what you're doing is you're drawing the knife towards you when you're cutting a mat, and if it slips, you can go right into your thumb, where all of the connectors are.

And so I had a couple that were—this is the thing that's happening, this is the catalyst. I did not know at the time that was "the breaking of the normal", I didn't know that was an event story, I didn't know any of that stuff. This was one of the stories that I accidentally backed into and I'm like, "wait, what happened? That's a good story. All three pieces match, huh!" But it is an exploration of trust, what happens when someone mucks about with your memory, and you don't remember it, but you just, there's something that is no longer comfortable.

I know, but in the version that is on Strange Horizons, it is up in the air exactly what's going on with Ari. It's pretty clear that she's probably not exactly human. I know, because she comes out of my novel, that she is an alien who can... I was 16—because this makes so much sense—she's an alien who can shapeshift to be either a cougar with the option of adding wings, so a winged cougar, no wings, human with wings, human with no wings, halfway in between, with or without wings.

Because that's exactly how biology works.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes.

Mary Robinette Kowal: And that's also exactly how convergent evolution works on different planets. It's very real that way. And of course also, she could heal things with her mind, and you can really see that in the way I approach the healing aspects of this scene.

So yeah, there's a lot of my teenager in that story. You can tell what I was reading, you can tell what television I was watching, But you can also see this is my experience as an art major. And I think that was the thing that actually made it.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. There's a real lived-in approach to how you deal with the injury and the art stuff, you buy into it very easily as a reader, because you can tell that it comes from like a real place of knowledge and experience.

The alien cougar wing thing... frankly, even (with) that being in the background, what's on the page is so delightfully vague. She could be anything. On my first read I was like, "oh, maybe like an angel or like some kind of being that has these healing powers, or a fairy or like any sort of thing like that."

But that vagueness does leave that room to really wander. 'Cause yeah, the boyfriend, I think his name is Tom. You don't remember it 'cause it's very like, "eh, his name is Tom."

Mary Robinette Kowal: No, no, no. You don't understand. She is a cat, his name is Tom...

Kat Kourbeti: Oh no. I see.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I am a hundred percent certain that's why I did that. 'Cause I was being so clever, 'cause I was 16.

Kat Kourbeti: I see what you did there.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Just to be clear for people, because I don't want anyone to think that I published this when I was like 18—I started writing this when I was 16, and worked on it for 10 years. Finished the novel version when I was 26, and then somewhere in there stopped writing for about a decade. So I published this in my thirties.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow.

Mary Robinette Kowal: And was willing to let people...

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Okay, so here's a couple thoughts I have though, based on this information: first of all, I love that this comes from teenage Mary Robinette, with everything that means. 'Cause there is something unfiltered when you write as a teenager, you just write what you love. And I think a lot of the time we tamp that down as writers in order to write what sells or what people might wanna read, whatever your impression of that is. And my mission, for example, as a writer, is to return to that kind of joy that I had as a teenager.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: To write for her, not for 35-year-old me who's like, "but what should my first novel be? Is it significant? Is it doing something? Is it saying something about the world?" And I'm like, I just wanna write a story that's fun, that's got all the feelings and the themes and the stuff that I loved engaging with back then. And if other people love it, great. And if they don't, whatever. It's a difficult thing to achieve.

Mary Robinette Kowal: So, I think it is because we have been trained, especially people who grew up in Western education, that there's either a right or a wrong. Test answers, essays, even classes that aren't pass/fail, it's like there's a right answer. And when you get into theatre and storytelling and communication, there's not always one way to do things. That's actually a thing we say: there's not a single way to hold a puppet. You're constantly shifting your grip. And I feel that way: whoever is writing something, that they have different ways of approaching it because their brain is different, their background experience is different.

But the other piece of that is that I think that the storyteller is only half of the story. I think the reader is supplying the other half. We are dependent on the reader to build the worlds in their head. We describe stuff, we can't describe everything that's in the room. So we are dependent on those readers, they're our collaborators.

So I think the thing that again, I accidentally did with 'Portrait of Ari' was because I left the right amount of vagueness, and because Tom is my POV character, he doesn't know. And so the reader is in the same spot, but the reader is left with their memories while he is divorced from his. So I think that what happens there is that I am leaving room for the reader to put more of themself into the story.

This is one of the things with live puppet theater in particular, is that the puppet only exists because of an agreement between the performer and the audience member. The audience member agrees that for the duration of the show, they're going to believe that puppet is alive. And so one of the things that puppets do better than actors do is die. Because when you put the puppet down and you step away from it, it has gone back to being an inanimate object, and you've also killed a tiny piece of the audience because they've inserted themselves into that. So I think that also happens in the story, and I think that was the thing that I did accidentally in those early days.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I totally agree. You definitely do in this, and I love that there's a through line with the puppetry in the writing. And a hundred percent on when the puppets die, the lifelessness, it's so much more than a human could achieve by staying still. The effect is super felt. Love that.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I'll talk about puppets at any opportunity. So I just insert it into everything I'm talking about basically. That and cooking.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I think cooking is a fantastic metaphor that a lot of people can more or less relate to, even if they don't do a lot of cooking, because you've (probably) done a little bit. With puppetry, you've probably watched something, so there's definitely an experience as an audience member.

But it's very interesting to hear it from someone who's done the puppetry and those techniques and what that can teach you, because it's just an aspect that most of us don't really get to do. That's really cool.

So that's then 'Portrait of Ari', which is only two and a half thousand words, but it packs a punch. And I will say that has brought me back to something you have become a really big proponent of, which is the MICE Quotient. And you mentioned a little bit earlier that "oh, this is an event story".

So how big a part is it now, when you sit down and you write? Do you think about that sort of thing consciously, as you're sitting down and saying— (MRK nods) Okay, yeah?

Mary Robinette Kowal: I do tend to think of it often. It depends on if I'm on a planning or pantsing day.

Kat Kourbeti: Sure.

Mary Robinette Kowal: On a planning day I think about it at the beginning.

Often what I'll do is I will throw some ideas at the page and then I'll ask a series of questions like, is the character navigating or trying to get someplace? Then I probably have a milieu story. Do they have questions? It's an inquiry story. Are they uncomfortable with themselves or trying to change some aspect of themself? That's a character story. Is something wrong with the world? Did normal break in some way?

And so I will use it often as a diagnostic tool to help me decide what to leave out, because that is often the harder thing, and it helps me move the story in a kind of consistent direction without bogging me down in necessarily needing to answer all of the things right at the top when I'm starting.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: And sometimes when I write myself into a corner and have to go back and fix it, the MICE Quotient is very useful because I can say, okay, wait a minute. What's happening in this scene? Alright, so originally the scene was a milieu scene, but it doesn't work, because plot hole. So what other milieu, what other environmental hazard navigational things can I bring in, or solutions can I find here? And that will often help me find solutions that don't make me like, have to toss the entire thing out. I can just (make) ingredient substitutions.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Back to the cooking.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. Back to the cooking. It's like "ah!"

Kat Kourbeti: There you go. Yeah. You have to bring in some acid to cancel out the too much salt, et cetera, et cetera.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Exactly. I think, again using the cooking metaphor, when I started figuring structure out, I really wanted someone to just give me a recipe. And then as I've gotten more comfortable, first it was, oh, now I'm comfortable with this recipe, and so I can swap my ingredients. And then, now I can start doing more adventurous recipes. And now it's like, I can go into a kitchen and cook improvisationally.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Someday I'll get to molecular gastronomy, but for writing.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, anything that just plays with complex things in really small scales. Would love to see that from you.

A big thing that you're famous for on the internet is all of your writing advice and the MICE Quotient stuff, and you also are a seasoned podcaster with Writing Excuses, where you talk about this stuff at length. What part has that played in your writing journey, would you say?

Mary Robinette Kowal: First of all, I love doing Writing Excuses. We are in our 20th season.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I joined in season six, so this season is me, Howard Tayler, Dan Wells, DongWon Song, and Erin Roberts. And what I love about it is that when we are talking about writing, it means that I have to sit down and go, "okay, no, wait, how do I actually do that?"

The really exciting things are when we're talking about a form that I'm not familiar with, and I have to sit down and do a little bit of homework and think, okay well, how does that work? And then I come into the room and I'm like, okay, great, ready to podcast! And one of the others will come up with something that is so brilliant, that my brain will just blip outta the podcast for a second and I will go solve a problem that I've been banging my head against with in my own fiction. And I'll come back, I'm like, oh, I haven't talked for a while. Which is why I still listen to the podcast sometimes 'cause I'm like, I zoned out there 'cause I got excited.

That's the thing for me, that it's given me a lot more conscious tools that I can use. One of the ways I think about it is that doing the podcast, talking about it, teaching on my Patreon—means that I have to have my kitchen in order. Because I need to be able to reach for something immediately so that I can show it to someone. I'm inviting somebody in. And left to my own devices, that stuff would be scattered everywhere. And I'd be like, wait, what do you do in the middle of a story? Eh, I'll fix it later.

And now I can be like, what do you do in the middle of the story? Oh, I just had my hand on that. So that's I think one of the biggest things, is it keeps the tools closer to hand. I also think that one of the fastest ways to internalize something in any field is to teach someone else.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, definitely. And it applies to, yeah, every field generally. So a hundred percent.

Mary Robinette Kowal: If I can explain it to someone else, chances are that I am beginning to understand it myself.

Kat Kourbeti: So that's a big part of your presence online for sure, and probably career in general, is the teaching. And it's been really cool to see people join your cohorts or your Patreon or whatever, and then come out with their own books and their stories and things like that. Like actually seeing it work, is really cool.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. In the Writing Excuses newsletter, we do Success Stories.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I knew that people listened to the podcast, and I'd had people tell me, "oh, thank you so much, it really made a difference". But the success stories, like the one that we just published, she was like, "yeah I knew that I wanted to write and then I stumbled across Writing Excuses", and now her debut novel is coming out from like one of the Big Six. I'm like, we helped. Wow.

But it's very cool, and also the philosophy that I have as a teacher, and all of us actually at the podcast have, is that our job is not to make someone a brilliant writer. Our job is to help them be the writer that they were always going to be, but to try to remove as many of the obstacles and hopefully help them level up faster and with fewer tears. Can't promise no tears.

But I've taken writing workshops where what the instructor wanted to do was to make you into a version of them, that there was one way to write. And I don't think that's true. I don't think there's one way to write, I don't think there's one type of story to tell, and that's again, like one of the reasons I like Strange Horizons, because that is the kind of fiction you all do. It's not one kind of story, it's not one way to tell it, it's not one sort of voice. It's all of it.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: And that's just, it's just beautiful.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. It is what we do. Very well put, yeah.

Mary Robinette Kowal: I was trying to remind myself of things about Strange Horizons, I checked my website 'cause I was like, when did I publish what?

Did you know what we did for the 10th anniversary of Strange Horizons?

Kat Kourbeti: There was an ebook, I think? [Editor's note: Actually that was for our 15th anniversary!]

Mary Robinette Kowal: The 10th anniversary, there was a nationwide celebration where different authors would do readings. We organized a reading in Portland, where we had six Pacific Northwest authors who came to a coffee shop, and we would have two people read and then coffee and conversation, and then two people read. And the audio of it is still up on my website.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh my goodness. That's amazing. Oh wow. I'm sure that people would love to listen to that, so we'll link it in the show notes. Thank you for that. Thank you for keeping it.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. It was Ken Brady, Tina Connolly, Brenda Cooper, me, Jennifer Linnaea, and Tamela Viglione.

Kat Kourbeti: It's a great lineup. Wow.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. So I just ran across that, I'm like, holy cow. The things that I find.

Kat Kourbeti: When you're such a good archivist though, you just gotta keep the things and put them somewhere and that's it. So thank you so much for holding onto that, cause that's the sort of thing that would absolutely go lost if somebody hadn't recorded it and put it on a website.

So thank you so much for your wisdom, your knowledge, your beautiful cooking and puppetry metaphors and analogies, and for spending your time with us. Is there anything forthcoming or recent that you'd like to plug or promote?

Mary Robinette Kowal: As we are recording this, I am about a month out from The Martian Contingency, just came out. That's the fourth book in the Lady Astronaut series. So if you would like hopeful fiction set on Mars in 1970 that's available for you. And it will work as a standalone even though it's book five.

And then in October, I'm very excited, I have a novella coming out from Saga, and I dunno if you remember the old Ace Doubles, but they were books, it had one novel on one side and another one on the other side, and you flipped them over. So Sam J Miller and I have a Saga Double coming out: I have a novella called Apprehension; Sam's is called Red Star Hustle. They're both exploring the idea of noir in science fiction, but in different directions. Mine is like, Hitchcock in space!, and his is like, Chandler in space!

Kat Kourbeti: That works!

Mary Robinette Kowal: Yeah. I'm excited about that. That comes out October 21st.

Kat Kourbeti: That's fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, we'll look forward to that, and we can find you on social media as well. And where can we find your beautiful talking cat? Except for behind you over there, napping.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Besides that, Elsie does actually have her own Instagram account, and YouTube— no, her YouTube is mine, and I cross post everything onto my Instagram, because I know what people want.

Kat Kourbeti: Listen, we're here for the cat stuff.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Look, I know where I stand in this. So Elsie is on Instagram as ElsieWants, which is constant. If you can't remember that, the easiest thing to do is to head to my website and sign up for my newsletter, because every month when I send it out, it's got classes, what I'm reading, what I'm crocheting, but it also has Elsie's Corner.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you so much, Mary Robinette, and have a lovely rest of your day.

Mary Robinette Kowal: Thank you. And happy 25th Anniversary to Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you so much!

Strange Horizons at 25 is a project helmed by Kat Kourbeti and Michael Ireland, in collaboration with the Strange Horizons Editorial Collective. The credit music was composed by Michael Ireland and Andrew Gorman.

Until next time, stay strange!

In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, editor Kat Kourbeti talks to Nghi Vo about how Strange Horizons kickstarted her publishing journey, her weird and interesting life before writing took off, and the fearlessness it takes to make a writing career happen.

Links and things:

• Want to leave us a happy birthday message? Click ⁠here to record an audio message⁠, and ⁠here for video⁠.
• Join our ⁠Patreon⁠ for early episode access, or donate through any other way to hear your name and message in our next episodes.
• Want to vote for Strange Horizons in the Hugos? We have two poems, a novelette, and the magazine all on the ballot! Get your WSFS and/or virtual Seattle Worldcon membership on their website, and you can cast your vote now.

Episode show notes:

• Read Nghi's work in our archives
• Follow Nghi on Bluesky or visit her website, nghivo.com
• Buy her newest book, Don't Sleep With the Dead
• Find more links to her work and other things as you read the transcript below.

Transcript:

Kat Kourbeti: Hello Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres.

Today's guest, Nghi Vo, was first published with Strange Horizons in 2007, and has since gone on to win multiple awards, published novels, award-winning novellas, all of the things. Personally I've been a fan for a very long time. It's so great to have you here, Nghi.

Nghi Vo: Thank you so much for having me. I got your message in the email and I was like, oh my God. Strange Horizons. I love you guys.

Kat Kourbeti: I couldn't believe you, like responded. I was like, oh, she's too busy for this.

Nghi Vo: As a matter of fact, I am very busy, but that's the best time to be doing a podcast with someone, right?

Kat Kourbeti: Well, something you're working on that you can promote?

Nghi Vo: Not yet, unfortunately. So...

Kat Kourbeti: Eventually.

Nghi Vo: Yeah, at the moment, mostly it's just this, this sad thing that happens to me at night when I'm trying to work. So it's not happening to anyone else yet.

Kat Kourbeti: So yeah, loads to talk about today. You've had a very interesting, prolific career, lots and lots of writing. I gotta pick your brain about how you get it all done, and perhaps part of it is by procrastinating, by being on podcasts.

So first of all, your oeuvre is very much like, playing with some stuff that exists already but twisting it around a little bit. And then also just some very cool—and I hate to say own voice, but kind of own voice—like, bringing in your background, your heritage, the stuff that you're interested in, and bringing it in and making it shine in a magical way.

What genres would you self-identify with?

Nghi Vo: Historically, when I first started writing, which was honestly not long before I actually got my first publication in Strange Horizons, I would've said that my genre is "whatever people will pay me to write". I started out as a copywriter, so it was everything like, how to get rid of roaches in your house, how to lance abscesses on your alpaca, which is disgusting. You know, just answering those pressing questions on the internet, like why you don't ride bears, that was a good one.

But honestly, these days what I like to write is what I like to read, which is speculative fiction. Didn't happen, couldn't happen, shouldn't happen, should have happened. That's where I like to be right this moment.

Kat Kourbeti: So speculative in the all encompassing sense.

Nghi Vo: Oh yeah. No. It's like, you want me to write about a spaceship? I'll write about a spaceship.

Kat Kourbeti: So let's dive into the short fiction side of things 'cause thats where you got your start.

I noticed on your website that you had a couple of flash pieces, or like short pieces, before Strange Horizons. What happened to those?

Nghi Vo: Oh, I don't know. They're like floating around somewhere, I think. One of them was a publication that a friend of mine was an editor for, and I think they needed some fill in between the columns. You remember the days back when you actually had to fill up the columns and you couldn't fiddle with them on the computer.

Mostly, when it comes to short fiction, I'm a huge fan. I started out as a short fiction writer. I probably still am, if you look at how short my novels are, like everything, all the novellas I've written, they just cruise in at 20,000 words, which I believe is the genre definition for novella. I might have actually shorted Tordotcom like, 200 words off one of the more recent Singing Hills Books. I think I fixed that finally, but, uh, that was fun.

No, I love short fiction, and one of the nice things I love about it is that you're done very quickly. You know, it's less of this "three to six months working on a novel" and it's more like, "okay, I can do this in three or four evenings, and then I can go have some pizza".

Kat Kourbeti: I admire you greatly for this because I start short stories and then—I've mentioned this on this podcast before—they run away and become novels in progress.

Nghi Vo: That's awesome, though. That sounds really cool. It means you've got a lot going on in there.

Kat Kourbeti: Uh, maybe, but then finishing them is a monumental task. And so I admire anybody who can keep things short and sweet. I also love reading a novella, frankly, like it's a great length as a reader. So yeah, this is interesting, we'll come back to the novellas.

Nghi Vo: Absolutely.

Kat Kourbeti: But yeah, it turns out Strange Horizons was kind of your first pro sale?

Nghi Vo: It absolutely was my very first pro sale. I believe it was also my first real short story, 'cause everything, as you know, before, was flash fiction, which is about maybe like 100 to 500 words, if that. So no, I was extremely spoiled at Strange Horizons because at the time, I was working as a phone tech support operator and, you know, there was a lot of time between calls so I was like, huh, what should I do? And it was kinda like this tossup between like, letting one of my cubicle mates teach me how to paint miniatures. And I'm like, I think I'm just gonna try writing stuff instead.

And then I wrote, I believe it was Gift of Flight, and it was the first speculative, real short story I'd ever written. I sent it off to Strange Horizons and then you guys accepted it, and you guys gave me an entirely skewed idea of how this whole process was gonna go.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh, define skewed.

Nghi Vo: You guys were the first place I ever sent it to. That was it. I wrote a story, I sent it off, you guys bought it. Suddenly there's money that I can use to pay for goods and services and pizza. And I was like, oh, well, surely it'll all be this easy. And that's not even a little true, but it was a really good first experience. It was a good time.

Kat Kourbeti: I reread it again earlier today and I was crying, high-key. It hit me right in the feelings, something about kids having to grow up before their time because bad things happen around them, and they have to sort of figure what's going on.

Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired Gift of Flight?

Nghi Vo: Gift of Flight. Just for anyone playing at home who hasn't read it, it's a story about a young girl growing up in the Midwest, and her mother is a swan maiden. And the role for a lot of transformative animal wife stories is, "if you hit her three times, she gets to leave you". And there's a mix of things going on. It's about skin, it's about the idea of leaving home, it's about what happens when home is not safe.

And what it came down to I think, the inspiration was, uh, there's a lot of roadkill in Illinois, which is where I was living when I wrote that story, and I didn't see a dead swan on the road, I saw a dead goose, which is this fascinating geometry of bone and feather. And when it's dead on the road, you know it's never gonna fly again. But you know very much in your heart that it used to, and maybe that's where that story came from, if that's any good to anyone else out there.

Kat Kourbeti: Fascinating. And the little moments that can give you like, a spark for something. It's not a very long story either, but—

Nghi Vo: Oh no.

Kat Kourbeti: —it packs a lot though. Like, I think you say so much—

Nghi Vo: Oh, thank you.

Kat Kourbeti: —with few words. Oh, I mean, you're welcome. Thank you.

Um, so yeah, what was it like, first of all writing it? As you said, you were writing in the gaps between calls and things like that. How long did it take you to assemble?

Nghi Vo: A couple days, I think. I mean, I'm gonna do my best because I just realized that's 18 years ago. That story's old enough to vote.

What I remember is... okay, I'm not gonna tell you where I worked. It was ridiculous, but the strong memory I have was while I was working on this story, we found out that our CEO was keeping like three to four terabytes of porn on the company servers. And for 2007, you have to understand that is so much porn. I mean, if you're asking where I was back in 2007, that's where I was. I'm like, oh, that's a lot of porn. Let's start there.

I was a cubicle rat, I was just corralled in there with a bunch of other people who, you know, we're not really social enough to work retail, but if you put us on a phone, it's fine. My manager, he was a kind of a big time hunter, which is not uncommon in Illinois. And I was trying to see if he would bring me back like a bunch of doves' heads when he next went, because I had this idea, I kind of wanted to make this mask that was covered in doves' heads. And he was not interested, which is a shame. Sorry you hate fun, Jeremy, I guess.

But that's kind of where I was. It was 2007, I was really young and I needed the money, which is why I was working tech support.

Kat Kourbeti: But I mean, it's great that some money came from writing. Did that change your atitude towards writing itself, do you think?

Nghi Vo: Um, not really, because it was pizza money. I never thought I was gonna be a novelist or a writer. I figured it'd be this thing I did while I was trying to sort of thread that needle, of living in the Midwest while working at a tech support job. I was like, I could work at tech support. I could probably go into like, insurance claims, that was the other big one in the area. I could grade tests, I could proctor exams. There was, you know, all the fun opportunities that happened when you have a liberal arts degree and graduate right into a recession.

It did kind of help me build up a little bit of confidence. I was already copywriting a little bit at that point. I picked up a job at an erotic illustrated fiction site, which was pretty good. 'Cause that was like 2,500 words for 50 bucks, and it paid out really regularly. And that was a pretty good time.

So, I mean, eventually I did circle back to spec fic, but I had a lot of words to get through before that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. And I mean, I think your next Strange Horizons story was fairly close after that, I think. Yeah, 2012. You come to us in five year increments.

Nghi Vo: I just show up, I'm like, "do you guys want this? I made this thing. Do you want it?"

Kat Kourbeti: And we're like, "yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes, please". And your next one also kind of has an animal theme to it as well.

Nghi Vo: Ah, yes, that would be Tiger Stripes. It's set, I believe, in the late 1700s in Vietnam, and it's what happens when a tiger kills an old woman's son and is forced to take his place because, well, it's not like the work stops needing to get done if someone dies. That one was fun.

I was actually thinking about that one the other day because I'm like, my God, do I like monsters that have to act like humans, and they're not happy with it, but they're doing their best. And it's almost cute. I actually looked up old photographs of tiger attacks for that one. I'm like, that's really unpleasant.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I bet. But again, the fascination with the symbolism that the animal world can lend to a human story.

Nghi Vo: Oh yeah, the transformation, the metaphor, the intersection of the wild and the human. One of my favorite questions: what makes a person? Like, not what makes a human, but what makes a person? That's always fun for me. I've made some real cash off that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. The length is also different. The first story's about 2000 words, second one is longer, third one—we go down to almost a thousand.

Nghi Vo: That's "Twelve Pictures (From a Second World War)", I'd almost forgotten about that one.

Kat Kourbeti: So that one's about World War II basically, but from different perspectives and different locations and so on. Just kind of vignettes, like images.

Nghi Vo: Yeah, that was one of the things that kind of started as a poem and I realized I'm not a poet. So, that was a fun format to work with, and it was a weirdly hard story to do. I think it took longer than either of the other two before it.

For those playing the home game, it's a story that describes twelve pictures taken in World War II that involve the local monsters at the various locations where some of the fighting took place, and what happens if you introduce, you know, home base monsters to invading forces, which was deeply pleasurable and a great deal of fun, and it took so much work. I hate doing work. It was hard. I'm happy I did it, but it was hard.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it tells such a story, but without dialogue and without the conventional trappings, if you will, of what you expect a short story to be. So you say you're not a poet, but you're playing with format anyway, and that's fine.

Nghi Vo: No, I'm really glad we're kind of entering this— I feel like we're very much in this era where it's, what do the children call it? " No plot, just vibes." I'm like, I was made for this. Please just allow me to vibe, children, please.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, the vibes era has been strong in the last few years, and certainly within the short fiction format. There's a lot you can do with just the vibes.

But for what it's worth, I don't think you're not not a poet. (Editor's note: Is that enough negatives? I meant I think she can be a poet!)

Nghi Vo: I think I'm just doing my best. I'll take it. I'll take it.

Kat Kourbeti: So at what point did you start thinking longer form?

Nghi Vo: You mean like, into the novels and the novellas?

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, yeah. Like at what point were you like, ooh, I wanna write this thing and I think it's longer, or it's coming out longer. How did that change transpire?

Nghi Vo: Well, it's a little embarrassing because this entire career, there's been no planning. It's been... okay, you have to imagine that the trajectory of my career is, if you take a hamster—something small, rodent like—and you put it in a box, and you attach a parachute to the box, and then you just heave it over a three story building, and you hope it's going to be okay. It's free fall with a parachute and a very small, scared mammal in the middle of it.

So the way it worked was the first time I decided to take a real stab at writing a novel, that turned out to be Siren Queen, and it was because this publisher called Angry Robot in the UK put out a call for unagented submissions. I had looked at the whole agent route and I'm like, that sounds kind of hard, so I'm just gonna do this instead. So I hammered out Siren Queen in I think about three months.

I made the deadline, I sent it off, and then they didn't want it. So no spoilers, they did not want it, but they sent me back this incredibly encouraging note that said, "usually we would include some critique, but this one got pretty far and you know what you're doing", which is a total lie. I had no idea, but I'm like, "thank you for believing in me". So I said, screw it, I guess I'm gonna do the agent thing.

So I created what my agent now tells me is a deeply mediocre cover letter, and I started sending it around and while I was sending it around, Tordotcom, where I'm publishing primarily at the moment, they released a call for submissions for novellas, also unagented, and I'm like, "I don't have an agent, I can probably write 20,000 words about something". And that's where The Empress of Salt and Fortune came from.

That was another one that I'm like, is it a poem? Is it an art project? It can be a novella, that's fine. So I wrote that one in, I think six weeks, and within the same week, Ruoxi Chen at Tordotcom said that she wanted to publish it. And Diana Fox at Fox Literary told me that she was interested in representing me. So that was a very busy week.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow.

Nghi Vo: It's a lot.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh. But if anything, your story is about A, perseverance, and B, just gonna shoot my shot and see what happens.

Nghi Vo: Absolutely.

Kat Kourbeti: That's great.

Nghi Vo: The thing is you don't even have to be that good at it. Seriously, because I put my best into writing that cover letter. And my agent, Diana, she said, "oh, that was deeply mediocre". I'm like, oh my God. And she's like, "well, the thing was, it got me to read the first pages, and that's what matters". And I'm like, "okay, you know what? I'm gonna take that".

So that's what I've been telling people, and I don't know if I should be, but I'm like, no, no, apparently your cover letter can be, quote, "deeply mediocre". So that's only started to haunt me a little bit.

Kat Kourbeti: I can imagine why. It's not the best thing to be told, but something I've been saying for years is that, you see some deeply mediocre books that are published, and that just gives me personally a ton of inspiration, because "if they can do it, I can do it".

Nghi Vo: And there's also the fact that we're all trying to hit different marks and we're all here for different audiences. That's what I've been hanging on to as well. I mean, there's a huge variety of quality, but we just have to find our audience and we just have to figure out who that is and get it right in front of them.

Kat Kourbeti: Mm-hmm. And crucially, finish the thing, so you can send it somewhere.

Nghi Vo: That does help.

Kat Kourbeti: You know, she says to herself as a reminder.

Nghi Vo: Oh.

Kat Kourbeti: Someday, you know?

Nghi Vo: That's a rough one. That is a really rough one, though.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It can be 'cause different stories demand different things.

But what I'm fascinated with, in particular with the novellas, is how they're interconnected—kind of, but kind of not, you know? How do you tow the line between each installment being an entry point, but then maintaining that connection?

Nghi Vo: This is the Singing Hills Novellas, which are actually all standalone, although they're part of a loosely connected series that is sort of linked together by the presence of a storytelling little cleric named Chih and their companion Almost Brilliant, who is a talking hoopoe with an indelible memory.

And the way it comes down to it is the fact that I'm like, my life has no narrative structure. Like my own life has absolutely no narrative structure. It has like weird little bits like, "hey, I found a hundred year old mechanical pencil and I guess I get to fix it now". Or you know, "well, I guess I play guitar now because I found this guitar someplace". I mean, it's all connected, it's all me, but these are incidents that have nothing to do with each other, and I would like to lodge a complaint because there's no plot continuity in my life. Like, characters I really love show up once and then never again, and then I can't get rid of some of the other ones. And that's life.

And I figured that if people can come along with me on that—the only thing I've ever really hoped for for Singing Hills is like: okay, you read between 20,000 and 40,000 words—did I give you a good night? And as long as I can hit that mark, I'm doing okay, I think.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, like, win a Hugo in the process, like no big deal.

Nghi Vo: That was a weird year. It was a fun, weird year. It was awesome.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. What was that like, your first kind of bigger publication, and off you go, like...

Nghi Vo: Uh, weird. It was very weird because, um—so The Empress of Salt and Fortune, it came out in 2020, which is the year of our lady, The Pandemic. And it literally dropped the week that the lockdowns happened. We had no idea what it was going to do because suddenly, people can't go to the bookstores. We had no idea what that was going to do to the book sales, or what people would be interested in, or what they would be comforted by, or what they would want to read. It was this very scary moment for a lot of people in a lot of different ways. And just for me personally, I was like, "but, my book!" You know, couldn't really help it.

There was really not much promotion for it because a lot of things had shut down at that point, so... The book is out there. I'm like, "ah, it's my book. It's so pretty". And it still took me like a good four or five months before I could see it in the stores, and that whole year was very strange for everyone. It really was.

And when I found out that there was the Hugo nomination—okay, this is, it's a little embarrassing—I thought it was spam at first. I'm like, "what the... what the fuck is this?" And I think that was the one I showed to my agent. I'm like, "hey, Diana, what, what's this?" And she's like, "you got nominated for a Hugo. Congratulations." I'm like, "oh, yay, that's pretty cool".

So, luckily my spam filter did not catch it, and I did not just delete it because I thought it was spam. But look, I'm telling you, the metaphor of the hamster thrown over the building, there's a reason that metaphor exists.

Kat Kourbeti: Hmm, well, the parachute worked, least that one time. We shall continue until such time as it doesn't, but—

Nghi Vo: That's publishing.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Yeah. Quite. I think the story was really comforting, not necessarily in a "here's what I need right now" type way for me at the time, but it was deeply and truly escapist, in the best possible way. I got into this other world for 20,000 words, and that was awesome, you know?

Nghi Vo: It sounds like it gave you a good time. I'm glad it did that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I think 2020 was the year of the novella for me, 'cause I hadn't been reading novellas before, I don't think. Kind of 'cause I didn't know where to find them, if that makes sense? Like, it was a moment where my reading really shifted.

Nghi Vo: Yeah, no. One of the best things I've ever heard in doing this job is when people come up to me and they said, reading your novellas helped me start to read again. Because look around, our attention span is shot to hell, and sometimes you really wanna read that big door stopper, and it's not even that you're scared, it's you're tired.

And the nice thing about a novella is, you're in and out in a few hours. And if you're mad at me, you're only mad at me for a few hours, I promise. If I've ever done anything good, that's probably one of the best ones. "You help me read again." I'm like, good. I'm so glad.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I think I definitely lost my personal connection to novels or door stoppers around that year. In fact—

Nghi Vo: It was a hard year.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, and it kind of took me a long time to get back to reading longer things, and I was just really grateful for short fiction keeping me in there, but I just didn't have it in me.

So did that then lead to a long contract for similar stories or did you just keep coming up with them anyway?

Nghi Vo: I keep telling you, my whole career is kind of an accident. What happened was I wrote The Empress of Salt and Fortune and I'm like, "oh, hey, maybe there'll be some money along. Well, I guess I'm gonna go back to my copywriting gig". And Ruoxi Chen, my first editor at Tordotcom, just fucking brilliant at her job, she's like, "so neat". And I'm like, yep. And she said, "could this be a series?" And because I like money, I said, "mm-hmm, absolutely."

See I'm a freelancer, right? And the rule of thumb when you're a freelancer is you don't agree when you know 100% you can do a job. You agree at 70%, maybe you agree at 80%, but there are people agreeing at 50. So I was at least 70% sure I could turn Singing Hills into a series.

And she's like, "so what would that look like?" And I'm like, "well, I think we'll be following the adventures of Chih and Almost Brilliant, and I think they're all going to be standalone because I kind of like the idea of people just being able to dip in and out, and they're all going to be different, and they're all more or less gonna be commentary on the stories we tell each other and the stories that we tell ourselves, and the ones we allow to be told to us."

And she's like, "oh, that sounds so good". And I'm like, "doesn't it? I feel very proud of myself".

Kat Kourbeti: "I am so smart."

Nghi Vo: "I'm so smart." If you ever see me running around at award shows, that's more or less my whole vibe. But yeah, that's how it began. That's the genesis.

I mean, I will take credit for the fact that I said, "and they're all going to be standalone so people can just pick up one", because I was so tired on series. I was burned out on them and I'm like, "wouldn't it be nice if they could just—hey, they like the cover and—you know, I love my cover artist. That's Alyssa Winans, who's just so cool.

I'm like, which Alyssa cover do you like? Just grab that one and go. You want the tigers, you want the pig, you like the kitty cat? You can have it.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes. Thank you.

What I find really interesting is that Siren Queen happened anyway. So, tell me about how that little accident happened, 'cause I'm happy we got it.

Nghi Vo: Siren Queen started because I always had an interest in Golden Age Hollywood, early Hollywood, the talkies. I watched a lot of Animaniacs; if you remember the character, Slappy Squirrel, who's the retired actress squirrel living in Burbank. Very fond of Slappy Squirrel.

And then one night I was talking with my friend Grace online, and I said, "hey, Grace, haven't you ever thought it's kind of weird that the early studios just renamed you, kind of like fairies taking your name, and they put you in long unforgiving contracts with really ridiculous rules that you have to follow and they can cheat them whenever they want, and oh my God, they really did just take over the lives of children". And you know, I go on like that for two hours and Grace is just like, mm-hmm. Trying to make me decide on where I wanted to go to eat, which was, I think what we were actually talking about at the time.

And what happened then was, I heard Angry Robot's call for submissions and I'm like, "oh, well, I'll just write that". And like I said, I brought it in right at the deadline with a minimum number of words, and it was a really fun thing to write. Then Fox Literary acquired it, and (Diana Fox) she's like, "you know this is like three novellas in a trench coat, right?" And I'm like, "I didn't think anyone had noticed, but okay, I guess we gotta fix that." So working with her turned it into a novel, which was very nice.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, well that's good. And maybe that's the happy accident of getting rejected at Angry Robot, led you to actually fixing what maybe didn't work.

Nghi Vo: Hey, I'm perfect. I don't have to fix anything, which I'm gonna say to you because I can't say it to my editors.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes, everything is perfect. Nothing is wrong.

Nghi Vo: I am a princess.

Kat Kourbeti: First drafts only.

Nghi Vo: Absolutely.

The weird part was—see, once again, I'm very spoiled because that was Empress. Empress just went right to copy edits. I'm like, what? Okay.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Nghi Vo: I don't know how any of this works.

Kat Kourbeti: So what was your background, if you will—like you just started writing, picked up a pen and like off you went?

Nghi Vo: You mean as a kid? Okay. I have this very strong memory of, I think I'm probably in kindergarten or first grade, and the teacher picks up this enormous book—you know, it's just huge. And she said, "this is a dictionary. All of the words that we use to write anything in English is in this book."

And my little brain just clicked on it because I was like, "wait, they're all in there? I just have to put them in the right order. That's all I have to do?" And I sort of ran off with that and I'm like, "yeah, actually that is all I have to do". And worst comes to worst, I usually think of the job as, you know, all the words are in the book, all the words are there, I just have to put them in the right order. That's all.

Kat Kourbeti: That's actually deeply profound for a kindergartner.

Nghi Vo: I was so excited. I was like, this is it. This is all I have to do. I'm gonna be a writer! And you know, yeah, somehow it worked out.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. That's amazing.

And then I have to ask about my personal favorite of yours, which is The Chosen and the Beautiful.

Nghi Vo: Aw.

Kat Kourbeti: Which is the Gatsby retelling. How did that happen? Where did the idea come from, and what was that journey?

Nghi Vo: Okay. I keep thinking I'm just disappointing everyone, because everyone has like these amazing stories of deep personal connections, and my deep personal connection to the Great Gatsby was... I was almost hit by a car the first day we started reading it in high school, which is just 'cause I'm clumsy and wasn't watching where I was going. It's not personal.

The reason why it's a novel was because I was writing this other novel about a girl who was being raised by ghosts, which sounds really cool, and I have got about a third of it done. And I'm on the phone with Diana and she says, "what are you working on?" I go into like exhaustive detail about the girl being raised by ghosts and she's like, "hmm, have you got anything else?"

I'm like, "okay, sure. What do you think about the idea of, I don't know, (The Great Gatsby) but it's told from the point of view of Jordan Baker, who's a Vietnamese American adoptee magician, and Nick Carraway is made of paper, Gatsby has made deals with the Devil, and there's a lot more murder and a lot more queer sex".

And she gets really quiet, you know? And for a second I'm like, "cool, I finally said something so fucking dumb, my agent's gonna fire me". So that was nice. And she's like, "okay, I need you to stop writing what you're writing right now, and I need you to go write that instead". And I'm like, buh? And she's like, "were you not aware that The Great Gatsby is coming out of copyright in about 18 months?" I'm like, shit, okay!

So I ran off and I wrote that. I think the way it worked was I spent a month doing the research that I needed to do. I needed to reread the book, I needed to write down every reference I was not absolutely sure I understood. Gave me a lot of respect for Fitzgerald as just a incredibly competent and masterful writer. It was a fantastic exercise for me as a writer. I'm really glad I did that.

And then I was off to the races. My sister was getting married, I was writing in Las Vegas diners, which was pretty fun for me. I'm like, "oh my God, look at what a romantic writer I am. Oh wow. I can gamble while I wait for my burger to show up". It was great. So yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: That's amazing. It's even greater actually, cause I would've thought you had realized that Gatsby was coming out of copyright. You just genuinely, organically had that idea.

Nghi Vo: Well, I mean, I've had the idea for a while. I was a queer girl growing up in the Midwest. I had a huge crush on Jordan Baker, which in the nineties, that was the closest thing we got to like a gay girl in terms of literature, right? And I've always (been) like, "huh, whatever happened to Nick Caraway?" because the book I have coming out, oh, like in a week, Don't Sleep With the Dead, which is actually from the point of view of the Nick Caraway from The Chosen and the Beautiful— that one's actually dedicated to unreliable narrators in the stories we tell. Nick Caraway was more or less my first unreliable narrator, and you don't really forget your first, right?

So what it comes down to is, if the American Canon wanted to make a presence for me of that book, you know, that's what I get to do with it now.

Kat Kourbeti: Excellent. I mean, that's kind of the best you can hope for. I love that, and also yeah, I think this episode will be coming out just after the book comes out. So anybody listening, go get that right now. It's out and available.

The journey has been perhaps filled with accidents. I say perhaps, but—it's one of those things where you kept going though. You kept writing and you kept coming up with things. So like, accident or not, it kicked into gear at some point and now you're on the wheel, little hamster.

Nghi Vo: Hopefully novels come out rather than just, you know, really sad moans and whines. I mean those will too, but you know.

Kat Kourbeti: It's part of the exercise, but yes.

So to kind of go back to your Strange Horizons experience, because you came to us in five year increments, you would've had the full (gamut)—like, different editors, different kind of editing styles, perhaps... What was your experience of submitting and getting published with Strange Horizons?

Nghi Vo: Oh, it was honestly fantastic. I don't remember a lot of substantive edits for any of the pieces that I've done. The vibe I always got was the Strange Horizons staff really wanted the specific stories their writers could tell. They did not want like generic good stories, because generic good stories do exist. They wanted specifically, "who is this writer and what are they trying to say?" And I've always really appreciated that.

I think it also helps that usually I'm pretty laid back about editing. Like, I believe I worked with Jed Hartman at one point, he was my editor for one of them, and I remember how very kind and polite he was with me about—I can't remember what it even was, but he's like, " well, are you feeling comfortable with this?" And I'm like, "do you not understand that I write 6,000 words a day for people who want me to talk about how to make their cats not throw up? I'm fine man. Go for it. Do what you need to do."

So I've always been pretty laid back about that, but it was really nice to have Strange Horizons very much match that particular vibe, and it was always a place I felt very comfortable. Like, there's a reason I submitted to you guys three times.

Kat Kourbeti: Would you say that that was the same sort of vibe, for lack of a better word, with the editors in subsequent years?

Nghi Vo: Yeah, I would say that it felt very much like a prevailing Strange Horizons philosophy, in some ways. It's, "we want the story that you have written". And as I've done this and as I've done my freelance career as well, that isn't always the case. Sometimes they want a very specific story. I'm like, "what the hell am I even doing here?" And I've never gotten that feeling with Strange Horizons. It's very much, you're working with me and I'm like, well, that's very sweet that you wanna work with me. That's awesome. So, it's a good time. It's a very good time.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I'm happy to hear it. I just interviewed Charlie Jane Anders for the episode before yours, and she recalls being grilled a little bit—

Nghi Vo: Oh wow.

Kat Kourbeti: —by the editors in the early days, yeah. So that's why I ask this question to everybody 'cause i t's a different answer.

Nghi Vo: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: From everybody I talk to. It's fascinating though, how through the years that has kind of been like, we want the best version of what you wanna tell, and sometimes that comes as it is, and so it doesn't really need very much polishing. So that's very cool.

You haven't stopped writing short stories since, not by a long shot. So do you find the short story useful in procrastinating now? Like what's your, (laughs) what's your system?

Nghi Vo: The short story is something that I've had a lot less time for, unfortunately, since I've started the novel gig. Which is a little bit sad, but it's led me to this other interesting animal, which is the solicited manuscript. So I actually have gotten, a few times now, solicited to write short stories for various publications, and first that's deeply flattering, and the second part, it's sort of like being revealed I'm under my rock. I'm like, how did you even find me? No idea. Like, my story, the one about the seamstress, "silk and wool, and silk and linen", I believe.

Kat Kourbeti: Silk and Cotton and Linen and Blood.

Nghi Vo: Yeah, I have no chance of ever remembering that one. But the reason why that story even exists is because I was in an online green room, I was doing a online con appearance, and I'm in this room and legendary editor and author, Nisi Shawl is in there, and I'm keeping my mouth shut because I'm like, "oh my God, that's Nisi Shawl right there". You know, not in person, we're in a green room. And I'm like, "I'm just gonna keep my idiot mouth shut and not make a bad impression".

And suddenly she just messages me and she's like, "I guess you just like ignoring me". And it turns out that she had solicited me for the New Suns 2 anthology, and it went right into my spam filter. I missed it entirely. And she's like, "so you didn't even get back to people?" I'm like, "oh my God, no, I missed that!" And I think in this frenzy, I promised her a story in like two weeks or some damn thing like that. I'm like, "no, no, yes, I want that. Yes, I'll give you whatever you want".

I might have said that, which is not flattering, but I'm so grateful she did that because I loved being in the New Suns anthology. That story did pretty well. It won a thing, I believe.

Kat Kourbeti: ...The World Fantasy Award for short story?

Nghi Vo: Yeah, that's it. That's what it won.

Kat Kourbeti: A thing?

Nghi Vo: Uh, well, it won something! It's been a—Kat, it's been a very weird career, okay? It's been a real, real strange career.

So apparently solicitations can happen when you least expect it from sci-fi legends, and that's fine. That's just a thing that can happen to you.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It can happen to you too, dear listener.

Nghi Vo: It could happen to anyone. Yes. Just.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I mean, Jordan Kurella had a similar story.

Nghi Vo: Yeah?

Kat Kourbeti: Well, his edits from the Strange Horizons editors got eaten by his email client.

Nghi Vo: Oh no.

Kat Kourbeti: And so he gets a frantic email two days before publication, like, "um, hello?" And he's like, oh no.

Nghi Vo: Oh my God.

Kat Kourbeti: But it worked out, they got all the stuff done in the end, but it was very much like, the email servers working against you.

Nghi Vo: Writers are messy. We are a messy, messy people.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. And I mean, the digital shredder that exists online... Like, it's just scary stuff. Check your junk mail, folks.

Nghi Vo: Check your junk mail, for the love of God.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, that's the secret. But it's great to hear that the novel has opened up loads of doors for you for more novels. So I know that you're working on something now that you're procrastinating.

Nghi Vo: Absolutely. This minute, this very minute.

Kat Kourbeti: And I won't ask what it is. I'm sure we'll find out about it eventually. But how do you find the novel life as opposed to writing short fiction, now? Is it different? Is it better? Is it not better?

Nghi Vo: It pays.

Kat Kourbeti: Hmm.

Nghi Vo: You can make a living writing novels, especially if you live in a Midwest city and you live in a one bedroom apartment and your only dependent is a little gray cat. It's a good living, and you can't do that off short stories. If I had all the money in the world, I mean, I'd be having a lot of fun with it, but I'm doing pretty well with the cash that I have coming in right now for the moment.

I wrote The City in Glass, which is one of my favorite novels. It's a story about the end of the world, it really is. And it feels like for a long time now, we've been living at the end of the world, and we have been. We always have been. So I don't know what comes next, but I will say that writing the novels has given me a slightly greater sense of futurity than I've ever had in my life.

Like, ages back, I was planning with my agent and my editor. They're like, "okay, well this will be 2025, and this will be 2026". And I said, "guys, I don't think I believe in 2025". And I think Ruoxi tried to be comforting and Diana just said, "you have to pretend that you do". I'm like, okay. All right.

And here we are, 2025. Somehow it exists.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it can be difficult to look ahead, especially given, *gestures at the world*. But I'm glad that you've got people in your team pushing you forward, because that's important.

Nghi Vo: I really do. Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: I haven't read The City in Glass yet, but just off the blurb, it's so my thing that I am very on board. And I'm very looking forward to The Chosen and the Beautiful sequel as well, out next week as of recording.

So is there anything outside of your upcoming book that you would like to promote?

Nghi Vo: Um, let's see. How about the fact that we should all be working for a better world and every little bit counts? How about that?

Kat Kourbeti: Hmm. Get involved in your communities, folks.

Nghi Vo: Worst comes to worst, there's always someone to feed.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Well, thank you so very much for taking the time to chat to us. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Nghi Vo: Thank you so much for having me. This has been great.

Kat Kourbeti: And we'll look forward to all of your upcoming things.

Nghi Vo: I hope you like 'em. I hope they give you a good time.

In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, editor Kat Kourbeti talks to Naomi Kritzer about her non-linear writing journey, imagining positive futures, and how to deal with the world catching up to your near-future specfic.

Links and things:

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Episode show notes:

• Read Naomi's work in our archives.
• Visit Naomi's website, or follow her on Bluesky.
• Order her latest book, Liberty's Daughter, featuring all of the previously serialised Seastead stories from F&SF Magazine.
• Find more links to her work, along with everything else we talked about today, peppered throughout the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it's my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres. Today's guest is Naomi Kritzer, who was first published with us in 2002, and has since gone on to publish dozens more stories and several novels, and win multiple Hugo and Locus Awards, a Lodestar Award, and a Nebula.

It's so great to have you here, Naomi.

Naomi Kritzer: Thank you. It's great to be here.

Kat Kourbeti: I was reading through your stories on Strange Horizons, and it was interesting to find themes that have a commonality with your newer work. I have to admit, I hadn't gone back through the archives that far. It's really cool to see the trajectory of your writing, if you will.

So that's what we'll be talking about today.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: So first of all, 2002, a very early time. How did you come across Strange Horizons in the first place, back in the day?

Naomi Kritzer: I was a regular attendee of Wiscon. Jed Hartman, who was one of the people working on Strange Horizons at the time, was also a regular attendee. Jed came up to me at the con and said, " hey, you should submit a story to Strange Horizons", just straight up.

And being asked to submit my work by an editor was a very novel experience for me, at that point in my career. I think I fairly quickly after that sent a story in, and at the time I will note print was a much bigger deal. Print was a much more prominent part of short science fiction publishing than it is today. There were a lot more magazines. They were much more widely read, I think, than the website magazines were. So getting published in an online magazine, the downside was is I wouldn't get contributors copies to stick on a shelf, which felt like a substantial thing for me at the time. Of course these days, I feel like it's much clearer that the advantage of an online magazine is the accessibility and the number of people who can come read it, and that was just starting to be true back in 2002. A lot of people could read it because they didn't have to subscribe. In 2002, a lot more people just were not on the internet.

It wasn't truly the dark age, it was like 1992. But having a story online meant that people could email it to their friends, which was like, new at that point.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I certainly came into short fiction as a reader because of online publications, and so like, it's really interesting hearing about that other side of, it used to be you had to buy magazines, or subscribe.

So a solicitation then? That's probably new in the realm of these interviews. So when you submitted, did you know it was this story you wanted to send? Comrade Grandmother?

Naomi Kritzer: Well, it's long enough that I don't remember for sure, but my guess is that it was a story that I had written that I hadn't sold yet. I had probably shopped it around at the time. I always sent first to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF), both because I liked it and because the editor would respond very quickly. So you'd send it out, paper form, in an envelope, and you'd get a rejection letter from Gordon Van Gelder that usually said, "thank you for showing me your story, but it didn't quite grab me, alas". So I probably sent it there and I don't remember where else I might've sent it at that point, but it had probably been to a number of places and been rejected. And I had it and Jed had just asked me, so I sent it to Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: What did they say? When Jed got the the submission, what was the response initially?

Naomi Kritzer: They bought the story. I may have submitted other stories that they rejected, and I just don't remember at this point.

Kat Kourbeti: Fair enough.

Naomi Kritzer: It was so long ago.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. But what's fascinating about a lot of these interviews is like talking to folks who, the online landscape was so new that casting your mind back that far, it's just so wildly different to now, and to what's considered normal in the short fiction market in 2025.

Naomi Kritzer: I'm guessing at the time, because it was an online magazine, they took online submissions, but I know that a lot of the places that took online submissions that long ago didn't want attachments. They wanted the story pasted into an email, and that is probably how I submitted to Strange Horizons, but I'm not a hundred percent sure.

Kat Kourbeti: Let's talk about that story a little bit, cause it's very cool and it really is a "Strange Horizons story", even by 2025 standards. It's called Comrade Grandmother, and it's about Baba Yaga helping out during World War II.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: How did that idea happen?

Naomi Kritzer: Let's see. So some of it was thinking about Baba Yaga and Baba Yaga stories and wanting to like, write about this character from Russian fairytale and folklore. And some of it was thinking about how easily World War II could have gone the other way, could have gone worse than it did. Not like it went super great, millions and millions of people died.

There's actually a video, which I had definitely not seen at the time that I wrote this story because it was made many years later, but it's this visual depiction of the deaths of World War II. It's an incredible watch because what it communicates visually with like little tiny figures, just stick figures basically, is that Hitler was stopped by a mountain of Russian bodies. That that is what it took to stop Hitler's advance, was just throwing people in his way. Because it shows you all the American deaths, and it shows you all the British deaths, and then it starts showing you the Russian deaths and it just goes on and on.

And like, this was something I knew, right? And it was something I knew when I wrote the story, and it was part of what the story was about. I actually think the video does a better job of communicating this than my story did, but anyway. These are all things that I thought about and I wanted to write something that was like a fairytale and kind of not.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: That's where that came from.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it's really cool. It's very stark, as one might expect of a story set in Russia and particularly during the era. And I think it does a great job of capturing—not necessarily heartless, but the matter-of-factness of certain folkloric concepts that, you know, there's a price to be paid and it is what it is, and you're gonna have to face that. Which I really liked. And the return of that motif towards the end.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Like really great. Do you remember at all, like if there were any editorial comments at the time, or was it just bought wholesale?

Naomi Kritzer: I don't remember. So long ago. Seriously, I'll also note: it was published in 2002 - I have two children and they were born in 2000 and 2003. So in 2002, I was parenting a toddler. It was a period of my life where I wasn't getting a lot of sleep and I had a lot going on, although not quite as much as a couple years later, when I had a 3-year-old and a newborn and a novel deadline.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. Yeah, no, that's completely fair. Yeah, like this story is old enough to drink.

Naomi Kritzer: Yep. As are my kids.

Kat Kourbeti: Yep. The story has been to college and graduated, so.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay, so then, there's a bit of a gap, I guess a couple of years. And then we have a two-parter from you. (St. Ailbe's Hall, Part 1 and Part 2)

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: And I guess we used to do two parters more back in the day, but I find that interesting as a concept, 'cause we don't really do them anymore. So how did that happen?

Naomi Kritzer: My recollection is that two parters were pretty rare, even back in the day. And I don't know why, I can't remember how I came about submitting this story to Strange Horizons 'cause I think it was longer than what you normally took. And I don't know if it was like, Jed bugged me again and I was like, I have this story but it's too long and he said, send it anyway. Which might have been what happened. It might have just been that there was something in the guidelines that said, if you have something that's outside our guidelines, let us know. And so I emailed because you published me before.

Kat Kourbeti: So let's talk a little bit about that one. So if I'm pronouncing it correctly is, is it St. Alba's Hall?

Naomi Kritzer: I always thought it was "Albi", but I don't actually know that for sure.

Kat Kourbeti: So it's a two-parter about enhanced dogs who can speak, and integrating them into society, and the resistance from a certain community, ish.

Naomi Kritzer: It's about enhanced dogs that are used as a slave labor force. And they're human level intelligence, but with like certain dog instincts left intact. The idea being that they could be used for unpaid labor indefinitely. And the resistance to this, like there's a dog that wants to get baptized, and a priest that is undecided about whether to do it, and a human who's pushing for it. A lot of what's going on in the story is the animal liberation movement, the dog liberation movement that's using the religious angle to push people to acknowledge that these animals are people, that dogs really are people.

Kat Kourbeti: With everything that entails. Souls and everything.

Naomi Kritzer: Including human rights.

Kat Kourbeti: Mm-hmm.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah, I remember a lot more about how I wrote that story.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh, tell me about it.

Naomi Kritzer: Because an earlier version of that story came fairly close to being my first professional sale, but then didn't quite make it. Actually there was a shorter version that I wrote in the late nineties when I was first getting really serious about writing and submitting, and I had joined a writer's group, and my writer's group gave me some feedback, thought it was a really great story, and I started shopping it around. And when I sent it to Analog, they wrote back and were like—wait, was it Analog? No, you know what? Analog just rejected it, but said it was like, pretty good, but not quite good enough. And I think it may have been a different magazine that sent me a bunch of really detailed critique. And so I did a bunch of editing and sent it back, and then they still didn't want it.

And I tried again on some of the places that had seen it before, and they still didn't want it, although they agreed that it was closer and it just, I couldn't sell it. So I put it aside and a couple of years passed and I went back to the story and just started it over. I still liked the basic premise and still liked the Siberian Husky. And I tried again, right? And that story came out a whole lot longer, but better. And I shopped that around again. And Analog didn't buy it and Asimov's didn't buy it and F&SF didn't buy it, but Strange Horizons was open to reading it even though it was too long. And then bought it and split it into two stories.

And that story, hilariously, years later, I got an email from an anthologist who was doing a collection of best nominees for the Ursa Major awards. And I was like, it was nominated for what? I'd never heard of the Ursa Major awards at that point. I was like, what if it had won? And I hadn't even sent like an acceptance, that would've looked so rude and ungracious. It wouldn't have been an issue apparently at the time, like the same person had won every year in a row for quite a few years, so it was very unlikely. And they didn't make as big a deal out of it as the Hugos, but it's the furry fandom's big award. So it was a story with an anthropomorphic animal and that's why it was up for it. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Would you look at that? What a journey that story had. Wow. And so interesting, multiple rounds of feedback and all of that. Gosh, like what does it take to get close to that kind of quality? Like, what people are looking for? The unknowable mysteries.

What do you think made it cross over that line, in its final form?

Naomi Kritzer: So my journey from aspiring writer to get published, to a writer who could get published regularly in short form, passed through a couple of stages. And this story I think passed through them with those stages. As a young writer, by which I mean a high schooler, I was writing stories, I was already sending them out. I had a mentor, Nancy Vedder-Schultz was my neighbor down the street, I babysat for her daughter. She's a really lovely woman and she read some of my early—one of my early stories, and gave me a bunch of really helpful feedback that sort of showed me how to approach editing it, which was really useful.

But at the time that I was in high school, my big influences in terms of the stuff I was reading about how to write were—this is two names that will make lots of people flinch: Orson Scott Card and Marion Zimmer Bradley. Yeah, it's...

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: Orson Scott Card had written a book called How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. It is still out there. It is actually extremely useful.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: And Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote all these introductions to her anthologies that talked about the sort of stories she liked and what she was looking for. And her formula for a story, which I used a lot in high school, her formula was:

Joe has his butt in a bear trap and this is how he gets it out.

So that was how I approached short narrative for a number of years, like, there's a character with a problem and he has to solve it or she has to solve it. And at some point in my post-college writing era, I realized that the real formula was:

Joe has his butt in a bear trap, and this is how he has changed by his struggles to get it out.

Whether or not he actually succeeds, that the core of the story was the change that the character experiences.

And my very first pro sale, which was to Realms of Fantasy, was a story called Gift of the Winter King, where I realized after I wrote it, handed it out, got critique from my writer's group, which included one member of my writer's group's critique started with a phrase, I want you to know, I really like you as a person.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, no.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah, it was a harsh critique, but very useful because I realized listening to him what I had screwed up. But I realized after the first go round that I had chosen the wrong person as the protagonist, because the person I had chosen as a protagonist starts out with one set of convictions and beliefs and dies with those intact. Like, there was a character experiencing change, and she had been a secondary character and I needed to make her the narrator.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay.

Naomi Kritzer: And so that was the first big sort of revelation, was the idea of focusing on the change rather than on the solution to the problem. And then the other thing that clicked in for me at some point, and this was partly thanks to Orson Scott Card, though not his book on writing. He has a anthology or collection called The Changed Man, and in The Changed Man, it has a story in which a character who has done something horrifying is pursued by a monster. And in his little afterword he said, the monster is the physical manifestation of this character's shame and remorse and guilt, and for that reason, those words never appear in the story because they appear as the monster.

And I was like, that was really crystallizing an insight for me. And it was an insight I started applying to my own work, to think about what ideas were at the heart of the story and what theme was at the heart of the story. And once I started really thinking about theme and what I was saying in the story, I got a lot better at figuring out how to rewrite the story so that the theme was present but never spoken. So it was there if you were looking for it, but I wasn't like thwhacking anyone over the head with the, " by the way, this is about guilt" or whatever.

And in the various revisions of the St Ailbe's story, one of the things the editors told me about the story is that the first three pages or something, nothing happens. So the first round of really figuring out how to do this was like, this is a short story, and if I've got two or three pages at the very beginning where absolutely nothing important is happening, I should take those out. Learning how to trim my work.This is where the phrase "murder your darlings" comes from, I think, is that there's stuff in there, I'm sure that felt really clever. But it needed to go. It wasn't serving its purpose.

When I rewrote it from scratch, I had thought a lot more about that idea of character change. And so there's a character at the heart of it who has to undergo change, and that's the priest. I also had thought about, what's the story really about? And what's funny is, I don't actually remember what I decided the story was really about, but I do think at that point I had started to really consciously think about it.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. From a more like craft-, like how do I make this evident, but not necessarily stated? Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: Exactly.

Kat Kourbeti: I think that it's a very interesting through line, across the board with probably all of your work, but especially this early stage where it's a lot about kind of community and people coming together, but—no actually, lies, because your latest stuff is also very much about people banding together in moments of hardship, and caring for one another and uplifting one another, not necessarily easily, but you know, through a bunch of things.

I find that very cool, like for that to be at the heart of someone's work. So can you tell me a little bit about how you think about those ideas and form them into something that can take the form of a story of some kind?

Naomi Kritzer: I think the central thing for me is that I find stories about people coming together and trying to like, work together and figure stuff out, more interesting than stories where people wanna like, destroy each other. Winning in a conflict by working together is more interesting to me than stories where the solution lies in clever military maneuver or whatever.

Also, I don't know anything about military maneuvers, so if I think something's a clever military maneuver, it's probably not.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

I suppose a better form of the question is, do you start with an idea for a theme like that, or does that just seep into everything regardless of intent?

Naomi Kritzer: It really depends on the story. The Year Without Sunshine, which is my recent story that is about a community of people in a neighborhood in Minneapolis who work together to like, survive through some sort of disaster, and in particular to keep a disabled member of the community safe and alive.

That story really did start from the premise of "would a community do this in a disaster?" How would a community, how could a community protect its most vulnerable members? Part of it was inspired by friends of mine with disabilities talking about how they feel like in stories of disasters, they're treated as expendable and as excess weight that must be thrown overboard, metaphorically—or literally, in the case of like, "lifeboat exercises". That's in quotation marks.

I grew up in the 1980s, and when I was in high school—middle and high school, maybe even elementary school—it was really common to have, if you had like a Friday afternoon before vacation and you didn't wanna make your students do math, you might whip out this thought exercise where you're making decisions for, there's a bomb shelter or fallout shelter, you've got space and supplies for 20 people, but 40 people have made it in. So you gotta decide which 20 get to stay and which 20 get thrown out into the radioactive wasteland.

I remembered this, but it's a vague, "yeah the eighties were a really weird time" kind of way, but my friend Elsa Sjunneson, she's about the same age as me, and she talked about at one point how it felt to be in a group of students where everyone else in the room took it for granted that a disability meant you got thrown out, and she was sitting there as a person with disabilities.

Because it was something that was so long ago for me, I had never really thought about it in those terms until I heard her talk about it and I was like, oh my God, that is incredibly messed up, and none of us in the eighties, like none of the able bodied kids in the eighties, as far as I know, were thinking about it in those terms at all.

Also it's a really messed up thing to ask kids to do. The only time I can remember that we did it where there was any justification at all was when we did it in Spanish class, in Spanish, and it was a topic that we were being asked to discuss using our language skills. But seriously of all the things in the world, you could have us talk about who lives and who dies, just... but like I said, the eighties were really messed up time.

Like the nuclear war felt like a really present threat. When I was seven, I thought I wasn't gonna get to live to be 30 because there was gonna be a nuclear war. Like just a really common experience for Gen Xers, at least within the science fiction community. I know Elizabeth Bear has talked about this same thing that she had this nihilistic belief.

Anyway, getting back to the story, I was thinking about that exercise and the ideas implicit in it and all the many stories that just show you the world after a disaster and they don't show you anyone with a disability, because of course it's just assumed they all died or were allowed to die. I wanted to think about alternatives to that, and I also wanted to write a story where the character that experiences change is not an individual, but an entire community. And I wanted to write a story where it's a really good thing that they all banded together to help a disabled person, and it's not because the disabled person turns out to have just the exact set of skills that everyone else urgently needs in order to stay alive, which is sometimes how these stories go. It's a really good thing you saved that person in a wheelchair, because that person in a wheelchair turns out to be like a neurosurgeon, and now the hero can be saved by this person.

I did not want that story, I did not want that moral. I wanted the moral to be that when your community comes together, it changes your whole community for the better. And that can be why everyone survives, is because you all came together. That's where I was coming from with this story.

Kat Kourbeti: I think it spoke to a lot of us—case in point, you won a Hugo with it. You wrote it at a really crucial time as well. I think we've all been thinking about disability, and inclusion of folks with disabilities, 'cause like, there's a lot more of us, and it's just more prevalent, especially—good thing or bad, but I think the pandemic really made us cognizant of a lot of these issues.

So it really came at a time that we were all thinking about these things anyway, and here's this wonderful story about people coming together. We all want to believe in a world where that is the norm. Not just possible, but common.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah. If you look at stories of actual disasters, people do tend to come together. There's a book by author Rebecca Solnit called A Paradise Built In Hell about the ways in which people cooperate and come together post-disaster. That's actually way more common than people like turning on each other.

And, yeah, Cory Doctorow has a wonderful line about 'covered dish' people, and how in order to survive as a society, we need there to be more 'covered dish' people than the people who come with their guns. There's this line about how, "if your neighbor thinks you're coming over with a gun, she'd be crazy to meet you with anything other than a gun. But if you come over with a covered dish, like a dish of food and she's coming with a gun, but only because she thought you were coming with a gun, once she sees that what you've got is food, she'll put her gun away and you can have a potluck."

He's got some really great stories about communities coming together in interesting ways as well. His book Radicalized is a collection of four novellas, and there's one where you have a character, one of the tech bros who's built himself a little hideout in the middle of nowhere, and it does not go as well for him as it does for the people outside the hideout. Not to spoil anything too much.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Not relevant at all in today's world!

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah. That book came out in like 2018. That "tech bro hide out in the desert" felt very prescient, like a year or two later.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: Only feels more prescient now.

Kat Kourbeti: I've been really enjoying the mainstream appeal of the term "enshittification", which like, everybody's like quoting it now, and I'm like, "yep. Thank you Cory."

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: I like how science fiction stories can really start as a thought experiment, maybe of imagining possible worlds, and then specifically the stories where that ends up being like a net positive change, like a better world than what we're in right now. I really like that, and I think a lot of what you write about, whether in science fiction or fantasy, tends to kind of look out with maybe a positive lens.

Would you say that you try to do that intentionally or...?

Naomi Kritzer: It's more that I write about stuff that I want to imagine, and I like thinking about possibilities for at least somewhat brighter futures, more than I like thinking about possibilities for absolutely horrifying futures. And I also, I think that there's a place for the cautionary tale, right? But I also feel like there are a depressing number of people who will miss the point of the cautionary tale.

Everyone knows the joke about like, you know, "Now Brought to You by Meta: it's the Torment Nexus!" You know, like, as seen in the science fiction novel, "Please Don't Build the Torment Nexus." There's just so much about the cautionary tale that people miss the point of, and also there's a lot to be said for pointing out possibilities that look like something we could achieve.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: But there's an older science fiction book by David Brin called The Postman, which is set in a world after a nuclear war. And I had read so many books set in a world post nuclear apocalypse. Like I said, the eighties were a weird time. Many of these were for middle grade, like the number of middle grade books about nuclear apocalypse is a little strange to think about in retrospect. But this was like the first one I'd ever picked up that showed any possibility for— I guess it wasn't the first because Canticle for Leibowitz is also like a post-apocalyptic world where things are bad for a while, but then there's a slow recovery, although then it ends in a second annihilation because of course it does. He (Walter M. Miller Jr) was not an optimist.

Kat Kourbeti: No.

Naomi Kritzer: But The Postman is a book in which like, there's a lot of horror, but also people are starting to pull together again and they pull together over something as simple as the ability to communicate over distance again, and recreating the postal service. And I loved that. That was like a really great idea, and it didn't make the idea of a nuclear war less horrifying. But I liked the fact that it thought about what are the essentials of civilization, and what are the things that we would most need to get back in order to rebuild? I really liked that.

So I think some of what I write comes out of of course the things I read and the things that I found most memorable and affecting. I read so many apocalypse books that just blended together, but even though I haven't picked up The Postman in 20 some years, I remember that a lot better.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. What speaks to someone is quite a personal thing and like an unconscious thing, but it will stick to you. Yeah, for sure. Now what I find fascinating about your journey is that it took quite a while to transition, if you will, from something short form to longer.

Naomi Kritzer: No, I have five books published in the early 2000s. Nobody remembers them anymore.

Kat Kourbeti: What?!

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah, no, I sold my first novel in 2001.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, okay.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah. So that was a fantasy novel, secondary world fantasy, historical flavored. That was published in 2002 and 2003 by Bantam, was split into two books: Fires of the Faithful and Turning the Storm. And then I sold a trilogy on proposal to Bantam, also historically flavored secondary world fantasy, Freedom's Gate, Freedom's Apprentice, and Freedom Sisters. And the trilogy did not sell well, and the last book came out as the economy was cratering.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh no.

Naomi Kritzer: So that left me without a publisher; Bantam did not wanna publish any more of my books. And I wrote, let's see, an urban fantasy that nobody wanted to publish. Just never sold. Two middle grade books, one science fiction and one fantasy, that have never sold.

And then at that point I was so discouraged about writing long form, that I couldn't make myself write the YA book that I wanted to write and instead wrote it as short stories. That was the Seastead stories, which have come out since then as a novel, Liberty's Daughters, came out in 2023. But those were published one at a time by F&SF.

I was also at that point in 2010 or so, I was so discouraged, I would write short stories still, but then I would send them out one time and then stick them in a drawer when they didn't sell the first time out. And I started selling again because my friend Lyda said, I will send them out for you and pretend I am your agent. Just give me the printouts and I will take care of this. Gimme the files and I'll take care of this.

And so she's the one who sold the Seastead stories to Gordon Van Gelder, as I had sent it to Asimov's, and Asimov's was like, this kind of reads a little more like chapter one of a novel.

Kat Kourbeti: That's 'cause it is.

Naomi Kritzer: 'Cause it was, yeah. And I was like, oh God, they're totally right. And that was why I stuck it in a drawer. So Lyda sent it to F&SF, and F&SF bought it and was like, "this reads like there might be more stories about this character. Please send those to me as well." Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Interesting.

Naomi Kritzer: So essentially I sold them a serialized novel, which is a little bit old school, but yeah, no, I had a career as a novelist that then tanked and had to sort of, you know—

Kat Kourbeti: Be rebuilt.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Wow. What a— wow, publishing is a fickle mistress.

Naomi Kritzer: It really is. And this I'll say, my story is really common. There's so many people in science fiction and fantasy who have a career and then they stop selling and their publisher cuts them loose, and they have to come up with a way to reinvent themselves, either by switching genres or taking a pen name or both. And I feel like it's something we—we tend not to talk about much, and I think it's partly fear. And it's the kind of—I think if you're succeeding, if your career is going well, you wanna tell yourself that your peers who've just vanished, it's because they did something wrong, or they took a break voluntarily. Because you don't wanna acknowledge the extent to which it's luck, because if it's luck, your luck can change and it can happen to you. You wanna believe that you're immune.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: No one's immune, no one. If you made a big enough splash with your first book, you might be immune, but most people do not.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It is unfortunately a super common happening. It's happened to friends of mine, and I do think that we need to talk about this more, because it's common and people need to know about that, but also, as it is in your case and certainly in others as well, it is reversible. Like publishers who think, oh, I'm not gonna, I don't think this will sell, can be wrong. They're wrong all the time.

Naomi Kritzer: Nobody knows anything. This is the thing about publishing too, is that nobody knows anything. It is an industry that is based on superstition to a degree that's hilarious. Like, when my very first book came out, the number of people who looked at it and said, oh my God, they gave you a green cover? Because there was a superstition, for years, that green covers didn't sell. It is just like, that's so silly.

Kat Kourbeti: I have the urge to look at my bookshelves and see if I have, how many green books do I have? I feel like I have a bunch of green books.

Naomi Kritzer: Maybe it was genre specific.

Kat Kourbeti: Perhaps.

Naomi Kritzer: Like there was this belief, this absolute belief that was still lingering in the early 2000s and may have since gone away, I don't know, that customers just didn't like green books. They found them off putting for some utterly mysterious reason. And so green books didn't sell, so you couldn't do green covers.

Everyone knows that like, certain types of covers telegraph certain things about a book. Like you can look at a book with no text, like you could replace all the text with Lorem Ipsum or whatever, and you'd look at a book and you would know from the font, am I looking at romance? Am I looking at women's fiction? YA science fiction, space opera science fiction, literary sort of science fiction. You have a pretty good sense, just because everybody knows certain types of covers communicates certain things.

There's industries where they actually do marketing studies on what works and what doesn't. I don't believe publishing has ever done that, probably because they don't have the money. But nobody really knows what works, nobody really knows what matters. Certain books take off. Some of it's stuff that the publishers do and there's like, certain writers who've cracked the code and have a social media presence that works really well for them, which is why publishers are like, we want you to have a social media presence. We have no idea what to tell you beyond, "have a social media presence", but you totally need to have one.

I have a social media presence because I like talking to people on BlueSky. I honestly think is the best reason to have a social media presence is if you find it fun.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: So, yeah, no, from a publisher's perspective, if you don't sell, it is easier for them to assume it's you than it is to like, take a second look at whether they gave you a cover that communicated the wrong thing.

I'll say my trilogy that I published back in the early 2000s, Freedom's Apprentice, I got the cover through the mail at the time. They would send them to you as like lovely printed flats. And I looked at that cover and I thought, did they give me one of Jacqueline Carey's covers by mistake? Because it looked like Kushiel's Dart type cover.

It's beautifully done, but it's a woman from behind and you see her back, her naked bare back, and she's like reaching up and doing something. What's interesting is it clearly depicts a scene in the book, but it's a scene that is happening in Central Asia in January, so she would've been wearing clothes because otherwise she'd be freezing. And also it's a scene that sort of implies sex, right? Because there's nudity and there's no sex in the book. And I emailed my editor and I was like, should I add a sex scene somewhere? And she's like, no, no, no, no. This is just a marketing thing.

I mean, Jacqueline Carey's books were selling really well, but I feel like if somebody picked up my book because they were expecting something like that, they would've been very disappointed with what they got because it was really different from Jacqueline Carey's work, like in every possible way, starting with the complete lack of sex in the book that I had written, and the reverse for hers.

That's probably not why this trilogy struggled to find its footing. There's a million and one reasons why books might struggle. I have friends whose books were amazing and nonetheless flopped.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: I feel terrible for everyone whose book came out in like, early part of 2020. Jo Walton's Or What You Will came out in July of 2020, and I was talking to Jo recently and I realized I definitely read that book when it came out, and I have no memory of it at all.

Jo just shrugged and was like, "it was a really bad year to have a book come out, or to be trying to read anything."

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I had friends who were debuting in 2020—

Naomi Kritzer: Oh God.

Kat Kourbeti: And they were like, my tour is canceled, and I guess we're doing a Zoom launch ...question mark?, and is anybody gonna turn up and will anybody even know that my book exists? Because everyone's just like watching the news, trying to figure out if the world will exist in a week. Like it was just...

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah, books actually sold pretty well in 2020.

Kat Kourbeti: Turns out we were reading a lot!

Naomi Kritzer: Well, like, people were buying books. I think, in a lot of cases the books were just piling up. They were collecting books more than reading. And then if you did read like, the books that I read, some of them I remember, but some of them I just—I reread Or What You Will, and I was like wow, I remembered one thing, and what I remembered was incorrect.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, no, there's definitely a gap for me, like 2020- 21, I don't remember most of what I read for sure.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: In fact, for me personally, it was a struggle to just read a novel, like a full, long thing. I read a lot of short things.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: In those years because it was just easier to finish something that wasn't too long. I don't know why I just couldn't do it, like for a couple years. And in fact, when I started reading novels again, I was like, oh my God, I can read books!

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah, no, that's very much how it was for me. I really, really struggled for several years to read anything.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: And especially to read like a novel, because that was gonna require really sustained concentration. With nonfiction that was a little easier to read because if a chapter was boring, I could skip to the next one and miss out on some information, but it wasn't like missing part of a narrative.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: I really started reading again, I wanna say in 2022, maybe '23, and suddenly it was like a light came back on.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: Great.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It was definitely like that for me. And I figured out a hack for me, which was to try and pair what I was reading with appropriate music, where I would try and find like the right soundtrack for something, and in some cases it was just what I was listening to at the time, and in other cases I was like, "hmm, but I feel like this needs like a certain sound". And so I would go and I'd find the sound and I'd be like, "okay, great, now we put this album on repeat and we read this book".

And so that's how for me, there was a Tade Thompson book called Far from the Light of Heaven, and I picked it 'cause it was short. Sorry, Tade! It was just literally like, how long is this? Not very. Great, let's just give it a go. And at the time I was listening to this British band that I had discovered 'cause I went to a gig and they just happened to be on repeat for me while I was reading this book, and now that's my soundtrack to this book. Like, I listen to those songs now and I just remember a spaceship locked in orbit, and there's a murder mystery.

Naomi Kritzer: Oh!

Kat Kourbeti: But yeah, that was just something I did to trick myself into reading again, to make it feel more like a full experience than just reading the words. And that was what unlocked it for me, but it was a struggle to get there, to be honest. So I'm glad we're all back, but it was a time, it was certainly a time.

And so during this time you'd already written the Catnet books, and I feel like around that time, that's when you were doing kind of middle length type things, like novellas and stuff.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: So what's your kind of relationship with each format, if you have one, in terms of writing them?

Naomi Kritzer: I really love writing short fiction. I've recently started writing novellas, in part because they're kind of an intermediate length, it lets me tell a longer story. A lot of the time, my ideas are sometimes short story shaped and sometimes they're novel shaped. Some of my stories, I can imagine a novel version of them, but I just told a little corner of what was going on in this future that I've imagined or this world that I've imagined. It's just a really tight focus. I worked on a couple of things that I didn't end up finishing in 2021-22.

2020, I was rewriting Chaos on Catnet as the pandemic was really spinning up. There's a story I tell in the afterword of the book: so I'd gotten my editorial letter in February of 2020; having turned it in a few months earlier, I got the letter back from my editor with "this is what I would like you to fix or change" or whatever. Super normal. And I read it and then set it aside to digest it and think it over. And then March arrived and we went from "this could happen" to, "this is definitely happening".

And I spent all day of every day like, staring at social media and thinking about how I was living in the timeline with an actual pandemic. Which is still honestly mind boggling to think about. And then April came around and I was like, this book is due in June. It is due like June 1st. And it was like, fairly substantial. It was the editorial letter, so it's not copy edits, it was substantial rewrites. I was like, I have got to do this. And so starting in like mid-April, I made myself sit down and work on it. It was extremely hard and extremely slow. Then in May, I was pretty close to the end, I could see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I was writing a section of the book that includes rioting in Minneapolis, right around Memorial Day, which as you may recall, is when police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd on camera. And suddenly I really couldn't think about my book for lots of reasons, one of which was that like, this is a book that was set in Minneapolis and suddenly the landscape of the book was being reshaped. And I sent an email to my editor and said, "I'm going to miss my deadline."

Kat Kourbeti: Straight up.

Naomi Kritzer: Straight up. There's just no way, I am not gonna make this. It was close, but not gonna happen now. She emailed me back and she was like, "don't worry, it's fine. Are you safe? Are you okay?" And I was like, "oh yeah, no, my neighborhood is fine. The nearest fires are like a mile from me." And she did not find this as reassuring.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. A mile is not that far.

Naomi Kritzer: But see, I had many friends who were like, one block from where fires were happening. I had friends who would cough from tear gas if they stepped outside their houses. Like, many of my friends were really in the heart of where the protests were happening very close by. One of my friends, her kids came and stayed at my house because she was really worried that if fire spread to their house that her kids would refuse to leave without getting the pets out. And she didn't wanna, she didn't wanna risk it. So they came and stayed with me for a couple of days and like, it was pandemic too, so it was like the first we'd had people in our house in a while.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: It was also unnerving. And anyway, when things had quieted down, I was talking to Lyda, the friend who sent out my stories for me when I was depressed, and I was like, "I don't know what to do. There's places they visited in the book that are ashes." Literally in the book they went to Uncle Hugo's Science Fiction Bookstore, and that burned. And I was like what do I do? Lyda said, "Rebuild it. It's set in the future. Make the Minneapolis you wanna see."

Turned out to be really, really good advice. It did mean that like, the rebuilt Uncle Hugo's that they visit in the book, is not in fact where Don Blyly reopened. It also meant that I revisited how I wrote about policing in the book, and I thought about what the long-term results would be of what happened in 2020 for the Minneapolis that I wanted to believe was possible.

I know that it worked well for Minneapolis readers 'cause a lot of people have told me that it worked really well for them. But that was an extremely hard year in so many ways.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow.

I think from a perspective of like, not a Minneapolis person, obviously—to me, I don't have a way of knowing what the landscape looked before or after, but certainly in terms of the setting and the future that you wanna build, I think A, that works perfectly, and B, that is solid advice for anyone working on anything that's near future. 'Cause I think the trap of writing in near future is that you're racing the clock.

Naomi Kritzer: Yes. Very much so.

Kat Kourbeti: And so then, yeah, you run the risk of like the world actually changing before you can finish your story.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: And then what do you do? And I think for a lot of people, certainly for me, I couldn't think of fiction during this time. I just couldn't. I was writing a book that for many reasons I'm not working on anymore, and I just could not think about fictional people at a time that like the world was in such a state.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Afterwards, I think one of the main questions that I was struggling with was, how do I picture a world that I was picturing before, but none of this had happened yet, and now these stories, that world doesn't exist, and how can I repicture that again?

And I think for a lot of people that meant, no, we're just gonna put this in the book and it's going to reflect whatever happened. And for other people it was very much a, how can I protect the setting that I had? It's just such a wild time to be living, because everything is happening really fast.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: And things change any second and we're just aware of so much.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: So for Catnet in particular, you imagined the Minneapolis that you wanted to see and the future that you wanted to see. Other works of yours don't necessarily have that central question I guess, with the near future, but how do you keep that in mind now, after having dealt with this for one of your books?

Naomi Kritzer: When you're writing near future, stuff can catch up with you and that's just, that's a problem. That is inherently a problem. And you can have stuff catch up with you in ways, both where it's this fabulous futuristic technology that's now in everyone's pocket, and you can have the situation where it's like, yeah, this thing that I thought was coming soon turns out to be like vaporware, you know, robot cars. I don't know, 10 years ago we were absolutely convinced we would have self-driving cars by now.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: We're not actually any—we do, but they're not common.

Kat Kourbeti: They don't work yet.

Naomi Kritzer: Not really very safe. They're not fully vaporware, but they're really not realized in the way that I was thinking they would be by now, a decade ago when I was thinking about this.

On the other hand, I reread recently, I'm not gonna name the book, but I reread a book recently that was written in the 1990s, the early 1990s. And it is set sometime in 30 ish years from now. And in the book, in this setting that's, still off in the future, cell phones don't exist. And there's stuff in the book that holds up really well, but the lack of cell phones and the ramifications, the ways in which people are still coping with communication in the way that they did in the early nineties, is very funny. It just, that is not a piece that held up well.

Like, cell phones even existed in the early nineties, they just were not very common yet. Not a lot of people had 'em. You tended to have one if you were like, rich or like a doctor. Also, their doctors and drug dealers had pagers. Also don't seem to exist in this future. And like a lack of pagers, we don't have 'em, right? Like it's been years since I've seen a pager. Maybe we do, somebody still uses them, but they're not common the way they were in the eighties and nineties. But cell phones are completely ubiquitous, and cell phones are also little pocket computers with all the information of the universe at your fingertips. But yeah, no, it's just a chronic problem.

I have a near future novella that I wrote, I expect to be able to make an announcement about soon, but it's near future, and it involves an obstetrician, who gets abducted by a cult that wants to have access to her skillset. And I was thinking about the fact that like, in the book there's references to the FBI. Are we even going to have an FBI by the time it comes out? Are we gonna have something else or are we gonna have nothing? The trajectory we're on as a country feels really dire, and it's really hard to know where we land.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: I'll say one thing I find a little bit comforting, is this thing Ada Palmer talks about. Ada Palmer is a science fiction writer and also a historian at the University of Chicago, studies the Renaissance. And there's this letter that was either written by Machiavelli or to Machiavelli where somebody is like, "you need to tell them how terrible this time period was and how much ground we lost, so they'll understand why things are such a disaster". And this was written during the period of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci and a period that like, from here we look at and we're like, this is when things started to get better in all these different ways. And like, that was not how it felt to the people who are living through it.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Naomi Kritzer: And that gives me a little hope that maybe later we will look back and this will all feel like part of a shift for the better.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. A through line of some kind.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah. It's hard to see now how that happens. It just feels so dire.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Her new book, Inventing the Renaissance, very much has that question at the heart of it, which is, you know, we think of this period as a bright time, and it was not. And let me tell you about it for a thousand pages.

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah, no, I don't have a copy yet, but I do want to read it.

Kat Kourbeti: Her essays on her blog in advance of the launch were delightful, and I will link a couple of them in the show notes because they are hilarious. And also just—

Naomi Kritzer: She is so funny. She has a really dry sense of humor. Love hearing her talk about stuff like this.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. She's another one of those people who like, takes all of that knowledge she has amassed through her day job and she really puts it through its paces for the speculative fiction side of things.

We once had a conversation at Dublin Worldcon, I think, 'cause I had just read the first book of the Terra Ignota series, and it turns out that a couple of the characters in it are Greek, and they're supposed to be speaking Greek to each other, but they're using gender-neutral pronouns, which currently in Greek do not exist. And so I was like, "so what are you picturing there? 'cause I can't, I don't know what that sounds like in Greek in my head, 'cause it's not like a real thing". And she was like, "I'd like to imagine that, that far down the line, the language has evolved to include this". There are movements in Greece to kind of change that, but we are borrowing right now a lot from English in order to create like a queer vocabulary, like it doesn't quite exist natively.

But it was just, yeah, just very interesting to pick her brains about it. 'Cause I was like, "I don't know what I'm picturing right now when this dialogue's taking place".

But yeah, excited to hear about this novella that's a mystery, but soon to be not mystery, maybe. Hopefully. And yeah. Outside of that, which I suppose you can't really talk about right now, is there something else that's recent or upcoming that you would like to plug or promote?

Naomi Kritzer: No.

Kat Kourbeti: You've got the Seastead book, though!

Naomi Kritzer: Yeah, the Seastead book came out in 2023, and people can order that. And I had a story published in Asimov's last year, which is up for Hugo in best Novelette.

Kat Kourbeti: Hey.

Naomi Kritzer: Which is pretty exciting. And since it's up for various things, Asimov's has put it online and people can just go read it, it is called The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea. Yeah, that's it.

Kat Kourbeti: Great. Yeah, that's all right. Plus the mysterious upcoming story.

Naomi Kritzer: Yes. Actually there's two novellas that I wrote in the last couple of years. There's also one that is about two teenage girls whose mother is a psychic reader at a Renaissance festival. And that is fantasy, and I should have something to announce about that too.

Kat Kourbeti: Awesome. We'll look forward to those, and we'll find you on Bluesky, @naomikritzer.bsky.social, I think?

Naomi Kritzer: Yep.

Kat Kourbeti: And yeah, thank you so much for chatting to us today, about your career and your writing, and we look forward to reading more from you soon.

Naomi Kritzer: Thank you. I'm so glad you invited me on.

In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, editor Kat Kourbeti talks to Charlie Jane Anders about her Strange Horizons publications dating all the way back to 2002, charting her journey as a writer and her experience with the magazine over 20 years, as well as her love for community events and bringing people together.

Links and things:

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• Join our ⁠Patreon⁠ for early episode access, or donate through any other way to hear your name and message in our next episodes.
• Want to vote for Strange Horizons in the Hugos? We have two poems, a novelette, and the magazine all on the ballot! Get your WSFS and/or virtual Seattle Worldcon membership on their website, and you can cast your vote as soon as the end of this month.

Episode show notes:

• Read Charlie Jane's stories in our archives
• Visit Charlie Jane's website, or follow her on Bluesky
• Pre-order Charlie Jane's upcoming novel, Lessons in Magic and Disaster.
• Find more links to her work, along with everything else we talked about today, peppered throughout the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres.

Today's guest is Charlie Jane Anders, who was first published with us in 2002, and has since gone on to publish a huge number of short stories, numerous novels, win several awards including the Hugo, the Nebula, the Sturgeon, the Lambda Literary, Crawford, and the Locus Award, as well as having an extensive career in SFF and digital journalism.

It's great to have you here, Charlie Jane.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah, it's good to be here. Thanks for having me. It's just, I'm so excited to celebrate Strange Horizons. I'm glad it's still going strong.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, thank you so much and we're happy too. Frankly, I feel like could go on and on by listing everything you've done and achieved, but we'd be here all day. I am in such awe of you and your squiggly career. I have been really excited about this chat, and to just dive into everything that's been part of your journey, 'cause a lot of authors, aspiring authors especially, expect a kind of linear trajectory. And it's great to see people thrive who like just do all the things. It's really beautiful.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah. Thanks. Yeah, I think that's a good thing. I don't know.

Kat Kourbeti: I think so. It's a world where writing, and especially short form, has never quite been like the lucrative world that we'd like it to be. And so, you know, we pivot and we find things, and/or we're also interested in various stuff, and we want to explore all the things and we can't sit still. Both things can be true.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, first of all, how did you come across Strange Horizons in the first place, to submit to us?

Charlie Jane Anders: Gosh, casting my mind back almost 25 years. Yeah. I knew about Strange Horizons a few different ways, I knew Mary Anne Mohanraj back then, who was the founder of Strange Horizons, and before I was published in Strange Horizons, I was published in Clean Sheets, which was an online erotica magazine that Mary Anne Mohanraj founded. I think Clean Sheets came first. I think she founded Clean Sheets and then she founded Strange Horizons. And it's amazing that Strange Horizons has had this amazing run. I think Clean Sheets only lasted like a few years maybe. It's all down to all the incredible volunteers that have worked on Strange Horizons who took Mary Anne's vision and ran with it.

So I think I had already been published in Clean Sheets. I actually wrote this very weird science fiction erotica story for Clean Sheets about a person who is married to three identical clones, and then cheats on them with a fourth identical clone. Basically they're living in a world where everybody is a clone of their three husbands. And so, they're the one person in their world who isn't a clone of this one guy. And so they cheat on their three husbands with another clone that's exactly the same as their three husbands. I can't remember if it was a story about like nature and nurture, or just about the nature of infidelity and like, why you would wanna have sex with a fourth clone when you're already married to three clones of the same person and just, I don't know. It was a weird story.

And so that was published in Clean Sheets, and so I think I knew that Mary Anne was also launching a science fiction magazine. I guess it was later that I started going to Wiscon, and there was always a Strange Horizons party at Wiscon, but that came later that I would hang out with the editors. So that was probably how I found out about it.

Also, I was haunting all of these forums for aspiring science fiction writers and it was like, oh, there's a pro market that has opened up. And at the time there weren't that many pro markets in science fiction and fantasy. There were the big print magazines, and then there wasn't really a lot of online pro magazines in 2000 or 2001 that were open to submissions, and that would actually consider new writers. That was a big deal.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, there was an interview with you on Lightspeed, where I think you mentioned Strange Horizons as like one of the few places that took chances on new writers, like looking to learn. And that was like 10 years ago or something, and I'm like, yep, we're still doing it.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah. I mean I think that's a really great thing that a magazine can do. It's actually really awesome.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I couldn't believe it. Part of why this podcast exists is, I was at Worldcon with my producer Michael last year in Glasgow, and we're just hanging out and we're noodling, you know, like what can we do on the podcast that's new, and by the way, it's 25 years next year.

It is what?

Charlie Jane Anders: Oh my gosh. That's wild. That is so wild.

Kat Kourbeti: And I just had this moment where I was like, surely that's nuts. And I started going back through the archives and like, seeing names of folks who like, either I knew or knew of, and I was like, did you know we've published all these people?

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah!

Kat Kourbeti: Crazy.

Charlie Jane Anders: I feel like John Scalzi got his start there.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Charlie Jane Anders: It's a lot of people got their start at Strange Horizons. The thing about Strange Horizons is that it had a reputation for really strong editing. The crew who were the editors back then were really conscientious and would put you through your paces, and they would challenge you. And that was something that happened with me, with a bunch of the stories I published at Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: That's very interesting. I think you're in a unique position to tell me about this, 'cause a lot of the folks I've been interviewing were newer additions to the roster if you will, and different editors work in different ways. Let's talk a little bit about your first Strange Horizons story which is called, Not To Mention Jack.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: January, 2002. Which is a phenomenal, really fast paced, loads is going on, and it's about a man with a strange power, and a woman who gets involved with him and uh, hijinks.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah. I should just mention something right up front, which is—nobody knows this, this is kind of a big reveal—I recently went back and wrote a new version of that story, which I've actually sent to my publisher as a novella. I expanded it and built it out. I feel like it's such a fun concept for a story, and looking back at the version I wrote back in 2001, I wasn't happy with it at all. So I actually have written a new version of it, which I'm really hoping that Tor or Tordotcom will wanna publish as a novella. So fingers crossed about that. Like, that's kind of a big secret that I'm revealing for anybody listening to this podcast. I'm so much happier with the new version.

That was a fun thing where I had this really neat concept of, there's this guy who has one of the powers of Satan, which is that if you say his name, he appears. And this is really inconvenient for him because, he can't get a moment's peace. Anytime somebody mentions him, even if they just mention his first name and it's clear in context who they're talking about, he will just appear. And he can't really control this except to try to keep people from talking about him.

What I will say is that when I wrote that story, like it was one of the better stories I'd written at the time, I was still very new and was figuring out my craft and it was like, I was a very silly, funny writer who wasn't good at characters or the shape of the story or plot or emotion or any of that kind of stuff. I was good at being random and silly. And I feel like the folks at Strange Horizons really were very patient with me. I think it was mostly Jed Hartman worked with me to make the story work better, sharpen it and to make it hit harder and flow better, and I remember just a lot of really intensive editing on that story. There were a couple rounds, I think, of going back and forth and just really reworking it. And so the version that was published in January 2002, was by far the superior version to like what I've been writing before.

It's no reflection on them that I now look back at it and I'm like, "oof, yeah, that's not as good as it could have been." I think, in terms of how they helped making it better, the central relationship between Jack and I've forgotten the name of the female character,

Kat Kourbeti: Carol, I think.

Charlie Jane Anders: Carol, yeah. Their central relationship is a lot stronger. Carol gets a little more agency, is a little bit more— I think we played around with the order of events and how things are presented.

But yeah, I mean, I think what's wrong with that story that I was aware of now is that it's a little bit misogynistic. It treats Carol really badly. She eventually gets her revenge, but the whole central conflict of the story is that she's clingy and annoying and that she's somehow gotten a crush on this guy and is making his life hell by saying his name all the time. It was kinda the laziest thing you could do with that concept.

And also the story makes no sense if you think about it, because he's this guy who has this thing where if you say his name, he appears, and it's in his interest to never be spoken about, but he's out there basically being a con artist and ripping people off, how is that gonna work out for him? It's gonna be a disaster. That's like, the least plausible thing he could be doing in that scenario. And it just doesn't make any sense if you think about it.

So that was an example of coming back to that story like 24 years later. It was just so obvious that I hadn't thought it through well enough, there were parts of it where I was just being lazy in terms of the dynamic of Jack and Carol and like the way that I write their relationship. I just like building out Jack's world. There was a lot of really interesting stuff there, but (there) was also a lot that I left on the table, that I was like, oh, this is a thing that would've been really juicy to explore that I didn't explore at all. And meanwhile I'm doubling down on this dynamic that's misogynistic and kinda lazy, and nothing about this really makes any sense.

It was an interesting metaphor for like a toxic relationship because basically what happens, we just gonna spoil it, is that Jack can't stop her from having a crush on him, so he eventually traps her in this weird building that crushes her spirits and dampens her emotions so that she can't summon him anymore. And so that was an interesting metaphor, but it's not worth it. And it's just, Jack is a horrible person; she's a horrible person; why do we care about either of them? It was funny, but it also wasn't funny enough to justify how lazy it was.

But again, I wanna say that the folks at Strange Horizons made it a lot better than it originally had been. I think that they recognized that there was something cool there and they tried their best to bring it out, and it was my shortcomings as a writer that kept it from actually working as well as it could have. So I'm really hoping at some point people get to read the new version, which I'm so much happier with.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, I would read that like right now. Oh my gosh. The concept I think drew me in. You're not wrong in looking back at your own writing and kind of recognizing, with hindsight and with the improvement of decades of more writing experience and life experience, to go, "ah I would've done this differently now."

But at the same time, like, the world building and the way that some of that magic works, and the humor, I think those bones are strong. I enjoyed reading it now, but I would love to read the new version, so Tordotcom, if you're listening...

Charlie Jane Anders: I think it's sitting on my editor's desk. There's a lot going on but I'm excited for it to see the light of day at some point, hopefully, because it was fun to go back to it.

Kat Kourbeti: And what about like, the British component of it? 'Cause it's set in London, where I live incidentally, and because I live in London and because I know some people who are, you know, their accent has like hints of Essex, but they try to hide it—

Charlie Jane Anders: Oh, I forgot about that.

Kat Kourbeti: There's some lines in there that I was like, ooh, love that. How did you decide for that to be an English story?

Charlie Jane Anders: That's a good question. I mean, I lived in the UK for many years. I went to university in the UK, and so I have that kind of background a little bit. I think it just felt at the time, it fit with the kind feel of the story. It fit with the humor of it. Like I guess I was trying to do a very, you know, British farcical, wry humor there.

I think the new version that I just wrote is set in New York, though, actually, I think I moved it to New York. I forgot about that. I also think, when you're writing about—no offense, when you're writing about repressed people who are being toxic to each other, I do think of the Brits a little bit sometimes.

Kat Kourbeti: None taken. I'm not a Brit, so like, yeah. For some reason I've chosen to live here. That's a separate story.

It's just very interesting to hear that the editors back then had a more hands-on, kind of like intensive approach, 'cause I think as the years have gone on and the department has changed hands, I don't think that they put so much like a heavy hand onto stories that come in. I think they just kinda let the story speak with not so much, at least from interviews that I've done so far.

So this is very interesting and very different.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah, I was probably at the, gosh, this is probably the fifth anniversary party of Strange Horizons at Wiscon. Might have been 10th anniversary. God, it was an anniversary party of Strange Horizons at Wiscon. The original crew were there, I think they were still running the magazine at the time.

And we were all kind of speaking about like, what Strange Horizons had meant for us and how it had changed our lives, and it was actually a really sweet gathering. Like every year at Wiscon, they used to do a Strange Horizons Tea Party, and the crew would be there, and I think sometimes John Scalzi would show up because he's very upfront about how Strange Horizons helped to launch him.

But I remember Ben Rosenbaum saying something that really resonated with me, that felt true to me, which was that, they were tough on you, the editors were, and that if they published you once and you came back a second time, they'd be tougher on you the second time. And actually feel like I got more rejections from Strange Horizons after they published me one time. Like they would just reject more of my stuff. And that was something Ben was saying as well, is that it was actually harder and harder to get published, the difficulty level would go up because they would be more picky about your stuff.

And also if they accepted your stuff, they would really put you through your paces. They were very intense about wanting to make it the best that it could be, and push you to be the best that you could be. It was not a thing where once you're in they just are like, oh, we know you could do this and we're just gonna let you do it. But instead it was like, you had to really bring it.

One of my favorite stories I've ever written was actually rejected by Strange Horizons. I shouldn't bring that up. But yeah, it was like a story that I was really proud of and that has like, gone on to have a huge life since it was published somewhere else. And they were just like, no.

Kat Kourbeti: Interesting. At the same time, it's not necessarily about it being bad, just that it didn't click for the folks there at that time.

Charlie Jane Anders: They just wanted something that they're really passionate about and that they're like, yes, I see this, I can make this better, I connect to this, and I feel like that's the way it should be. I don't think you should accept everything that comes over the transom, even from an author that you've published before or whatever.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, no, absolutely. Like it needs to be of the quality and of the standard that you want on your magazine. Nothing more, nothing less.

So, the next story we have from you then is from 2007, and it's about sentient cryptocurrency, I think?

Charlie Jane Anders: Oh yeah, oh wow.

Kat Kourbeti: Question mark?

Charlie Jane Anders: It's not crypto. This was before cryptocurrencies existed.

Kat Kourbeti: That's why I was like, oh my God, these currencies are sentient. How did she know this?

Charlie Jane Anders: I think at the time, like, for my day job, I would just write different publications about mostly healthcare stuff. I wrote a lot of stuff about healthcare back then where I would write about here's how things are working in the healthcare sector, or here's how to navigate this complicated legal thing around HIPAA or whatever. That was like, legal compliance publications aimed at people in an industry, or like B2B kind of publications or, just news about like regulation and stuff. I love nerding out about complicated stuff.

For a year or two around that time, I was shunted over to working on a publication about online banking, so I got to learn all about the regulations around banking and how they were applying to the internet and like, all the different complexities of banking online, which at the time was a huge, deal. Like all these banks were moving online and doing a terrible job of it.

So I was thinking about those issues and I I liked the idea of currency that is given sentience so that it can look out for fraudulent transactions or fraud or whatever, currency that thinks about how it's being spent. But then obviously once that happens, it starts to think about like wealth inequality, and all the ways that our economy makes no sense because it's engineered for the comfort and happiness of like a minority of people. That was fun because it was a fun thought experiment.

I'm still really happy with that story. I would like to reprint it one of these days.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Charlie Jane Anders: But ultimately it's about confronting wealth inequality, which wasn't as big a topic in 2006 or 2007 as it is now, but already felt like a huge big deal to me. And finding a new way to talk about something like that is always a gift because there's only so many ways that we can point out the sheer obvious fact of like, how unfair our economy is, and how rigged it is for the wealthy.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. And it manages to do that with a big dollop of romance. It spoke to the idealistic romantic in me who's like, oh but I want them to do well, I want them to manage to like, be together. These two currencies who like, have some thoughts about the world.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah, that was fun. I feel like that was maybe an example of me having gotten slightly better at writing since I wrote that first story, because it's another story about kind of a romance, kind of a relationship. And I feel like it doesn't take quite as many lazy shortcuts. It's still not my best work in terms of how it portrays the relationship, but it does at least treat the relationship with respect, and give agency to both sides of the relationship in a way that feels natural. It's not just oh, hahaha, everything sucks. People are garbage. LOL.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, the story manages to capture all of these feelings and really kind of have an argument with capitalism, but like, in a really interesting digital way. I love how you found a way to turn what was probably really dry reading about online banking, into something profound.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah. I just like taking things apart and finding out how they work. I think that's a really fun, like I actually kinda miss doing that for my job. It was weirdly relaxing. It was like needle point, especially if it's not like life or death for you personally to figure out all this weird, bureaucratic, legal stuff. It can be super interesting. I don't know.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Did you take any of that with you into your subsequent journalism career? 'Cause you and Annalee Newitz co-founded io9.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah, Annalee really founded it, and I came on board sometime after. It was really Annalee's baby. But journalism, like everything I learned, I brought with me and was useful in some way. I feel like the main thing you learn is skepticism and, understanding that things in capitalism are always gonna be messed up and wonky and that you're just, I don't know.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Charlie Jane Anders: I feel like a certain amount of skepticism, like I think coming from like business journalism or like economic journalism to entertainment journalism, I was maybe a little bit more skeptical about stuff than people who had come up in entertainment journalism.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, you guys were kind of at the forefront of what was a burgeoning ecosystem of writing about geeky things and science and, just the complicated Venn diagram of things that nerdy people are interested in. And yeah, of course you bring your background with you, but that's only a good thing when you've got to look at the news and dissect and find what's interesting in there.

Charlie Jane Anders: I think so. Yeah, for sure.

Kat Kourbeti: Now, there was a bit of a gap in your Strange Horizon's history, and the next story I've got from you, there's romance in it, I think, but again, perhaps an exploration of toxic relationships, but from a very different perspective, very different dynamic.

It's called Source Decay, from 2011.

Charlie Jane Anders: Oh wow, okay.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Taking you back through memory lane.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah, that one was weird. That was interesting. There was this TV show that we used to watch sometimes 'cause it was just such trash, called Cheaters. It was such a terrible TV show. It was so awful. Basically, it was like a reality TV show where somebody would come to these producers and be like, " I think my spouse is cheating on me or my significant other is cheating on me." And so they would try to catch them cheating, and then there would be a confrontation. It was terrible, it was a terrible show. It was on for a long time.

And so basically it was just a thing of what if an episode of Cheaters, or like a show like Cheaters— it's not Cheaters, but it's sort of Cheaters-esque— what if a show like that is like one of the few artifacts of our culture that's preserved in the future? Which I feel like that's a whole genre.

There's some science fiction story that's super famous where future archeologists find like a Mickey Mouse thing and they're like, I can't remember who wrote that story, but it's like a famous science fiction story. And it's like, was this a god? They don't understand what Mickey Mouse was and they're just confused. [Editor's note: it's History Lesson by Arthur C. Clarke.]

And I feel like that is a trope, that's a very common trope in science fiction. When that story came out, not that many people read it to begin with, but the people who read it, some of them were like, "oh, this is just doing that trope, whatever, I've seen this before." And I think I was trying to do more than just invoke that trope, I was trying to like, think about how this really messed up situation, with this reality TV show and this couple just like lighting everything on fire, took on different meaning, and how our stories can change meaning over time.

The other thing about this story, and it's also true of the fourth story that I sold to Strange Horizons, I think it was me experimenting with form a little bit and trying to like, do something a little bit weirder and be like, "okay, let's play around with what a story can be and like how a story can be structured," and so this was very much like, we're gonna start out with this very grounded situation and then we're gonna take it into the distant future, and show how it's become this piece of culture that's preserved in the future and how the meaning of it has changed and stuff.

Honestly, I'd have to reread that story because it's not as clear in my mind, ironically, as the two earlier ones. Like I remember it pretty clearly, but it's also just, it was an experiment that I was having a lot of fun doing, and I felt like I was trying to comment on how stuff sticks around and gets amplified and stuff.

Kat Kourbeti: It is a trope, yes, and I'm sure I've read other stories that posit that question, but I feel like every story that does that, answers the question a little differently and/or asks it a little differently. What does it say about our culture, our fascination with these things, or, just the tendencies in our relationships maybe, or the dynamics and it's all very, you know, emblematic of a certain time and whatever.

But yeah, trash TV. What does that say to someone, thousands of years later? I think it's a fair question to ask. I enjoyed this one a lot. I think it's very funny. Yeah.

Charlie Jane Anders: I should reread it. I'm sure it lands differently now, because now we are living in a world shaped by reality TV.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Charlie Jane Anders: Everything in our culture is reality TV, and that wasn't as true when I wrote that story. So I think I should probably, I'm curious to see how it holds up.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. That's what's interesting about science fiction is, the genre tends to look ahead to try and catch a glimpse maybe of the future. And a lot of the time it gets it scarily right. And then you're like looking back at the thing and you're like, how did I envision this so clearly, and that's the way things went? But it's also a trap for a lot of authors where near future is a little too near, and it's difficult to cast your gaze like far enough where that's still fiction, if that makes sense. Social media had only just started at the time that you wrote this and, yeah, we had a lot of reality TV, but nothing like right now.

Let's talk a little about your fourth story, which again, you play around with some things and it's very interesting. It's called Complicated and Stupid, and it's from 2013.

Charlie Jane Anders: Oh, wow. Yeah. I didn't realize it was that recent. That's a story, again, I'm experimenting with form. It's a story where I tried this thing where like, each section of the story is a different POV and it's like a relay race. Each POV hands off to the next POV kind of, and we don't repeat any POVs, which was something that I was really enjoying messing around with, and I don't know if I pulled it off or not.

It was a story that was deliberately very weird and strange and silly, and I think there's like concussion porn and there's this scientist who's gonna try to release something into the water to make people have more empathy. It was again about toxic relationships, but also thinking about like how people could be better, or how we try to be better and how it's just really hard.

I remember that the title of that story, Complicated and Stupid, is a quote from a Lady Gaga song. I feel like I @'ed Lady Gaga a few times on Twitter asking for her permission to use that phrase, and she never responded, of course. And I was like, if Lady Gaga sues me, I guess that'll be really good publicity. Like it would probably suck, but also like, I'd be instantly famous. So that would be something.

Kat Kourbeti: I don't think that she could trademark—

Charlie Jane Anders: No.

Kat Kourbeti: —this, necessarily.

Charlie Jane Anders: Song lyrics are this weird kind of extreme area of copyright law or whatever, where song lyrics, if you quote three words from a song, you could be. So I shouldn't say that because now I will get sued by Lady Gaga, and that would suck.

But yeah, I don't know.

Kat Kourbeti: We will scrap that.

Charlie Jane Anders: I think she's probably a little busy. I think she's got other stuff on her plate and she probably doesn't need the 37 cents that she could get from me, if she sued me over that. Plus, like, she might've waited too long.

I feel like that story is like dripping with irony, but also there is like a center of genuine sadness or like wanting human connection and feel like human connection is important and, I guess I was working on that story at the same time as I was writing All the Birds in the Sky, where there's like a thread running through it of like empathy and, whether people are able to connect to each other or not, and human connection being this important thing that different entities in different ways are trying to foster. And so I think that was on my mind.

But yeah, I feel like Complicated and Stupid was probably one of the later stories I wrote where I was trying to experiment a lot with form. There's one or two after that. Like I wrote a story called Captain Roger in Heaven, which was in 2016 or 2017, which is another story where it's like different POVs and we never repeat the same POV. So that was a clearly a thing I was trying to like mess around with. But I feel like this was, in terms of me writing short stories that were like, more experimental, this was definitely towards the end of me doing that. Not because I don't like experimenting anymore, but just because I got really busy and oftentimes when you write a really experimental short story, people don't know what to do with it, and so they just ignore it.

There's always the possibility that you're gonna do short fiction experiments, and people are gonna be like, oh my gosh, this is resonating in some way. And, it's like anything else. Most of the time it just kinda slips through the cracks and it's hard to justify doing that, especially when it's conceptually hard to pull off.

Kat Kourbeti: It's the challenge of the genre and at least short form gives you an opportunity to mess around and play with that, without dedicating yourself to 80,000 words of that. It can be 4,000 words.

Charlie Jane Anders: Totally.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. So that kind of segues into my question about moving around with formats. 'Cause you've written things of all kinds of lengths which is very interesting. And how would you say did the evolution of that transpire? 'Cause you were writing All the Birds in the Sky, you said, around that time. So walk me through like your novel writing journey a little bit.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah, I was writing novels I guess the whole time. My first novel, that was a long time ago, and that was super experimental and weird. My first novel I wrote in the early two 2000s, and it was published in like 2005, then I wrote like a bunch of other novels after that, that didn't ever see the light of day. One of them, eventually I turned into a novella, Rock Manning Goes for Broke. But there are a few others that I revised them and polished them and reworked them and had beta readers and everything, and then they just never appeared.

So the whole time I was writing novels and it was just like, All the Birds in the Sky was the one that finally made it over the finish line and got a big publisher and got some more attention. But yeah, I feel like I cut my teeth writing short stories for sure. Feel like that's a common pattern, at least it was a common pattern when I was starting out. Strange Horizons was great because it was like, a pro market that was open to newer writers, it was online rather than in print. So it felt more accessible in various ways. Like anybody could read it. It was this really cool thing that kind of came along.

It wasn't the first online pro market that I was aware of. I don't think it was even the first online pro market that I was published in. I think that might've been this magazine that nobody remembers, called it Speculon. Which I always think in retrospect, that sounded a little too similar to speculum—

Kat Kourbeti: Yep.

Charlie Jane Anders: —but Speculon was like a magazine in the late nineties, maybe 2000, 2001. I don't know when it went under. and they published one of my stories before Strange Horizons. And so that was my first online pro SFF sale. But Strange Horizons felt like it was this really unique part of this short story ecosystem at the time. It was great because I was learning so much about writing and getting the kind of editorial feedback that you got from Strange Horizons was worth its weight in gold. It just made things so much better.

And what I always say about writing short stories is that it forces you to get better at writing endings, which if you only ever write novels, then you only write a very small number of endings. And endings are hard, like beginnings are also challenging in a different way, but I think endings are a little magic trick where you have to make everything come together, make all the pieces fall into place, or at least enough of the pieces fall into place that it feels kinda satisfying and that, you know, rigging everything to a graceful stop or leaving things in an interesting place.

And so endings are hard, and just having practice writing a ton of endings was really good. There was that period when I tried to write a short story a week for a few years there, and didn't ever really achieve that, but I tried, and in retrospect I probably should have written fewer short stories and spent more time on each of them, but I was just like, I'm just gonna get better at this and I'm gonna just do it by doing it a lot. When I first sold a short story to Strange Horizons, it did feel like I had kinda leveled up, and then I kept leveling up by being part of Strange Horizons, and I was so proud to be part of it 'cause it was such a cool magazine.

Kat Kourbeti: I think that even from the earliest days, I think your superpower is dialogue. Like your characters feel alive, you know?

Charlie Jane Anders: I really appreciate that. I feel like dialogue is something that I, as a reader, I will often find myself skipping the long descriptive paragraphs to get to the next piece of dialogue. 'cause I just where I feel anchored in the story kind of, so I think that comes out in my writing. I like writing dialogue. It was definitely during my forays into writing for television, or actually a comic script to some extent too, to just be more focused on the dialogue is actually like, oh, this is actually fun because I don't have to like, you still do have to write some descriptive stuff, but it's more dialogue forward kind of.

I do enjoy that. For me, the easiest way to be anchored in the scene and also get the character's voices like literally happening. So I don't know. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It's early in the interview series we had Arkady Martine on, and—

Charlie Jane Anders: Oh yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: She and I were on a Worldcon panel years ago, and she said something that stuck in my brain and that I've been disseminating since. And it turns out that she took it from someone at Viable Paradise. It's this adage that "every writer gets at least one thing in their toolbox for free."

Charlie Jane Anders: Oh!

Kat Kourbeti: Then everything else you have to work at.

Charlie Jane Anders: Oh, that's interesting. I like that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, Arkady said her thing is settings. She can come up with a world and a city and its culture like immediately, no problem. Sit me down and in 15 minutes I'll have something for you. Everything else she has to work at, but yeah.

Like character, dialogue, these things that some people struggle with, I think your stories really feel like—these people feel lived in and real. Or at least to me anyway as a reader.

Something else that I really love that you do is all of your community organizing, all of the stuff that you do for the people in San Francisco and just generally, that you have this pull to like, bring people together. So I wanted to ask a little bit about that, how you got involved in that to start with, but yeah, just kinda what it means to you.

Charlie Jane Anders: When I first moved to San Francisco over 25 years ago, I just got involved in volunteering for stuff and in time turned into organizing stuff because that's just what happens. And I don't think I've ever had a division in my head between, oh, there's the part of my life where I'm writing and it's just like me sitting and writing there's this part of my life where I'm doing community stuff.

I think they always blur together because I think of writing as being—this sounds cheesy, but being in community with people. Like, writing doesn't exist in a vacuum. Writers are in community with each other, authors are in community with readers. We're all in community with each other.

And so when I'm organizing a literary event, like I'm organizing a reading, and we're bringing together authors who are sharing their work, and yes, of course that's fostering this kind of community, but also when I'm organizing like the Trans Nerd Meetup or the Bookstore and Chocolate Crawl or other stuff I've helped to organize, it's all about like hopefully strengthening community and bringing people together.

And again, that was the thing about Strange Horizons, it was so great, is that it did feel like a community. Especially when you would go to these tea parties that they would have at Wiscon, or when you would like interact online with a bunch of the other Strange Horizons contributors and with the crew at Strange Horizons. It felt like a little family, it didn't just feel like, oh, this is a magazine that published me one time.

It felt like, oh yeah, I'm part of something really cool.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's like a—my husband is a San Francisco Giants fan, and there's a saying in the Giants where it's like, "once a Giant, always a Giant," and I feel like that's a Strange Horizons spirit as well. Once you're in this family, you're always part of this.

Charlie Jane Anders: Ah, I love that. That's great.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

So thank you so much for joining us. Before I let you go, is there anything that's new or forthcoming that you might wanna plug or promote?

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah, I have a novel coming out in August called Lessons in Magic and Disaster. It's about a young witch who teaches her mother how to do magic. She teaches her mom to be a witch, and she's also a grad student who is uncovering the secrets of a mysterious book from 1747.

It definitely uses a lot of the muscles that I developed writing for Strange Horizons. It has that intense focus on relationships, and on how stories change over time. So yeah, I'm excited to share it with the world. Lessons in Magic and Disaster, August 19th.

Kat Kourbeti: Awesome. We'll look forward to that and thank you so much for taking the time to chat to us.

Charlie Jane Anders: Yeah, it's my pleasure. Have a great rest of your day.

In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, we present a soundscaped reading of Jordan Kurella's poem, 'this tree is a eulogy', and afterward Kat Kourbeti chats to Jordan about his writing process, the wonders of New Weird fiction, and the magic of writer friendships.

Links and things:

• Want to leave us a happy birthday message? Click ⁠here to record an audio message⁠, and ⁠here for video⁠.
• Join our ⁠Patreon⁠ for early episode access, or donate through any other way to hear your name and message in our next episodes.

Episode show notes:

• For the poem reading:
  • Soundscape by Michael Ireland.
  • Music credit: 'Reawakening' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au
  • Narration by Jordan Kurella.
• Follow Jordan Kurella on Bluesky, or check out his website.
• Read Jordan's work in our archives, including his poem 'this tree is a eulogy'.
• Pre-order Jordan's upcoming novella, The Death of Mountains.
• Find more links to his work, along with everything else we talked about today, peppered throughout the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello, Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres. Today's guest, Jordan Kurella, was first published with us in 2019 and has since gone on to garner nominations all up and down the genre space, loads of publications, a short story collection, a forthcoming novel, question mark? All sorts of things.

We're super happy to have you here. Welcome Jordan.

Jordan Kurella: Thank you. Thank you.

Kat Kourbeti: We were just having a bit of a chat just before starting recording about shared experiences of London, and yeah, it's not changed that much since you were here, I don't think, except it got more expensive.

Jordan Kurella: I'm sure it got more expensive. It was expensive when I was there. I was living on the American dollar and everything was two to one. If you wanted anything, it was twice as many dollars as it was pounds.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, when I first moved here it was very much [the same]. I lived on the euro, and it was, I think, one pound was a euro sixty, or something like that, and it was like... a bad time. On your student budget, it's like, everything shrinks like, "ah, I see." But books were cheap, which was great for me.

Jordan Kurella: The only thing that was cheap was travel, because you could just go. I explained to people here in the States that, you go to any country in Europe and it's, you go to Paris, or you go to Vienna, or you go to this place and Paris is just as far away from where I am as Pittsburgh or Detroit or Indianapolis. They're like, wait, what? But then you explain to people in Europe that going to Cleveland is as far away as going to Germany to them. And they're like, "but I'm in the same state."

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: And they're like, wait, what?

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, truly. Us Europeans often make fun of Americans for your sense of like, "oh, it's just a four hour drive, whatever." And I'm, like, four hours?! I'm not getting in a car for four hours for anybody. And it's very much like, when the distances are that large, or in our case, when they're that small, your sense of what is a worthwhile trip gets analogous, like it will shrink and it will expand accordingly.

Jordan Kurella: The biggest thing I miss from Europe is trains.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I'm about to—I have booked my first Amtrak ticket. So I'm intending to go to Seattle Worldcon, and I'm going to go from Seattle down to Vancouver, Washington to see some family. So that's going to be my first Amtrak experience. I'm kind of excited. Is that weird?

Jordan Kurella: It's terrific. I took an Amtrak in the way before times from Chicago to Colorado. That was fun.

Kat Kourbeti: I've heard that the views on that are amazing. So yeah, I can't imagine.

So welcome to the podcast. You are a prolific short story writer and you dabble in some longer form stuff, so I wanna hear about the different kind of genres that you write in. You do a little bit of horror, a little bit of this and that, but yeah what's the general space that inspires you?

Jordan Kurella: Mostly like weirder, not... My best friend calls it "normal stuff". So it's like the new weird, dark fantasy and horror. I started off writing for publication in horror, but I'm not as efficient, I don't think, in horror, as I am at new weird and dark fantasy.

I think I like a little bit more hope in my fiction, and horror has hope in it, and I like to say that you can't write that genre without hope. I learned how to write all dark fiction by reading the RPG manual Dread, which is the RPG game that uses Jenga. And the biggest line that I took from that was that all fiction, whether dark or dark fantasy, weird, or horror, basically has to have hope, because otherwise you're just writing for the sake of freak out. Right? The idea of "the darker you go, the thinner the thread of hope is"—if you're not writing for hope, then why are you writing? So why are you playing a game? Why are you creating a game?

Every time I try to write in that darker horror vein, I always end up writing dark fantasy, or like new weird. I think Evan: A Remainder, which came out in Reactor in January 2024, I tried to write it as a horror story, but it was too funny. All my beta readers were like, this is too funny. It doesn't work as this. So I created it as a contemporary fantasy, newer weird story and it worked then. And that's what usually happens, I'm trying to write something scary and ends up being too funny or too fantastical and too hopeful.

Kat Kourbeti: I mean, is that a bad thing?

Jordan Kurella: Yes, but when you have too many jokes in your scary story it creates a dissonance, I think, for a lot of my crit partners and some editors. That's what's come back to me. But like, when I wrote All Her Rows of Teeth, which was definitely a scary story that was very unsettling, these are just my two more recent examples which are different, they both involve transgender characters, transmasc characters. That came out in Three-Lobed Burning Eye in July, it has some humor in it, but much less than the Reactor Evan: A Remainder story. So that actually worked as a horror story. The editor, Andrew, basically said this was terrifying and frightening and disturbing.

I was like, "oh, thanks. Gee, cool."

Kat Kourbeti: I find that a lot of horror writers tend to be very sweet people. Just, you know, "oh thank you so much!" But everything inside my brain is terrifying.

Jordan Kurella: Every time I show my best friend who's not in publishing, he works in factories, like I show him something and then he goes, "this is totally not normal. Congrats, you did it!" I'm like, thanks, man.

Kat Kourbeti: We aim to freak you out.

Jordan Kurella: Mm hmm.

Kat Kourbeti: So "new weird" can be quite a nebulous term, I think, but a lot of people have a sense of it. I certainly think I understand what the boundaries are, but there's also a vagueness to that. What would you say especially from your own writing constitutes new weird?

Jordan Kurella: This goes way back to 2015, the way back. When I first started getting into like, I'm going to write for publication, my friend, also not in publishing, but a big reader, said, "have you read the Area X Trilogy?" They said, "the writer is coming to town, and I think you would like to read this book and then go see his talk." And Jeff VanderMeer had not yet won the Nebula for the Area X Trilogy.

So I read Annihilation in two hours, which I do not recommend because that will really mess up your brain. And then I read Authority in two days. And then I read Acceptance in four days. So clearly, I like these books, a lot, and it totally changed—I was like, you can do this? You can write stuff like this? And Authority is one of my favorite genres of "the office as a liminal space". Because when we go to an office place for work, we are not who we are, like code switching to the extreme, especially if you're a stranger sort of person, you're not like, "I wear button up shirts all the time, and I do the normal human thing". The office is a liminal space.

Severance is also one of my favorite shows. Authority is one of my favorite books. And then Karin Tidbeck, who wrote Amatka and The Memory Theater, is also a terrific author of the new weird, right? Bogi Takács is another terrific author of the new weird. R.B. Lemberg, a terrific author of the new weird. These authors are basically like, lifting up what is the new weird for me.

I read The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed last year. I wouldn't call it new weird, but the way that it's written in its low and terrific way of telling a story, and the way that the language changes based on Alefret's state of mind, gives me that sort of unsettled feeling, and I think that's what the new weird means to do, is that it means to not scare you, it means to not comfort you, it means to not dragon you. And I hate to say that, 'cause not all fantasy has dragons, "it means to not dragon you" as in, create a sense of wonder in you, like fantasy does. It means to not transport you to another world like science fiction does, but it means to create a place where you are unsettled and uncomfortable, yet intrigued. That's what I think the new weird does. You are unsettled and uncomfortable, yet intrigued.

Kat Kourbeti: I love that. It definitely tracks for everything kind of 'new weird' that I've read. And it's kind of a fun place to be emotionally when you're reading, because it's like both liminal and otherworldly, like there's something familiar about it that you can latch on to, but then...

Jordan Kurella: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: It's not fabulism, because fabulism is one thing, but magical realism is another thing, which is not for white people to write, and I will die on that hill. It's not magical realism, but it has to be unsettling in its own way.

Kat Kourbeti: I think some of the stuff you've published with us actually has that feeling like the poem as well, I think that you published with us—

Jordan Kurella: this tree is a eulogy.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, that kind of has a sense of unsettling strange feeling, and poetry lends itself to that, I think, quite readily. But what was your inspiration around the poem?

Jordan Kurella: So that was published in the criticism issue in 2022. I was thinking about the Giving Tree and the idea of permanence, right? There's graffiti, which can be painted over and painted over. And there's the idea of sidewalk carving, which is more permanent than that. But there's the idea of the Giving Tree, which constantly gave and gave, but there's the idea of carving your initials in something living, which is then a bastardization and a painful thing. The Giving Tree was like, I'm going to give all this to you, but then you have taken so much from me. So it's also a relationship that's only one way, but also it's so painful for the person that is constantly being taken from. So that was the whole point of 'this tree is a eulogy'.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it's beautiful, but also yeah, there's something in that pain that we can see, that feeling that's permeating. I find spec poetry very interesting because of the inherent nature of poetry to create imagery and enhanced metaphors, that just give that opportunity to make those metaphors and those images really speculative.

What has your experience been, like, dabbling in poetry and then having output in that? Tell me about it.

Jordan Kurella: I went to a undergrad university that's known for its poets. They even had a mug that basically said, "we do poetry like Ohio State does football". I have that mug, but it's so faded. It was a small liberal arts college in Ohio, and I wrote poetry because that's what you just did at this college. You sat on a bench and you wrote poems, because that's just what you did. They actually have a Poem In Your Pocket day at this college and everything. It's just bananas. You just do poetry there.

I started off writing poetry, and I actually have a whole book just full of poems I wrote at this college. I actually published a poem in another small zine that I started at that college, and then I finished in like, 2021. But speculative poetry—I was talking at Gen Con about this, what is speculative poetry? And it's basically, like, the metaphor is the same, because I talk about lit poetry too, because lit poetry is all about metaphor; it's about taking the power words and making the metaphor out of it. But with speculative poetry, the metaphor is more like, how far can the imagination get you? Because you're not just doing the metaphor within life. You're doing a metaphor within space, within dragon, within... How far can the imagination take you? And that's why speculative poetry is so hard to define.

I edited the Mercurial issue of Apparition Lit, and we actually ended up taking one more poem than Apparition Lit normally takes, because we had such terrific entries of poetry that submission period. We had one on games. We had one on resistance. We had two on spiritual animals, like basically of religion. It was incredible. It came out in May of 2024. It's so hard to define, but when you know it and you read it, you can see what's going on.

Kat Kourbeti: I think we're in fact in a golden era for speculative poetry, showcased by the fact that there's a Hugo this year that people are now reading poetry for and like, just opening up that potential of what could constitute a speculative poem? The answer is loads of things. It's very exciting.

Jordan Kurella: I was talking to Brandon [O'Brien], the poet who's being honored at the guest of honor at Worldcon, he was the one who was running this GenCon panel. "What is speculative poetry?" And he is terrific. I have his Can You Sign My Tentacle book, and it's one of the best spec books of poetry that I've read. It's just incredible.

Kat Kourbeti: He's actually the person interviewed right before you, so this episode will go out just after his.

Jordan Kurella: I just, I—he's just incredible.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, he really is, and it's wonderful to talk to this many people who were published on Strange Horizons with poems. We are one of the few markets that have always put poetry in the foreground of what we do, and there's just so much, like, golden stuff to find within our archives, including your stuff. It's great to hear like, people's different takes on what led them to writing poetry with speculative elements and all of that, and just making that part of their writing journey.

Jordan Kurella: I think starting off with poetry as early and as poorly as I did helped with writing fiction. I read a lot of poetry in high school and college, my major was in literature in my second language. I took poetry classes in high school and college in French, and then I took Russian poetry in translation. I think if you read a lot of poetry, you can understand how better to construct short fiction. Long fiction... Maybe not long fiction, because I'm too good at word economy. I don't know.

You can be better at constructing shorter sentences because you get rid of so many words. That's just a thinky thought that I have.

Also it took me longer to get a poem published in Strange Horizons than it did to get me a story. More submissions than it took me to get a story.

Kat Kourbeti: That's interesting.

Jordan Kurella: I looked through before this interview.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, so what was that like then in terms of numbers of submissions? First of all what was your relationship to Strange Horizons as a reader before you even submitted? What was your kind of impression of the magazine?

Jordan Kurella: So I always thought it was like, too cool for school, right? I was like, Oh, God, these guys are great. I loved reading it because like, you know, I was talking about how I loved Jeff Vandermeer and Karin Tidbeck and all those things. And I was like, these stories are so terrific. Early on in my writing for publication, I read a lot of stories by people who also critiqued stories, like Maria Haskins, Charles Payseur and other people like that. And I said, the reason why these people are good at writing short fiction is because they read a lot of short fiction.

So I read like a story a day, and I always loved when it was Strange Horizons Day. But then when I slushed for Apex for about a year, and this is strange, because a lot of the stories I sent up to the editors would get rejected, and then they'd get published in Strange Horizons. I was thrilled to see these stories come to life in Strange Horizons. And actually, one story that I rejected from Apex, got published in Strange Horizons, and I cried that day. I cried that day because I thought about that story every day after I rejected it, and I've thought about it since, and sometimes I go back and read it.

Kat Kourbeti: Can I ask what story that was?

Jordan Kurella: I don't remember the title, because I haven't read it in a couple of years, but I was wrong to have rejected it. Sometimes you make a wrong call. I hate to say this, but sometimes you make a wrong call. But I was so thrilled. A week after, I was like, oh, I made the wrong call... But you can't take it back.

But I was so happy that it got a great edit, or the author did some revisions. And I was like, "oh, this is even better than when I read it." And I was, oh, don't remember the author's name.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, that's so lovely to hear though. That you had that victory moment of "I recognize the quality of that story, and clearly somebody else did too."

Jordan Kurella: There's three or four stories that I remember succinctly sending up to the editors at Apex, and they got rejected and then they ended up in Strange Horizons, and I was just so thrilled. Maybe there's more of an overlap than we thought.

Kat Kourbeti: The Venn diagram.

Jordan Kurella: But also it just shows that this is my taste, right? So that was my experience with Strange Horizons as a reader also, but also as a lover of fiction.

Kat Kourbeti: So then the first thing that we have from you was a short story, in fact. Which is The Wind Whispers Secrets to the Sea. Which is a very interesting, strange little story. I don't know, would you class this as new weird? Cause I wouldn't say that it's like horror or anything, but there is something vaguely menacing about it.

Jordan Kurella: It's new weird. And it's written in first person plural.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: And the character, the narrator is All Four Winds.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh.

Jordan Kurella: Yeah. Basically, the narrator goes through as All Four Winds and has relationships with other elements. That story came to me as a shower thought completely full, and I had to run out of the shower, towelling off, and type it completely. I showed it to some crit partners and they're like, this is done. I've had like maybe two other stories come to me that way as full shower thoughts; one was a story that got published in Apex a while ago, and another was published in Small Wonders last year. It's so weird, but so wild when a lightning strike happens and you can't get it out of your head, and you just got to write it.

Everyone said, send it to Strange Horizons. And I'm like, "no, they're too big a deal. I can't." But then I looked through my rejections from Strange Horizons, and I realized I had sent four things. And three out of four had been signed by the editors. And so I'm just like, maybe there's a chance. So I sent it off and it got accepted in 23 days. The story is less than 950 words long. It's so short. Anaea Lay did a great job podcasting it. It was the first story my family read, and it's very sexy. I threw my phone across the room, when I found out that they read it.

Kat Kourbeti: I can imagine that.

Jordan Kurella: The first person plural was something that I had wanted to explore. So the novella I have coming out in March has a perspective of a mountain, who is an ecosystem, and she talks in first person plural.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I did have questions about the first person plural. It's so rare because you do need something to anchor that to. There needs to be like a reason; in the case of the mountain, it's an ecosystem, so fair enough. But the Four Winds as a character... talk to me through that inspiration in the shower, just thinking "Hey, what about...? What if...?" Yeah, how did that happen?

Jordan Kurella: So usually I get a first line. It doesn't leave me alone for days, unless it's like a lightning story like this one was. The line will just come to me. I'll be like, washing dishes. It's like, I'm here. And so it won't leave me alone.

But this one was like, the first line is "our last husband was so hot, he burned the house down." And I was just like, okay, that's good. And I don't remember what the next one is, but the whole thing just started going, and so I was just like, I got to get out of here and I just wrote the whole thing down. Sometimes when I start writing the first line, the next six paragraphs pour out. I go to my computer and I start writing and the next like, eight pages pour out.

I'm a discovery writer, or pantser, as they say. And I'm just like, "oh, I didn't know this character was the Four Winds until I got to the end." So I revised it, and then brought out the fact that she's the Four Winds in the story. And I don't know if that's obvious, but to me it was, and the new weird is nebulous, that unsettling yet intriguing sort of thing. It doesn't need to be told .

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Oh, that's so cool. I do love lightning stories like that. Sometimes it be that way. I have a—I talk about this story often enough on this podcast. I think I've mentioned it a couple of times because I'm sitting on it, cause I think it's a Strange Horizons story. It's been rejected from all the other major ones, including Apex, but that story came to me in a dream, wholesale, including third person and then also first person because it's two different perspectives.

And for some reason, as I was writing it down, I was like, it doesn't make sense for both perspectives to be the same. I don't know why, I've never done this before, mixing up perspectives like this, but to me it just completely made sense. And before I could send it to Strange Horizons, I got the position here on the podcast, and we can't submit fiction while we're on the team. I'm like so convinced, because it's got that like, weird strangeness that Strange Horizons often is known for, especially in the fiction side. The speculative elements are, I would say, on the low side, but it came to me in a dream, and, like, when does that happen.

Jordan Kurella: My dream stuff is always, if I wake up and write something on a pad of paper, it's like "tuna socks." Yeah. Doesn't work.

Kat Kourbeti: Go figure. Totally.

Interesting that the fiction side, four rejections and then an acceptance is not a bad ratio. I think that's pretty okay. But then what happened with the poetry? Like how many rejections is a lot?

Jordan Kurella: I've gotten one poem accepted and I probably should have twenty five, but I don't metric it.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: And I need to say this: every single poem, every single story, every single essay has to find the right editor, has to find the right market, has to find the right person that loves it enough for it to sit in the right issue for the right magazine.

It's never personal. Even a personal rejection is not "I hate this. You suck. Goodbye." I don't take it personally when someone's like, "no, thank you." Because I've worked in slushing and like, they don't hate you. It's just not the right time for this.

Okay. No big deal. I'll just send it again. I'll send the same story or the same poem somewhere else, because that's what you got to do. 25 poem rejections is no big deal. It doesn't mean that you're better if you get accepted in less time, or worse if you get accepted in more time, it just means you didn't hit that right moment, right time. It's all about luck. Sometimes.

Kat Kourbeti: But the journey is interesting, though, still, that it took that long to find the right poem. Or perhaps, the poem to find the right editors.

Jordan Kurella: I'm not as good at poetry as I am at short story. I just admit that. I talk to my other poet friends and I'm like, I have no idea what I'm doing.

Kat Kourbeti: I feel like poetry is nebulous like that, though. I think for a lot of people it's just like, "oh, I don't know, I wrote this thing. Shrug."

Jordan Kurella: I can revise poetry. When I was editing poetry for Apparition Lit, I could be like, "hmm no, this is too many stanzas of the same thing, and we need a break here." And I can send it to the poet and they're like, "oh, you're absolutely right. You're so good at this!" and I'm like "yeah, but I can't write a poem."

But, yeah, I can edit it. I can help somebody with critting their poetry, but I can't—I don't know what I'm doing.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Go figure. I kind of like that though. The sense of like, "I know what's right, I can see what's right in other people's work." I think that's often the case that we're too close to our own stuff and we can't quite see past what we've put down on the page. It's why crit partners are great. It's why writers groups are great, because you get to see your work from other people's perspectives before it's even out somewhere. It's important to maintain that level of slight distance if you can.

So how was your experience working with the Strange Horizons editors, because you've worked with both the fiction and poetry teams. What was that like for you as a writer?

Jordan Kurella: It was absolutely terrific. I love it. I absolutely love the experience.

Funny story though: my email client ate my final edits of my short story. And I was like, "should I query? I feel like I should have heard something by now..." And I got a panicked email 2 days before the story was published, like, "why haven't you returned these edits?" It's like at midnight. I was like, "I never got them! I never got them." And then we were just emailing back and forth and they're like, "can you make it?" And I was like, "it's too many changes to make. I don't have time." All because the email clients ate several emails.

And so now, lesson learned, I query! Literally the email client was just like [hand gestures in the air], right? They hadn't gotten anything from me, I hadn't gotten anything from them, and they were in my contacts! But. Very understanding, terrific, wonderful. That's why I do love working with them because they're like, no, it's okay. I'm like, thank gosh. Thank gosh. Thank gosh.

But like the poetry editors were wonderful to work with, the fiction editors were wonderful to work with, the podcast team is wonderful to work with. Absolute dream. And I'm friends with some of the former editors , Vajra and Vee, and like, yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: I think it's a wonderful relationship that builds between people who work together to bring out something from one another. Whether that's an editor and a story or a poem. In my case, I've built friendships with the people whose stories I podcasted. Whether it was here or like, stuff I've narrated elsewhere. There's a genuine connection between like, I loved your work and I'm glad that it found a home.

Have you felt this as an editor as well?

Jordan Kurella: I felt this. I've only edited the one thing, but it's one of my favorite things that I did, that keep on, and I feel like I don't talk about it. Because I edited the magazine and it was such a wonderful thing to be asked, to edit this issue of Apparition Lit, and it came out and then I had to have a major surgery. I felt so bad because it keeps on getting shunted to the back of my mind, but I guest edited this thing. It was one of my favorite accomplishments that I had last year, and the stories were so great. I'm blanking on all of them right now, because of course, I'm talking about it. So I can't remember anything, but working with the team was great.

I'm so sad that the magazine shut down because it's one of those I always wanted to be published in. Then I ended up guest editing an issue. It was beautiful. Every single story that I passed up to the editors, got published. I'm curious about the writers' careers now. And with all the stories and poems that published in that material, I feel like I'm curious about their career now. I'm an expert of what is happening over there.

I was talking to my friend about this, about one of the best things about being a reader who became a writer, is that you can potentially become friends with some of the people whose books you love. And it's just so nice.

Kat Kourbeti: It is so nice.

Jordan Kurella: So nice.

Kat Kourbeti: None of my fiction's been published yet, but a lot of the friendships I've made in the space, whether it's through cons or podcasting things, it's just been really delightful how excited people get for each other's stuff. It's absolutely just the friendliest community, because we all go through the same hardship and have the same burning need to tell a story, and then we face all the same hurdles and all the same like, processes that publishing, you know, is what it is. It's just natural for people to be like excited about each other's like, "hey, you did it! You made it. Yay!"

Jordan Kurella: Yeah, like, John Wiswell—I was co-writing with him when I was writing a book that I thought I should write because it was very important. I hated every single bit of writing this book. And John, I've told this story several times, but John was also like, "why don't you write something that you want to write? Like, why are you writing this book?" I'm like, "you don't like it?" He was like, "write something that you want to write, that's fun."

So I wrote I Never Liked You Anyway, instead, and I had a great time. I was like, this is everything that I love in one book. And I'm just like, why am I not writing things that I have fun writing, because life is too short to write things that are dark and broody. And you should write it. And so like, John was one of my friends since like, the beginning of my career and it's just so cool to see, all his accomplishments.

Sitting next to Sam, she wrote The Rabbit Test, which won the Nebula, I was sitting next to her at the Nebula ceremony between her and Ai Jiang, right, who was also nominated for short story, and she was like, "I'm not going to win," and her name gets called, and Sam is livetweeting the whole ceremony and we're like, "Sam, get up." It's Samantha Mills. And she's so surprised and so gracious and it's so cool because Samantha Mills and I started publishing at the same time. One of those things when, you're at the same career trajectory and someone surpasses you, you just be like, "look at them go!"

It's so wonderful because these are your friends and they're doing so great.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I feel that way about seeing all of the other Greek SFF authors who are doing incredible stuff. Cause growing up in Greece, you can dream like, oh yeah, someday I'd like to publish books or whatever. But seeing people do it, seeing people win awards with stories set in your hometown... What? That's Natalia Theodoridou, by the way, who is also a Strange Horizons author. And it's just one of those like, just super proud moments where not only is it possible, but look at them go. And I'm so proud to know these people and to cheer them on. Cause it's like, who'd have thought we'd be here?

Jordan Kurella: Avra Margariti is one of my favorite short fiction writers.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes.

Jordan Kurella: Also of my favorite poets. They're amazing. The chapbook that they wrote about the moon, I literally sat outside, it was 3 or 7 degrees, and I read the entire thing. It's incredible. I was so cold and I had my glove off so I could like, scroll up and my hands were so cold, but I read the entire thing. 20 pages.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: And they sold it for like, how much you could pay. And I paid 7 dollars.

Kat Kourbeti: I read it on a plane.

Jordan Kurella: And I sat outside for 40 minutes and just read this entire thing, and I just, I talked about it all the time. It was so good. But Avra, their grasp of the English language, which is not their first language, is just beyond the beyond, and enviable actually, as a English as a first language speaker, and it's just phenomenal. It's one of those things where I'm watching Avra's career being like, "when are you going to be like, one of the most celebrated authors?"

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, it's going to happen. I firmly believe this. I think it's because they work in short form that they're building a body of work and that's admirable and good for itself, but I feel like eventually they'll get stuck into a novel, and then it's over for all of y'all.

Jordan Kurella: All of us. I'm excited it, right? Yeah. So incredible.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, we're fixing up an interview with everyone I've mentioned, because they've all been published on Strange Horizons, and so I'm really excited to actually pick their brains about this stuff, so it's gonna be great.

So yeah, with your short fiction, then moving on to novella length, now moving on to novels, what has been your experience trying out the different formats? Because it is a different skill set, and it is a different kind of way of thinking about each kind of story, and like, all these lengths lend themselves to different things. What has your experience been, working your way up to longer length stuff?

Jordan Kurella: I have written four novels. I haven't sold any novels. I've done a novella, which I really like. I get how the novella works. I get how a novelette works. Novelettes are my favorite thing to read because they're just like, I can read them while I'm eating dinner. I can read them while I'm waiting for a doctor's appointment. They're just the perfect length for waiting for something. You got 30 minutes before your friend is gonna arrive? Novelette, you're done. Right? So it's such a great length. Basically, it's like an episode of a TV show. I probably read 20 of them last year.

But, novelettes I can do, and novels... Last year I started 3 novels, I believe. The year was so bananas with emergencies, I would get 30 or 40K in, and then something would happen, and I'd get back and be like, "I have no memory of this place." I don't like any of this. And I'd just scrap the whole thing. Because I'd be like, "I have a whole different idea of how this has to go."

For novels, for me in particular, I need momentum, which is something I have to change, because there's no more momentum in this economy. So you just have to push through, so I think I actually have to outline, which is something I don't like to do because my brain goes, "I already wrote that. Thank you. Bye."

People have called the novella a long short story or a short book, and that's not what it is. It is its own animal. Each length is its own animal. Your flash is its own animal. It's not a short story because it has to exist as a complete entity in its own word count. So novella has different pacing rules, different structural rules, like, how many elements can go in this, within the word count requirement? And I will die on this hill. Yeah, because if you write a novella as a long short story, or a short novel, you're gonna end up getting people wanting for what they missed.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, so that's what I find fascinating, just from a writer's perspective, just the craft element of it, because of those different structures, because you're constrained by the word count. And so, it's interesting to me. I always, very naively, sit down and I'm like, "I think I have an idea for a short story", and I sit down to write it and it runs away and it becomes a book.

That's how I've ended up with multiple works in progress, just like sitting there. Cause every time that I get a new idea, I'm like, "okay, yeah, like I could whip this 5,000 word short story out". And then, like 15K in, you're like, "I haven't even introduced anybody properly... so, I don't think this is a short story anymore."

It's just fascinating to me, being aware of that on the outset, when you're sitting down to write. I don't know what your process is, and you can walk me through it—is it very much deliberately, "I'm sitting down to write a short thing now, therefore I'm thinking about this in these terms," or does that emerge as you are drafting?

Jordan Kurella: I usually get about 3K in and go "oh, this is a "this" book." Right? Cause about 3K in, I start going... like, this is gonna be a terrible analogy. So when you're putting stuff in a pot, making broth, right? You're making like a chicken noodle soup, right? That's got one thing. Then you start putting a lot of stuff in it. And then eventually you're making either a stew or a chili or whatever. And the more thick it becomes, that's a novel; the less stuff in it, you've got a novella; less stuff in it, you've got a novelette; less stuff in it, you've got a short story. But a broth is basically an idea.

So the more stuff you added to it, the more page count and more word count you have. This is a terrible analogy, but that's how I'm thinking of it. That's the analogy I'm going with to make it more relatable.

Kat Kourbeti: I don't think it's a bad analogy at all. I would say that kind of makes sense to me. If anything, there's probably a little clip in there that just speaks to me a lot about feeling your way around a thing, which, like, in cooking too, sometimes you got to feel your way around what you're making and you don't know until you're about halfway through and you're like, I think...?

And so maybe it's helpful to someone. I think it's certainly sounds like it'd be helpful to me to kind of feel my way around a thing as it's happening, and just go, yeah, I think this is a "this" length, yeah.

Jordan Kurella: Process is so individual, right? So we need to know our own processes in order to figure out how we're going to do a thing, but also process changes over time as you’re writing with your life events, and, you know, personal events, and current events, and living situation events and everything else, so you have to allow for the process to be able to change and more as you change, as the world changes, as your life situation changes, as your health situation changes, because you can't keep on hammering the same process when all the tools are different.

I have to start outlining because I can't keep on trying to do a novel in this situation. But I am always the kind of guy who writes a short story and it's a suitcase. It's a stuffed suitcase, and the thing going, "look how many thoughts I can fit in this thing!" There's a thing called the MICE Quotient, right? And I'm always like, yeah, but what about MICEs Quotient? There's so many mice in my mice quotient.

And then there's all these rules to writing; you have to write a short story linearly; you have to do this and you have to do that. Rules are guidelines. They're like guardrails for people just starting. And then you figure out, I don't need this one, I don't need this one, I don't need this one. You figure out which ones work for you. I'm going to say something I say all the time, which is "fashion is something that people tell you what to do, but style is something you have".

Rules are something that people tell you what to do, but style is your own, in writing. You take out the rules that you don't need and that's your style.

Kat Kourbeti: I really like the guardrail kind of approach, where that exists to be helpful. And a lot of the time, it's not given to you in a prescriptive way. But people certainly take it as prescriptive, even such advice as the MICE quotient, which I think is super helpful to think about.

I took a class by John Wiswell a couple of years back about 'wrangling the short story', and he talked about the MICE quotient like, yeah this is helpful, you can use it with the math and the spreadsheet if you're that kind of guy, and that's fine, but you don't have to, it's not that strict. It's just meant to be a helpful thing for you to think about while you're doing your draft in whatever way.

Personally, I am an outliner, but I've also over-outlined certain things and ended up feeling like, "oh I've written it now, so it's not fun to me to draft, because I've already put it down on the page. What else is there for me to do?" But the outline wasn't a book, it was bullet points. So it wasn't ready to be read by anybody, certainly, and it had lost its luster for me to sit down and write with it. So you gotta find that sweet in-between spot where this is helpful, this is not. Fine.

I think we're all works in progress on that one.

Jordan Kurella: We're all works in progress, basically, just in general.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: It's just one of those things of like, the guardrail approach to training wheels approach, all that kind of stuff. We have to have the grace to let people—and that's what I think about with Strange Horizons is that, when I was thinking of "it is too cool for school, too shiny, too this," I was really limiting myself. Because when you think of a zine or a magazine or a publisher as "too cool for me," you're really limiting yourself and what you submit, because everybody gets rejected. But I loved this magazine, and I still love this magazine, I still read it all the time. The criticism section like, there was a terrific, by S. Qiouyi Li—Lu‚

Kat Kourbeti: S. Qiouyi Lu. Yes. Yeah.

Jordan Kurella: About Everything Everywhere All At Once.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes.

Jordan Kurella: —which totally—

Kat Kourbeti: Fantastic review.

Jordan Kurella: —just blew my mind, and it was longer than a typical piece than I read of criticism, but it was just like, incredible.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it was so personal and everything about like, their connection to the film. And I love the film anyway, but seeing it from the eyes of kind of the ideal target audience for this film, and seeing what they noticed about it, oh—I'm such a big S. Qiouyi Lu fan from that. I'm just like, anything they do, yes, please. They're incredible.

Jordan Kurella: There was that and the criticism that y'all do, there's fiction, the poetry, everything is such a great institution of a magazine. And the podcast and everything, just yeah, yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Aw, thank you. We do our best. What's been really interesting during these interviews is seeing how that impression that people have of us through the years, how that has changed or not changed, but also just kind of the stuff we do, the different departments, you know, we don't really have a hierarchy. Technically, we have a managing editor, but you can do whatever you want in your own department. You're left with making the choices that make the most sense to you. And it's interesting how we all kind of arrive at a similar conclusion, we all want to do similar things, without really talking about it.

Jordan Kurella: That's perfect.

Kat Kourbeti: Because I was a podcast guest recently on the Functional Nerds podcast, talking about Strange Horizons, and my managing editor, Romie Stott, posted about the episode saying, "oh yeah, I was nodding along. Like I love what they do. This is great." And it's like, Romie and I haven't talked about this very much. But it's great that what we're doing on the podcast resonates with the general vibe. So I'm super happy to hear from people who like, have been reading us for a long time and still have that good relationship with the magazine.

Thank you so much for taking the time. Is there anything that's forthcoming or recent, or both, that you might want to plug or promote?

Jordan Kurella: Yeah, The Death of Mountains comes out on March 31st from Lethe Press. The Death of Mountains is the entity that comes for a middling hill in the Appalachians who doesn't want to die. So to stave off the inevitable, she trades stories with the Death of Mountains to play the oldest game in the book with the entity of death. Publishers Weekly gave it a terrific review, and they called it "a fabulist tale with a strong world."

Kat Kourbeti: That's very exciting. Kind of A Thousand and One Nights, but with mountains.

Jordan Kurella: And it's set in the Appalachians.

Kat Kourbeti: And also has a fantastic cover. I love the cover for that already. It looks amazing.

Jordan Kurella: It was done by Inkspiral Design. The interior is also freaking terrific. I love the interior too.

Kat Kourbeti: Cool. So we'll look out for that, and where can we find you on the internet?

Jordan Kurella: So you can find me at jordankurella.com. I'm also at Blue Sky, @kurellian.bsky.social. Kurellian, like Orwellian, but Kurellian. That was a meme that somebody did. I was like, oh, that's awful, but I'm doing it.

And that's it. That's my only two places, because I have trust issues.

Kat Kourbeti: Keeping it short, and also yeah, just too many platforms, too much faff, like, we got stories to write. So that's fair enough.

So we'll look for you there, and thank you so very much for joining us, it's been a pleasure to talk to you.

Jordan Kurella: Thank you so much.

In this special episode of Strange Horizons at 25, Kat Kourbeti sits down with fiction editors Hebe Stanton and Kat Weaver, as well as poetry and administrative editor Romie Stott, to talk about some of the work we published last year, just as the Hugo nominations deadline draws close.

Links and things:

• Want to leave us a happy birthday message? Click ⁠here to record an audio message⁠, and ⁠here for video⁠.
• Join our ⁠Patreon⁠ for early episode access, or donate through any other way to hear your name and message in our next episodes.

Episode show notes:

• Read the full Azimuth post including all links to today's recommendations, plus some extras for good measure.
• Follow Romie Stott on Bluesky
• Read Hebe Stanton's SFF review blog
• Follow Kat Weaver on Bluesky
• Follow Kat Kourbeti on Bluesky

And of course, find a fuller list of what we talked about today as you read the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello Strangers, and welcome to a special episode of Strange Horizons at 25. I'm your host Kat Kourbeti, and while on this podcast we tend to talk about older works published during our 25 years of existence, it is early March and the Hugo nominations deadline is around the corner. So we wanted to bring some attention to some of the fiction and poetry that we published in 2024, to help nudge you to fill your Hugo Awards ballot and to get some insight into how our different departments work along the way.

I am here with a few of the editors of the fiction and poetry departments. Please introduce yourselves.

Hebe Stanton: Hi, I'm Hebe Stanton. I'm one of the fiction editors and I also sporadically blog about science fiction on my blog.

Kat Kourbeti: Which is a great blog, by the way.

Hebe Stanton: Thank you.

Kat Weaver: I'm Kat Weaver. I am also one of the fiction editors at Strange Horizons.

Romie Stott: And I'm Romie Stott. I'm one of the poetry editors, and I'm also getting over a pretty brutal cold. So I'm gonna be growlier and slower than usual.

Kat Kourbeti: That's okay. We're not looking for speed. We're looking for your insight. Thank you all so much for joining me today.

So first of all, this is a first on this podcast, to have some of the editors join in. First of all, I kind of wanna ask how was 2024 for you publishing wise?

I know that for a lot of magazines it's been difficult in the last kind of year or two with AI submissions and things like that. How has our submissions queue looked in the last little bit?

Hebe Stanton: I feel that because of the way the fiction department works, we open for very limited periods and have caps on our submissions, we're not really a good target for AI spammers. It's not really particularly a return on spamming to us. I think I've only actually seen one AI story since AI became a thing, which obviously we're very lucky about, 'cause it has been a major problem for other magazines obviously, but I dunno what it's like in poetry.

Romie Stott: We are open continuously. But I haven't noticed a big flood of AI submissions. I think our rate of submissions is pretty similar to what it's always been, but that rate is very high. We receive a lot of poetry submissions, and you can tell whether they're coming from people who read, not just our magazine, but like speculative fiction magazines in general.

We will also sometimes get huge influxes of poems where it's clearly a high school got an assignment or it got posted on a message board in a particular country, I will suddenly get a ton of submissions, because we are very friendly to international submissions, and we are very friendly to new poets and offer a fairly friendly amount of feedback.

We will not workshop your poem for you. That would cost money. We are volunteers working for free. But we always get a lot of submissions, and a certain percentage will be inappropriate, but still by people who are interested in showing us their poems. Like it's not people trying to get rich off of poetry because that doesn't happen.

Hebe Stanton: Did you you see your poetry submissions go up last year? Because certainly the last window we opened, we hit our cap extremely quickly. I think it was just over 24 hours, which has not happened before. And I dunno what's behind that really. I dunno if it's closures in other parts of the sector or, yeah. I just wondered if you'd seen something like that.

Romie Stott: No, I think we've seen a really similar level of submissions, but that's partially because of how high our submissions rate got during the pandemic. During all of the shutdowns, a lot of people were staying home writing poems, so we shot up and we've stayed that high.

Kat Kourbeti: Which is interesting and I would say it's probably like a net positive for poetry, generally speaking. But more work for you.

Romie Stott: I would say the internet in general yes, has been a boon for poetry, because it's very easy to share a poem online and it's very easy to read a poem, as a way to rejuvenate yourself while you're on a five minute break at work or while you're riding the bus. So yeah, I would say poems are being shared more broadly than I would ever have expected.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it's very cool. I don't know if any of you have heard the episode with Brandon O'Brien that at the time of recording was the latest interview, but he's been talking a lot about the fact that poetry can be accessible, and people tend to reach for that a little bit right now, which is nice.

Romie Stott: I'd say something that we're really starting to see in science fiction and fantasy awards as well, it's starting to be added to consideration for Hugos or Nebula or for membership in the SFWA. Poetry's kind of its separate literary thing, but now there's more of a "no, this is actually an important piece of writing that we care about". There's less of the, "I never read poetry". It used to be, you'd maybe have somebody sing a song in the middle of a story, but speculative poetry has really come into its own.

Hebe Stanton: I feel like the internet in general has been good for the accessibility of works that aren't novels in the sort of spec fic space. I always find it really nice when I'm talking about authors to my friends, and I'm like you can just go and read their work for free a lot of the time. And I think that it just really helped open up those other forms. Like obviously science fiction has already always been built on the short story, but it's just so much more widely accessible than a hard copy anthology or a hard copy collection. And I really like being able to introduce people to new authors and the possibilities of the short story form, which are very different to that of a novel.

Romie Stott: Yeah, it's a huge change from even, I'd say 10 years ago. Obviously Strange Horizons has been publishing in the online space for 25 years. And we have had other magazines come and go, but the discoverability has gotten better where you will see like short story roundups to where I don't necessarily have to be reading all of the magazines all the time. There are recommendation lists, there are things that go viral, and I can find them really easily.

Kat Kourbeti: Have you noticed, as editors that maybe some things get spikes of attention on Strange Horizons? Has there been stuff like that within the last year?

Hebe Stanton: To be honest, I'm not really on social media, so I dunno the answer to this question, but it certainly is nice when stories get picked up in roundups on places like Locus. And that's just, it's just very nice to be like, yes.

Kat Weaver: Yeah. I am also not super on social media very much, like I don't know when a story is receiving a lot of shares, but like I do try to make an effort if a story I've worked on or if an author I've worked with is promoting their story, I will repost it as well just to give them that extra boost, even though I'm not very online. I think first of all, it's nice to share something that you had a hand in working on, but then also to help promote the author.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, my favorite things that I've experienced is the kind of camaraderie that I have with some of the authors whose stories I've narrated, whether it's on Strange Horizons or elsewhere. There's like a, "Hey, I worked on this thing. It's not mine per se, but I helped make it into something." And we're always promoting that together. And that friendship that I have with some of the authors that I've worked with is really special.

I think the first story that I ever narrated for Strange Horizons, the author now lives in London. And so we were like, oh my God, you're here. We should hang out. On that note, Cat Aquino, we need to hang out. I hope you're listening.

I wanna ask, what is the timeframe for a story in Strange Horizons from slush to like publication? How far out are you guys working? Especially in fiction and poetry.

Hebe Stanton: At the moment in fiction, the timelines are quite short. So from when we accept a story, it might be a month, probably no more than that, that we're turning around the story.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. That's pretty great actually. But that means that you're probably reading constantly, and constantly kinda looking at things as they come in.

Hebe Stanton: Because we do it window by window, we're not constantly open. So it's a case of going through each batch of stories as they come in.

Kat Kourbeti: And is there anything—this is for Hebe and Kat in particular—is there anything in particular that you personally, as editors tend to look for in a story that makes you go, "ah, yes, this is for me".

Kat Weaver: So I think by now all of us editors, we have a very solid idea of our own tastes, but we also have an idea of our fellow editors' tastes. So sometimes we'll read a story and we'll bump it up to the rest of the editors and we'll be like, "this story wasn't for me, but this feels like one of you might be the person to work on this story".

Hebe Stanton: Yeah, I think for me, what I like is a sense of abundance. I like to feel that there's a created world or just the author's world or the character's world that I can enter into and feel that it's full. I personally love a slightly baggy story, although I know that's not everybody's taste on the team.

Kat Weaver: Yeah, I also enjoy long stories, reading them, but as far as editing goes, I tend to like stories that are very precise and considered, about both their use of language and their use of structure.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh, I love those words. Do you have an example of something that's precise and considered?

Kat Weaver: So that is an excellent lead in to I think one of the most interesting stories that I worked on structurally, it was Vermilion by Victor Forna published April 2nd 2024. And that one is, it's prose is extremely poetic, but the structure and how the characters progress on their journey, through one part of the planet to the other and the way it's broken up and the way the formatting, like the poetry of the narrators state, works with the blocks of text as they progress through this science fictional planet and the landmarks, was extremely interesting to me. And it does make the piece feel more poetic in a sense, almost too. Like you have these prose poems as you progress from one part of the planet to the other.

Kat Kourbeti: That's awesome. And yeah, very unique. I think we have a tendency at Strange Horizons to play around with that sort of thing. And I wonder if that's your kind of mark on that, 'cause those are a lot of the stories that I've enjoyed where it's like, something strange is going on here with the structure, or with the format, and it's unusual and I love those, so that's very cool.

What about you Hebe? We are moving into kind of the main part of the episode, which is recommendations and thoughts about various stories we published last year. It's a bit of a free for all.

Hebe Stanton: Yeah. So for me, the story that I wanna shout about is The Spindle of Necessity by B. Pladek, which I've told my friends that it is a story about transness as navigated through that one piece of media that only you really care about. Which I think is in the experience that a lot of people in science fiction have.

And I think what's wonderful about this story is that I guess it illustrates what I was talking about, the sense of abundance. It's so rich and complex. It's doing so many things on so many different levels. It's about that experience with a piece of media that you really love. And it's also about the questions that many queer people have about their identities and whether they're, quote unquote valid. And whether you can ever have that sort of external validation, that you are valid as a person. I just, every time I reread it, I see something new in it and it changes and I just think it's fantastic.

Kat Kourbeti: I wanna second that. I love that story very much. And is this something that you edited, Hebe?

Hebe Stanton: Yes it is.

Kat Kourbeti: Awesome.

Hebe Stanton: Yeah. And I think something that I really enjoyed was also the language of it, the relationship that the protagonist has to the piece of media by an author from the fifties who wrote gay fiction. She's a Mary Reynold character. It evokes that sort of wistfulness that I think you see in a lot of fiction from that period. And that sort of bittersweetness, that sort of melancholy is probably one of my favorite emotions to have when I'm reading a story.

Kat Weaver: I also want to give a shout out to I think my personal favorite story that I worked on last year which is Bride Butcher Doe by Lowry Poletti, that was 19th of August. And this one is a novelette. And we haven't published too many novelettes. I think there's only a couple others from this year. The other novelette is Aquarium for Lost Souls, I think it was, and then the third was Premee's story, By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars. That was Premee's fundraiser story drive. But Bride Butcher Doe, that one immediately caught me. I told a bunch of people about this story, I was just like, you guys have to read this unicorn story.

But what I love about it, first of all is its use of language is so contrasting. So you have almost three modes that the story is working in. You have this like really medicalized mode, cause the main character is working on like dissections and is a scientist. So you have that really medical voice, and then you also have the fantasy voice where you get like glimpses of oh, there's a king, there's a court, there's ladies and princesses. And then you also have this like modern humorous tone too, 'cause they're also all texting. The character listens to EDM. It's fascinating. All these registers that the story moves back and forth between, and that, even just beyond the subject matter, I thought that was just delightful.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes. And in fact, to go back to what you were saying earlier about novelettes, I love it when it turns out one of our stories is a novelette because it's just such a difficult length to publish. And so then when something comes along and it's like, oh, hey, it's over seven and a half thousand words... Love when we can place a story like that, it's really cool.

Romie, what about poetry now? As poetry editor, you're not the only one who's working on, like publishing poems. There's a handful of you. How do you guys navigate working together? I think you have more of a collaborative process in the poetry department, if I'm not mistaken.

Romie Stott: Actually we have an anti collaborative process.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh.

Romie Stott: We are each completely allowed to make our own decisions and nobody has any kind of override over it. We do not confer with each other at all. Yes, each of us we hand off reading different reading periods, and obviously we like and respect each other or we wouldn't be working together.

But we have to ultimately each trust our own sense of taste completely. And this kind of goes back to an earlier question that you were asking about, having a sense of when something goes viral or is popular. Aside from being one of the poetry editors, I am the administrative editor of Strange Horizons, which is a deliberately pretty vague title, but one of the things it means is I am the person who has access to the analytics. And I avoid looking at what's popular.

And part of that is laziness because most of the analytics tools are really geared toward people who are selling things online, who are selling products to be like, which T-shirt do we need to make more of? And we don't do that. So all of the tools you really have to fight with to actually get the information that I would want.

Plus the fact that we have readers that are reading our entire archive. Our five most popular pages from the last year were not published in 2024. One of them was published at the tail end of 2023.

So just if you're curious, our top five most popular pieces on the website in 2024 were:

• The Ghost Did What, from November 2023, which is about translation.
• Kirk Drift from 2017.
• Tomorrow is Waiting, from 2011.
• Good Hunting by Ken Liu from 2012.
• And Selkie Stories are for Losers by Sophia Samatar from 2013.

So things do keep getting read. So it's also, like, I would have to go through a lot of pages before I could figure out what from 2024 really hit.

But it's also an ideological idea, that we bring this group of editors together because of their taste. When I trust an imprint, when I trust a magazine, it's because I'm trusting the selections of the curators, and we run the poetry department that exact same way.

Essentially when we talk with each other, it will frequently be about something like, how to handle a bad response to a rejection, or how to format a particularly tricky poem because we're all also galleying our own poems, and poetry formatting is not really what HTML is optimized for. So we're frequently having to figure out workarounds to be like how do I get this to indent? How do I get it to change font size midway through? All of this kind of thing, while also still being accessible to screen readers.

So a lot of our chat is more technical, and otherwise we leave each other alone other than to be like, ah, good job. I liked that. So that does make it a little bit difficult for me to speak for the department as a whole.

I can mostly speak to the poems that I accepted myself and also some other poems that I'm just a fan of. Although this is a really exciting year in the sense that, 2025 is, I believe the first time a Hugo for poetry is going to be given out. I don't know the whole history of the Hugos. It might have happened and gone away before, but I think this is the first one.

Kat Kourbeti: I don't think there's ever been like a dedicated, this is the first time that it's been in the Hugo Awards. Other awards might have had a different relationship with the medium, but yeah, it is very exciting. It's very fun.

Romie Stott: Yeah, my usual very not helpful response is that "all of our poems are wonderful and you should read all of them". It's not like it takes that long.

Kat Kourbeti: I do want to stress, generally speaking, and I've put this in the text for the Azimuth post that will accompany this podcast is that it is very much not an endorsement of one thing over another. I know we're talking about specific poems and specific stories in this episode, and we will put some links to things, but it doesn't mean that any of the other works that we published over the last year are any less worthy of considerations.

Romie Stott: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: By all means go through the archive. Read whatever you want. It's all eligible, please, and thank you. We would love to see stuff on the ballot that's from here.

Romie Stott: And I am gonna give some suggestions. It is just, I think with poetry especially, it's similar to music in the sense of you read something and it connects with you, and it's about seeing that thing at that moment that you needed.

So one poem that I really loved was called Lotus Descends to Visit Nova. And that's also worth looking at just because it has a stunning illustration attached. And it's a longer poem; we often publish quite short poems, but it's a full poem that is the story of a character riding through a cyber punk underground train, but reminiscing about somebody that they miss. And it's just beautiful. All of the emotion is very felt, but also the imagery is outstanding. It does create its own world that you can escape into, which I think is a real triumph and is something that many of us turn to speculative fiction for, is being able to have this sense of entering another world. And this poem absolutely provides that. So I think, even if you're somebody who's not always interested in reading poetry this has substance to it, and I think would probably still appeal to you.

Another poem that I was impressed with this year is called The Lantern Runner. And again, it's a poem that does tell a story. It tells a pretty complex narrative with a beginning and a middle and an end, but it is doing it in a double sestina format. And the sestina as a form is one that basically you pick essentially like six words, that are repeating in different frequencies that are prescribed throughout the poem. So it has a sense of structure, and it has some degree of rhyme and it has a pretty intense rhythm to it. And so for somebody to be able to within that also tell a story that moves forward instead of just looping back on itself all the time is really wonderful. And it provides, in the case of this poem, a real sense of destiny, of here is somebody who was chosen to do this, and it is working through to the point when the prophecy thing happens. It's just an excellent use of a structure to reinforce an idea that's also important to the narrative. And again, it's just also impressive from a craft standpoint.

Another of the poems that I liked is called One Large Deep Fried Thistle Burr. It's not as flashy as the other two that I just mentioned. But it is just imagining a near future in which there is basically a disease that makes plants at large, really dangerous to eat, to where humans just can't really digest plants anymore. And how much of an adjustment that is, and how that means that instead of animal products being a luxury, plant products or this extreme luxury, to where this person is salivating just imagining even being able to eat a thistle, which is not something one would normally want to eat. And I think it's really well realized. Aside from the inherent science fiction story of it, which is interesting to consider, I think it connects with me emotionally because we're at a moment in the world, maybe we always are, but there's a sense of things that you relied on, maybe going away and maybe not ever coming back. And it's an indirect way of being able to think through some of the grief around that.

And along those lines, another poem that I personally found extremely comforting is called Interstellar Assistance. And that's a type of poem that is sometimes called a patchwork poem or a cento, or an assembly poem. It's all taken from lines in a manual of shipping distress signals that are then rearranged into a poem that's telling a story about a craft that's lost in an asteroid field, and that has significant mechanical damage and is calling to this other ship, which is radioing back, how they can find each other. And I find it so moving because it's sending this idea into the future and into this space of imagination, but it's also drawing on things that people have said to each other in disaster situations across decades. And it provides that handshake across time, that idea that there's always a way to call for help, and there's always people who are trained in how to respond, and that we can learn to be either of those.

And then I guess finally, the other three poems that I would mention are Gold Foil Experiment, which we often publish poems that are not about science fiction or fantasy, but are drawing on actual science that happened. So the gold foil experiment was an actual experiment, and as we often do, we are interested in a poem that relates that to someone's personal life and kind of makes it embodied and relevant and personal.

We also liked the poem, Why is the Forest Lonely? And I liked the poem The Same Fur Coat, which is one of the less expressly science fiction or fantasy poems that we have run. It's more of a slipstream piece of kind of the sense of when you find an object and are imagining its history and have a sense of its magic, but it is partially about the fantasies that you have for yourself or the fantasies of how you imagine the rest of the world.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. A lot of these sound incredible. And I haven't read all of them, so I will be checking these out. To go back to what you were saying earlier about your department not necessarily being focused on collaboration, that's very funny, 'cause that's what Brandon O'Brien thought you were doing. He was like, oh well, multiple poets would've read my work, so if they published me then, they all must have agreed. And actually it turns out it was probably just one person.

Romie Stott: With that said, we do actually have fairly similar tastes. I mean, we have different tastes; I always suggest not targeting an individual editor because again I respect the other editors very much, and part of the reason we don't have to confer very much is, again, we appreciate each other's differentness, but also, I love the stuff the other editors pick.

And like, there are several poets that it'll be like, oh, I just accepted a poem by this person. And the other person will be like, me too. And the other person will be like, I did also. So yeah, we do very frequently, yes, we do all like that poet. And if I see that somebody is submitting to us that has been accepted by another of the editors, I will give their work a closer look, because that's already a recommendation.

Kat Kourbeti: And would you say that that extends to editors before you joined the team, or you know from before?

Romie Stott: Yeah. Okay. Again, getting into the weeds of the way the submission software works. In Moksha, the submissions portal, we can see the submissions history of anybody who's submitting to us, and there is a little A that shows up next to their name if we've ever accepted them. That includes if they've been accepted by fiction. Like I can just see if Strange Horizons has published this person before. So it is impossible to avoid. Like we can all see it all the time. We always know, 'cause they have the A.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay. So yeah, so that does give you a little bit of a stamp of, somebody has trusted this person before, like their work. So that's cool. Thank you so much for that very cool list. We'll post the links to everything so people can go check that out.

Now back to fiction, 'cause I'm sure that the fiction editors here have more stuff to recommend, so please keep them coming. What's another one? You have another one that you would like to recommend, Kat?

Kat Weaver: Yeah. So I want to give a shout out to a story, one of the other editors who isn't here, Dante Luiz, he worked on a story called Nuca by Ana Hurtado. And that one is a fascinatingly written story, the poetry of it is incredible. In fact, it's not that the poetry of it obscures what's going on, it more creates a tone poem of what is happening in the story. It is about a group of young women who go to a waterfall. And this group of young women has faces on the backs of their necks. And it's a lovely story. It's a fascinating story. There's all sorts of like interpersonal relationships between young women that are like breaking apart and like coming together. It's such an interesting piece, and like the metaphor of the faces on the backs of their necks does so much. So I wanted to give that shout out to that story of Dante's.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you. It's really cool actually, side note, that Dante has moved between departments kinda laterally from art to fiction and so on. Yeah, very nice. And I love him as an artist and as a writer. So it's just great. I love everybody in this magazine. I was gonna make a Mean Girls reference, but it's not appropriate. So yeah. Thank you for that.

Hebe, do you have any other stories you'd like to recommend?

Hebe Stanton: Yeah, I wanted to talk about one, which actually Kat mentioned earlier, one of our novelettes, The Aquarium for Lost Souls. This is about a woman who ends up dying repeatedly on a space station. And the space station is also an aquarium. And fairly early on the story, we discovered that the aquarium actually holds the remnants of the Pacific Ocean. So yeah, Romie was talking earlier about climate grief, and this is one that really evoked that for me, which is something that I'm thinking about a lot at the moment for reasons. And so yeah, it has that influence and it manages to resonate this very large grief, grief that not one person can hold, with a small tragedy that's happening to this woman who has crashed in this aquarium. And that thematic resonance managing to connect these smaller griefs with these larger griefs is one of those things that I think speculative fiction does really well, connecting the large with the personal, and I really love this story because I really like stories that attempt to represent otherness through formal innovation.

And I think this story does it really well. The voice of the Pacific Ocean is punctuated in very non-standard ways, which gives her prose sort of the rhythm of the tides, the pulling and pushing of the tides. I think that just does such a great job of evoking this, this being that isn't human, that is bigger than human, and really bringing home to that sense of loss as well, of her loss and all of our losses as well. So yeah, that's one of my favorites in this year.

Kat Kourbeti: That sounds beautiful. It reminds me of an older story that we published a few years back that I narrated, Bathymetry by Lorraine Wilson, that also kind of had themes of climate grief, and I think it was written around the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean and that combined with a personal tragedy.

I love these stories in Strange Horizons because we always tend to resonate as a magazine collectively, I think, with stories that have that personal touch, where a character is going through something on their own, but then how do you reach into the world with the speculative themes and stuff.

So that one's one of the novelettes that we published last year, so that's awesome.

Kat Weaver: I just want to give a shout out again to some stories that another fellow editor who couldn't be here. So Aigner wanted to recommend Exit Interview by KW Onley, that was published in December. She also wanted to recommend Those Who Smuggle Themselves Into Slivermoon, that's by Varsha Dinesh, that was published in May, and she wanted to recommend Frogskin, written by ML Krishnan, and that was in January.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, the bit of variety there from different themes, and also different times in the calendar. Remember that everything is eligible from January of last year. Are those stories that Aigner edited herself?

Kat Weaver: Those I believe are stories that Aigner worked on.

Kat Kourbeti: Cool, cool. At some point we will have her on this podcast, so help me. Just calendars and timing, but we will make that work.

My little—not selfish 'cause I didn't work on this like at all—but my country-person, Avra Margariti, had a story with us last year called Cicadas, and their Skins. Who edited that one?

Hebe Stanton: That was Aigner, I think.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I love that story. Mostly because it's Avra's weirdness which, they're known for just being a little weird goblin. Loads of folk horror among my country people. I'm from Greece originally, if the listeners don't remember that, and I just love reading stories that even if they're not set within a Greek setting, they feel Greek. And Avra has a tendency towards some dark things lurking under the surface. So if that's your vibe, check out Cicadas and Their Skins. That's my recommendation here.

Anybody else have anything? I don't wanna hog the microphone, 'cause this is your time to talk about your work. So I'm happy to defer.

Romie Stott: Has anybody already mentioned my favorite story from last year, The Jaxicans' Authentic Reconstruction of Taco Tuesday #37, by Steven Granade?

Kat Weaver: That's one Hebe worked on.

Romie Stott: I loved that. That's my favorite. It's from back in April and I've reread it many times.

Hebe Stanton: I really like IKEA stories basically. I think there's something very uncanny about an Ikea and I really like stories that kind of use that for effect. That was a very fun story to work on, I think. It's both irreverent and also comes to some really quite touching truths about authenticity. And just generally how do you go on in this ridiculous situation, which is these humans have been resurrected in the far, far future to be studied by aliens who want to learn about basically chains, chain stores. So the protagonist was an employee at a taco restaurant. And he's been reincarnated to go through his life as a Taco Tuesday employee and it's very funny, but it's also very profound I think. Like, what is authenticity anyway, 'cause the aliens are trying to reconstruct authenticity and the protagonist is like, but this is a chain restaurant. Like it's not really authentic, but then it is as well, because it's also about reconstructing a feeling, not necessarily the kind of specific food, the feeling of being in these restaurants and the experiences that you can have in them, even as the food is bad. So yeah, that was a fun one.

Kat Weaver: And that also is another story about a protagonist dealing with having their own personal revelation while at the same time confronting the more science fictional aspects, like the speculative world of their story, in which he is trapped in Taco Tuesday.

Kat Kourbeti: Is Taco Tuesday a real place? Asking as a European.

Kat Weaver: No.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay.

Kat Weaver: I assume it is probably a Next Beef or something like Taco Bell.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, it's just, yeah, it's one of those things where it's like I learn something new every day. As a European, sometimes I'm just like confronted with the strangeness of the North Americas. So that's fair enough.

I think we wanted to shout out CL Hellisen's Godskin as well. It's on my list anyway. So we can quickly talk about that one. Do you remember who edited that one?

Hebe Stanton: That was me. Yeah. What I really liked about that was the bleakness, the absolute bleakness of the life that the protagonist lives, also how there's some hope and maybe it's just outta reach or maybe it's not reachable for you, but it's there and I think that seems to ring quite closely with a lot of the kind of folktale fairytale stuff. I think there often is this sense of life might be bleak, but you know, there's something there. I don't know, it rung some of my sort of spiritual, religious sort of bells, yeah. That was another lovely one to work on.

Romie Stott: I did wanna also shout out The Battle Verses of Prufrock J. Alfred by Rachel Rodman. And that was an acceptance by Lisa. Actually, several of the poems that I've mentioned were not accepted by me. I haven't been great about crediting the editors. Again, I have a head cold, but, we are all doing excellent work, like major praise to the other poetry editors. They are heroically good.

But The Battle Verses of Prufrock J. Alfred would probably be a weird pick for a Hugo nomination, I don't know. Because it's one of the less explicitly science fiction fantasy poems that we've run. We have sailors and mermaidy sirens and resurrections and all this kind of stuff, but it's essentially because there's a long history of poems about sea monsters and fantastical elements that have then fit into a literary tradition. A lot of times we are in conversation with preexisting works that have not necessarily been considered speculative fiction and saying well, they are though. And this is an example of that and also arguing with it.

So it's doing something in the same tradition of what like Grendel is doing with Beowulf or there's that wonderful novel that is about the mad woman in the attic in Jane Eyre and telling the story from her perspective.

Kat Kourbeti: Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys.

Romie Stott: Thank you.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Romie Stott: Yeah, so this poem is doing that with Prufrock, and it actually did get a fair amount of traction in terms of people talking about it, because it's exciting. It's a really good piece. It's worth checking out.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you. Yes, I do love response kind of writing, because especially in science fiction and fantasy, I think we tend to place a lot of classics on a pedestal like, you know, it's up there and we can't touch it. And so works that tend to engage and respond to that kind of work is, I think it's interesting. I think we all have thoughts about those pieces and I think it's worth exploring them.

Romie Stott: Yeah. I'd say in general, our department publishes a lot of work that's in conversation with other preexisting work. Just partially because that's the fabric of poetry. It's very allusive.

Kat Kourbeti: Lovely. So thank you so much for taking the time for just going through some of the stuff that we published last year. By no means an exhaustive list because as readers and listeners will know, there's at least a short story most weeks, some weeks are special issues, and so we have more of those. We publish multiple poems constantly, and in the special issues also.

And I know that we talked about short stories and novelettes and poetry today, but there's also a lot of nonfiction content within Strange Horizons that is super worth looking at. We have ongoing columns, we have articles and reviews from one time contributors. Loads of really great stuff that deserve attention and time. So I hope that people will look at all of that.

We'll put links to everything and to where we can find you on social media for if and when people would like to chat to you. And yeah. Thank you very much.

Kat Weaver: Yeah. Thank you for having us.

Hebe Stanton: Thank you.

Romie Stott: Thank you. I mean, Because of our wild geographic diversity as a magazine, we don't have many opportunities to get together, so it's a pleasure to hear your voices.

Kat Kourbeti: I know!

In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, Kat Kourbeti sits down with longtime friend and Seattle Worldcon Poet Laureate Brandon O'Brien, chatting all things speculative poetry, TTRPG design and actual play streaming, and the impact of markets that have many readers and editors—hey wait, that's us!

Links and things:

• Want to leave us a happy birthday message? Click ⁠here to record an audio message⁠, and ⁠here for video⁠.
• Join our ⁠Patreon⁠ for early episode access, or donate through any other way to hear your name and message in our next episodes.
• Did you know SH@25 is eligible for the Best Related Work category in the Hugo Awards? Keep us in mind for your 2025 ballot!

Episode show notes:

• Follow Brandon on Bluesky, or sign up to his newsletter, Afternoon Tea.
• Read Brandon's work in our archives
• Get a Seattle WSFS Membership and longlist your favourite SH poems today!
• Find more links to everything we talked about as you read the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello, Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it's my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres. Today's guest is Brandon O'Brien, a performance poet and writer from Trinidad and Tobago, first published on Strange Horizons in 2016 with his poem 'Population Changes'.

He has since gone on to be the poetry editor for FIYAH magazine, published several poems and short stories all over the literary landscape, including his debut poetry collection, Can You Sign My Tentacle, which won the 2022 SFPA Elgin award. This year, he is Seattle Worldcon's Poet Laureate as the community gets ready to celebrate speculative poetry with its own inaugural Hugo award.

He is also a massive tokusatsu fan, among other things, and can often be found playing or designing tabletop games. It's great to have you here, Brandon.

First of all, I love a varied career that has bits of everything. I was trying to like put that intro together and I was like, my God, you're a poet, a fiction writer, a columnist, a podcaster, a TTRPG designer, a streamer, like the list goes on.

Brandon O'Brien: I don't know how I find the time for it.

Kat Kourbeti: Genuinely. I am kind of in awe. We're going to try and dive into everything today, I want to get a real picture of how it's all evolved together. But firstly, would you describe yourself first and foremost as a poet?

Brandon O'Brien: Yes, first and foremost. I feel everything springs from that well, first and foremost. I've been doing poetry since I was so young that I can't even recall what those poems could have possibly been about. It is the thing that I find the easiest and most compelling to do. Like there are still moments that I'm pleased with myself for being able to just pick up a notebook and scribble out a poem when everything else gets hard. So I'm very proud to be able to call myself a poet and to be able to be in the position where I can now tell my mother, yes, poetry is allowing me to pay bills. It's very hard, but it's doing it.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I mean, it's the the ever-evolving struggle of the outside of the US publishing landscape where it's an absolute mess, but I am glad that it is making something and allowing you to do that for money. It's all that we can hope for in this field. Let's talk about how that poetry journey started for you.

Because you say you've been scribbling things out since you were a kid. At what point did science fictional elements or speculative elements start seeping into your poetry, would you say?

Brandon O'Brien: So this route for me has been a very hilariously circuitous one. I love telling this story because it briefly becomes the dumbest thing that I ever did in high school.

So as I said, I was writing since I was very young. Poetry was like the thing that I would do when I was bored in a class. So while I was bored in a class one day, a kid asked me, while they were noticing that I was writing a poem, asked me if I would write a poem for him. Mind you, I was in an all boys high school that was physically connected to an all girls high school separated by a lobby. It was the most catastrophic experiment that anyone could ever perform on teenagers. But I'm here in this class writing this poem and this kid asks me if I would write a poem for him, to get the attention of a girl on the other side of campus and I was like, this is a bad idea. I don't even know who you're talking about. How would I possibly write a poem for them? And they're like, I'll give you $20.

I wrote the poem. I'm still so very ashamed of myself, but that very quickly led to other people realizing that I was into poetry and I would, like, read for school assemblies and stuff like that. And that got the attention of one of my like, elder classmates who introduced me to spoken word because at that point, other people were also doing performance poetry in local universities and stuff. And we would like leave school to go there and read and talk to those poets, and I got into that space as well.

And it was through that and then doing that for work, being able to perform poetry in order to pay my bills that I attended a literary festival in Trinidad called the Bocas Lit Fest for the very first time, mostly as staff because they hired us to do poetry stuff, and I decided I was going to go to some workshops and see if this would help me figure out other things about my craft. And I went to a science fiction workshop with Tobias Buckell and Karen Lord, and it was brilliant. Tobias and Karen are absolutely wonderful writers and absolutely wonderful speakers and just brilliant people overall.

But like, the thing that broke my brain in that moment was just the realization that, oh, they're doing this for a living, and they don't have to water down their work to do it. I can just write whatever I want? Okay, I'm gonna try that.

And somewhere very early on in that process, I was like, I wanted to figure out what to do with this thing, but I do want it to be poetry first. And I was very pleased to discover that there were magazines that were publishing poetry, of which Strange Horizons was one of them, and I very rapidly started turning out all of these poems, some of which were just me still trying to figure out, well, what is it that I want to say, moving from the poems that I am writing in high school, that are like these very intensely romantic things. "I have very strong feelings about whether I'm going to be loved or appreciated or whether my parents actually like me and like having me around, and I may have a crush on someone, but I'm never gonna tell anyone. So this poem is the only place where it's gonna be." I was rapidly transitioning into, "do I have a thing to say?" That helped me kind of figure out more strongly, okay, these are some of the things that I care about. These are some of the things that I like observing.

And I'm very pleased to be able to say that I turned into lot of poems, like between 2015 and 2017, of which one of them was 'Population Changes'. Which was kind of a fluke in the writing process in part because a lot of that was just, I know what I want to say, how am I going to say it? And then like in the middle of the night, I'm pretty sure this is two days before I actually submitted it, I'm up at 2 o'clock in the morning and I go, Oh, this is it! And it just kind of spirals out into my brain. And most of that is just because I was listening to a rap song at that point in time and went, Oh, I'm just rewriting that rap song I guess, so let's just do that. Let's just see where that goes. So that's how that came about.

The reason why I tell that whole story all the time is because, a lot of my poetry work was around young people. One of the things that I keep trying to hold on to is the fact that these paths are always circuitous. When you tell it as a story, it seems like it has a beginning and a middle and an end and it's all coherent. But when you're living it, you're like, I'm just going with the flow until something works out. And I'm grateful that it's worked out, but it's also very important to qualify that. If I weren't just doing the thing that I appreciated doing for myself in a classroom that one time, none of this would have ever happened.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it's fascinating how you figured out like, 'Hey, it's this thing that I like doing, but also could I make it into something else? Look at these people doing it. Can I do it? Yeah.' That's fascinating.

And I love how it all kind of linked to your Strange Horizons first publication because that would have been one of my next questions, is how that came about. So that's very interesting. Chaotic, but also it tracks.

Brandon O'Brien: Mm yeah. So like, I think back about those early poems a lot because at the time I had no idea what I was doing. But thinking back on, again, about how circuitous these paths are, but how they eventually reveal what you're supposed to be doing. I look back at some of those poems and go, I surely was not this smart in my twenties. Somebody must have made this realization for me, but I'm glad that I had hit on the thing that I was trying to discover in that poem. And that's also a rewarding feeling to be able to go back to your own work and go, you did in fact figure something out.

So being able to say that was happening while I was still trying to figure out my place in the genre overall is very rewarding.

Kat Kourbeti: Would you say that your poems start with the idea you're trying to talk about, usually, or is there a lot of figuring out in the process where you start writing something and the theme or the point kind of emerges later?

Brandon O'Brien: I mean, every poem is different, I think. Sometimes it's about, I know what I want to say, I just need to figure out how to make what I want to say look good. And those are always the harder poems to write. But sometimes, most times, actually, for my process, I will find an image or this very unique kind of juxtaposition that I think is interesting, and I'll just kind of play with it for a couple of poems and see where it goes.

Hilariously enough, that's how Can You Sign My Tentacle happened. I was just writing a poem for a reading that I was supposed to do, like, sometime later that month. And at that point in time, I had just finished watching season one of Atlanta. I was like, I have a lot of feelings about this, about Atlanta, about Donald Glover as a creator, about the act of creation. How do I make that not only interesting, but funny? And that turned into the first poem of the collection, Hastur Asks For Donald Glover's Autograph. And I just read it at this reading, just thinking, okay, I just wanted to read something that no one had heard before. Hopefully it's good. People liked it. Cool.

And then Interstellar Flight Press was open for chapbook submissions and I was like, okay, this is cool. I was working on another collection at that point in time for like months. I was like, maybe that's gonna work for here. How big is that chapbook again? Oh, this is too big. I guess I need to start all over. Do I have anything that I can do? Do I have any ideas that are worth like 40 pages? And I looked back at that poem and went, this is a bad idea, but I'm going to experiment with it anyway.

Kat Kourbeti: Is there such a thing as a bad idea, truly?

Brandon O'Brien: I mean... fair. But like, the interesting thing about it was at that point in time, I wasn't sure if I had anything to say, and one of the most rewarding things about that book as a result is that I am still actively in a state of discovery every time I go back into that book. Because it was in the process of digging into more about H.P. Lovecraft's experiences and his work and finding, like, unique kind of juxtapositions between that experience and the Black diasporic experience that were really interesting to me in ways that were revelatory even in the act of writing. Like, I joke a lot to people now that it's very easy to hate Lovecraft, but I kind of pity him now instead.

Kat Kourbeti: Mm.

Brandon O'Brien: Because it's kind of obvious in the process of writing that everything that is going on in your life is not uniquely different to other kinds of fear and doubt, and this desire to be safe from things that you think are going to endanger or ruin your life. And it's a shame that you [Lovecraft] had to be a racist about it, but if someone had just spoken to you, if you weren't surrounded by yes men all the time, this could have not happened. You could have found the opportunity to learn from this experience and tell something even more radical from it. And what would your work have looked like as a result? What would your interactions with other people look like?

And like, in the process of out both of those things, I feel like the poems kind of emerged as not so much a kind of admonition of Lovecraft as a creator, but a kind of reminder to the reader, you are not necessarily a morally superior person in the world. You're just a person who has been surrounded by people who helped you figure out how not to be cruel, and you can do that for other people as well.

The inception of that collection were just in the middle of the first Trump presidency.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Brandon O'Brien: And I was still in the process of editing—the process of editing for me is also very much a process of going, "is there a part of the story that I'm not finished telling yet?"

Kat Kourbeti: Hmm.

Brandon O'Brien: Which I'm very grateful was not very annoying for my editor, Holly Walrath, who was very gung ho about, "oh, you have more poems? Please let me see them." Because I was worried that I was gonna be annoying going, "here's three more poems for the book. Is it still a chapbook now?"

But like, a lot of the process of editing during that period in history was also me noticing, as I said, that there is nothing making you uniquely a good person in the world. We are now in a period where one of the most abhorrent political ideologies of the past century is re emerging in the world, unprovoked in territories that have never been uniquely touched or inspired by fascism, because people see that it is working.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Brandon O'Brien: Because people see that it is selling well.

Kat Kourbeti: The caveat to that is that I don't think that there have been places that were ever completely untouched by fascism. Perhaps it wasn't Nazi rhetoric, but there was other stuff and good God, was there ever military coups and other such things going on.

Brandon O'Brien: I guess what I mean is, there are places where it is uniquely obvious, to me at least, that everywhere in the world, there are ultra conservative ideals that are being clung to, but there are places where some sub section of those ideals don't cater to them.

I was thinking in particular from my own perspective as a Trinidadian, at one point thinking that it is uniquely impossible for Trinidad—for all of its foibles—to cling to any flavor of ultra nationalist rhetoric, and then one of the poems that I added last minute to the book was literally written between the period of Brexit passing and the big celebratory rally that folks were having in the UK at the time. Our then opposition leader in Trinidad and Tobago joined a TikTok influencer-led protest against Venezuelan migrants to Trinidad. On an island where we regularly refer to ourselves as a melting pot, much like other territories, and where our relationship to Venezuela has never been negative up until this point... and I'm like, this is only happening because you think, if you play the Trump card—and I hate to call it that—you will win the game, and you're not wrong, and I hate that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Brandon O'Brien: How do I communicate that this is not a rule of the universe, that these things are not right because they're working. They're working because everybody keeps doing them.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Brandon O'Brien: And that turned into, a whole group of poems in the book that is just about, "hey, sometimes evil will lay a seed in your territory, and its only goal is to hurt as many people as possible, and it will either hurt you or assimilate you. Which would you rather be, hurt or assimilated?"

Kat Kourbeti: Oof.

Brandon O'Brien: And that idea sucks, right?

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Brandon O'Brien: There is a correct answer to the question because there is an answer from which you can go, "at least I can be less hurt by defending other people". I was thinking just the other day—and I love that this is also a thought about poetry in my head, but it's not in the real world—I was thinking the other day about the fact that people love making jokes about whether people get that famous Holocaust poem by Pastor Niemoller. "First they came for the Jews, but I did not speak because I was not a Jew." Everybody likes joking about how people don't get that poem, about how people will never make themselves available until they are the last.

But then, the joke is also you making yourself available, so at some point you also have to speak for someone. And I feel like we are now upsettingly at this point where people get that fact, that you are still in Niemoller's poem and you get to speak whenever you want to. And I'm hopeful, despite the fact that, again, it is going to hurt, at least you will not be assimilated. And then you have a duty as a result to limit the amount of hurt that you and others experience. And I don't know what that's going to look like in the future. It is a trying time in some of the territories where that kind of rhetoric has also taken hold in your own territory's government, so you have to deal with them and the world superpower that is the US, doing things to you at the same time.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Brandon O'Brien: But if you deal with it now, if more people see that this is actually untenable on a global scale, it will fall because the only thing it has left to do is hurt you. And if you refuse to let others be hurt, then they survive to speak.

Kat Kourbeti: Hear hear.

Brandon O'Brien: And that is also important.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Oh, God. I mean, that's exactly the mindset I've been in myself in the last little bit. We're recording this literally a few days after the inauguration for the re-election. Good God. And yeah, I think it's on everybody's mind. There is certainly a lot of that rhetoric in the UK where I live. Some of it in Greece, where I'm from, less than it has been, which is good progress, I guess.

I do think that people, especially in light of the US situation at the moment, are reflecting a little harder. In particular, within creative communities, it's been heartening, to see people flocking together and starting to devise plans of resistance, of how do we make work during this time, how do we preserve each other's work in case it gets banned, how do we amplify the voices of people that need to be heard so that, as you said, those hurts can be minimized, so that we're not assimilated into just like despair and evil and hurting each other. It's a really scary time to be around.

But yeah, I wanted to touch upon some of the themes in your poetry that Strange Horizons published, but also I guess, about your relationship with the magazine before the publications started, like as a reader, and the process of submitting your poetry as well, how that cooked together to make the result.

Brandon O'Brien: So, at the time, I felt like I didn't know a great deal about the publication space in the genre, so I felt like I was just kind of feeling my way through the space at that point. But one of the things that immediately inspired me to submit to Strange Horizons, other than the fact that obviously it was taking poetry in the first place, which is still very rare among magazine outlets in the genre, was the fact that it had so many poetry readers and poetry editors, and that immediately clicked for me.

There is something uniquely engaging to me about being in a room full of poets. When I was doing spoken word, I was working with other poets. We would gather once a week and just sit in a room for three hours and just write. We would regularly just meet up and talk about poetry. We were rehearsing all the time. We were writing all the time. There is something refreshing about sharing space with more than one craftsman of this art form.

So there was something interesting to me about being able to submit to Strange Horizons, where at that point, I think in 2017, there were three poetry editors all at once. A part of me was actually very nervous about that because I was like, if three poets don't like my work, my work must suck. It was also, obviously they're going to have a conversation about my work, above the level of whether it is momentarily working for them as a reader in that moment.

And this is not me judging the process. When I was at FIYAH, I was the only poetry reader that we had, and I tried to give that as much space as possible. To the point where, like, there were some periods where I will shamefully admit that I would run the clock on when the magazine was actually supposed to be friggin due because I was like, I wanted to process all of these poems as carefully as possible. But the thing that I appreciated about Strange Horizons, the thing that I wanted to believe would benefit my work, was having multiple poets look at it and go, well, this is what we're seeing in this work.

And if I recall correctly, I'm particularly grateful at that point in time, because I think when Population Changes was published, that was the first batch of poems that I had ever sent to Strange Horizons. So I was like, okay, this worked. I don't know how it worked, but I guess it worked the one time. It worked immediately. And that was also very rewarding. So, I feel like there is value specifically in that part of that space.

There is a lot, I think, that Strange Horizons has been doing, well, since I got into the genre, that I think are very good indicators for what makes a magazine not only easier to run, but makes its process more accessible for readers and writers. And I feel like one of those things is having more than one editor, not just more than one slush reader, but more than one member of editorial staff dedicated to that part of the magazine whose job it is to all process the work at once.

Obviously that's not hard for fiction because a lot of people are trying to get into fiction. But I'm always grateful when it's happening in poetry, because poetry is just as valuable. Poetry is the place where you have to tell the exact same story in as few words as possible. I feel like there is a lot to learn from poetry, and as a result, I feel like there is a lot to learn, not only from being published in Strange Horizons, but reading the work that is published by Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: That's very sweet. Thank you.

Brandon O'Brien: Like at the time of recording, I wrote a blog post for the Seattle Worldcon blog. It's called Con-Verse. We thought we were being very clever when we came up with that name.

Kat Kourbeti: I love it.

Brandon O'Brien: I wrote, like, a breakdown of how to get into speculative poetry for the first time. Like, what makes a poem speculative? And how do you find ways into discovering these speculative elements of a work. And at the bottom of that blog post is an exercise for readers, and it is 'go to the poetry section of Strange Horizons and pick a poem at random, and read it and process for yourself. What are you discovering in this poem? What do you think this poem is about, what do you think is the obviously speculative element of it? What devices are performing that speculative element for it?'

Because speculative poetry is actually very hard. The longer I think about the act of trying to teach it, the more I realize that part of the difficulty is, poetry is very good at making certain elements feel so concrete that it becomes very difficult from a reader's perspective to go, "is this a metaphor? Is this something else?" And being able to help readers parse, this is what the thing is trying to do, this is how the speculative element is trying to reveal itself, is very challenging, but very rewarding for me as a writer and as someone who wants to help other people read it more.

And being able to just kind of guide people to spaces where I think there is a wealth of very good work in that space, and just being able to tell them, hey, just, just scroll for a bit and just click one, is actually, you have created a pool of poetry that I think is very instructive in that regard.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. Thank you so much. That's like the sweetest thing I've heard. And I agree. I mean, I'm not in the poetry department, but I think what they do is really cool because as you say, it's a larger team and it's not just one person calling the shots, but also because of that diversity of perspective, there's a lot of different things that make it through that different people are interested in and they're championing poems within the department and saying, yeah, actually, this one. And I do appreciate having resources that are free that are accessible, like this, you don't have to go buy a book or textbook or anything like that.

It's just on a website. You can go and as you say, scroll a little bit and find something that maybe will speak to you.

You've inadvertently answered a big question I had, which was what's your advice for a tentative speculative poet? We will link that post in the show notes. Because I know that a lot of people who listen to the podcast are writers who want to break into the space, and I'm sure that a chunk of them are poets who haven't been published before. So I hope that your words will inspire and stoke a fire to write more and to submit.

Brandon O'Brien: Yeah, and I kind of want to speak to that on the recording so people can hear me say this part as well: I think for a lot of people, especially people who have been writing poetry for a while and are still trying to navigate their way into speculative poetry, like I was in the early process, there is kind of this complicated part where you kind of go, "well, what makes a poem speculative must just be putting a fantasy or science fiction thing into the poem and then just moving on. There's a dinosaur, there's a robot, there's a spaceship. It's suddenly a speculative poem." And I think ultimately it means more than that.

I think one of the things that I kind of discovered as a process of reading other people's discussions about what makes poetry speculative is the idea that there is—well, there are two things that I think matter to me: one is what I refer to in workshops as a metaphor in a heightened state of arousal. Which is the point at which it becomes obvious that this metaphor is trying to be real and you cannot deny that it is real. My go to example in classical poetic work is The Second Coming [by W.B. Yeats] when the persona refers to this "beast slouching towards Bethlehem, waiting to be born". There is a moment when you read the poem where you go, "Oh, I see this thing. I can imagine what this thing is in the world". And I'm sure that's not what Yeats meant, but the fact he pulled it off means that at that moment, that metaphor is in a heightened state of arousal, where you can imagine that this is not just a theoretical force of power or threat entering space, but you can imagine something.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Brandon O'Brien: And the second thing I think is most important is, what is the speculative question that you are trying to ask or answer? What is ultimately the thing that matters in a way that reveals the mundane thing about something speculative, or the speculative thing about something mundane? And I think that a lot of speculative poetry that I really enjoy is essentially asking us not merely to reimagine the real world in the context of what would we look like in 10 years, or what could we have looked like if this didn't happen, but also asking a deeper kind of speculative question, like, what is it about the world that we live in, that if it had changed, would affect you in a specific way or would affect someone else in this specific way? What does it mean to you as a reader to experience this kind of imagined world? And what are you going to take from that experience and go back into the world with?

Which is the same thing that a lot of good prose does, obviously. That it's not just about the robot, it's about, now that you've seen what happens to the robot at the end of the story, what are you going to do in the real world so you don't have to be in the terrible position that this robot has been? And how do you ask that question in a poem as well? So I think once you have those two things together, everything else is just craft.

Kat Kourbeti: I love that. That's good practical advice that myself and other people can take away, and go noodle on some poems, maybe. Every time I talk to you, I'm always inspired to like, go write some poems. It's a unique superpower.

Brandon O'Brien: This is my goal. I've worked with young people so often, that I think a lot about some of the canards that people have about poetry—that poetry is too hard to read, that poetry is too hard to write, that it has to rhyme—I hate all of those things. So whenever I incidentally inspire someone to want to write, I'm always very excited about that.

I did workshops with young people for most of my twenties. So I'm accustomed to people hearing me share my love for discovering other people writing poetry and them going, "but I don't want to do that because I don't want anybody to read it". I never asked nobody to read or share nothing with me. The thing that matters is that you are exploring the craft in your own time, in your own way. You don't have to show it to anybody. This is not me inviting you to be published if you don't want to be published, although I hope that at some point you pursue that route.

This is not me telling you that you have to be a performer. This is not me telling you you have to write a book. This is just me going, "there is something revelatory about the act of writing a poem. And you can do that for yourself in your own time, and discover things about doing so that are not just rewarding for the poem itself, but are rewarding for you."

Kat Kourbeti: Man. That's inspiring. Thank you.

Brandon O'Brien: Oh lord.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, I love that so much. Yeah, and I think it's uniquely in poetry that you find this, because it's less tied to convention, in the way that prose can be, where you have to have a certain structure, and you have to have a certain plot beat to follow, and you have to have conflict... God forbid! So poetry has that kind of liberatory, nothing has to be any sort of way. And once you embrace that, it can be genuinely anything you want it to be.

It can have a narrative. It doesn't have to have a narrative. It can just be vibes. And I think a lot of the poems I've enjoyed have just been vibes, where it's just like, 'there's something unsettling going on in space'—but really it's about loneliness or really it's about something deeply human, just clothed in various speculative things.

Brandon O'Brien: So, when you say that, I mean, I do think about most crafts that it is perfectly possible to do anything that you want at any time. It's just harder in prose for a reader to get accustomed to the idea.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, for sure. I suppose it is possible.

Brandon O'Brien: Yeah, no, and that's what makes prose so much harder for me. Because I do think that you are right about poetry in that sense, that you are encouraged to be freer in poetry in part because what is typically a constraint is now also a freedom. The fact that in this brevity, you just get to explore the idea that you want to express, and nothing extraneous to that.

There are poems that people like, and like to joke about, because they feel like it is indicative of how artificially ideal poetry is as a craft. They like to joke about how we think that poetry is a high art form, but you can really just say anything in it.

One of the examples that sticks in my brain a lot as a good example of people essentially saying they've gotten poetry, is when people attempt to rewrite William Carlos Williams. This poem about eating the plums in the icebox. This poem is one of the greatest poems of all time. This is not just a joke about a guy being hungry; this is a very loving husband writing a letter to his very loving wife about being hungry this one time and acknowledging her feelings in this moment. And every other time that somebody has aped that poem, they're either saying, I've never gotten poetry a day in my life, or I don't think that this poem is actually really meaningful. Let me express it to you by rewriting the exact same poem with the exact same feeling and the exact same emotion in a way that matters to me, but I imagine will matter to no one else. I'm like, you're doing the thing! This is what we mean when we tell you to read. This is the process.

I just want people to experience that all the time. I want them to experience it in the ways that are accommodating and encouraging and inspiring to them. I want people to get out of the habit of assuming the worst of poetry. I'm not saying that there are no bad poems, obviously there are some bad poems out there, but I'm also saying that it's not our business to be interested in whether a poem is bad. It's our business to be interested in whether a poem is doing the thing that it has to do for us in that moment.

One of my go to examples of what makes a poem good, without having to perform any of the artifice of what makes a poem high culture, is that poem that people keep sharing on the internet that a nine year old wrote about a tiger escaping its cage. It's four lines. It's written by a nine year old. [Actually, he was six!] This kid is like 16 or 17 by now, I'm sure. And I'm sure if anybody ever asks him about that poem, he's like, please don't ever repeat this to me again. But the rest of us are like, you got it at nine! I wish I had it at nine!

I hope you're still writing poems. This, was the name Nael or something like that? I hope you're still writing poems. Because that was dope. I hope that you are still engaging with the craft. And I hope that every time somebody sees that tiger poem, they feel inspired as well. Because that's what it's all about. And I want more people to tap into that.

Kat Kourbeti: It's what you were saying about writing things as a teenager about where you're at at the time, which is heightened emotions and big conflicts and intentions that happen for everybody at that age. It's not necessarily, you know, yeah, high culture, but is it not what matters to you?

Brandon O'Brien: Also is it not? What's the difference between like, a Greek epic and an Olivia Rodrigo song—what is the emotional difference?

Kat Kourbeti: Genuinely, it isn't. It's why there's a lot of theater productions that kind of coat the Greek epic in something more, like, I'll say "pedestrian", but like, something more accessible or modern. Or, you know, Shakespeare. It's why Shakespeare has prevailed, right? Because there's all of those emotions and all of those questions and the social upheaval and stuff that he talks about is very much echoing through time, and so you can dress an actor in whatever, but the stuff underneath is the same.

And so yeah, no, highly agree, and to finish my sentence, like, it's not high culture, but like, it's coming from a genuine place. And what's interesting about the speculative stuff is that we also get to play with that as well.

Would you say that as a speculative poet, that the reach of your art is finding a more segmented audience or not? Is the speculative stuff limiting who you can reach with your poetry, or is it perhaps expanding that?

Brandon O'Brien: So, this is less an art form thing and more a culture thing,

Kat Kourbeti: Mm hmm.

Brandon O'Brien: Because I do think that the genre space is very niche and when you're in fandom, it means that you are essentially expressing all of your thoughts about the genre to other people who are into the genre. As an aside, one of the greatest examples of this is whenever the Hugos or Worldcon are in the news, and you're seeing booktokers and booktubers, people who are reading speculative fiction on a regular basis, comment on the news as if they've never heard of Worldcon before. Because they hadn't! Because they've never been to one, because they didn't know that it existed. Because they didn't know how to attend. Because they didn't know that the Hugos were community voted. There are people who think that the Hugos are juried. And I'm like, I don't blame you. I know where that's coming from.

Kat Kourbeti: I absolutely was the same. I mean, I didn't realize that the Hugos were a thing that you could (a) vote in and (b) go to until there was a Worldcon in London and I could only attend the day of the Hugos, and so I went to the Hugos. And I was like, you mean you can go to these? You can just go? And then it turns out you can vote in these? And you can longlist and shortlist things? And like, that it's actually us, who love this stuff, making the choice of, like, who gets a Hugo? That's huge! What?! I was 24 at the time, and it blew my mind. It blew my little mind. And it's great to see people discover that. It's not great to see people discover it in this way, because there's drama.

Brandon O'Brien: It's a very trying time to have that discovery, but it's also an opportunity for you to engage with that discovery as well, for you to be a part of the process. But like, when I say that the space is niche, that's what I mean, that we are in the genre talking to ourselves a lot of the time, that when news about fandom breaks, it is breaking for us on the inside, no matter how widely read the genre is. So in that sense, it is actually very limiting because if I get published in a magazine, the chances of the average person discovering that magazine elsewhere is remarkably slim.

Because some of the big mags that publish poetry don't have print. If you do have print, it's kind of hard to justify having copies of your stuff in a place where people can easily see it. I don't think Locus is in your local bookstore.

Kat Kourbeti: No.

Brandon O'Brien: Which it should be, but it sucks that it's not. So people who are passing through for their latest Sarah J. Mass or whatever, know that the culture is happening somewhere, but they're not on the inside.

So a lot of the work that we are doing is for fandom, which is good, because fandom is still very big, and these are people who are definitely interested in propagating the art form. But it does mean in that sense that it is very limiting on a culture level. But on a craft level, I think what is most interesting is there is nothing stopping anyone from being available for my work. As long as I make my work accessible, there is nothing stopping other people from wanting to access it. So the only problem is, how do we solve the culture problem to let more people discover that for more people? Which is a larger issue that cannot just be solved by the craft itself.

But I think one of the most obvious ways that individual creators get to play a small part in solving that problem is merely writing the work for their local audiences, for the audiences that would otherwise not be directly tied to fandom. And then when you've already hooked them with that work, you get to tell them, here are all these spaces that people don't want you to know exist. We're going to crash these places. So you can always know that I will be doing my work here and you can always find other people's work in this space. And in so doing, other people start to discover other places and other local voices and local ideas about the speculative. And that's how the thing grows. That's what cons are supposed to do. And then at some point, I guess the walls fell back down.

I do not think that this is anybody's fault necessarily, but because of the insular nature of the niche that is fandom, it can often feel like we're trying to widen the field and people aren't looking for what's on the other side. And that's something that creators and these spaces themselves have to work together to solve. But one of the ways that we solve that, I think, is by making work that reveals more of the world from our perspective, and then introducing those regional stories, those local stories, into those wider fandom spaces.

So people get to go, I want to hear more like this. I want to read more like this.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Brandon O'Brien: What door do I have to kick down? Where do we have to bring Worldcon next to experience more of these things?

Kat Kourbeti: On the subject of that, the local stories, as you've said, how do you inject your cultural experience, your Trinidadian background, your growing up, your experiences from all aspects of your life, into your speculative work?

Brandon O'Brien: I do think this is one of the questions where when you ask someone in the beginning of their career, they're like, here are all the things that I want to do, and then 10 years pass and you ask them again and it's like, what did I do? Did I actually accomplish a thing?

So one of the big things for me in my work is I like folklore. I think ultimately one of the things that is most revealing about human nature is that almost uniquely as a collective unconscious state, we have latched on to certain kinds of fears and ideals that reveal themselves through folklore in ways that are ultimately very revealing.

I care a lot about the fact that there's a creature in Caribbean folklore that is technically not a vampire, is not known as a vampire. Does not suck blood, does not drain people of blood, but it does bite people though. And it is subject to arithmania, so if you drop a pile of salt or a pile of rice at a crossroads they will stop and have to count each grain. But it's not an Eastern European vampire. I love that a lot. I have no idea where it came from when I'm like, is there something about math that we're latching on to? Is that what you're telling me? And those things I dig a lot about folklore, that ultimately it is revealing something deeper about us as a species. The things that we fear, the things that we think we can trust, et cetera.

A lot of the poetry that I've been writing for a while now have been specifically about Trinidadian folklore, and how they relate to the experience of violence in the world. How they relate to our own nature of feeling violent or experiencing violence thrust upon us. How we relate to the idea that there is no perfect victim of violence. And how we relate to people who do not present themselves in like culturally appropriate ways as a result of experiencing violence, but through the image of folklore, because ultimately that thing that is radical to me about folklore is you have told me that this person is a person. That at some point, at least, this person was a human being. And then they suffered something, and now where they are not to be trusted.

There is a character in Trinidadian folklore known as the Diablesse, the Devil Woman. The common narrative is essentially that this is a woman who at some point witnessed or suffered intimate partner violence, and as a result goes out into the world to lure lustful men, and then murder them. The cultural vantage point of that story is obviously, "don't go out with people you don't know in the middle of the night", and more curiously, "don't go out with strange women in the woods". Because why is this woman in the woods? But no one asks the obviously deeper question, "what happened to this woman?" And if you are falling for this woman's guiles, what is that saying about you? And digging into those questions is actually more interesting to me.

A large part of the collection that I'm presently working on right now is about another creature from Trinidadian folklore known as the Lagahoo, this powerful, monstrous shapeshifter, that I immediately kind of latched onto because as a black man, there is this lingering sense in the world that people constantly consider you a physical threat to them, regardless of what's happening to you. And there is something revealing, I think, in using the Lagahoo as a metaphor for not being in control of what people imagine is your beastly nature. For that beastly nature, (a) is informed by trauma, and (b) reveals in itself this deeper understanding about where harm comes from and what is necessary to keep other people safe. That when you tell me I'm being monstrous, you're really telling me you do not have the right to tell other people how to treat you because they're afraid of you anyway. So I might as well be the result of your fear in order to survive.

Kat Kourbeti: That's fascinating. And really interesting, how some of what you talked about reverberates in other folklore as well. The vampire that isn't a vampire, the woman who's kind of beguiling, but really it's the result of something that's happened to her, you see that in South American folklore, you see that in Arabic folklore. The Greek vampire is kind of like the Caribbean vampire in that like, it's not a vampire at all. Like, there's no blood, but there is a an aspect of revenance, you know, of coming back from the dead and people being scared of the person that they know coming back and being different, and being violent, or being scary. And whether or not that goes back to perhaps periods of illness, where people were ostracizing members of their community that were perhaps sick, or whatever the case may be.

It's just fascinating how, it's what you said exactly that, this stuff kind of like happens, and it reveals stuff about human culture and how it develops independently of each other, and sometimes in discussion with each other.

Brandon O'Brien: Yeah, overall, I think the thing that is coolest about folklore is, there is this lingering fear that people have, that someone that you love will be someone that you do not recognize at some point, and you will not be able to do anything about it. Like, a lot of zombie and vampire lore is about the idea that someone will come back in a way that you will not recognize, but they still obviously know you and want to be in connection with you, but something about their capacity to connect has now been broken.

There are stuff like changelings in a lot of European folklore where the sense is that you might lose the true form of someone that you care about, and it will be replaced with something totally unrecognizable to you. And that means that you have been robbed of the true relationship that you have with that person and never be able to actually solve that problem because everybody else thinks nothing has changed.

I think that fear in particular comes from two different places. I think for a lot of people it is obviously the concern that relating to people is already very hard, and you don't want to feel like you're starting over with somebody that you've already bonded with. But also a lot of it is a fear of a loss of control over the conditions of your relationship, that something will change radically about the way that you relate to somebody in a way that makes you feel like you no longer have a sense of control over, not just that person, but the conditions of that relationship, and you won't be able to navigate it again. Because now the person with that control is them, and you don't want other people to have to tell you how that relationship goes. You wanna say how the relationship goes, and then that fractures in a way that is threatening to them.

I feel like that's where all of that is coming from, and being in the attempt of using poetry to communicate, "well, sometimes that just happens to people, you know, people change", is presently refreshing as a poetic process.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, that sounds fun. It's fun to work with the stories of your homeland, but to use that to say more current things for you. I'm looking forward to reading that new collection when that comes out.

Brandon O'Brien: So am I. It doesn't get finished. It just keeps getting bigger.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh no! The infinitely growing!

Brandon O'Brien: But yes, I would like very much for people to experience that collection when it is finished.

Kat Kourbeti: So let's touch a bit upon the different side of your poetry journey, which is the editing. Because you were poetry editor for FIYAH, you did mention that a little earlier that you were the only person going through all those submissions. What was that experience like for you? And what did you take away from it? What was your process in editing the poetry for FIYAH?

Brandon O'Brien: I still think that editing for FIYAH was one of the most radical experiences for my poetic career at this point. Because ultimately I think anybody who wants to write in a craft should read as often as possible. And now that I'm no longer editing, it does feel kind of weird to be in a position to tell people, well, you should be in slush because then you get to read what people who have never been published before will write. It feels like I'm putting you in a position to judge strangers and that's kind of weird. But I do feel like it is obviously very important to be in a position of consistently reading and consistently seeing what works and doesn't work in that sense.

But also specifically for FIYAH, specifically for poetry, I think you discover things that are obviously resonating in Black spaces in the speculative genre in ways that is ultimately very dramatically revealing. One of the things that I learned the most about that experience is there are biases that people have about describing the Black experience. Both the African Continental experience and the Black Diasporic experience come with these unique biases that people who are not African or not Black have about telling those stories. And just like every other craft, there are people who are like, okay, I'm writing for an audience that I know is not me. So I guess I need to perform that bias in order to enter this space.

I think that happens for a lot of diasporic writers all over the world. But the thing that eventually reveals the heart of your poem is refusing to do that and instead telling the story that is true to your community and true to your ideals. And that's particularly meaningful to me as a poetry editor who is neither an African Continental writer nor an American Black writer, to be able to witness both of those things simultaneously and go, I have no idea what you're talking about, but it is not my job to know. It is my job to be taught, it is my job to learn. As an editor I am reading just like everybody else, my job is not to know more than the poet, my job is to be in a position to help you write the poem that makes it the most effective way to teach me, so it can be the most effective way to teach other people.

And I think that has informed my writing, obviously, in the process of what is the version of my poem that is neither inaccessible nor coddling? How do I write the poem that is genuinely instructive without feeling like I need to diminish the value of the heart of that work. And also, I think one of the things that's most revealing about editing in general is people underestimate how hard it is to get into the space overall.

Folks were having this conversation on Bluesky like a couple of weeks ago. People were frustrated about an editor who was commenting on how easy it is for work to kind of get lost in the slush after not keeping a reader's attention for a certain arbitrary amount of words. Like, you have to hold us in the first few paragraphs, you have to hold us by the first line, and people are like, "but you don't know what the rest of the work says, you kind of gave up, without ever committing to the rest of the thing", and the problem is, there aren't a lot of us out here.

One of the things that I think I particularly discovered, as someone who is now reckoning with the fact that I feel like a lot of my experience as an editor was also defined by undiagnosed mental illness, is there isn't enough time or enough resources to commit to every possible work in the world. But the lesson there isn't that your work is less valuable because it has not been published. There is still time for your work to discover the place where it is absolutely positively meant to be published. Your work doesn't lose value because it hasn't been accepted. Your work doesn't lack value because it hasn't been accepted. It actually still has value yet to be gleaned by someone who is not me.

I went out of my way for a period while editing FIYAH, to write at least a one line note for every rejection that ever came through the magazine. And there were periods where that was easy to do because we got maybe a hundred, a hundred and fifty poems. Still a lot, but I can still go, "if I read twelve poems today, I know what all of those twelve poems are about. I can comment on those things."

I'm grateful that FIYAH has now gotten to the point where that's a great deal more streamlined for those editors, but I imagine that it's still very difficult as a result, because it's still not a lot of people navigating hundreds of works at a time. I think the lesson that writers need to get from that is not about the lack of value that comes to your work from not being accepted or from not getting comments on your rejection, but simply the acknowledgement that at this time, someone hasn't gleaned the value your work obviously has. So it's just a matter of going back to the drawing board and making that value unavoidable.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I did see that discourse, and I like that a lot of people were very reassuring to unpublished writers that it wasn't about anything nefarious, but it's more like, we train our eyes to see what's good, or like, the kind of writing that we like, and so a lot of people were saying they can tell really early on that this isn't it. So no, thank you. But it's not a rejection of you as a person. Crucially, it's not a rejection of your work as a whole. It's just about finding that editor or those editors, those markets, that they'll see your work and go, yes.

So it's very reassuring, but at the same time it doesn't lighten the difficulty of dealing with this. Publishing is a fickle mistress.

Brandon O'Brien: No, it is! And I feel like, the two things that stand out to me are separate kind of experiences from FIYAH actually. One is the idle observation that if I'm not mistaken, Strange Horizons has expanded its number of published works from earlier in its career, to the point where it is trying as often as possible to publish six poems, seven poems, whenever it can. And sometimes that's not possible. I know a lot of other magazines are going out of their way to do that as well. I know Uncanny Magazine tries very often in its fundraising period to let people know the only thing stopping us from publishing another novelette every period, or another two short stories every period, is that we don't have the money to pay the writers to do that. And I think that one of the obvious sticking points is editors are also keeping track of word count, so they can't say yes to everything and then not be able to pay you for your work. People underestimate that. I think the speculative genres are one of the few places where magazines are paying you by the word for your work. You can't put a short story in the New Yorker and get six cents a word, you know.

So like, we should appreciate the fact that even if it is harder to get in, when we do get in, we are experiencing that value. And the other experience of this was when I was the guest editor of Apparition Magazine. There was a point in the editorial meeting when we were discussing a work that we wanted to put in the final issue, and obviously the thing that I find rewarding about a group editorial process is everybody is discussing the things that they see and don't see of value in that work. But it meant that I was in the unique position to be able to say, "I like all of these poems. I know you only told me to select this specific number of poems. I am not fighting you on whether we're taking all of those poems instead, so we need to figure a way around this." And that still ended up having to be a discussion about, ultimately, what still needed to be cut. But it meant that people also underestimate how often editors are actually fighting to make room when room can be made. It's just, often it cannot.

The solutions to these problems are putting more editors in more magazines that give magazines more money. And we cannot do that all the time. I can't ask everyone in the real world to be a slush reader because then they will never read for leisure anymore. And not everybody has all of the funds to support these magazines all the time. But if you can, and you want to be a part of making more room for more writers, part of doing that is obviously, how do you contribute to the magazine in a way that allows their bottom line to give room for more writers.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it's the age old problem. Subtle reminder to the listeners that you can, in fact, support Strange Horizons on Patreon, and in other ways as well on our Donate page. That will make or break, say, if we can do a special issue, or how many things can we include in a special issue, and things like that.

Because, on the week to week, we can have a conservative estimate of what a budget is for the year. But then because we, as a magazine, love to do either a themed special issue or something around a region of the world or whatever, then it's like, well, we have to allocate a specific pot of money for that, and so, however much we can raise, that's it.

And so, absolutely, that then becomes a barrier. And I'm sure that for every magazine, that's the same. So yeah, support your favorite magazines in whatever way you can. And honestly, there's nothing too little. I'm sure that everybody would be grateful for whatever they can get. The climate is difficult.

Brandon O'Brien: I kind of want to actually stay on this call to action, to anyone who's listening to this podcast at this moment in time. If you just donated five dollars to Strange Horizons right now and got nine of your friends to do the same, that's like half of the payment for one poem. So if you do that every fortnight, if you can spare ten dollars every month, and get nine other people to do the same, you can add one poem to Strange Horizons every month for a year. And that's 12 new poems you get to read, and you get to do that for dozens of other magazines anytime you want.

And that's not just you going, I want to support this magazine and see this magazine do well. That is you going, I want to see what this poet, who I've never heard before, has to say about a thing that I've never thought before. And how will that change my life. You are investing ahead of time in discovering something radical about a writer who might have just gotten paid their first commissioned sale from a magazine on the internet in their entire life. And that's the thing you could do with ten dollars a month, and nine of your friends.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, we often say in our fundraisers, actually, you know, this amount of money funds this thing, so that it's not this elusive, big cloud of question of like, you know, okay, so I gave you $5. So what?

It's like, no, your $5, and the $5 of 10 other people means we can publish this. It's a review, or it's a poem, or it's part of a short story. So it's very much like, we try to make that transparent, at least during the fundraisers, that that's how much things cost. And definitely, you can see that in the pay rates of magazines, per word. What does that come up to?

Now, we've talked a lot about poetry. We've talked a lot about your writing. Now, let's talk about other fun stuff you do, cause, man, you're a multi talented guy.

So, in a slight related way, you've got your tabletop designs that you do, like you write your own games. And some of them are fairly simple, one or two player type things. Tell me a little bit about your process, first of all, how you got into that, cause it's a very different skill set and art form really, and where you get your ideas about how to structure things, rules and things like that. Like, every game is different. What does that look like in your head until it becomes a game?

Brandon O'Brien: So, how I got into Tabletop is also very circuitous, and this is also very fun. So, as I got into speculative writing, I was in a bunch of Slacks with a bunch of different writers. And I can't even remember which Slack this was, because I no longer use Slack, because Slack is very daunting. But I was in a Slack with Michael R. Underwood, who at that point in time was also not in tabletop yet, had done some tabletop study in university, if I recall, but wasn't in the industry yet. Mike is now also doing big things in tabletop design as well. I'm very excited for them.

But they had just randomly put a link that the game designer, Avery Alder, was looking for people who wanted to join her Emerging Game Designers Mentorship. And I was like, this sounds interesting. I have no idea what any of this means. I'm just gonna throw out a random idea in my brain and see if that manifests into a thing.

I sent my submission and then suddenly got very invested in the idea that I had submitted. I was like, okay, I hope this actually works, and it worked. And for the majority of a year I was talking through the process of a game that I wanted to work on that is still presently in development, and it was this very inspiring, this very refreshing experience to be able to go, "this is another avenue of my creativity that I can invest in, that also requires my speculative writing brain, that also requires me to think a great deal, not just about the mechanics, but about what this world is and what it does. And most importantly, how to get somebody to directly invest into that space."

And while that one big game was still on the back burner, I was like, let's just experiment with some of the ideas that I'm discovering by just making a bunch of very small things. And the thing that I think is the through line between my tabletop design and poetry, one of the through lines rather, is there is this unique moment when you discover how to present this brief, small thing in a way that is obviously concise in its shape, but gets bigger when somebody else gets to experience it for themselves.

I like the idea of something that I have crafted with as little words as possible, but those words' job is to get you to think more deeply about something other than just what's on the page. And playing with that more often has just been very refreshing for me being in the position to just go, "here is a thing that I think would be cool and funny, let's just see how I'd make other people experience the act of playing that thing."

One of the more interesting and more personally challenging small RPG projects that I worked on that is presently on my Itch.io page is a game called A Nice Hobby, where the game is about joining a nice hobby. It's about discovering this cool card game, or getting really into Gunpla or have you, like, discovered how to make costumes or something like that. And you're meeting all of these new friends, and you're discovering that, oh, this hobby is actually not very nice. There is a point in the rules where the game keeps telling you "this is a nice hobby. You shouldn't worry about anything at all. Please define your greatest fear." And then you turn the page and the book says "I'm sorry". And like—

Kat Kourbeti: Oh my god, I love this. Not for nothing, but we've all experienced that moment, though, haven't we, in a hobby?

Brandon O'Brien: No, like, because I'm essentially describing not only the real world sense of, you got into this thing because you thought it was fun, and now you discover all of these people are not cool. But also, it is expressed in a more speculative way, because it was like inspired by a tokusatsu series that I saw and really loved, and it's really a shame that it only got one season, called Girl Gun Lady, about a high schooler who decides she wants to get into building model guns from this weird model gun set that is available at the hobby shop next to her school, because all of her friends are into it, and also this girl who she stopped talking to for some reason and she doesn't get why they stopped talking is also into it, so she's like, maybe if I get into this thing, we'll be cool again. And then she goes home and she takes one of those model kits and she builds a toy pistol and goes to sleep. And she wakes up at school. But no one else is at school except for her and five other girls, which also includes the girl that she's not talking to. But they're all in different uniforms that look like military uniforms.

And they all have their toy guns on them. But their toy guns are now full of actual bullets, and now they have to shoot each other in order to leave the school! And like, okay, this is a lot. This is a lot and a half. This is very worrisome. But like, that heightened image of "What if this thing that you enjoy is bad for you?" revealing more deeply, how do you maintain the bonds that you have actually formed with people that you care about when you discover that the hobby that you're in is hostile? And try to replicate that in game form.

And I think that ultimately every time I make a small game like that it is essentially a poem that you roll dice in. Which is very funny to me in part because I am not good at math, so like rules and shit don't actually matter to me all that much. I try to not make a game that is so broken that you actually cannot play it to the end. But it also doesn't matter to me whether this game is "good" or "balanced". What matters to me is that it's replicating the experience that you're supposed to have at its core.

I don't care if the end state of A Nice Hobby is everybody loses, because that's still story. It's a very horrible story, and I'm sorry that I put you through that, but that's still story. And every once in a while I'll have an idea like that where the goal is, how do I create that experience in a game in particular?

My favorite of recent experiences is I made a game called The God of Spite and Violence, which is what if you essentially were John Wick? And the core story beat in that space is how do you punish someone for destroying all of the things that mattered to you before you were violent? While reconciling that violence is not ideal for your body. It's not good for you. Because like all of those movies, all of those games are about people who just resort to destroying themselves and then just find peace afterwards while severely wounded, while pieces of themselves are poking out, because hard, strong men are apparently not supposed to care about those things.

But what if you told the version of the story where, at some point, other characters come up to you and go, "you know, this is a lot. When this is done, you need to find your peace some other way," and the game doesn't tell you how.

Kat Kourbeti: Yikes.

Brandon O'Brien: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: But also, yeah, fair and valid. It's the thoughts you have while you watch a film like that, where you're like, "... could I just say something?" And then that becomes like a new idea.

And you don't only design tabletops, you also play them like, live in podcasts and things. So, how did you get into that? And do you have a favorite one you've done? I know that the tokusatsu theme kind of comes back in the other things that you do outside of the writing, and sometimes in the writing.

So tell me a little bit about your streaming TTRPGs and actual play things.

Brandon O'Brien: Yeah. So, I am the co host of a podcast called Speculate, which is presently on hiatus. But when we were still live, we would on a monthly basis stream playing tabletop RPGs. And I think the obvious fun that a lot of other people have discovered about tabletop RPG actual play streams is, it is essentially guided theater. The book essentially gives you room for improv, and anytime you want to ask a question that you don't already know how to improv off the top of your head, you just roll dice and the game will tell you what the answer to your question is. Which is very rewarding for narrative play, but also once you find the game with the world and the story that you want to tell, it becomes very engaging to just kind of pursue all of the energy that that game is trying to get you to fulfill.

I think the most fun I've had running a game for a stream, there is a game by Andrew Gillis called Girl by Moonlight, which is like a very magical girl anime themed, but the actual story frames in the book are often very dark and complicated in that sense. And we played a series of one of those for Speculate, where essentially the world building is there is this conspiracy of powerful... question mark—we never even qualify what these entities are, but they have the capacity to enter and control dreams, and they do so for a very deeply socially ingrained conspiratorial reason that has an effect on the state of our city as a dystopia. And the protagonists are essentially the only people who can willfully enter and leave dreams and have been given the mandate to save other people from this conspiracy and reveal what its true nature is.

And what was fun about that is this world sucks. There's a rule in that specific story frame of the game where players have to make what is called an Obligation Rule, and what it defines is in their ordinary day to day life, how their job is inherently dystopian. One of the players was playing a teacher who discovered that their school is so ingrained in their conspiracy that teachers aren't allowed to have inspiring or hopeful conversations with students about their own gender identity. Another player character was a hostess at a hostess club who just discovered that they're in debt to the mafia. And then after that, they have to do the thing that is their calling in the real world, which is enter the world of dreams and try to save people from this thing. And then they're learning things like, one of your best friends was a member of the conspiracy the entire time, but they did it because they were trying to protect you because they love you. But now you're in a fist fight with them because they're the only enemy in the room. And like, homie, what?

A lot of the energy that I try to bring when I'm running and playing RPGs is, I don't like to know a lot of the answers to the end of the story, because we're playing to find out how the story goes. So I will just make characters and give them very intense back stories and kind of have a good idea of what they would do if they were left unbothered for like five more sessions, and then someone will make a radical decision about that character. I'm like, okay, cool, what happens now?

There are so many moments when I have looked directly to the camera with my jaw to the floor going, "I don't know how to answer the question you have just asked me about what happens next. So I'm gonna go back into the rulebook and start throwing some dice, and I'm gonna get back to you in a minute." And that's fun to me. Like I'm sure you've heard a lot of writers joke about the fact that we write books because this is the book that we want to read and no one else has ever written it yet. There is a lot of inherent joy in being able to go, I am playing this game because I want this vibe. I have no idea what I want out of this story yet. I just know I want this flavor of story. And then getting four of your friends together and they do the wildest thing you've ever imagined and you're like, yes, I enjoyed this so very much. This is good story.

And then you have to turn back to them and go, now I have to tell you how the world responds. You don't just continue telling the story to me. And I enjoy that so very much. I've actually been very frustrated by the fact that I haven't run a game on stream in over a year now. I really want to get back to it. So hopefully sometime very soon I get to do that again because it is actually very fun.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. And it's part of that, bringing the collaborative element into the storytelling where it's not just you making things up, which can be fun, and is, but there's something so powerful about having other people improv and come up with something that you never would have, and that aspect of the fun is just so much more enhanced, because there's more of you there.

In my TTRPG experience, the most fun has been the improv element. I was never really a rules person, kind of like you said, math isn't really my thing, I'm not going to crunch numbers. What matters is what choices can we all make in this room and how can we affect the plot, or make the GM be like, well, I don't know what to tell you. Sometimes the chaos is even more rewarding.

Brandon O'Brien: One of my greatest experiences as a GM, before that story, we were playing a game of Blades in the Dark, where I'd created this entire story about, all of the players were essentially fugitives running from the law because they were alleged to own this very dangerous artifact that had been stolen, etc. And there was a point in time where they had to interact with a mob boss in order to gain more information about the situation that they were in. They knew nothing about this person. They knew nothing about this person's relationship to one of their dead colleagues. All they knew was they need to get information from this person about another person who they also do not know. They have no in.

And then one of my players describes going into a closet, changing clothes into what looks like a uniform for one of the workers in this warehouse, steps out with another player who is not human, who is essentially just a giant robot, and tells this entire story about how they've been sent here by someone to gather information about XYZ. I have no idea what they're describing to this person. They just made up a story for two minutes. I'm like, mechanically, I should ask you to make a roll to see if you've persuaded this person. But you've persuaded me, so just do the thing!

Kat Kourbeti: Sometimes the dice roll is not necessary.

Brandon O'Brien: Yeah, sometimes you just do the thing! And I think that's what is most rewarding to me. Because in high school and early university, I hung out with a lot of theatre folks. Theatre is still, like, very strongly bonded to how I discovered poetry as a craft as well. I'm very into the idea that what TTRPGs mean when they say play to find out, is that anything that you do in game is play. We ask you to roll dice because if we do not know the answer to our question, the dice will give us the answer. If your performance gives me the answer, I do not need anything else from you.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Brandon O'Brien: People are committed to the idea that rules as written, you need to do X, Y, Z.

No, sometimes your players will just be committed to a course of action and you just let them experience the consequences of their actions. Sometimes you don't need to guess what other people will feel about this thing. Sometimes you just know. And I'm always excited about the moment when somebody makes a radical decision like that. Because it means that everything is happening at once. It is all RPG, it is all theater, it is all storytelling, in a way that doesn't require any other artifice. And when you hit that on the head, like, that's the whole game.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, glorious fun.

Brandon O'Brien: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Just a rad ol' time. I do hope that we can see more from you in that field soon. And until then, we'll leave notes for people to go check out the podcast and other places where that can be found.

So outside of your current, ever growing, infinite poetry collection that you're working on at the moment, is there anything else that's kind of recent that or coming soon that you want to promote or plug?

Brandon O'Brien: First and foremost, I really want people to check out the Seattle Worldcon blog. I'm very, very, very excited about Con-Verse, actually, because I like talking to people about poetry. As I said, I like giving people opportunities to find access into poetry as an art form, and speculative poetry as a subset of an art form. So I hope that it inspires you to dig more deeply. Hope by the time you're hearing this, if nominations are still open, you have bought your membership for Seattle Worldcon and are actually nominating poems for the best speculative poem special award at the Hugo Awards. And if we have missed that, and we are now into finalist period, I hope that you still have your membership. So you can actually put a poem as the winner on the ballot. But yes, I hope that you check out the blog.

I have poems all over the place. One of my latest poems in Uncanny Magazine, Anansi Braids Your Stepson's Hair, is like one of my favorites to have written so far. I'm so very grateful to have more poetry in the magazines that I really, really adore. So I hope that you're checking that out as well. And again, I hope that you're checking out all of the poetry in Uncanny and in Strange Horizons, all kinds of other places as well.

I will say that I am presently in the end of writing text for an RPG called Gray Shade, which is the D&D 5th edition RPG tie in for the Gray Assassin Trilogy by my good friend, the author Gregory A. Wilson. So if you ever wanted to play a religious assassin in a city that is more or less Renaissance Venice with the serial numbers filed off, I hope that I give you the experience of playing that.

I recently finished some writing for an adventure in the Tomb Raider Shadows of Truth TTRPG that is coming out very soon. I'm so very excited about that as well.

And yeah you can find me on the Internet all kinds of places @TheRisingTithes, and I have a website that is also my newsletter at BrandonOBrien.xyz, where I very sporadically write about pop culture and show pictures of whatever game I'm playing on my phone right now. So, yeah, check me out anywhere on the Internet, I guess.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. Will do. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been an absolute pleasure talking to you and we'll see you around.

Brandon O'Brien: Yay! Thank you so very much for having me, this was fun.​

In this episode of Strange Horizons @ 25, Kat Kourbeti sits down with SFF critic and writer Bogi Takács for an in-depth conversation about the role of criticism in the SFF space, plus an overall look at their varied career.

Links and things:

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• Did you know SH@25 is eligible for the Best Related Work category in the Hugo Awards? Keep us in mind for your 2025 ballot!

Episode show notes:

• Follow Bogi on Bluesky, and visit their website, BogiReadsTheWorld.com
• Read Bogi's work in our archives, including their reviews, poems, and fiction.
• Buy Bogi's latest collection, Power To Yield and Other Stories
• Find more links to their work and everything else we talked about, as you read this episode's transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello, Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres.

Today's guest is Bogi Takács, first published with Strange Horizons in 2012 with their poem, "Torah and Secular Learning", followed by various articles and reviews, more poetry, and has also since gone on to win the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer and the Lambda Award for Transgender Literature, among other nominations.

It's great to have you here, Bogi.

Bogi Takács: Thank you very much for having me, it's a pleasure.

Kat Kourbeti: When this episode goes live, which is next week at the time of recording, it will be our Criticism Special. So you're a very fitting guest, actually, as you're a prolific critic and reviewer with your website, Bogi Reads the World. You've also contributed to several roundtable conversations on criticism on Strange Horizons through the years.

And your voice is, I would argue, one of the most respected in the field. So it's an absolute pleasure to talk to you today about reviewing and criticism and thinking about SFF critically through all the different perspectives. And my first question is, how did you first get into reviewing SFF books?

Bogi Takács: That's a good question. It has been a really long while. I was reviewing first in Hungarian and then I switched to English, I think 2010, when Shweta Narayan organized an initiative to diversify SFF reviewing in English, where there was a group of people who would get people Hugo memberships and encourage them to review, also in the less reviewed categories, like short fiction, novelette, novella, which back then the novella category was, was very different and much smaller. So that was when I started reviewing in English, but I had been reviewing in Hungarian at that point for, I don't even know how long. I started in high school, I was writing reviews for an online magazine called Solaria, in Hungarian. So that was basically how I got started. And then after that, when I switched to English, I think that has been like, probably more known to the audience.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I'm also from a non anglophone country and it's a shame that like, you do limit your audience when you write in your first tongue. Like it just kind of is what it is. And so we're kind of, not forced, but kind of forced to write in our second language, to learn it best as we can, in both our cases to move countries elsewhere to where that's the primary thing and where the jobs are and stuff.

It's frustrating to see that, in Greece it's the same, where I'm from originally, where the audience is like, very, very tiny, so you kind of have to.

Bogi Takács: And also I feel like just writing in different languages just comes with different kinds of tensions. For a while, in Hungary, I also used to be a member of a group blog about video games. And one of the reasons we ended up stopping that is that people would just send us an incredible amount of anti Semitic and racist hate mail. This was before GamerGate in the US. I am sad to say that this type of thing is now also more common in like an anglophone context, but back then there was really a stark difference. So yeah, that's certainly one aspect of it.

But also, I started writing in English when I was still living in Hungary and started reviewing while I was still living in Hungary. I moved to the US I think about four years, five years after that. And since I live in Kansas, it's not like there's a con every day in the backyard. There's sometimes cons in Kansas City. But in Hungary, I used to live in Budapest, everything was close by. It was quite different in that sense. But I actually really like living in Kansas, so.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm glad to hear it. Moving has its challenges and, you know, it's neutral in a sense. There's good things and bad things about it. I've lived in London for 16 years now, which is almost half my life. So at this point, yeah, what is home? And I do enjoy living here. I also get very frustrated with it. So, ehhh, you know. The choices we make kind of shape the journey.

So to talk about your journey as a reviewer, since it's the first thing that you got into, what's your approach when it comes to reviewing? Do you have like a specific set of criteria that you always use when you're looking at a text? Do you let the work itself guide the review with what you notice?

Bogi Takács: I always just read through the whole thing for my first attempt and just note down my thoughts that I have. I often read on Shabbos when I don't use electricity. So I have this amazing thing called Book Darts that I can clip on the side of the page. So I use the Book Darts for Making sure that I'm not missing anything that I specifically want to mention. I always like, when I'm making my points, I always like to quote specifics from the text. Because I just feel like that just makes it more substantial. And more like, okay, I'm not totally off base here. Hopefully. Maybe I am. So that is how I get started.

I feel like I have a lot of criteria in my head, but they are there implicitly, I don't necessarily explicate them. I have been reviewing for a very long time. I have also been editing, especially short fiction and poetry, for a very long time. Of course, those are always in my head. And sometimes I read something that has already been published, it, it gets cross wired in my brain, and I go like, "Well, I would have done something else here, and I would have just gently told the author, and I would have seen what the author does then".

But of course, when something is published, that's not really a possibility. I have edited multiple reprint anthologies, where this was especially tricky, where I was like, "okay I am not going to ask for a rewrite because it has obviously been previously published". But sometimes with reprints, you make those compromises. Or you ask for really, really small line tweaks if you feel like that has to happen. But usually not.

So I have criteria, but I don't have a bullet point list or anything like that that I work through. It's not that structured at all.

Kat Kourbeti: That's very interesting. It's segueing into a future question I had about your editing. Of course, all of that will impact how you read a text because you have experience of like, here's how I would do it. Here's what I would like to see from it. So that's really fascinating.

Let's talk about the editing now and then we'll jump back into a couple of other questions about reviewing again. So with editing especially with the anthologies, how did you get into it? What was the impetus to get into editing in the first place? And was it an easy process for you?

Bogi Takács: Yeah I decided very shortly after starting to review in English that especially since I was reading a heap of short stories, I was like, I really want to do a Year's Best. I even did, I think in 2011, I put a thing like that on my website that I just called "Bogi's Virtual Anthology" because it didn't have a publisher. It just had links to the individual stories. And I was like, well, I put it together like an anthology that you can read, but it's really like, a blog post. And back then I had like no idea how to query publishers, how to do anything like that.

What happened with Transcendent is that the first volume was edited by Kellan Szpara. I sent a reprint, so I am in that book with a story, but then Kellan didn't necessarily want to do another.

I was really interested in doing another. I discussed it with Steve Berman, and that was how that got started. So I did three volumes of that. I am hopefully going to have something soon that I cannot announce yet, because I haven't signed the contract yet, with a different publisher. So I'm teasing a strange and mysterious thing that I cannot mention. So hopefully there's gonna be, not exactly the same thing, but something along these lines.

I actually, the first thing I edited, this is a bit funny, because that was in like sixth grade. We had to do an art project for art class in school. I decided to make a "science fiction magazine". And the way this worked was that I was already reading a lot of science fiction at that point, and I would just photocopy pages from magazines that I liked, especially flash stories, because they were kind of short. And then, I wouldn't say I typeset them, but like I glued them to these sheets of paper. I added little graphic elements that I made. I made a cover that I also drew myself, etc. It had something like three stories, so it wasn't very long. And I was really surprised, not just that my teacher liked it, but it ended up being displayed in like, the school corridor, and people would actually read the stories and come up to me and tell me "I read the stories in the corridor!" Okay, thank you for reading the stories in the corridor.

So I have always been interested in (editing), but for a very long time I had no idea how to even approach a publisher. I feel like I still struggle with that. I often don't know like, who has the resources, who has the willingness, how I find those people. So, here is the place of the advertisement, if anybody wants an anthology edited by me, reach out. I am trying to be more diligent about just talking to publishers.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I mean, the process can be convoluted. Publishing is not easy, but I'm very excited to hear about this mysterious teasing project, so we'll look forward to that when time comes. That's awesome. And it's super cute that at what, 12 years old, you were editing little anthologies. Yeah. Three stories, whatever. That counts, I think.

Bogi Takács: Yep. One of them was about cats.

Kat Kourbeti: Of course, you got to have a story about cats.

Bogi Takács: Yeah, exactly.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, that's brilliant.

So thinking about the anthologies you've put together besides the year's best, especially the themed ones. What is your approach as an editor, when you're looking through the slush, when you're choosing stories to put in the anthologies, like what are you looking for?

And is there a streamlined process for you where you go, I want this, I want this. This ticks it, this doesn't.

Bogi Takács: Yes. So first of all I read everything myself. I don't have slush readers simply because I read really quite fast and I also make up my mind fast. So I think I can do that. This leads to just really high volume of submissions.

I haven't been open for anything recently but I'm a bit concerned, like, what's gonna happen with, especially if I'm editing something with originals, people will send these AI generated things. I already see some of that because I teach in college, and people send me their AI generated homework, and then I'm like, "Uh, you know that the sources you cite don't exist?" So, yes.

Then I feel like I want to have, not so much thematic diversity, but like emotional diversity. I don't want all the stories to be downers and I also don't want the reverse, but I think that's less frequent. I think people mostly write stories which are like downers or scary or evoke some kind of negative emotion, often really well. But stories which evoke positive emotions are harder to find, but I want to make sure that I have kind of a mix of that. I know that people say, "oh, if a story has something very specific, then usually editors don't buy anything else that's very specific in the same way". That has also annoyed me as a writer, but as an editor, I can do something about it.

So for the latest anthology that I edited, which was Rosalind's Siblings, that came out in late 2023, this was an anthology specifically focused on scientists of marginalized genders. So it had a bunch of fiction and poetry that was specifically about scientists. So that already kind of narrows it down.

But then I ended up in the slush having two awesome stories, which were both about trans astronauts exploring Venus. So that's really very specific. And I was like, these are both great. The conventional wisdom would be that I would reject one of them. I was like, "I don't care about the conventional wisdom. I'm going to buy both of these." And I bought both of them, and I put both of them in the anthology, and that just got so much positive feedback from readers. Like, I was surprised. People were like, "whoa, there were two stories on the same topic of trans astronauts exploring Venus, and yet they were both so different and so exciting, and I loved both of them, and I'm so glad that you had both of them." People would literally reach out to me to tell me about that.

So that made me feel a bit relieved that, okay, the conventional wisdom is there for a reason, but it's okay to push against that. It's okay to be more flexible. If there's literally two amazing stories on the same theme, then I don't think the world will be destroyed if I buy them both. That reassured me. It just made me happy in general, so that was cool.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. Yeah, I definitely have heard stories from people who were like, "Oh, there was all of this stuff that was kind of very similar. And we had to, you know, we can't have too many of the same thing." I love hearing that. And yeah, of course they'd be different. It's that whole thing of like, the same idea cannot be executed in the same way by two people. Two different writers will come up with a very different story.

I'm glad you did that, and I'm glad that people responded well to it. Cause I think, rules can be bent, you know, and it's an unofficial rule anyway.

Bogi Takács: Yes, exactly.

Kat Kourbeti: But it's great to see a very specific, "Yeah, you know what? I really like those. I want to put both of those in. You know why? Because I'm the boss."

Bogi Takács: Exactly.

Kat Kourbeti: It's great!

So to jump back a little bit on like reviewing and how that intersects with Strange Horizons. So you have published a couple of review articles with us as well, a few years back. What was your experience pitching these to the reviews team?

Bogi Takács: I think it was a mix. Some of them I reached out that "I have this and this book, I think it would be cool to have a review about it". And sometimes there was a list of books that was being circulated, like, "who wants to review any of these?" So it was kind of a mix of both.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, and because they're both very interesting, and one of them was a self published book as well, which, as you note in your review, doesn't happen very often, reviews of self published books. But, it's really cool to kind of see that mix of approach. I think our reviews team is very varied with that. They've got their little circle of people, and they circulate things. So, yeah.

The articles that you've published with us that are not reviews are also very interesting because they're kind of analysis of various topics related to SFF publishing. In fact, I think the first thing I ever read from you was the Diversity in Editors piece, which is really cool and data driven. What prompted you to dive into that topic and how did you go about collecting all that information and analyzing it and kind of going into the details?

Bogi Takács: Basically I started doing it because people were just starting to discuss—I wouldn't say that, because this discussion has been around since forever—but it finally reached some kind of mainstream threshold where suddenly a lot of people were discussing diversity in SFF, but mostly related to fiction, and even in fiction I think mostly related to novels. And there was very little discussion of other aspects of publishing. And I decided that I would focus on editors. I thought that I would also focus on agents, but at that point there were very few agents who I could include. And I remember I messaged, some of them and they were like, oh, I quit agenting. And I was like, yeah, wow, that's really sad, but also I kind of understand, and I'm also seeing a pattern is that if I ask really just a couple of people and this was one of the predominant sentiments, then that really bothers me actually.

So I decided to narrow it down to specifically editors. And other people did other things later, like for example, specifically focusing on all aspects of publishing, especially in the kid lit space. There were various initiatives. Not just We Need Diverse Books, but for example, Lee and Low was also doing a survey. There were other kinds of surveys and so on.

But the way I started working on it was, I just thought about who are the people who come to mind. And I asked everybody if they wanted to be included. Like, I wouldn't want to include people against their will. And some people said no. Not very many, but, some people said no. Sometimes it was like a situation where they felt that they belong to the majority in their countries of origin or where they were living, but not in like the wider anglophone space. Which, because I focused on English I still reached out to them, but I was like, okay, I understand if you don't feel specifically marginalized. But there weren't very many people who opted out, just a couple.

Most people wanted to be included. Most people wanted to be included so much that this kind of caused problems. I started doing this on social media, and then I started sending out emails. And I was sending out like these dozens of emails, and I was trying to be very clear back on Twitter, I was saying like, "Oh yeah, if I haven't gotten to you yet, it's because I'm literally sending out these endless emails" and all of these are personalized emails. Since I know quite a few of these people, I wouldn't just send them a 'fill out the form' or anything like that. But I also did want them to answer a couple of questions. Like, I wanted them to self define because I didn't want to have to figure out how to categorize each person. I wanted them to go like, okay, this is how I identify, these are the terms that I prefer, et cetera. And some people got upset that I didn't get to them fast enough. So that was a bit stressful for me because I was really trying to do it as fast as I could. In retrospect, I wish that I would have done it differently in the sense that, first build up like a stack of emails and then send them out all at once, instead of just sending it out one at a time.

But I honestly didn't expect how much interest there was, and just how many people reached out, and I think that was awesome. So it was absolutely worth it, but there were times when I was a bit stressed about it. I feel like now there's many more like that, and databases and all sorts of information like that. Often much better made than this, which was basically like an HTML file. It wasn't like anything elaborate.

I have had databases that I made since then that were much more elaborate because now the technology is there. It's super easy to do like, an online spreadsheet or anything like that. But back then it wasn't so much a thing. I was really happy that I did it and I was really happy that Strange Horizons not just published it, but gave me specifically a place to reflect on the process and do a kind of like post mortem of, okay, this is what I did and this is what happened.

Kat Kourbeti: It was really interesting to me as a reader at the time, just seeing what the space looks like and, who is it that's looking at these stories and if I send something somewhere—me as a queer female immigrant, non Anglophone, whatever—how is that reflected in the space? And at the time, I mean, this was what, not 10 years ago, but almost, like 8 years ago. I wanna say 2017?

Bogi Takács: It was. Oh my God.

Kat Kourbeti: We can look this up.

Bogi Takács: It was a while ago. (laughs)

Kat Kourbeti: It was a while ago. And how do you feel about the space today? Would you say SFF publishing and especially in the short form and the semiprozines and other kind of spaces, has that diversity improved, do you think? You know, is there still work to be done?

Bogi Takács: Oh, there's always work to be done, but I think that it has vastly changed. But also the amount of stuff that is being published has also vastly changed. Like, when I started reviewing in English, Clarkesworld, for example, ran two stories per month, and now they run a lot more than two stories a month and I ended up subscribing to the print magazine, and it's like thick as a book, and it's very fun to read as a magazine issue, but it's also kind of like an anthology. I can see how Neil and his staff are trying to have a thematic through line in various issues.

But yeah, just to go back to author diversity, I think that has really improved. I see different trends in novels where both the barrier for entry is higher, but also I feel like thematic diversity is less encouraged than in the short form. In the short form, you can do really, really unusual and groundbreaking things. Or you can do things that are, for example, in your own culture, in your own traditions, are very, very normal and everyday, but very strange to a different audience. So, there's certainly room for that. And the same is true for poetry as well.

But when it comes to longer form, I think even authors who get published, especially with the big presses and who are marginalized in some way, there's this pressure to have the same kinds of storylines, the same kinds of emotional beats. The same act structure. And now I think there's more awareness of how people should have more room to write what they want, and not be forced into—I feel like the bottleneck is often not necessarily the novel editor, not necessarily the agent, but often it's the acquisitions board with big publishers.

I hear this on a regular basis from writers whose work I love, is that, "oh yes, my editor sent it to the Acquisitions Board and they threw it back". So that is absolutely a thing, and that I personally find frustrating. One thing that I have noticed, though, is that literary fiction publishers have become more open to publishing SFF. And a bunch of the SFF that I have been reading lately, especially translated SFF, often comes from non SFF publishers, period. Like I'm reading the latest César Aira right now, came out from New Directions.

(By the way, I was a bit frustrated because even though the translation is wonderful, they didn't put the translator's name on the cover, only on the back cover, and that is the thing that is always frustrating for me, put the translator on the front cover. If New Directions is listening, then yeah.)

So I think in the short fiction and poetry spaces, I see much more, not just inclusion of people as a headcount, but inclusion of people to say what they want to say, even if it doesn't fit like a template. In novels, I see in some cases even the reverse, where people are encouraged to make their work more formulaic because people want to have a certain good seller, but unfortunately, what becomes a good seller is in very huge measure due to the marketing budget, which is determined in advance.

I used to work for a while in book marketing for a Jewish publisher, so it wasn't directly connected to the SFF space, though they did have some SFF books. I got to see that very much upfront that simply how much visibility a book has and how many sales it has is very much related to just how much marketing resources there are for a book. And this is kind of what I as a reviewer want to counterbalance, and make sure that I read a bunch of small press books, that I read self published books. Because those books might not have people to champion them for money, so here I am, I'm gonna do it for free.

Kat Kourbeti: Disheartening to hear about all the hurdles that people have to jump through to get something published, especially in novels. Yeah, I think at every level, there's one more hoop to jump through and just hope for the best.

So in terms of your own writing, you know, you're a poet. You're a fiction writer. With Strange Horizons, you've published four poems, which is quite a lot. The first one in 2012, which was your first piece with us. I want to hear a little bit about your poems because they're all very different. Very unique. A couple of them are mind blowing, but let's start with the first one. So "Torah and Secular Learning". How did that come about for you, and the speculative elements and stuff? Tell us a little bit about it.

Bogi Takács: Yeah, yeah, so this is a Jewish themed poem, and I have quite a few Jewish themed poems. I feel like maybe even the very first poem I published was Jewish themed. But most of these have been published outside Jewish spaces, which is interesting. I mean, that might change but I have primarily sent them to speculative venues because they have SFF elements, everything from like angels to demons to things that go bump in the night, and all sorts of those aspects.

So I always based them on something specific that struck me. As of relatively recently, I have also been employed as an assistant teaching professor of Jewish studies, and also Slavic, German, and Eurasian studies, which is a mouthful, but it has been created from three departments that have merged, so I have the longest title ever. So now it's also part of my day job to read a bunch of Jewish things. Before that, I just did it because I wanted to.

So I always come across really interesting little tidbits that I feel like, "Oh, this sounds really speculative". I feel like there's even more of them than I can actually include, there's always these gems. I remember quite a while ago I was studying Talmud, and there was this passage about going past the Shabbat boundary that you're not supposed to cross on Shabbat, and can you do it if you fly under your own power? So that's essentially Superman. And I was like, I can't believe they sat there in the ancient era and were discussing Superman, just like that. So there's a lot of cool tidbits that I always want to write about, and of course there's like the biblically accurate angels and things like that.

Lately I have been working on a series that also has some poems that are specifically Jewish related, but some that are not super explicitly. I guess all of my poems are Jewish related because I write them. But this is a series that specifically focuses on, it's called 'Jobs For Magical People That Don't Involve The Military'. I specifically started working on this in relation to the Israeli invasion of Gaza, which I think is horrible. And I'm very glad that there's at least a temporary ceasefire now and of course, always hoping for not just a permanent ceasefire, but an end to occupation and things like that.

When the whole thing started going down, both with Hamas taking hostages and then the absolutely disproportionate response to that from the Israeli government, for a long while I was just so upset I couldn't even write about anything. But then I also thought about how, especially here in the US with the military industrial complex, they often find themselves inspired specifically by fantasy, like if we think about things like Palantir, or all of these various military and surveillance and all of these projects that are specifically suppressive in nature and are named after these fantasy things. And a lot of what happens with magic in fantasy is like that, like, "what do you use magic for? You shoot a fireball." So I wanted to just have a bunch of alternatives to shooting a fireball, even though shooting a fireball is pretty cool, and I'm sure it has peacetime uses. But that in itself is also something that can be explored.

So I have been writing a bunch of these, and now a bunch of these have already been published. Most recently, specifically in Strange Horizons, I think exactly a month ago.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. December of 2024. It's 'The Person Who Reminds The Other Person To Cast a Spell'.

Bogi Takács: Yes, exactly. I feel like that's a very essential job, by the way.

So there's a whole bunch of them and they're all different. Some of them have more Jewish elements, others have fewer. But always I'm trying to emphasize that this magic and sense of wonder and things like that, do not necessarily have to be associated with violently subjugating other people, which is bad. Even if this seems really naive or something, it's certainly one thing I can do.

And of course I'm doing various other things. One thing that I have been also focusing on as a reviewer is to not just read a lot of Palestinian books, but also tell people about them. Sonia Sulaiman has this wonderful reading list where she's trying to have a bibliography of all the Palestinian SFF published in English, and I really recommend that. And not just to read, but also to talk about, because that is how people experience things through word of mouth, even today on social media.

I think that is true of all the present marginalized peoples. Like when we think about also the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there also people wanted to read books. This has led to a very cool anthology, Embroidered Worlds, that is an anthology of Ukrainian SFF in English. I think it was also reviewed in Strange Horizons. I have two translations in it, which I was very happy about because they were specifically translations of Hungarian authors who are Ukrainian, like ethnic minority Hungarians who are Ukrainian also. I was just very happy that when the anthology was put together, they thought about that and they reached out to me to ask if I know any authors, and I found two authors and translated work from them from Hungarian.

Because I often feel like when something has a focus on one marginalization, then if there's any additional ones on top, then that just has an even huger barrier. Like, one of my examples that I still keep on reusing is that trans authors in translation are really hard to find. Simply because what gets translated is often very much like the hegemonic, mainstream bestseller type of literature, because translation is already a risk. People don't want to take on another risk. So I like doing that and I like seeking out books like that both to read and to review.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I mean, we at Strange Horizons, you know, we did the Palestinian special a few years back. This was even before, you know, the last couple of years. And Sonia in particular, she also worked on editing that with us, and it's tremendous work, and I really admire and value the people who do that kind of work, where it's like, "let me highlight what's out there," because, like you say, it's hard to find. For the mainstream to seek those things out. So voices like yourself or like Sonia and others who gather all the things together and they're like, "here you go. Here's a list of all the things." It's tremendously valuable, both for diversifying your reading, but just also for archiving, to just have a record of all of these things.

Cause gosh, I mean, especially in the last little bit, with the internet imploding, it's been just really on my mind. Like, how do we keep records of all of these things, especially things that were online, perhaps in defunct spaces now, communities that used to gather someplace that now are no longer there and have to put all their work somewhere else. It's all really fascinating, and sad at the same time. Just how much we're losing with all of this AI stuff, the dead internet thing where it's all just robots talking to each other. And meanwhile, us humans are like, hello.

Bogi Takács: Exactly. I see that very acutely. I really appreciated recently the work that Bethany of Transfeminine Review has been doing. She doesn't necessarily focus specifically on SFF, but she does mention SFF as well. And she has these great, not just lists, but also like articles about preservation and things like that. And this is also one of the motivations when I started making a list of intersex books by intersex people a few years back, because I just felt that for me as an intersex person, it has been just prohibitively difficult to find those books. Especially when I started out. Now people know that they need to tell me because I have a list, and I'm maintaining the list.

Even still, I constantly find books that came out like a year ago, two years ago, and nobody told me about it. I couldn't find out about it, didn't hear about it. And now, if you look on like Amazon in new releases, it's completely flooded with like, AI sticker books and things like that, that nobody buys, nobody reads, but if you look at the recent releases, that's what comes up.

So it's just another barrier of discoverability. Even though I personally think that computers can be great for discoverability, like similarity algorithms that find you something that might be similar to the things you like, but more obscure. This could absolutely be leveraged in a cool way, but that's unfortunately not what's happening. So yeah, one of the reasons why I make lists, I feel like some of the reasons are just completely egocentric. I like making lists. So then I just make them. I would make them even if it didn't have any further motive, but I like making lists and trying to find books that are hard to find, so that other people have some success in trying to find them.

There's so many gaps. I remember maybe three, four years ago, I was trying to find specifically SFF by authors from Afghanistan. I found three books, and I posted about these three books. And also there's just entire regions I feel like are still missing from the discourse. Central Asia, good chunks of Oceania. There's just a lot of stuff that's like still not discussed. So, I am like, trying my hardest, but also I'm one person and I have my own biases and my own desires of what I want to read. For example, I read a lot of poetry and then sometimes people go like, why are you always recommending poetry?

And I'm like, I like poetry. Yeah, not everybody likes poetry, apparently.

Kat Kourbeti: Go figure on that.

Bogi Takács: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Over here at Strange Horizons, we love poetry, and as is evident we keep publishing both you and just a variety of like really cool people.

I want to ask about a particular poem we published of yours that I was looking at again today and I was like, this is so cool.

So it's called You Are Here.

I guess I'm going to spoil it a little bit, you know, for the listeners who haven't seen it, but you read half of it and then there's a link that says "proceed", and then you click that and something magical happens, that I was delighted by. How did that happen?

Did you have that specific idea? And how did you get that to work? Who did the programming for the really special thing that happens?

Bogi Takács: Oh my god, I did the programming. It was bad. So, yeah, I had the idea first. Then I was like, okay, sure, I can program this. That didn't go as planned. First of all, it was super difficult to make the function words all match up. I didn't want any words leftover or left hanging. Then I had this huge issue with the syntax where it just didn't want to do a for loop no matter what I did. That's such a basic thing. So, I ended up literally doing the loop in a different programming language and I generated the code for that. And then just, the original code was a mess. I think after it was accepted in Strange Horizons, they recoded some of it, because it was just ugly.

I think I put as a Patreon bonus the original source code a while back, so it's somewhere on my Patreon. It was very difficult both just to make the words count, like fit in both halves, and then to actually make it display the way I wanted. At one point I was just like crying at my desk. I was like, Oh my God, I really want to make this work. It's like almost working, but it's not.

Kat Kourbeti: That blows my mind even more, cause I know very little code, and so this is witchcraft to me. So well done.

How did you submit this? How does that work in terms of like, "hey guys, I have this poem and it's really weird. And it requires some special coding stuff." Yeah. How'd you do that?

Bogi Takács: I made just a zip file. It had in it the actual code. I made a little frame for it just so that, this is how it would look like in a website. I had some instructions where I also explained why some of the code is so messy. And I also had an accessible version where it was just like a description of what it does if you can't physically see the visual aspect of it. And I don't think that that ran with it. I'm not sure, but I did put it on my website, and it was also published in my first poetry collection, that was Algorithmic Shapeshifting, that came out from Aqueduct. So that version has also been published, and it does exist.

Kat Kourbeti: Fascinating. I'm always fascinated with strange formatting, and what we can do online versus print. So out of interest, how does that poem translate to a print version? How did you make that display in a way that perhaps evokes a similar feeling?

Bogi Takács: Yeah, it's kind of just like a verbal explanation of what happens, because obviously you can't animate it on the page. I mean, you could have like a flip book. I never tried that. I could do it like a one off, like a little limited edition thing. That's a fun idea, now I'm like thinking.

I like doing strange things with computers and sometimes it translates to print, sometimes it doesn't. Also, I am really frustrated with large language models for multiple reasons. Okay, you trained it on other people's work that they didn't give permission, and you didn't pay attention to resource use and things like that, etc., etc. So I have many issues with large language models. But I actually did something like that, so to say, on the kitchen table where I took my own manuscripts and also some of my unpublished stuff, and I ran an algorithm on it that was a purely like stochastic process. Like it didn't learn anything. It just like, tried to find regularities in my own work, and it created an output which was a humongous mess, and then I handpicked the best lines from that, and I put that together and wrote a little foreword for it that this was like a collaboration between me and statistics. And I thought that was really fun, but now I think everybody would assume that I did it with an LLM, which is extremely not what I did.

This is also frustrating for me because I like generative art where you do something with a computer, but this has been completely impossible to find because if you search for generative art, of course what comes up is this AI art, which is really awful. And I finally found a subreddit called Generative, where people post actual generative art that you program yourself, and it can take many different forms. And they ban AI art, which is really funny, but that makes perfect sense to me.

Kat Kourbeti: No, for sure. In the same way that machine learning and stuff, before this boom, this—what I consider a bubble personally—like, I really think that we're hopefully close to it bursting, because it's not working.

Bogi Takács: Exactly.

Kat Kourbeti: It's not doing what they're promising. It's not doing what we want, and it's taking away from what I think has been really interesting machine learning research that was happening before all of these models started becoming popular, and taking away resources and brainpower from areas where algorithmic power would be helpful. It's like there's places and spaces where there is use for these tools, and instead of using it for that, we're using it to, like, write emails, or make it tell us a birth chart, or, you know, in the case of your students, write crappy homework.

Bogi Takács: Yeah, exactly, like, I will make you redo it. It's not gonna help.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it's so frustrating, especially with how it's been affecting our industry. Writing, art, everything that's SFF, there's all of this malicious flooding of submissions of bad stuff that's, first of all, not art. So, I don't know what you're hoping to do.

Bogi Takács: Get the money for the acceptance. That's what they are aiming to do.

Kat Kourbeti: But the thing is, they're not even aware how difficult it is to get accepted, and what it takes to write a good story. It's not just like, "oh, hey, give me, I don't know, 500 words of whatever". Speak to your soul and see what comes out, which especially is what we do at Strange Horizons. We want things to resonate emotionally. What do you think is going to happen if you ask one of these things to do that for you? It's not going to do what you think.

So when it comes to your own writing now, the fiction side, right? We've talked a little bit about poetry, about your reviews, about your editing. You are also a prolific short fiction author. I'm sure that by now you have your own robust methods of sitting down to write a new story. I want to pick your brains. I want to find out how it all works for Bogi.

How do you tackle a new short story idea and get it through to the finish line? What's your method, if you have one?

Bogi Takács: I am very much an ideas based writer. If I don't have an idea that I feel is unique enough, then I'm not gonna write. I know many wonderful, awesome writers who are like, "okay, let's focus on these characters and their interactions". I always feel like when I myself do that, it doesn't necessarily work out the way I want it, unless I also have separately an idea that drives the story. This is also why I go through periods of not writing much poetry, because with poetry I feel this especially acutely, that I want to have a specific idea for a poem and if I don't have that, then I will just not.

Kat Kourbeti: When you say an idea, does that mean a concept? A world? What's the level that's acceptable to you?

Bogi Takács: In other people's writing, everything is acceptable to me, but with my own writing I want some kind of conceptual uniqueness. I also like to have, especially in poetry, some kind of structural uniqueness, or if I don't have a huge amount of structural uniqueness, then the concept. For example, when I came up on this idea of, "I'm going to examine different potential jobs that use magic, but don't involve the military", then that was an idea that's not structural but it can be combined with further structural ideas. This kind of became a mess because some of the structural ideas went so far away from poetry that now I'm shopping them around as flash fiction, so that also happens. Sometimes have these pieces where they are impossible to tell if it's fiction or poetry.

Along this military line, I had flash story a while back that was called the Oracle of Darpa, which is funny because it was reprinted both as fiction and as poetry. I just decided to send it to every call that seemed vaguely similar and took reprints. So obviously for some people it's fiction, for others it's poetry.

So I like to have that structural uniqueness. Sometimes I have an idea and then it goes for over a decade without it being written. For example, I had like a D&D idea that was my pet peeve about D&D. Generally people don't want to publish D&D stories unless it's very specifically a D&D venue, and I had no in to that type of thing. And then I was approached by a publisher creating specifically a D&D themed anthology. And then I was like, yes, I have this idea, I've had it for a decade. Now I can do it.

Sometimes I have an idea and I spend many years just trying to write it and failing, and having ten versions of that was bad. And then maybe the eleventh, I'm like, okay, I'm comfortable sending this out. I'm not a super prolific writer on the writing, I think I just have a reasonably good success at placing what I write. So I don't have a huge backlog, which is sometimes a problem because people reach out and go, like, "Oh, do you have something for this, in the following week?" And I'm, like, well, if it's in the following two weeks, then I can write it from scratch, but I don't have anything that I can take off the shelf and go like, "okay, I have this that might be a fit". In fact, I'm trying to figure out how to counteract this, because sometimes people really want something right away, and I don't always have something right away.

Kat Kourbeti: That's really interesting. I saw in another interview, you mentioned that you were drawn to writing longer and longer pieces. So is that still the case? And are you maybe thinking of a novel? Are you working on something long like that?

Bogi Takács: Yeah, I have two novel manuscripts that I have like 25k of each. So I need to actually finish them and decide which one to finish first. They're very, very, very different. One is a space opera political intrigue type of stuff, and the other is an urban fantasy subversion type of thing. So they are really, really very different.

I also wrote a YA science fiction novel that I haven't found a publisher for. Everybody was like, we don't do YA science fiction anymore. And this is true. Like, Alex Brown made like a database. And there's just incredibly few titles. Everything is fantasy in the YA space right now. Or horror. But this was a straight up space opera type of thing, so that wouldn't have worked.

I actually had the publisher tell me to revise it as adult and just send it to them. But I haven't had a chance to actually revise it as adult. It has quite an amount of political intrigue, so it could, in principle, work as an adult book. But teenage self discovery was an important aspect, and I wouldn't want to lose that. So I'm actually not sure what to do with this manuscript. I will figure it out. It's not very long, and I feel like it probably needs more length also.

Because my problem is always that I under explain things, so that is part of my process. After I have written the story, I show it to either my spouse, RB, who has also been published copiously in Strange Horizons, or my friends, and then they tell me, "okay, that's super underexplained, Bogi", or "Bogi, I have no idea what's happening there". Then I explain that and hope for that.

I also have two novellas that I'm currently shopping around. These are also very different. They're both at various publishers right now. One is like a post apocalyptic Hungary that's inspired by things like the Talmud, and other things that have nothing to do with post apocalyptic Hungary.

Kat Kourbeti: Sounds amazing, and I want to read it right now. I was raised Christian Orthodox, and so a lot of that imagery is really baked into my cultural experience, and so anything that's zingy, that's taking that but doing something interesting with it, I'm so sold. I'm so here for it. So, yes please. One reader right here.

Bogi Takács: Yes, that's great, thank you so much. The other one I have that is also quite different, that is about first contact with aliens, secondary world, and also shows a situation where somebody doesn't want to go into the military and goes through various things. A diasporic story very much, where the person is in diaspora and is given an opportunity to go to like the source land, and then serve in the military and fight people. And she doesn't want to do that. Which is similar to, I think, many people's diasporic Jewish experience, where you don't necessarily want to go to Israel and fight in the military, and then fight against Palestinians. Just this whole situation is awful. So I wanted to write something about that.

Also having like that bit of distance from it to put it in a secondary world setting, where I can examine various different aspects of it that I can adjust in the way I want. And I'm not bound to, "okay, here's this inspired by culture A, culture B, and culture C". But rather, this is what was the original inspiration, but I can put my own spin on it and examine different aspects of it. And also aliens, because I like aliens.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I'm always fascinated with what SFF immigrant and diaspora authors do with regards to examining that experience culturally, both of the process of leaving, but also the mutated relationship that they have with home, which is something that I really enjoy whenever I read anything in khoreo, for example, who make that their mission. But then also things in Strange Horizons and elsewhere, where that's highlighted. I love that the genre can give us that freedom—

Bogi Takács: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: —to have that room to play around with those concepts and not have to make them literal or grounded. You know, as I always say, SFF is always about something else. It's not about space. It's not about aliens. It's about X, Y, and Z, but the packaging is fun. It's fun. We like to have fun here.

Bogi Takács: Yep.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I'm very excited to hear about all those ideas. I do hope that you can place them because I want to read them.

Bogi Takács: Yep. But for like really shorter work, I'm always trying to put the latest things out there. Sometimes I really don't have time for it. I feel like now it's a bit different, because previously I used to have like three different part time jobs, and now I have one, so that's a bit easier when it comes to scheduling, but it's a busy, busy full time job so, um...

Kat Kourbeti: Academia's not easy.

Bogi Takács: Yeah, I am having these spreadsheets and things where I'm trying to manage my time and then trying to make sure that, I sent this out, I finished this. I literally just missed this deadline I wanted to do, so I'm maybe not the best person to talk about spreadsheets, because I literally just missed something I really wanted to do, so.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh no!

Bogi Takács: I will probably still write the story, it will just be for something else.

Kat Kourbeti: Is there anything that is recent or that's coming out soon that you want to plug or promote?

Bogi Takács: Yeah. I have more poems coming out in this series. One that I just placed is coming from Utopia SF, who is going to have a xenolinguistic special issue. And I didn't actually write this for the xenolinguistic special issue, but I'm a linguist, so it probably shows. And then they had this call. I was like, yes, yes, let's do this.

And I just had a short story collection that was called Power to Yield And Other Stories that came out in 2024, with a cover art that I love by Galen Dara. I actually don't have a copy here. I didn't prepare for the physical aspect of holding up the book. But please, everyone, search for this book because it has a very cool cover that I did not make and I have nothing to do with.

Kat Kourbeti: No art in the corridors this time.

Bogi Takács: Yeah, so the cover is amazing and I'm really grateful to my publisher Broken Eye, for asking Galen Dara to do it. It has a novella that originally appeared in Clarkesworld, and a bunch of other stories. Interestingly, a bunch of them have to do with plants. I am not sure how that exactly came to be. I mean, I like plants, but I'm not an expert on plants or anything. But I seem to have a bunch of ideas about plants. And that went into the story.

It also has a bunch of intersex stories, because I started doing when people reach out that they want a story, then I'm like, okay, now I will do an intersex story because they're harder to place otherwise. But if somebody already wants something from me, then I'm going like, 'okay, I hope that you are prepared for this'. Though I just placed an intersex story, I don't know if I can say because I haven't gotten the contract yet, but completely from slush for an anthology where I don't even know the editor. So there is hope for placing intersex stories, even if people don't ask for them.

So I'm very happy about that.

Kat Kourbeti: That's great. Yeah, just write what you know, and what you want. And it's on the editors and the readers to open up their scope and kind of widen that. So that's so cool. I'm looking forward to reading that.

And thank you so much for joining us. It's been an absolute pleasure chatting to you.

Bogi Takács: Thank you. It has been a delight and also it's just really cool to talk to another diasporic person who understands those specific aspects and, and also asks about them. So thank you very much for having me.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, my pleasure.

In this episode of Strange Horizons @ 25, producer Michael Ireland sits down with acclaimed SF author John Scalzi to discuss his 2001 story Alien Animal Encounters, which just so happens to be the only story he ever submitted anywhere, plus his long and decorated career in the SFF genres.

Links and things:

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• Did you know SH@25 is eligible for the Best Fancast category in the Hugo Awards? Keep us in mind for your 2025 ballot!

Episode show notes:

• Visit John Scalzi's blog, 'Whatever'
• Read his 2001 story, Alien Animal Encounters, in our archives
• Follow John on Bluesky, @scalzi
• Order When The Moon Hits Your Eye, released March 2025
• Find more links to John's work, along with links to everything we talk about in this episode, as you read the transcript below.

Transcript

Michael Ireland: Hello Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Michael Ireland, and it's my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and the impact of Strange Horizons on the spectre of genres.

Today's guest is John Scalzi, first published with us in 2001, and since has gone on to win multiple awards, including a Hugo, and published many, many, many books. It's good to have you here, John.

John Scalzi: Thank you. It's good to be here.

Michael Ireland: So the purpose of having the conversation today is to understand what's been happening for you since you first published with us, cause you were one of the first to do it in that first year. And just to understand the processes that you had before Strange Horizons, and what you've taken on since then.

So, the first story that you submitted with us was a flash fiction from 2001. Was this your first short fiction that you had looked to get published? Because I know you had Agent to the Stars just a little bit before that.

John Scalzi: Right. So what had happened with Agent of the Stars, which was the first novel that I wrote, I didn't actually have any intention to ever have it published. What I was going to do with it was, I was writing it to find out whether or not I could actually write a novel. And so I took off all the pressure.

I was like, I'm not going to try to sell it. I'm not going to actually even try to make it good. What I'm going to try to do is try to write something novel length and then see what happens from there. So that was done. I put it up on my website. I was like, that's going to be where that stays forever. But then I got to the point where I was like, well, you know, maybe I should try to actually see if I can get something published, and I had been a newspaper columnist and a humor columnist with America Online, before I did anything with science fiction and fantasy.

So what I ended up writing, the Alien Animal Encounters story, which is the one that went out in 2001, was basically a humor column, but with alien creatures, right? So I was writing to my specific strengths. I knew it was going to be short. I knew it was going to be punchy and I had little bits in it so that nothing went on too long, and I could mask the fact that I was so new to writing science fiction that I couldn't even plot a story.

Michael Ireland: Okay.

John Scalzi: So yes, it was always meant to be very short. It was meant to be humorous because that was what I knew. And then, having written that thing, and it's under 2000 words, I think it's maybe even just 1500 words, I started looking around to see where I might be able to get it published.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, and with the landscape back then—because I know when it started at the end of 2000, Strange Horizons was brought to provide an extra space for those stories to be sold. How was you able to find it back then, using dial up?

John Scalzi: (laughs) It wasn't quite dial up. I think I might've been on a T-one line or something like that, but it was very, very, very close to dial up. And the way that I did it was, honestly, I just looked online for venues that were publishing science fiction that I knew. Of course there were the big three, which at the time were Asimov, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Analog, and I didn't feel the need to actually send it to there because one, I didn't see that they were publishing a lot of very short stuff or very humorous stuff, and then also—and this is going to sound ridiculous, but I want to stress that I am a lazy person and this will be a theme in my entire career—they also required you to submit by print at that time.

So you would have to print it out. You'd have to put it into an envelope. You would have to send it off. You'd have to put a cover letter on. And I was just like, honestly, I don't have stamps. I don't know if I have envelopes, I have a printer but I'm out of printer ink... So that just took the big three out of the equation entirely. So basically I was just looking around, and then I chanced upon Strange Horizons.

Now I did what you're supposed to do, before I sent them my stuff: I actually read what was in Strange Horizons and I looked at their submission guidelines and I did all of that sort of stuff so that before I submitted, I was familiar with the magazine and with what it was they were looking for. So I did all of that, but the magic thing for me really was the thing where they're like, "sure, you can send it in by email." I'm like, "Sold! This is what I'm going to do."

So not only was it the first place that I submitted it to, it was honestly the only place that I ever submitted it to. And if Strange Horizons had rejected it, I don't know that I would have submitted it to anywhere else because again, who was taking submissions by email at that time? The answer was almost nobody.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, so quite revolutionary then in terms of the approach. I've got a very similar approach as well, if anything requires me to print something off even today I'm just like, it's not getting sent.

John Scalzi: Yeah, no, I don't even have a printer. I think the last printer I had was when I was president of SFWA, and I bought it because I was like, "I'm president of SFWA, I will probably have to print something out." And I didn't have to print a single thing out when I was President of SFWA. And, uh, that was more than 12 years ago now. So, you know, since then, people are like, "can you print this out?" I'm like, "no, no, I can sign it for you electronically, but if it needs to be printed, you're going to have to print it and send it to me."

Michael Ireland: Yeah. Obviously you've got your blog, which is where you post most of your things, where I think you posted Agent to the Stars first of all. Is that right? Yeah. And it seems like you've just always had that online presence. So going from the start of the millennium, you really found your niche especially with the "Where can I do this in the way that suits me?"

I don't know what the landscape was back then with Strange Horizons, was there much in the way of editing when it came to your story at that point? Like how was the back and forth?

John Scalzi: It was actually—my memory of it was—basically, they were like, "yep, this works, we'll take it." Which made me happy because I'd come from journalism, and one of the things that you try to do when you are a journalist or as you work in newspapers and you write a column or something like that is, you're used to trying to get it right basically the first time so that when it goes in, the copy is clean, they don't have to do too much in terms of copy editing.

And then also, you know, quite frankly, if there are issues with the story, that they're easy to resolve as opposed to, you know, this is going to be a massive rehaul. So that was part of it and part of it was, I worked at America Online from 1996 to 1998 and I was an editor of a humor area there. And so I had been an editor myself, and one of the things that I always say to writers is if you actually want to become better writer and you have the option to do it, do a stint as being an editor. Because you have to look at other people's writing. You have to say, why is this working? Why is this not working? If it's almost there, but not quite, how do you communicate to them? That this is a thing, how they can fix it and to make it better, and you got to work with that. And so when you come back to your own writing, one, you have a completely new perspective. You have the editor's perspective, to look from. And it also, in my particular case, at least, made me much less precious about my writing. Before I had been an editor, I was like, "every single thing I write is gold." And then when I got done being an editor and looked at the stuff that I had written before that, I was like, "Oh my God, who told this person that they could write?"

And so I started writing science fiction after I had been an editor. So when I was writing, that editor brain was part of my tool set as it were, so I think basically when I submitted it, having read again, the submission requirements and what they were looking for and everything else like that, I wrote to the submission requirements and I wrote something that I knew was kind of what they were looking for, so that when they saw it, they were like, yes, this is actually exactly what we wanted, and I think came back without too many notes because also it was very short, and it was very, like I said, structured. So, there wasn't too much to fix.

I remember the response was just really, really good. This is when Mary Anne Mohanraj was still the main editor for the site, and it was just really exciting to be able to see that submission and have them say, "yes, you read the assignment. You did the job. Well done. We're going to print it."

So it made me as someone who was literally just starting out, very first submission, very first short story ever in a professional milieu, it made me feel extremely happy. I was like, "Oh, okay. I can, in fact, do this thing."

Michael Ireland: How did that lead on to, then, your next project? Because I think it was about four years before Old Man's War came out. What happened in that period between?

John Scalzi: I was writing Old Man's War in 2001. It was being written concurrently with the short story, the Alien Animal Encounters. So what had happened to that was, I had written Old Man's War specifically to be something that I could sell as a novel, and then—remember again, I'm lazy—I finished the novel, and I was like, oh, because now I have to submit it, now I will have to print it out, and all that sort of stuff.

And at the time, I was writing nonfiction books. I was working as a freelance writer. I'd already had books out. So the ego portion of I am a published author was not something that was riding on Old Man's War going out or anything like that. And so literally, I finished it in, I believe October of 2001. And I literally just put it in a virtual shelf, in a virtual drawer for a year. I was just like, "I'll get to it later. I'll figure out what I'm going to do with it later."

So basically just a year went by before I was finally like, "I should do something with this actual novel that I wrote." And I'd had pretty good success, with Agent of the Stars, just putting it up on my website. So I was just like, "fine, I will do that again". And so in December of 2002, I just serialized it, one chapter a day, and was telling people, "if you want it before the serialization is done, send me like $1.50," because PayPal had just become a thing. So they could PayPal me money. And I would just literally send them a Word document with the full manuscript.

So at the end of that, Patrick Nielsen Hayden from Tor was like, "can I buy that from you?" Which was great because then I didn't have to submit it. Again, the lazy thing. Once they formally accepted it, it was a couple of years before it was published. The informal offer was December 28th, 2002. The formal offer was made January 2nd of 2003, and it finally came out on January 1st, 2005. So I had been writing during this time. It was just like, basically there was a space that it just took for publishing to happen and me to get over my hump of laziness. And then once that happened, everything else started coming fairly quickly because I had another book for us and then Old Man's War came out and it had been a success. And so I just started getting on the publishing treadmill, and I've been on that ever since. Which is great because, you know, it beats working.

Michael Ireland: So it was literally just the short story you submitted, you had Old Man's War written, and there was the non fiction and things like that in between. But, is there any short fiction that you've done between that or is it just one to the other?

John Scalzi: No, I mostly hadn't done any short fiction after that. It was kind of weird because, the way that I explained it to people was honestly, bluntly, Strange Horizons is the one and only place that I've ever submitted a short story to. That was it. Because after that, Old Man's War came out, it was a hit, and every short story that I've written since has either been something that I've just put up on my own website because I can't be bothered to submit, or someone has come to me and they have solicited a short story from me. In which case the sale was already agreed to, and all I had to do was write it.

So, it makes Strange Horizons absolutely unique in my publishing history. It is the only place where I have ever said, in science fiction, "will you please publish this thing?" And I had to wait to find out if they said yes. Everything since then, like I said, has either been solicited or I put it up on my own website or, in the case of novels, I just write them and Tor takes them.

So, I have never in science fiction, had a piece of work rejected.

Michael Ireland: Because it's the one and only piece.

John Scalzi: Because it's the one and only piece. And I mentioned that to people and they're like, "okay, I'm going to stab you in the face now, and then later, I'm going to push you out of the building." And I totally, totally, 100% get it. But it is just one of those things that, the combination of just circumstances and me being incredibly lucky and privileged, and also again, the laziness of "oh, I could submit."

When I was up for the Astounding award, back when it was still called the Campbell award, and Stanley Schmidt, who was the editor of Analog at the time, came up to me at the Worldcon in Los Angeles. He's like, "you know, you should submit a story to us. We would love to see something." And I remember saying to him, "well, I would, but then I would have to print it out and then have stamps. And I just, I can't." And he just like looked at me like I was an alien creature. It's like, "don't you understand, I'm from Analog." And I'm like, "no, I get it. You would be lovely to actually be published in, but stamps. But stamps."

Michael Ireland: I have a very similar approach when it comes to anything. I look for the way that I can do it in the format that I'm comfortable with, and it's probably beneficial to you as well because you were so early in adapting the digital approach, I think you were ahead of the curve on that.

John Scalzi: I would agree with it. I mean, I do think that the digital format was really advantageous to me in a lot of ways. I worked in newspaper and that was lovely and I had a wonderful time with it. But being able to come in on the early part of the blogosphere wave, back before they even called them blogs, they were online diaries at the time, and just be able to stake a claim there, in the format that, you know, Whatever, my website, what I was doing, that was just sort of very congenial. I was very fortunate to catch that particular wave at that particular time.

It's hard to tell people who are digital natives, who have basically only been alive or cognizant in a world where there have been blogs and social media and Facebook and all of that sort of stuff, how new all of this was and how all of us were just sort of making it up as we were going along. Like that Wallace and Gromit thing where Gromit is putting down the rail just before the train rolls over it, you know, that's what we were doing.

And that's what Strange Horizons was doing actually back at that time. I mean, the idea that a science fiction magazine would be basically digital native, that everything would be there, that could be something that not only was viable, but would actually be sort of pioneering. I don't think people thought of Strange Horizons as being a serious competitor at that particular time. And I think they really underestimated what Mary Anne and the other editors there, were doing at the time, because so much of what Strange Horizons was doing at the time, being a digital native, doing the thing where fundraising was part of their business plan, all of these things, looking for the type of writers that you wouldn't typically see in Analog or Fantasy & Science Fiction or Asimov's, and building that generation of writers into something, that was really successful.

Again, nobody knew at the time that that's what they were doing and that that would be a business model that would not only be successful immediately, but would persist for now, two and a half decades. We all made it up as we went along.

Michael Ireland: It's still the same ethos that comes with it, looking for those new writers, looking for voices that haven't got a voice, and being able to still have that foundational ethos, 25 years later. It's very impressive. I'm quite new to the journey, but was immediately welcomed.

But even with your writing, the humor was in there immediately and you seem to have carried that on throughout. There's some books where it's not as heavy, but the ones that I tend to go for are more the popcorn sci-fi books that I enjoy. The story—usually quite a simple plot—I usually listen by audiobook, because I love audio. So it's how I get a lot of my things done, and I know Wil (Wheaton, actor and narrator of almost all of Scalzi's books) does most of those more light hearted approaches. But with the humour, has the humour changed at all for you in the writing, as it's gone on?

Because again, I can read this, I can read Starter Villain, and there is that silliness to it.

John Scalzi: I will tell you what has changed over 25 years, which is that humor used to be radioactive in science fiction and fantasy. Cause I had always written with humor, you're absolutely right. If you read Old Man's War, there's humor in it. If you read the short stories, there's usually humor in it. Humor has always been an aspect of it. But they were—Tor was and a lot of other places—I think were absolutely terrified with the idea of marketing science fiction as having kind of a humorous edge. And part of that was because, my theory is at least, in the wake out of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was just sort of an epochal event—like the same way that Star Wars was an epochal event for cinematic science fiction—it so set the template, that it kind of ruined the humor in science fiction for a couple of generations. Because nobody else could write British farce like Douglas Adams could. As I'm fond of saying, he's the only person besides the Monty Python people and Neil Ennis, who is their songwriter, he's the only other person who's got a writing credit for Monty Python's Flying Circus. So he was a farcicist before he was a science fiction writer.

And so people were like, well, this is what humor is in science fiction now. And they just kept not doing it because it's hard to do British farce when you're not British or a farcicist. So for a long time, people were like, humor doesn't sell. Humor doesn't sell. We don't want to lead with humor because we're worried that people won't pick it up. So it took me until Redshirts, which was eight or nine novels in, before Tor would even say, "yes, this is a funny book, and it's supposed to be funny, and you're supposed to laugh at it." Everything up to that, the humor was there, but it wasn't what we were leaning forward.

And this was what, another thing that I really sort of liked about Strange Horizons is that they weren't scared of the fact that I was submitting a humorous piece to them, or that other people did humorous pieces for them, because I certainly wasn't the only one who did it. But I would look at a lot of the submission requirements for various other places that I was looking at, and some of them really were like, "uh, we don't really want. humorous science fiction," right? And so that was already kind of a block. Whereas, Strange Horizons was much more open. They were like, what do you got? Let's see how it works. So the fact that they were open to that, and the fact that I got to have Alien Animal Encounters basically as my calling card for science fiction up till Old Man's War came out, was actually kind of useful to me.

I don't think now that we have a problem with science fiction and humor in the same sentence anymore. I think there are more people who have done it. Certainly Catherynne Valente did it with Space Opera and Space Oddity. And there have other been other novelists in fantasy and science fiction who are sort of taking that banner and ran with it. But, honestly, Strange Horizons was the place that I knew that I could submit where they would say, yeah, okay, we'll take a look at it. And it really helped set the tone for who I was in the science fiction and fantasy world.

Michael Ireland: Yeah. So does that help you validate you being able to use humor in your writing?

John Scalzi: Yeah. I mean, it has been a differentiator for me, right? Because for the longest time, not a lot of people were using humor or putting it in, in the sort of way that I was doing it. For a while there, at least in terms of novels, I was the only one who was basically able to put in humor. And it allowed it to be a calling card. But the thing for me was, I came in having been a person who wrote a newspaper column that was meant to be humorous. I had written and edited a humor area that was a place of knowledge and competence for me. And so I was more comfortable, honestly, when I started off, more comfortable writing humor than I was necessarily writing science fiction.

And so, the fact that Alien Animal Encounters was, that Strange Horizons took it, one validated my idea that in fact I could write as who I was, in the milieu of science fiction, and maybe be able to make a go of it rather than trying to be like, "okay, science fiction is this puzzle to be solved and I have to change who I am as a writer and as a personality", when in fact the answer was no, I could actually be who I was, be the writer that I was, and also write science fiction, at the same time.

So, for me, getting that first story in was kind of a proof of concept for me that that was something I could do. Again, there was a lot of bias and fear in the publishing community, as opposed to the reader community, about how to market humor. And that took a long time for that ship to turn. But, the fact that, that first instance was, yes, you can do this. It would be perfectly fine, convinced me that I should just do what I do, and let people worry about how to market it later.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, with the humor aspect, even looking at Old Man's War, the time from that was, you know, late 2001 that you were writing that and it's a military kind of thing. How did you feel about putting the humor in with the landscape that was going on in the US at the time?

John Scalzi: My feeling about it was, I mean, two things. Most of what I had written was written before 9/11. So the sudden post ironic age, it was too late. Written and baked in. But the other thing about it is, I don't think in times of crisis or in times where there's that sort of wrenching change, that the need for humor goes away. I think that people still want it and they still want to look for it. And they still want to have it. So for me, it was not too much of an issue.

Now, I do think one has to look around at one's environment and sort of feed off of it. The famous thing is, "science fiction is written about the future, but it's written in present time." So the concerns of the science fiction writers is going to be the same. You can see how I was handling some of that, I think, over the course of many, many novels. And also, of course, I was 35 when my first novel was published. I'm 55 now. The things that I would write today would not necessarily be the things that I would have written 20 years ago. Right? Because times change and perspectives change, and everything else.

When I started writing, there were so many people that I know now from so many different communities that I had never met before. I was a very stereotypical white guy who thought he was really clever and had perspective enough for everybody. And then learning in fact that there's a wider world and many different perspectives than what I had, has certainly made me, I think, a better writer, because it's always a better thing when you can take in that the world is in fact wider than your own perspective. But it's also been an incredibly positive thing for, I think, for science fiction and fantasy generally. And again, that goes back to what Strange Horizons' mission was, to bring in the voices that you wouldn't have otherwise heard.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, I feel like that's also been a privilege in my journey as well, is getting those perspectives from people that you wouldn't be able to figure out by yourself. Checking your privilege is the way that I do it. Some of my favourite writing and co-writers are queer women, and they helped me understand the world from a different perspective, compared to the writing that I've got.

And so we do an audio fiction show (The Secret of St Kilda), which is a cult horror. It is horrific, but it is also a sitcom. Some of the cast described it as Hot Fuzz meets The Wicker Man. So it's like you said, with things that are going on in the world, or the horrific nature of reality, gets juxtaposed with comedy to help balance that, because there's very horrific things in our show that happen, but you're laughing for 60% of the things, and then you realize, "oh, no, this, there's actually things very, very wrong here."

John Scalzi: Well, I mean, that's one of the advantages of being able to write humor at all. The thing is, that you get to be able to put in the whole dynamic range of human experience.

Old Man's War, as an example, has scenes that will make you laugh and will have scenes that will make you cry, and I put both of them in with the full intention to have all of those. But the fact that you have the scenes that can make you laugh means that you get leavened. It's not all a downer all the time, but it's also not just "ha ha ha, everything's a laugh, ha ha ha."

And that is something that has been consistent in the way that I use humor up until, I have a book coming out in March, which is called When The Moon Hits Your Eye, and the conceit of that is, for an entire lunar cycle the moon turns to cheese. And obviously it's a ridiculous concept, and obviously it's something that can be played farcically. Absolutely can be played as farce. But for me, it was much more interesting to look at the whole perspective of how people would deal with it. Some people would treat it farcically, but some people it would be just completely upend their entire world, in a very serious way.

And to be able to get that to encompass the entire range of emotional existence is actually kind of an exciting thing to do. And if you write humor, as you say with your thing, you can put in the funny stuff and then you can put in the horrific stuff and you give that whole range, and it makes all of it much more impactful. And hopefully even more profound.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, having that approach, especially with When the Moon Hits Your Eye, first thing I thought of that was obviously the Wallace and Gromit movies. I don't know how ingrained it is in American culture, but it's really big over here. And also the Randall Munroe What If books, where it has a scientific approach to absurd questions of what would happen if this, and it usually results in everyone dying constantly, but it's quite fun where you don't think of how bleak things are or how they could be with a turn of a switch.

But I'm looking forward to reading that when it comes out. It ticks off both of those things that I enjoy. The reality of the absurd sci fi, and the humor of Wallace and Gromit going to the moon. I like that. I think the first one that I read from yourself was Redshirts. This was pre Orville days. I think the Star Trek genre was missing the humor, because it provided 'reality'. Not everything is as serious as it needs to be, just because it's sci-fi. So having Redshirts as a book that I just picked up and I was like, "Oh, I know what a redshirt is," I enjoyed it a lot. I ran a TTRPG for my friends where they were the redshirts because they didn't really have control of their fates.

When Redshirts came out, how did that get perceived for you then? Because it could be fanfiction. How did you balance the originality to existing tropes?

John Scalzi: What was interesting to me about Redshirts was, when I wrote it, everybody who was a nerd knew what a Redshirt was. Right? It was not a brand new concept. The thing was, and I remember when the book came out and there were a couple of reviews where people like, "yes, it's a redshirt thing, but this is a five minute joke. Why would you want to make a novel out of this?" And that was, I thought, kind of a really interesting way of looking at it. It's like, here was a trope that was so ingrained in the science fictional nerd psyche, that we had just incorporated it and didn't think about it anymore than, oh, no, Redshirts, they're gonna die.

I was like, "this is a horrifying tragedy for the actual people involved, right, to understand that, no, you don't have control of your fate, know that free will is an illusion, know all the things that happened in your life and all the things that you thought you were put in this universe for, are a lie. And in fact, all you are here to do is to make a main character sad for five minutes." All of these things, behind the trope, behind all of the tropes, is pathos, is existential terror, is a challenge to who you perceive yourself to be, as a human and as an agent of free will.

For me, the fun of it was not to run away from the tropes. Like I shoved all the tropes into the book. If you go to TV Tropes and look up Redshirts, the page just keeps going. You just scroll for a mile! But in addition to the tropes is all the other stuff that you are thinking about. The issues of free will, the issues of is this my life? Am I actually in control of my life? And all that sort of stuff. And this is the thing that I think is kind of the myopia of nerdery, which is that we are aware of all internet forums, and we are aware of all the tropes. But we sometimes just think about them very, very sort of a surface sort of way, as opposed to delving into what is behind those tropes. And that was the fun of Redshirts for me.

And one of the things that I was absolutely stunned with, because Redshirts was such a prevalent trope, was that no one had really done a Redshirts novel before. It was literally just sitting there. It was the lowest of low hanging fruit. And I'm like, "is literally nobody going to pick this fruit? Because if you're not going to do it, then I will. And, you know, I'll pluck it and I'll make a pie out of it."

And that was the thing, that once the Redshirts novel was out, people were like," Oh yes, of course, all of this makes sense." It went on to win a Hugo. It went on to do very well. It's been optioned for film and TV a number of times. All of that. But again, it was the whole looking behind tropes. And that's something that I did with Kaiju Preservation Society, with Starter Villain as well. I mean, that's all James Bond stuff. And then, obviously with When the Moon Hits Your Eye, because the moon's turning to cheese. So prying open the tropes and finding the meat underneath them is, I think one of my core strengths as it were, as a writer of popular science fiction.

Michael Ireland: Does that come from having that background, because I think you had done philosophy at college, was it?

John Scalzi: Yeah. I think part of it is having the philosophy background. Part of it was, I was a film critic for a number of years, so I was literally looking at popular storytelling from the professional point of view. Part of that is just simply who I am as a storyteller anyway. You put it all together, all those influences, and that's kind of what comes out.

I mean, as a storyteller, I think that the things that I bring to the party, because there are so many writers who have so many spectacular talents, right? And you think of who they are and some of them, again, to go back to Strange Horizons, even got their start there. But the thing that I've always brought to the party is, an ability to do humor, an ability basically to talk about weird and sometimes really abstruse concepts, in a way that even if you are not a philosophy major or a scientist or something like that, that you can kind of pick it up and go with it for the length of a story.

I have always been an incredibly accessible writer, with the idea that it's not difficult to read my stuff and get into it. There's the flip side of that where people are like, "well, he's not particularly deep, is he?" And it's like, you got me there. But the flip side of that is, I'm bringing people into the genre. And then once they're inside, it's like, here's a whole group of other people who are really going to drill down on the weirdness, and you're going to love them because now you have some sort of initial setting and understanding to go further from that. So, in the world of science fiction, I'm the guy at the door being like, "oh, come on, come on in. Oh, it's this is easy stuff, this is stuff you can understand. You're going to have no problem with it. You like that? Well, here's some more stuff."

Michael Ireland: Yeah. And you don't always need the deep, heavy stuff, but also there's other writers for that. So you don't have to stand on their toes to do that. You can still appreciate it.

John Scalzi: But this goes to the larger point and again to something that I think that Strange Horizons did better than a lot of people early on which is, there is room in the science fiction milieu for just a huge number of perspectives and a huge number of writers and a huge number of folks and everybody is doing their particular thing in a particular way.

There is no possible way, for example, that I could write the same books that Nora Jemisin writes, just literally impossible to do. Nora is a black woman who comes from a different tradition of science fiction and fantasy than I did. She came in through a different path and she's writing things that is not possible for me to write. But that doesn't mean that the world of science fiction is not capacious enough to have both of us in it, and then to have Mary Robinette Kowal or have Emily Tesh or to have Marko Kloos or to have Adrian Tchaikovsky. Everything kind of goes in the mix. And for the longest time, I really do think that there was, up until like basically the last 25 years, particularly, that there was always "this is the mainstream of science fiction and you'll get a little bit on either ends on the periphery, but this is what science fiction is."

When I started being in science fiction in 2005, it was still kind of narrow casting in that particular way. And now you come into the world of 2024, 2025, and the world of science fiction is so much more vast than it was before. And that's exactly what science fiction and fantasy should be. It should be the place where you have the multiplicity of voices and perspectives, because science fiction is speculative. Science fiction is about getting your storytelling outside of that particular comfort zone that you've already had, and looking at it from a point of view that is not yours.

I don't want to say an alien point of view, because none of the writers are alien to the human experience. But certainly there are people for whom, a writer who has a different life experience from them, that will be an alien experience for them reading for the first time. But that's what science fiction and fantasy is about. Getting a new experience that you've literally never had before.

Michael Ireland: Yeah. And that's what I find fascinating with the Strange Horizons approach, because obviously it's not a strict limit, but usually you know under 10,000 words for short fiction, but a lot of that is coming from non-Western-centric voices. So when I am reading those I'm getting a perspective on African culture (for example), as well as the interpretation of speculative genre. I get to learn the history of it, and also the future of it as well.

The stories that I do read and getting my mind open to, how things are perceived because of living in such, as you said, isolated identities that we've got in Western culture, having a place like Strange Horizons to give those voices, and to find those new writers as well.

John Scalzi: Absolutely. And the other thing is, I want to make it clear, it's not like, "oh, I'm reading all these other people and I'm getting my bran." No. These are great stories. It's actually fun to read! Which I think is the thing that a lot of people who are like, "Oh, I don't know. I don't know if I want to read that. I want to go," but like, no, dude, not only are you getting your mind cracked open, which is fine, but the simple fact of the matter is you are getting a great story out of it too. And I think that's what it boils down to is that particularly, I'm not very prescriptive about anything, but I do think that science fiction and fantasy readers of whatever perspective that they come from, should be excited to read something new and interesting and out of their own experience.

Because that goes again to the very root of what science fiction fantasy is and is capable of. And that is, speaking as a reader myself, one of the things that keeps me coming back to read Strange Horizons and other magazines that have sprung up since the 21st century and particularly online, is the stuff that I would not have been able to find anywhere else and that I found really sort of interesting and mind expanding, and all of that is fun for me.

I wouldn't read it if it wasn't fun for me to read. That's one of the things that we really should stress about all of this stuff is like, why has this been successful, part of it is simply because they're just great stories.

Michael Ireland: Yeah. And with the Hugos as well, finally getting that recognition in Glasgow, was just a really good feeling, especially hearing the crowd get behind that as well. Because even though it is in that digital age, having that instant feedback of going, "Oh, people do read, these people do enjoy these stories," it's really nice to see that it's not just me enjoying the stories, or it's not just some of my friends. It's a wider collective. It makes you appreciate that just a little bit more. Especially with the voices that are going on, people who have been published by Strange Horizons in the past that, you know, majority of them were on stage throughout the Hugos as well because of their own journeys and nominations and categories and things like that.

And you realize that it's getting broader and broader, and that's why we're looking to try and celebrate these last 25 years. Because there is so much that came out of it. There's so many voices that have been able to start their careers and continue on, like yourself, to have an output.

John Scalzi: Well, no, I mean, it's absolutely the case that I will always be eternally grateful to Strange Horizons for being the place that I got my start. It was the right place at the right time for me. I remember going to the Worldcon in 2004 in Boston and there was a Strange Horizons meetup, and I got to go and meet some of the people who were my fellow Strange Horizons writers and editors and all of that sort of stuff. Many of whom are people I'm still friends with today. Like I said, Mary Anne Mohanraj is a perfect example of that.

And just having that as one of the first steps of my journey into science fiction and fantasy, I don't take that for granted. I'll always be proud to have that association. I hope that Strange Horizons will always be proud to be associated with me. So as far as it goes, I'm thrilled that they have been around as long as I have, you know, we've seen kind of the world change in tandem, and it kind of makes me excited to see what happens next.

I mean, I know I'm going to be around for a while. I mean, unless I get hit by a bus or eaten by a bear, I have a book contract that will have me writing until I'm 70 at least. So I know that I'll be around and kind of hope that Strange Horizons will be as well.

Michael Ireland: I hope so too. No, it's been great, John. If you want to plug your upcoming book for March, that'd be great.

John Scalzi: In March, I have a book called When the Moon Hits Your Eye, it will be out March 25th. And then in September I will have another installment of the Old Man's War series coming out. I'm busy, in fact, the instant that I'm done talking here, I get back to writing that because it's due at the end of the month. So hopefully I'll get it done on time because otherwise I'm going to have an editor come and kill me. So... (laughs)

Michael Ireland: Thank you very much John, it's been a pleasure talking to you.​

In this special episode of SH@25, editor Kat Kourbeti narrates 'Little Brother' by Bruce Holland Rogers, originally published on 30 October 2000. Hosted by producer Michael Ireland, with warm holiday wishes from the entire SH Editorial Collective.

• Read the story ⁠here.
• Want to leave us a happy birthday message? Click ⁠⁠here to record an audio message⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠here for video⁠⁠.
• Join our ⁠⁠Patreon⁠⁠ for early episode access, or ⁠donate through any other way⁠ to hear your name and message in our next episodes.
• Did you know SH@25 is eligible for the Best Related Work category in the Hugo Awards? Keep us in mind for your 2025 ballot!

In this episode of SH@25, Editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li to discuss her foray into poetry, screenwriting, music composition and more, and also presents a reading of her two poems published in 2022, 'Ave Maria' and 'The Mezzanine'.

Links and things:

• Want to leave us a happy birthday message? Click ⁠here to record an audio message⁠, and ⁠here for video⁠.
• Join our ⁠Patreon⁠ for early episode access, or donate through any other way to hear your name and message in our next episodes.
• Did you know SH@25 is eligible for the Best Related Work category in the Hugo Awards? Keep us in mind for your 2025 ballot!

Episode show notes:

• Visit Vivian's ⁠website⁠, or follow her on social media (⁠Bluesky⁠/⁠Instagram⁠)
• Read Vivian's poems 'Ave Maria' and 'The Mezzanine' ⁠in our archives⁠
• Find more links to Vivian's work, along with links to everything we talk about in this episode, as you read the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello, Strangers, and welcome to SH at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it's my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres. Today's guest, Vivian Li, was first published with us in 2022, and she also does art, and music, and fiction, and all the things. I'm super excited to dive into it all with her today. It's great to have you here, Vivian.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Thank you so much, Kat. It's such an honor to be here.

Kat Kourbeti: When we met at Glasgow 2024 this year, we were on a panel together and I said, I'm with Strange Horizons. And you were like, "I was published at Strange Horizons!" And it was just such a like joyful like, oh my God, I need to interview you. I need to hear about all the things that you do, because you're such a multi disciplined artist. You do so many different things, and I'm very interested in how it all gels together.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, it was such a great time. Yeah, when I was moderating that panel, was it like Music in Anime, I think? It was just such a joy to be talking about anime music with everyone for, I think it was around an hour, and have people listening to us talk about music and anime for that long.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it's phenomenal when you get to geek out about something with like minded people for however long, and having an audience is even better. And this is a little extended version of that. So for the listeners, I hope that they'll enjoy the various forms of geeking out that takes place on this podcast, because we do.

So, you are not just a writer; you do all the things. We'll dive into all your various publications and things, but first of all, the poems that you published with us were part of the art issue a couple of years ago. Two poems that are relatively short, and I'm sure that they're not the only poems you've written, but I want to hear about these poems in particular. How they came to be, what the idea was, or how you got to writing them, because the formats are very different as well. They're not the same between each other.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah, for sure. So, Ave Maria is like a prose poem, and it actually relates to a time when I fell in love with music, the moment I fell in love with music, because I didn't used to like music. I used to be forced to play piano by my mom, and I was learning these notes and reading the sheet music and I was like, "I don't like this, I don't know why I'm doing this". I think I talked about this when I was moderating the panel, but like, that moment I listened to this anime—I keep forgetting the title, but there's this anime where this girl who doesn't play any violin picks up this violin and immediately, it's like a magical violin. So then she starts playing concerto-like music and it's gorgeous, and it's the journey of her falling in love with music, but also the magic slowly wearing out from the violin, and balancing that aspect. And there was this duet between her and this other guy, and they were playing Ave Maria. And then, that was when I fell in love with music. And after that, I was like, I love music. Before that, I liked music, but I wasn't in love with it in that sense. And this poem is about the moment, when I think back to "what is my happy place? And how do I go back to that?" Like return to that moment?

And then The Mezzanine was kind of a reflection of personal experiences with my parents, but also... I was playing at that time Slime Rancher, and there's just elements I wanted to explore, of being in this weird world that you don't feel like you belong in, and you're dropped into the middle of it. But yeah, I definitely was imagining elements of Slime Rancher here, even though it doesn't really show up as much. So it's being inspired by what's around me, but I also wrote these in during my MFA at UBC. There were prompts like, we should write a prose poem. And I was like, I'm going to write about my experience of falling in love with music. And then I think The Mezzanine was more like, I need to share this feeling of feeling trapped, but also wanting to find a meaning in what I'm feeling right now.

I think I mentioned in the poem, the line, "when were you or I be loved?" And it's like trying to find a way to navigate that.

Kat Kourbeti: So I think the anime you're talking about with the violins, is called Nodame Cantabile.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah. I think so.

Kat Kourbeti: It's quite a popular anime. I think there's a movie, I think there's a live action series—

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Oh, I didn't know there was a live action.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, definitely a TV series, maybe also a film. It's one of those like very encompassing josei anime that's aimed at young women, but it's for everybody, and it really took off. I remember I think it came out maybe like late 2000s or something. So yeah, quite a formative time.

I love when you can pinpoint a moment when you fall in love with your art or when you find something that you love a lot, and you can find that moment specifically. For me, I think it's a little more nebulous, but I'm always trying to capture, "I'm writing for teenage me". I'm trying to make her happy. So all the things that she loved to geek out about, those are the things that when I'm writing, it taps into that place of, I love doing this actually. So that's really beautiful.

So about the poetry publication and stuff, you've obviously written these for your MFA, they were just sitting there. What was the process of submitting to Strange Horizons?

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: I think I had heard about Strange Horizons from Augur folks. And also I read a few pieces and I really enjoyed them. I just saw there was an art issue call, and I just put in my submission and sent it out. And then I just forgot about it. Because every time I submit something, I forget. I like to forget. So if there's a rejection, which usually happens, I just go, "oh, I didn't remember this. Who was that? Who sent it? I don't know who that was."

Kat Kourbeti: "It's okay. It doesn't bother me. I've already forgotten about it."

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: But like when I get accepted, it's like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. It becomes a lot more exciting. So yeah, I guess it worked out.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm happy to hear different people's strategies of dealing with rejections, because honestly, it's a lot. For me, I always send things out to the markets that I know will send a quick rejection. Cause then it's like, alright, there we go, fine, done, next.

And a lot of the time, yeah, I think forgetting, or doing it and forgetting it, is great, cause no matter what happens, it's fine.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Like, it's not a bad turn of events. You got rejected, eh, alright, who cares, next. And if you get accepted—ooh, a gift from past me!

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah, exactly. That's how I do it.

Kat Kourbeti: Love that.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: So I don't know very much about the dealings of the poetry department, but my guess is there isn't very much editing going on after they accept your poems, and then, maybe copy editing? I don't suspect that this changed very much from how it was when you wrote it.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah. I think so. I think it was like a copy editing round and, I don't think there was a lot of edits, but that's poetry. I think I really enjoyed the process and it just, it was like a very smooth process.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, that's good. No news is good news sometimes. Yeah, I think the general vibe I'm getting from a lot of these interviews is that we tend to just pick what we think works and then not really change anything about, whatever the art form is. So that's really lovely.

So then, obviously these aren't your only poems. Tell me a little bit about your MFA, your other writing. What formats are you drawn to chiefly? Do you experiment and stuff? What's your process, really?

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah, so I guess it depends on the poem. I'm trying to do more experimental things now, where I'm doing like concrete poetry a little bit more, but, it just depends on the kind of image or mood or resonance I'm trying to bring to the poem. And I guess it just depends on what that subject matter is, what is it that I'm trying to convey and what's the best way to do that through the words and the writing, and the sound's very important to me. I feel like all poets, they're trying to find the right word. It's a lot about the sounds and the image and the mood, but also to play around with time, and have that temporal element be part of the structure, the format of the poem as well sometimes. I write something, whether it be like a poem or a fiction piece or a TV script or a feature film or whatever, I always like to think about, what is the core of this thing?

I feel like each one of them is like part of me, like, imagining them as one of my children. And it's like, well, what does my child need? What do they need to be complete? So thinking about it from that perspective and giving them what they need in terms of the writing or the structure, the stylistic elements. I think words and the sound of words is really important to me because whenever I hear a word, or whenever I read a word as well, there's an element of 'oh, I see the word', but I also feel like there's like a textural element and emotional element to that, so that's sometimes how I write through the feeling and through the quality of words. I try to link it together to another word that feels similar, whatever that emotion is.

Kat Kourbeti: I agree, especially in poetry, that the sound is super important. But I love that idea that you treat them like your children, and you feed them nourishing food and you give them whatever it is that they need to grow stronger and go out into the world. That's a beautiful way of thinking about your writing.

So how much would you say is poetry like your chief form of writing? Because I know that you dabble in other things. So what's the ratio?

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: I think of myself more as a fiction writer, honestly.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay, great.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: But I have more poems published than fiction.

Kat Kourbeti: That's the way it goes sometimes. Whatever is easiest.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: I think the thing with poetry is that I do them a lot in between bigger projects. I write a lot of poems between bigger projects, like if I'm working on a novel. I'm still working, but yeah, when I was working on my novel.

Kat Kourbeti: It never stops.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: It never stops. That's so true. If I'm switching between projects because I just get stuck or I get like, how do I get this character to this from point A to point B? And I'm like, I don't know what's going on. So then I switch to another project. I don't know the exact ratio, but I feel like the reason why I like switching between things so much is because each genre has its own things that I have to really focus on.

For instance, in playwriting, I listen to the characters a lot more than I see them, and so that kind of listening to the dialogue and figuring out their voices and their cadence, I like to incorporate that in my fiction as well. Then I'm like, listening to the characters.

And then when I'm writing film, then I visualize things a lot more, and visualizing the way the scenes dissolve and characters move and everything, as a camera does, and then when I'm writing my fiction once again, I feel like I can see more of what I maybe couldn't have in the past. So I feel like I'm a fiction writer, because I feel like it's all serving my fiction writing in certain ways.

Kat Kourbeti: I think that's really cool, using the different elements to help and serve the fiction or the other art forms. Fascinated about your playwriting and your film writing as well. Cause I feel like those are very different skill sets to prose writing. Whether or not you think in a visual way, the way that you put it all down on the page for other people to interpret, to then go off and make something that's more tangible than a fiction story, fascinates me very much.

So tell me a little bit about your scripts, but let's start with the theater work. What sort of plays do you write? Is there a speculative element?

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah. I think there's a speculative element to everything.

Kat Kourbeti: We love to see it.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah. I mean, even my fiction, I feel like it starts off not thinking it's going to be speculative. For instance, the short story that was longlisted for the CBC short story prize last year, was a piece that was going to be very much about diaspora family. And then it became more about this bird that gives gifts, that's transferred through generations. So then I was like, okay I can't help exploring that.

In terms of my plays, I have that element as well. I have this one act that was performed or staged in some places in Vancouver. And then at one point I also acted as a character for one of our graduate college residence annual event. That was about a ghost coming to visit her brother during Qingming and talking through what their experiences were with their parents and like, that kind of ghostly element of, 'why didn't you visit me?' And it's that kind of interesting dynamic between estranged siblings. And so that was an interesting one that I enjoyed writing, and definitely had a very poetic element to it, because I struggled with depression. I still do. And so like, 'do you know how it feels to be like this?' It had that element as well.

The full act that I wrote in the Arts Club program, the LEAP level three program, which is where one writer gets to write their full length play, and then actors workshop it. And then they have a staged reading at the end of the year. And that was really cool. I had an all Asian cast in that play. And so many characters, but this is now the issue with production; if I wanted to produce it, I'd have to scale it down a lot and then prove that it's a viable thing to produce.

But, it was about three women in successive generations born in the Year of the Tiger, because there's the stereotype in China, especially in rural areas or older generations, that women born in the Year of the Tiger are stubborn. They're hard to marry off, they're aggressive, like it's not good to have a girl born in the Year of the Tiger basically. And then when I heard that I was interested, because I'm born in the Year of the Tiger, and apparently some parents avoid trying to have kids around the year before Year of the Tiger because they're like, 'Oh, we don't know what it's gonna be like, we don't know what they're gonna turn out to be.'

So yeah, it's really weird. So then I wrote about that, three women born in the Year of the Tiger descending into the Chinese underworld, to try and retrieve some element of their past or fix something in their past. It's about a grandmother, a mother, and daughter, and the grandmother has already passed away, so we have that element of the ghost also like leading them into the underworld. So I feel like ghosts feature a lot in my stories!

Kat Kourbeti: I love that.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah. I wrote in the script, I was like, 'yeah, the tiger spirits!'. That's something I'm still figuring out. But with the TV script, it's called Ever Lost and it's this silk punk kind of TV script, about two women who later become lovers, but in the first episode, it was like, what their background is and they're struggling against, I guess this overarching ideological state apparatus, like this oppression and everything else.

And so it was exploring that world, but also the priestesses who govern this world and what does it mean to be a priestess in this world? And I also incorporate tattoos and what does it mean to have a tattoo versus not have a tattoo? A tattoo being a way to represent their soul, almost. But yeah, it was really fun script to write. Then it was a semi finalist for the Screencraft TV pilot competition. The film is something I'm working on and off on, because it was a script I started in Sheridan's class during my MFA at UBC, and it has a little bit less speculative elements honestly, but it plays a lot with memory, and moving back and forth between memory and time, and is an homage to my late grandmother, and dance kind of incorporates everything together. And actually I do, nevermind—I remember now. I do incorporate some spec. I think there's some mythology in there as well. So yeah, I think I always return to the spec!

Kat Kourbeti: I just find it really interesting how certain art forms really lend themselves to speculative stuff. Theater in particular, but then also film and TV, because of editing, because you can do so much with color, with just different filmmaking techniques and stuff. You can really invoke speculative elements without a lot of work, because the audience is already primed to accept whatever's on screen or on stage. There's a suspension of disbelief that's already happening the minute they walk through the door and they sit down.

And so, because I'm really passionate about speculative theater in particular, I think it's just such an underappreciated form. And I truly believe in my heart of hearts that you do not need expensive sets, fancy stage magic, big objects or elaborate costumes. Often, the simplest setup is enough to transport me into your world. I think you can do that with not a lot of work.

Last night, actually, I went to see—last night or the night before, at the time of recording—I went to see Asian Pirate Musical. It's by Zhui Ning Chang, who is editor of khōréō. And because she's based in London, she's doing this musical, she's in fact been working on it for like five years, and it was a beautiful kind of time travel-y thing about history and colonialism and like, finding your own way and finding where you belong in the world, but through time and also pirates and also music. It was great. I had a really great time, and it really wasn't an elaborate kind of staging, it was more a concert presentation of the songs, rather than a full version of what the play will be at some point. And we were all there. We were there on the ship. We were there in space. We were there in the various time periods. I thought it worked so well with so little in terms of sets and things. Like the costumes were very evocative, but simple, like nothing crazy. And it just really made me think of just how easy that can be for these art forms.

So you've made some films, certainly. Tell me a little bit about the struggle of filmmaking. Cause I know it's a lot.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: My first one was also related to ghosts. It was a musical dramedy. I was inspired by the pandemic: my late grandfather passed away, but we couldn't go back because the borders were closed. And so I was like, what if instead the ghosts of the ancestors spirits came and possessed the parents? And then we could have this farewell sing-off kind of thing together. It was part of this program in Toronto, Reel Asian Film Festival, where they had this really great program where people who maybe hadn't the opportunity to make films before, could in the span of a summer, which is very ambitious and very doable, make a short film. And so I pitched the idea and they're like, yeah, cool. And I was like, yeah, cool.

And then, I think I won't ever make a musical dramedy as my first short film ever again, because I had taken no film courses in the past. It was in Vancouver where I knew almost nobody, not even in the film industry, like nobody in any creative industry at that point. Getting the whole team together was like a matter of putting Facebook calls and managing a huge group of people. There were around 20 plus people on set, including actors and everyone else. After I finished writing the script, it wasn't a matter of just the script; it was like, shooting, and trying to figure out what that looks like, and then in post, editing, figuring out what we have, and what is different from the script, and how we can make that into a final product. And so I feel like every stage was another way of art making, of recreating the original idea. For that film, I feel if I could do it again, I might have done a bit more with the visual elements, because I focused a lot on the story and the music and what they were saying, but not so much on the visual elements.

The second short film I made was a video poem actually, and it was about the Chinese classical garden in Vancouver, Sun Yat Sen Classical Chinese Garden. It was based on this contest that Fiona Lam, Vancouver City Poet Laureate, was organizing at that time. And it was like, 'go out there and find some historical ecological places, and write poems about them'. And then based on the shortlisted poems, can you make a video poem? And I was like, okay, sure. I've done one short film, I can do another one.

And this one was much more scaled back. This one was much like, me and three other friends. I was like, I can't do the 20 plus people again. I think I can't do that. So then we just filmed it and then I edited it and added music to it. But yeah, it was definitely much more scaled back, but every film is so intense.

That's why I feel like I really can't ever do film full time. Cause I feel like it's just like a 9am to 7am job, there's a constant grind. It's always going to be like a push-push kind of feeling. And I think there's some new places that are trying to like, be more mindful of that, and like a nine to five job, but definitely those are harder to find.

And maybe the standard is more like, just got to push through it. I was like well, I kind of want to be able to enjoy my life in other ways. The reason I started making short films is because in part, I wanted to actually direct my feature film in the future, which I wrote the script for, and I was like, I need to get experience directing and explore that aspect.

And the last short film I've made was about an older Vancouver queer drag artist and we just did like a documentary style, but yeah, I think definitely it's a whole intensive process. Once you start, it's just a constant, you're just throwing money at it. It was really cool and really fun, of course, it's just super intense, and I really enjoyed the process. I think I would probably make another short film in the future, but not right now. It's like a different child. A child who needs a lot of work in a short period of time, short burst of time. And you need to be prepared for that.

Kat Kourbeti: The difficult thing about filmmaking, whether it's part of the industry, so to speak, or if you're just doing it yourself, is you don't realize until you're in it just how much work it can take to get something on camera the way you want it, to set it up so that it's easy. The locations, the equipment, the this, the that. I completely understand not really wanting to dive into another film quite yet. The good thing about them is that it is collaborative.

And aside from the film things and TV and theater scripts and all that, you also compose music, which I'm incredibly jealous of as a skill and as a way of thinking. I know that you have a special relationship with music, in a similar way that I do, that music can really drive the stuff that you write as well, which is super cool.

But tell me a bit about that relationship with music, and with writing, composing music.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah. Thank you for the question. I think for me, I don't know why, it's like all the sounds of words relate to music, and texture/emotional qualities. And so I think that's a return to that for my music, like a return to that kind of like, what is it I'm trying to really explore in this piece of art?

For instance, the video poem, I composed music for that. It was on Logic Pro, and I used the Guzheng kind of music instrumentation input. And so it was a lot of fun, because I got to explore that element. I feel like I'm a little bit of a perfectionist sometimes. I tend to be the only person to care of everything.

Like with film, it's impossible. You can't be the only person to take care of everything, and the collaborative aspect is actually really enjoyable for that reason. But with the music, I get so caught up in it sometimes by accident that I'm focusing on it so much that I'm listening so hard. I'm like, 'Oh, I don't like that version or that moment'. And then I go back in and try to change it. So it gets a little bit stressful honestly for me sometimes, because I'm so picky. But I like the overall feeling of spontaneity, of the overflow of emotions in that moment, just composing, I think it depends on the kind of piece I'm composing but sometimes I'm just playing around with the music and the emotions, and just trying to imagine what kind of emotion, or a scene I'm trying to depict with the music, and then trying to fit that in, or play according to that emotion with the chords and notes and everything else. Yeah, I think that's the vibe.

I've been trying to compose a song for my partner for the past... four years? It's because I keep changing the vibe. 'Oh, it should be happy' and it's like 'oh, no, it should be like more know, mellow'. Yeah, and complex. So I have different versions of it and it's never done, and I feel like I finally have the version, I'm just going to—cause at this point, he's like, 'um, so where's the music video?'

Kat Kourbeti: I think that kind of reflects relationships, how things change and are always in flux, and there's always different feelings and different sort of things that come into it. And I think that's interesting how that is reflected in your process.

What sort of instruments do you tend to use for your compositions? Is it like purely piano, or do you veer with kind of more synth-y things? What's your kind of sound that you go for?

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: I think that might depend on the piece, but so far I've been using the keyboard into Logic Pro and working instrumentation there. But I also play the violin, a bit of guitar and I used to sing opera. So I think it goes back and forth between that. Actually, I think my style is more weirdly like, Chinese pop / musical theater / a bit of jazz.

Kat Kourbeti: Okay!

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: And I think, because sounds really impact me and everything, I don't tend to write a lot of, I don't know, extremely loud and angry. It's more like, sad and emotional, even if I'm angry.

So I'm partly working on this musical. I don't know exactly what the whole storyline is yet, but it's about neurodivergence and surviving in a world that's very chaotic and trying to filter that through.

For me, I love singing in musicals. So when I write music about neurodivergence, or how I experience neurodivergence, I think I tend to almost immediately go into that field somehow, even if I'm trying to write just one song. It's like when I'm writing a poem or when talking about 'creating the children', giving birth, quote unquote, to the children. It's like, if the children want this, like they wanna be a musical, then you can't make them be a song. They have to be a musical. So now it's a musical. So yeah. That's just how it is.

Kat Kourbeti: I like music for helping me kind of filter my thoughts, in a way, if that makes sense. Because I'm also neurodivergent and the chaos in my brain sometimes just needs a channel. And so that's my kind of interpretation of my relationship to music, is I think that it helps me focus the various things into one train of thought that can be followed.

And so, I think it's very interesting how you're using that to reflect your neurodivergent experience through your composition. I'll be very interested to hear that when you choose to release it in whatever form, whatever shape it ends up taking. Yeah, like a little neurodivergent musical. Hopefully with some kind of speculative element, maybe ghosts, knowing you?

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Oh, I think definitely. I think I'm already incorporating witches and, yeah, probably we'll have ghosts.

Kat Kourbeti: Great. On brand.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yes. I think we talked about it in the (Worldcon) panel as well, how music influences the way we write a little bit.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. That's my other podcast that I'm launching soon at the time of recording. So at some point I would love to chat to you on that one more specifically, about the role of music in your writing. But, yeah, that's all just so wonderfully interconnected, your music, your scripts, your poetry, like there's a through line in everything about the diaspora experience, and your various life experiences, and the emotions that you want to convey.

I just love like, multi talented artists who just try all the things. As much as doing the one thing is fine and admirable, and I wish I knew how to do that.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Me too. I honestly I wish I knew how to do that too.

Kat Kourbeti: Wish I could specialize. That's not really my wheelhouse. I do all the things. And so just, yeah, it's wonderful. I will say we're going to link the playlist that we made in our anime panel in the show notes.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yes!

Kat Kourbeti: Cause we made this for the people who attended the panel and then just kept adding things.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: And so it's this four hour monster at the moment, and I'm sure it's going to grow longer.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: It might be five hours soon, I might add a few more.

Kat Kourbeti: Just add things, honestly. It's all the anime bangers that we like, and soundtracks, and openings and endings, and things that kind of speak to us. We spent about an hour just really going at it with Avery Delaney, and with Dakkar as well, who's a anime fan from Italy. Yeah, just a great conversation.

Outside of all of your creative work, you also edited quite a bit for Augur magazine, which is an SFF publication in Canada. Do you want to tell me a little bit about your editing process and your experience working at Augur?

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah, I had a really wonderful time. I'm still part of the team. I'm like trying to figure out, I might help with like programming or some other aspects, but I think the editing aspect of it, I, because I edited so much for, at one point in undergrad, I was editing like 13 journals, like not at once, but it was like, academic and then creative, and then I was at Prism International and prose editing for them. And it was a really intense process, like of curation and editing. And I just, I think I need a little bit of a break, honestly, from editing, but I really do enjoy the process of editing and yeah, they're (Augur) an amazing group of people and Kerry, the co-founder, they're stepping back a little bit from that, but they're super cool.

I think the whole experience was really great because it was a lot of training from the ground up on how to edit. And so I think from that experience, I really got to understand how that process is like, and how to talk to authors and like stylistic, substantive, the whole process. I feel like it's because of Augur that I managed to edit for Prism International, which is UBC's creative writing journal. I just think it was a really great experience. They're doing such amazing work, honestly. The amount of intensity and care put into the journal and the pieces are just really amazing, inspiring. And yeah, just editing and then meeting the authors in different parts, and I'm like, 'Oh, I edited your piece!' and it's like, getting to know them, it's really nice to have that element as well. And yeah the conferences—they've been doing AugurCon. They did it online the first year, I think, and then in person, and it was really cool just to have that kind of energy.

And we went to World Fantasy recently. Some of us went to World Fantasy together, and it was just a joy because we rented out a Airbnb, and we just called it Augur House. We just like, hung out and had a night where we watched The Covenant, like the old one, like 'that's so bad is funny' one. Yeah. That was a really fun time.

Kat Kourbeti: Was it fiction you edited?

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Oh yes, fiction, yes. Sorry, I forgot to mention that, yeah. I did fiction pieces.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm glad that it was a nice experience. I've only ever, you know, experienced the Augur everything online, I subscribed at one point, and I did come to at least two AugurCons, the virtual ones.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yay!

Kat Kourbeti: I really like what you guys do with, first of all, centering the Canadian experience, no matter what perspective that comes from, because it's all quite valid, but then also the approach to the global submissions, because you are open to stories from everybody, but the real care that I think you guys take with selecting and with nurturing.

What was your editing style, as an editor working on these pieces, like how involved were you?

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yeah, I think it depended on which role you were in for sure. I would say I was quite involved with the process. We would have the pitch meetings, and then we'd choose which pieces we wanna edit. And then we would send out emails to the author, asking if they want an intro meeting, asking if they have any questions, and then we would go through, depending on what the piece needed, maybe a substantive round, and then a stylistic round, and then line edits, and then copy edits at the very end, and making sure we had the content warnings they needed or wanted, and then we would just send that off to where they would do the typesetting and everything else.

When I first started, I was kind of like an assistant, so I was not really sending the main emails, not really putting comments into the documents, not necessarily interacting directly with the authors. And then later on I was directly talking to the authors, and I think the main thing I really understood from all the experiences I've done, as a writer myself, I understand like how vulnerable it is to be edited.

Having to phrase in a way, if there's something that you're curious about like, 'Oh, I wonder about this. I'm curious about this'. And so like, balancing that and then also later learning - I would always ask the authors in the beginning 'how much edits do you want?', because usually it's not like you need like a ton of edits anyways, but if you would want your piece to be deeply edited versus lightly - because it's their piece. Whenever I edit, it's like helping them explore their vision of the piece. I'm not trying to like, fight them. We're trying to work together, like on a movie, it's like we're director and producer, trying to make this thing happen. That's something I started asking, 'how deeply do you want to edit it?'

And so some people are like, 'we want all the edits'. And people were like, 'not so much'. So then I would consider that when going through the piece, cause we're working together and I'm trying to help them polish it for publication. It's not about trying to fit any kind of vision of what I think it should be, it's about their vision of what it should be. And if their vision is that they don't want that many edits or they want it to be similar to what they have already now, then that should be fine. I think we should follow what they want.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I think it's the mark of any good magazine to really meet the author where they're at, and with what they're trying to do, and just try and find ways to make that shine more, whether that's intensive edits or, 'yeah, this is fine. Change this comma, please.'

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Yes, exactly.

Kat Kourbeti: I think it's a lot of what we do here as well, at Strange Horizons, we don't really often change very much at all. It's very much about finding, like you say, what the vision is that the author has for the story, what is it that they're trying to convey, and just making sure that we're helping them do that.

And I'm really glad that has led to more editing stuff for you. But I can also understand how it's a big, kind of involved process. And maybe you want to take a little breather at the moment. That's fair enough. I really hope that the novel comes along.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Thank you.

Kat Kourbeti: Sooner rather than later!

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Some people are waiting for it. I'm like, oh my gosh!

Kat Kourbeti: We want to read it! Yes, please.

But yeah, thank you so much for spending your time with us and for sharing all of your art with us.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: No, thank you for just your wonderful questions. We were just like, we met at Worldcon on that panel specifically. So it's really serendipitous. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: That's a thing. SFF friendships. We connect over the things we geek about and it's really great.

Is there anything that you're working on right now that you'd like to promote?

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: I'm editing my thesis novel. It's about sisterhood, but like weird timelines and Chinese philosophy elements and very much - all fiction is auto fiction, but I feel like a lot of the things I'm grappling with, like, how to find order in a chaotic world when the outside world is so externally chaotic to me, and working through depression, and, like, the diaspora experience, and it's written in the form of letters to the past and present between the two sisters. I don't know if it's something I need to promote right now, because I'm still finishing the edits for it. I can't actually be like, go ahead and read it, because it's not published yet. Um, but that's something to look forward to, yes.

Kat Kourbeti: And where can we find you on social media?

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: I switched my handle a couple of years ago, but right now I'm @VivianLiCreates, on BlueSky and Instagram.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, lovely. So we'll find you there. Thank you so much for your time and we look forward to all your future endeavors.

Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: Oh, thank you so much, Kat. It was a pleasure and honor to be here. Thank you.

In the 5th episode of SH@25, editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with author E.M. Faulds to chat about her 2022 story Broken Blue, combining Eldritch horrors with mundane moments, writing female characters, and finding the strength to write during hard times.

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Episode show notes:

• Visit E.M. Faulds' website and follow her on social media (BlueSky / Instagram)
• Read E.M.'s microfiction over your coffee break on her Ko-fi page (and throw her some change while you're there)
• Read E.M.'s story Broken Blue in our archives
• Buy a copy of Gallus, the 2024 Glasgow SF Writers' Circle anthology
• Check out Nova Scotia Vol II from Luna Press
• Check out Ada King, E.M.'s novel, and Under the Moon, her short story collection featuring all-female protagonists
• Find more links to E.M.'s work, as well as recommendations and links to other media we talked about, as you read the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello, Strangers, and welcome to SH at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres. Today's guest, E. M. Faulds, was first published with us a couple of years back, and has also published a couple of novels, and is part of the very well known, very well connected, very productive writers group out of Glasgow, Scotland.

I'm very happy to chat to you. Hello. Welcome.

E.M. Faulds: Hello, yes, the acronym is the GSFWC, which stands for Glasgow SF Writers Circle, yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Every one of you I've met is amazing. And because I also run a writers group in London, you guys are like goals in terms of how you do things, how you've got your events and your own anthology. And I'm just like, wow, I love this. I love this for writers' groups to lift each other up.

So I want to talk to you about that today. And just about your career in general, and your life, and how Strange Horizons has fit into it all. So, first of all, I want to ask, how long have you lived in Scotland?

E.M. Faulds: I moved up here in 2006 to move in with my partner, who rapidly became my husband, and before that I was living in England, and before that I was born and raised in Australia. So, moved around.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I've lived in the UK for like 16 years and I feel like you live someplace a long time, it just kind of like really embeds itself no matter where you're from. But there's also an aspect of that, that means you're a little removed from both where you are and where you've left. It's that kind of strange feeling. And Scotland has a lot of really rich literary history, which I'm sure that plays into your relationship with writing.

E.M. Faulds: Oh, 100%. Yeah. But it's also, like, very intimidating, because there's these kind of, working class heroes. There's, anything from Robert Burns' poetry to Alasdair Gray, who wrote Lanark, which is very prominent around here, especially in the, let's say, weirder fiction. Speculative, but also, you know, Earth based kind of fiction. But yeah, I mean, it is an incredibly inspiring place to be.

Kat Kourbeti: And the Glasgow SF Writers Circle that you're a part of, also has its own rich history of folks in the speculative genres who have popped off, not just recently, but for the whole history of the writers group, and you guys really support each other. I've seen this at cons in the UK and it warms my heart to see, like, writers groups really band together and elevate each other's, whatever it is, your novella, your short story, your novel.

E.M. Faulds: Yeah, so it's really great to have a crew. You know when you're going around somewhere and you've got someone, you've got a familiar face to meet up with. In fact, some of the members of the Circle I met for the first time at a convention elsewhere in the UK. So it's really fun and it's very supportive, and it doesn't matter how long ago you were a member of the Circle because, if you like the idea anyway, you will always be part of the family as it were. So that's wonderful. We've had a few names like, Hal Duncan is one that most people know. And more recently Eliza Chan, who was New York Times bestselling author recently with Fathomfolk, who now lives in Manchester, but used to come to the Circle when she was very much younger, and is still part of the family. So, that's wonderful.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, we're the same down south. I run a group called Spectrum and it's very much kind of a mix of people who were traditionally published before they even joined, we've had a few bestselling people in our group, but they come and go because it is kind of what it is. You can't predict life, but it's always really lovely to get support and critique and feedback from other people who, A, take writing seriously and they take the craft seriously, and B, people who are deeply familiar with the genre, because a lot of the time, general writers groups can be really challenging to work with when you write genre because you have to lead with an explanation of like, why you chose to write high fantasy or whatever it is.

It's great to start from a baseline of, we all know what we're writing. We know the various kind of ins and outs and the conventions and the tropes that we're working with. And how can we make this better? I certainly feel like I've learned much more by being part of a writer's group than my whole creative writing degree, which I did, and it left me really just questioning things.

E.M. Faulds: Oh, let's be fair to your degree. Every single degree in the entirety of humanities and academia has been not as useful as actually going out and doing a thing, generally speaking, to prepare you for the world as it is. Publishing is difficult. You can't just necessarily follow a set script, a set of steps that actually tells you exactly how to be successful, because 90 percent of it is luck. And the other 10 percent is just dogged determination. And if you don't have support during that it can be so much harder, and you can't even begin to tell where you're going right or wrong. So yeah, it's definitely worth having a community, even if it's just an online one, even if it's just some folks you've met at an event, you know, just someone to talk to. But if you can get a more in depth genre, specific to you, group, then yeah, you're gonna have a much easier time, I think, just dealing with it.

Kat Kourbeti: A hundred percent this. I do want to ask about your guys's anthology that you have a story in, Gallus, that was launched at Worldcon (Glasgow 2024). Unfortunately I had to miss your launch event, but tell me a little bit about putting that together.

And how all of that came to be, to actually have a physical book of your guys' work in your hands. That's awesome.

E.M. Faulds: Well, it's not the first one they've done. It was actually just as I was joining, they had put out a 35 year anniversary edition of Collected Works from past and present members. This one we wanted to be all just present members who are currently active in the Circle. Obviously people come and go, and they go on to bigger and better things in their careers, or they may move to the other side of the world. It's not always practical to have every single member in as well. So we decided to keep it, as a snapshot of current members.

And so, this time round, we wanted to put a little bit of a Scottish spin on it. Obviously, it's always going to have a Scottish spin, but especially for Worldcon, especially for Glasgow 2024. So we decided to just sort of say, well, if you want to write one that's got a Glasgow or a Scottish theme, yeah, go ahead. And if you don't, it doesn't matter because you are a Scottish writer. Now, whether you were born in Scotland, moved to Scotland, doesn't really matter. You are a Scottish writer if you're part of this group. And if you've ever lived in Glasgow, and you've written there, why not? Because Scotland's a very, very open place, and it's kind of more an attitude than anything. We decided, me, Neil Williamson and Brian M Milton, we kind of just decided we were going to do it for Worldcon.

We were going to create an anthology because Neil had the experience of the previous one as an editor, and the other two of us were just too stupid to say no. So we decided to give ourselves quite a good bit of time. So we had a year essentially of having the stories in and going through developmental edits, because obviously when we're taking a snapshot of our membership, some people have a lot less experience of going through this, and for some of them it was their very first publication. So obviously there is a differing level of work needed, and so we gave it a lot of time, a lot of back and forth, a lot of getting confused about which version of which manuscript. And then we threw it together into a lovely print and ebook version. And we got the very talented Jenny Coutts to do artwork, as well as a story inside. So the cover is, I don't know, if you ever get a chance to go and see it, it is beautiful. And then we went to Worldcon, we did a launch event, and there was um, a great big surprise of, we sold out, we sold every single copy, including most of the contributor copies, which we hadn't expected, and it was an absolutely smashing event.

Cover of Gallus by Jenni Coutts

Kat Kourbeti: I don't think it should be that surprising, because it was just such a local celebration, Worldcon in Glasgow, here's a group of writers from this city, let's show you what we've got. I think it was, first of all, a tremendous idea, and second of all, of course people from all over who came to Worldcon are like, let's check that out. Let's see what's going on. What's up, Glasgow?

I'm really happy you guys did it, because also, for those members with the less experience, it's such a boost to be part of something like this, that maybe gives them that foot in the door, where it's like, hey, I've got this thing in that anthology, really lovely way to just take a snapshot, and give everybody that little bit of something.

And what was your story in this anthology?

E.M. Faulds: My story was called Pearl and the World, and it is a space based one, so it's not really particularly Scottish, but that's okay, as I said, it was one I had. It found its place in there, I'd say, because it was a lot of very close detailed Scottish, Scots language as well employed in the stories to outer space. Mine's not even the only one which is an outer space based story.

So it's a horrible story, I have to say, and I don't mean like in quality terms, I mean in terms of, you will probably go through it with this character, going, oh my god. I have this tendency, I think, to write Marmite stories. You're gonna feel something, you know, it may be not, 'oh wow, that's so beautiful and lovely', but it will be something.

Kat Kourbeti: Legitimate, though.

E.M. Faulds: I have a habit of talking my stories down and I get told off by the other members of the editing team for like, "no, no, no, it is legitimate science fiction". It's about a lot of things that are not pleasant. I think in the end it kind of ends on a hopeful note, I hope.

Kat Kourbeti: I mean, I'm inclined to agree with them. It is legitimately science fiction. Honestly, not all stories have that vibe, and a lot of the stuff that I enjoy personally tends to be like, in some ways, like—

E.M. Faulds: —darker or on a slight tilt there. Yeah. Maybe I should rewind and say, 'no, it's the best story that was ever written'. But you know, we're British and we don't do that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes. I see that a lot with my group members as well, cause we're down in London and there's that English way of like, "Oh no, no, I couldn't possibly," which can be endearing, that self deprecating, I'm not going to put myself up. But at the same time, you can internalize some things that are not necessarily healthy, to completely push yourself down so that you don't pull yourself up too much.

It's that whole thing of, like, responding to "how are you doing?" with "not too bad". Which—

E.M. Faulds: Mm hmm.

Kat Kourbeti: For the listeners who are not in the UK and have not experienced this, when you ask a British person, how are you, nine times out of ten, they'll say, not too bad, because, and this was explained to me at university, and it didn't click, I still thought that it was very strange.

In the decade plus since, I've been like, oh, I think I get it now, a little bit, maybe, I still don't agree. It's that whole thing of like, you don't want to say you're doing too well, in case the other person isn't doing too well. And so, "not too bad", actually means okay, or good, even. But to a non English person or non Brit visiting or moving here, my first response was like, eh? But why would you say this? So are you okay then? Can I do something? Are you having a bad day? And it's like, no, I'm not too bad.

E.M. Faulds: It's also, like, to be fair, if it was too bad, you'd never bloody say that either, would you? Because that would be too much like expecting the other person to bear the burden of knowing how you feel that isn't great, you know? So you're not actually allowed to say that, "do you know, actually, my back hurts. The cat woke me up this morning and it was vomiting. I tell you, these kids ran past me and I, yeah, whatever." You've got to soldier on.

Kat Kourbeti: Keep calm and carry on.

E.M. Faulds: All of that. I say, don't be a burden. But I hope that by saying 'my story is horrible', I'm actually being a bit sneaky by thinking that, you know, maybe people will go, "really, is it? I have to go and see now!" Maybe the reverse psychology isn't all that.

Kat Kourbeti: I think there's something about preparing your audience for the worst. Cause then, maybe it's not so bad. So let's kind of zoom in and hone in a little bit on your history with and your experience of Strange Horizons. First of all, as a reader, have you been reading Strange Horizons, say, for a while before you submitted, or kind of off and on, maybe?

E.M. Faulds: Yeah. I've always come across social media shares of people's stories and they're like, Oh my God, have you read this? Go and read it, put it in your eyeballs right now. And I go and do that and then I'm like, oh, I see why. Obviously, I had seen the magazine before I submitted because, you know, it's one of those rare venues that has got a very, very high standard of editing and selection. Obviously, because my story's in there (laughter). Also it allows you to read for free, which is, I don't even know how you guys can manage that. I know there's like a great amount of generosity from the community in terms of crowdfunding. Which, if you're a reader and you're listening to this, every time that the Strange Horizons puts a crowdfunding opportunity up, please go and give some money because they do so much with so little and it's amazing.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you, yes. I mean, the secret is, it's not a secret. We're all volunteers, even though it takes quite a big team to wrangle everything. Especially, I think more than half of the entire staff is our first readers, just because there's so much to go through during each reading period.

But yeah, we don't get paid. Every little bit that comes in through crowdfunding goes to the writers, the artists, people who write reviews for us, things like that. It's all we can do, to elevate that which we believe in. And it's why we're there. We're there to do the lifting. But really the gems come from the contributors, such as yourself.

So your story was published in 2021, and it's called Broken Blue. Do you wanna tell me a little bit about the idea behind the story and kind of how that came together for you in the writing?

E.M. Faulds: I know exactly where I was when the story came to me in this massive inspiration download, if you want to call it that, or just like a flash that just came into my eyes when I saw someone was walking their dog in a park and the first line basically came to me, which was, "I'll go when the dog goes". And I was like, what, where did that come from? And what does it mean? And how can I use that? And then I was thinking later on—you know, you squirrel that piece away—that's quite a strong opening, for reasons which I don't yet understand. Then I was reading about, well, spoiler alert, Fair Folk and Eldritch beings that British countryside folklore has in spades, and the Irish folklore as well, of the Fair Folk who'd come and do mysterious things. And then they had quite, perhaps, a strong bond to animals. Especially your pets and such. My favorite one is everyone whose cat suddenly stares at a wall for no reason. I love that. Because everyone's like, what is it seeing? What is it seeing that I can't see? And that's kind of terrifying. But also it's incredibly fun to think that animals might have like a link to the spiritual or the unseen world.

I was kind of like, let's mash those two together. Those two things. There's a dog, this sentence, and some kind of eldritchness. And I was really lucky to be able to get accepted by anywhere with that, because it was quite a slight speculative element, compared to something like that's set in the medieval times with swords and magic and wands and wizards. This is a very small and domestic kind of magic. So I was really lucky to find somewhere that would take it. This is what I love about Strange Horizons, is that they're not afraid to be subtle, to have nuance in the work. And some of my previous encounters with Strange Horizons included, Lorraine Wilson's Bathymetry, which I'm sure you remember, because it went on to win a prize as well, in 2022. I looked that up earlier. I'm not that good at remembering.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I actually read the podcast version of Bathymetry. And I I love that story so, so much. Sorry to interrupt you. Please continue.

E.M. Faulds: Yeah. Somewhere that, that allows a smaller fiction as well as larger.

Kat Kourbeti: My ideal Strange Horizon story is something where the magic comes from a deep need to tell a story that like you say, the little things, the domestic things. Another story that I read on the podcast was Anna Martino's Haja Hoje, which is a Brazilian story, very rooted in Rio de Janeiro, (pronounced Hio, not Rio!) which is the proper pronunciation, as I learned. And again, the magic in that came out of grief, and the desire to see a loved one who's passed and to manifest them again, and that sort of thing. So the little ways in which magic can elevate and help you tell a story.

I'm really amazed by the opening line and how that fed into your story. Just like, let's make that a thing. And the Eldritch stuff is subtle as well.

E.M. Faulds: Where did that come from? I was walking through my local park. I wasn't trying to think of particular things. I was just sort of ambling along. That in itself is a kind of small magic, if you like. Just where inspiration comes from. I remember, my favorite thing is when Terry Pratchett's character, who is basically a version of William Shakespeare, but I think a dwarf. And he has to wear a special metal helmet to stop the inspiration particles streaming into his brain, so he can actually get some sleep. So yeah, I just love that. And I wish I could be the sort of person who just goes, oh, today I'm going to write a story, and it's gonna have this theme, and this message, and that motif. But unfortunately, that's not how my brain works. I'm very jealous of you if that is how your brain works, but it's like, suddenly, the void speaks into my head, and that's it. I have very little choice in the matter.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, you get a little magical phrase here and there that just kind of makes you go, what was that? Backtrack. Let's figure that out. Let's write a 5, 000 word story, try to figure that out. Why not? And so was this story an all in one go, 'I've cracked it, I've written it, it's done'? Or did it take more finagling?

E.M. Faulds: Oh heck no, yeah. The first version I wrote, I took it to the Writer's Circle, and they looked at it and they went, huh? What does this mean? And I was like, "um, I thought I was being really obvious", but apparently no. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna have to pull this out here and push that in there and undo this and zip this right up. And then you put it on submission. And then when the editors have gone, 'yes, we love his story', you're like, cool, I've done it, but wait, there's more. And then that was a really, really cool part of the process actually, because obviously a lot of people have told their editing nightmares on social media, and had a very difficult time. But I did not. It was, I believe, Kat Weaver who was doing the editing, and, it was just so supportive, and so easy. It's like, "oh, this is cool, yeah, I get what you're saying there and why. Okay, yeah, let's just change that." So, I honestly couldn't have asked for a better process.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. My favorite part of these interviews is hearing about that from all sorts of different writers and everyone has that to say and to praise our editorial team for being supportive and for getting it. It can be a really subtle thing, like in your case where initially, maybe it wasn't so on the page, and you then have to hope that the next person who reads it, or the editor who reads it, gets it.

And it's great that the effort is being made to meet writers where they're at, instead of trying to shape them into something else. Because I don't think that our editors tend to ask you to change much, if at all, like it's more copy and phrasing and things like that, if the interviews hold true.

E.M. Faulds: Yeah, no, absolutely. It was very light touch, and I'm very much about supporting your own vision, your own voice. As you were saying, it's not really about putting words into your mouth or trying to conform to anything particular. It's about, as you say, meeting it where it is. And, do you know what? That's just proof that it can be that way. It doesn't have to be a terribly traumatic process. It can just be kind of—

Kat Kourbeti: Just kind of nice. Yeah. And it's these sorts of stories that tell that quiet kind of magic that, maybe it comes from like a deeper place of the Earth and the uncanny and the unknown, but really it's about people and where they're at emotionally. And that drives the story. I think that's where the best kind of sweet spot is for a Strange Horizons story.

It's funny, years back I wrote a short story that was for a contest within my writers group, and, you know, it did very well. I subbed it everywhere. It hasn't found a home yet. I am so convinced it's a Strange Horizons story, but the problem is I can't submit as a volunteer. So... someday!

E.M. Faulds: Oh no! That's, just very, very sad because, obviously you do so much work and then...

Kat Kourbeti: It's okay. I'll just sit on it until then.

E.M. Faulds: We just need more markets like this. There is not enough. And, you know, even with your own amount you can take, it's a drop in the ocean, obviously, compared to what you would love to take. So, it's heartbreaking that there's just not more. Let's just clone you guys, and set up a hundred Strange Horizons. And then we'd probably getting close.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, we just need more markets in general. There's more stories than there are magazines that can publish them feasibly. So, if anybody wants to start a new one, this is your call. Y'all can do it. I believe in you.

So yeah, I'm happy to hear that the writer's group feedback helped shape this. That's really cool.

Let's talk a little bit about your other writing. You have a book, or two books out, I think? Two novels?

E.M. Faulds: Well, I have a novel, Ada King, which I self-published many years ago, so it's not like I can say "Oh yes, amazing". But it seems to have actually been received pretty well for that. And I'm actually pretty proud of it still. So, would I do it the same these days? Possibly? But yeah, I mean that was a learning process in and of itself.

I have got hopefully a novella coming out next year, which I can't talk about just yet. We're still in the kind of embargo phase. But, after that, I need to just get writing more novels because I really want to finish novel length work again. The first one I wrote in three months, because it just came pouring out of me. I'd spent six months writing notes and structuring and plot points before I actually did the physical writing, because I was working in a job that didn't require an awful lot of brain capacity, so it was brilliant because I could just think about my story in the background. I have also got the short story collection Under the Moon, which has won the British Fantasy Award last year, so that was nice.

Kat Kourbeti: That's super, super cool. Tell me a little bit about the collection.

E.M. Faulds: I had all these short stories kicking about, so I was like, what do I do with them? I know—I shall create a collection! And, I needed a theme for it. So the theme was, essentially very simple and yet somehow quite remarkable as well: every protagonist in the SFF and a little bit of H story, was a female protagonist. It was kind of the unifying theory. But I thought to myself, there's got to be another person who's done this, somewhere in the science fiction/fantasy world. There must be a person who's done a single collection who is a female author who has written just female protagonists. And I couldn't find one.

And of course you're like, "eww, should I really use this as a theme?" Because obviously people look at any stories that feature women as 'women's interest', which is like saying, "I won't be interested in it because I am not a woman". Okay, it just happens to have a female protagonist. They could be doing a lot of different things.They could be doing something very small and domestic, or they could be doing something large and exciting, geopolitical, or anything. As soon as you go, well, we're just gonna make the chicks do the work in this, as the protagonist here. And then it's like, yeah, okay. So that was it.

I didn't think it was particularly remarkable at the time, until I sort of tried to look around to find anyone else who'd done the same. And I could only find collections where it was multi author, and some of those authors were not women, which, you know, is fine, but there wasn't a single author approach that went, just the chicks as the protagonists.

There's some dudes in it, but mostly the chicks. And then, you know, one of them's a spaceship, for goodness sake, so how could it be a chick? But it thinks of itself as like, analogous to a mother, so it counts. But yeah, I mean, it was kind of a feeble excuse to put all these stories together, cause I just happened to write a lot about female characters, being one myself.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm flabbergasted that no one else had done this before? Ladies!

E.M. Faulds: Well, not that I could find. I'm not gonna say I've read every single book out there, so of course I could have found it.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, we need more of it anyway. I just think, it's as good an excuse as any to theme things together. I think the only collections that I've read that were themed like that were like, the Joanna Russ ones that are specifically about women who love women. And so, of course the protagonists will be female, but those are all different authors. So yeah, we need more of that.

E.M. Faulds: Yeah. I particularly don't want it to be classed as a ' feminist collection', because they're not all just fighting for women's rights the entire time. They just happen to be women. But it is also feminist, because the notion of feminism is just women being equal to men.

Kat Kourbeti: Groundbreaking.

E.M. Faulds: Well, if you would read a collection of stories that had only male protagonists in it, then, if you don't mind the idea of feminism, then just read a book with all female protagonists. It's fine. And/or, maybe non binary these days, you know, because we should have all of these different perspectives in our lives.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. Yeah. There is a gap, of course, still in publishing, in terms of, most authors who are being published still are predominantly male. And then we need to look at the intersection of all of that. In the genre as well, if we're looking at speculative stuff. Like, yeah, there's a lot of components and factors that at the end of the day, need more parity. So that's great; your anthology is just a step, your collection. Here's a building block for other people to be inspired by and do a little bit more of, themselves. I hope. Maybe someone hearing this will.

E.M. Faulds: The idea of science fiction and fantasy is kind of being quite male dominated still. I mean, especially on the science fiction side, to be fair, it's not as heavy in science fiction as I wanted, but maybe next time I'll just do straight space opera. All chicks. All the time. Kicking ass and taking names.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. Thank you very much. I would read that in a heartbeat.

And then you've also got a little bit more short fiction elsewhere, and you do microfiction, which—I very much admire anybody who can keep things short. Because I can't do it to save my life. I start a little thing that I'm like, oh, it's going to be a short story. And then it's like, maybe a novella. And then it becomes like a two or three book series as I'm working out the kinks of the story. And I'm like, oh no, I've done it again.

So how do you write so prolifically, in short formats? Teach me your wisdom, please.

E.M. Faulds: Listen, listen, I've got ADHD. So, I mean, the instant gratification hit is something to not dismiss. I just started up making a coffee, that's K O F I, Koo-FI?

Kat Kourbeti: Kofi? Yeah.

E.M. Faulds: The sort of like Patreon lite of sharing platforms. Often people use it to buy me a coffee if you like my work, but I thought, if I put some stories on there as well, that will help. So I'm kind of singing for my supper. But in any case, sometimes a story idea hasn't got legs to go further. It just doesn't. These are the guys who didn't drop enough to leave the nest. Let's say these are the guys who are like, just a small image, or maybe they're just a concept that you could try and shoehorn it in somewhere, but it's just something that has a very much a shorter shelf life for me, and I'm not going to use it elsewhere and I'm not going to completely expand it into other things.

So that's where that comes from. But they are short flash fiction, so like, if you want to read it over your coffee break, then you can, without having to bookmark it and come back later.

Kat Kourbeti: I will say, I also have ADHD, but my little dopamine bits are in finding new building blocks for my already existing thing. And so every time I just add a little more, and I add a little more, and instead of it being a short story like I intended, it ends up becoming like at least one novel, if not three.

So it's an interesting way of exploring concepts and ideas, and maybe I need to do a little more of that.

E.M. Faulds: Well, as I say, I really need to get some more novel length work out there, because at the moment, uh... since the pandemic, actually, it's been very terrible for me being able to sit down and consistently do all the writing that I need to do. It's being able to keep yourself in a consistent headspace. So kind of jealous if you're just like constantly adding in the back of your head.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, I'm trying to get back into that habit, because as you say, the pandemic threw a lot of that completely in a tailspin. I used to think about my stories all the time, and always keeping that in the background, and then with the shutdown of the world, I was completely like, "what's happening? Fiction whomst?" and... it got me into podcasting and things, which I'm grateful for, because it was a way for me to channel other skill sets into the genre that I love so much, but the fiction side of it all does, as you say, require to keep a headspace that's stable, maybe? For lack of a better word, a baseline from which you can operate. It's taken me a long time to get back to that. I think I'm kind of there now, and I'm reading actually, Charlie Jane Anders' Never Say You Can't Survive.

E.M. Faulds: I got it right here. Yep. I love it. You just flip to any page and there's—every other emotion is connected to anger somehow.

Kat Kourbeti: Really feeling that right now. There was a moment post US election results that I was like, I can't let this situation get me back to that point where like, I can't even think about stories. That isn't productive for me. And I remembered those essays as they were coming out, you know, before they were an actual book they were just essays on Tor.com, now Reactor, and I will link them in the show notes for folks to have a read, because as you say, just every emotion links back to "how can I fuel this anger into something that's going to give me a result, like I can write a story, or I can write a book, or I can write whatever", channeling those emotions that are coming from a reaction to a bad situation into something that can let you release that.

So that's where I'm at as a writer right now.

E.M. Faulds: Uh huh. Like it's survival as an act of resistance at this point, right. Because it's difficult out there. And writing is an act of survival in this case, because, it's what they want. I say they, what the people who are against you want is for you to shut up and sit down. So they don't want to hear anything else. So you have to keep going.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It's about getting those thoughts into a coherent form. That's like, well, why should I shut up and sit down? The things that I have to say are valid, and my existence is valid, and my feelings and my stories and my worlds are worth exploring.

E.M. Faulds: You're not harming people by writing these things. Now, if you were writing down horrible stuff that was actively making the world worse, sure, shut up then. What you're actually providing is a lifeline to other people to escape, to think, to feel, to breathe. Then yeah, of course.

Kat Kourbeti: No, I think that's kind of vital for us all right now. If anything, we now need to be louder than ever. And use that anger and that frustration and make something else out of it, not sit and wallow in that misery. I don't think it's going to be helpful for anyone.

So yeah, highly recommend that book to anyone who's feeling some type of way right now. And if you're finding it difficult to write, this is maybe going to give you a little way out of the cloud.

E.M. Faulds: Here's hoping.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. So before I let you go, I want to hear about what you're working on right now, like if there's something that you'd like to promote or plug, if there's anything recent that you want us to take a look at.

E.M. Faulds: Yeah, so obviously the Gallus Anthology, that's G A L L U S. It's a Scots word that means bold and, maybe a little bit crazy, a little bit reckless. So Gallus Anthology is available on Amazon, I'm afraid only on Amazon, because we couldn't afford to get this printed any other way. Eh, you do what you do. But, please take a look at it, especially if you weren't at Worldcon, and you haven't got any Scottish books. Go and get that. And if you want another one that's Scottish science fiction and fantasy, there's also Nova Scotia Vol II. "Nova Scotia" being New Scottish, you know, as opposed to the place in Canada. So it's using the Latin name there. So Nova Scotia Vol II is an anthology by Luna Press Publishing, who are amazing. You should check out every book that they've got out as well. But that features also a story of mine, called Love Scotland, which I think is probably the best thing I've ever written in my life.

Okay yes, it's not better than Gallus, of course, but I could tell that that one was different. It was special, something that came out of me because it's science fiction, but it's really near future. And it's political, but it's also human. Anyway, please go and take a look, and I just have to ask anybody who's not already doing this, if you've read a great book, and you thought, "wow, that was cool", please review it. Wherever you bought it, wherever you didn't buy it, on social media, on your blog, please leave something for the writers, because it's really hard at the moment to get anyone to review anything, for reasons which I can only imagine boil down to people's spirit being sapped out of their body daily by life. But if you can, that would be a real great big help because it's hard out there. So, I think that's it.

And if you want to find me, and check out stuff, please go to EMFaulds.com, and I'm pretty sure Kat will leave a link to that too. And thanks very much.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat to us and for talking a little bit about your work. It's been great to find out about everything, and I hope that everyone will click the links in the show notes, and grab a copy of Gallus and Nova Scotia. Highly agree, by the way; Luna Press are doing fantastic work, so while you're there, check out everything else on that website. You will not regret it.

Thank you so much for joining us, and good luck on your future writing journey. I can't wait to see more of your stuff.

E.M. Faulds: Thanks a lot.

In the 4th episode of SH@25, Editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with tabletop game designer and SFF critic Kyle Tam, whose young career has taken off in the last few years. Read on for an insightful interview about narrative storytelling from non-Western perspectives, the importance of schlock and trash in the development of taste, and the windows into creativity we find in moments of hardship.

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Episode show notes:

• Visit Kyle Tam's website for her full credits/bibliography
• Follow Kyle on BlueSky @percypropa.bsky.social
• Read Kyle's reviews for SH on her author page
• Back the project Kyle's work is next appearing in, Devil's Due, on Backerkit
• Find more links to Kyle's work, as well as recommendations and links to other media we talked about, as you read the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello, Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons Magazine. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres.

Today's guest, Kyle Tam, was first published with us in 2022 and has since gone on to publish several tabletop games and reviews and criticism of science fiction and fantasy media of all sorts, actually, in Strange Horizons and elsewhere. I'm really looking forward to diving into a very multifaceted career, which despite only starting a handful of years ago, shows no signs of stopping.

It's great to have you here, Kyle.

Kyle Tam: Hi, thank you for having me.

Kat Kourbeti: We're so happy you're here. So you're like a very multi talented person, and you have like loads going on in the non fiction space, which is how Strange Horizons came into your life, I think.

Kyle Tam: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm very interested to find out about aspect of your work, but also all the aspects of your work.

So tell me a little bit about where of your writing starts to come from, the things you're interested in.

Kyle Tam: I began writing, I think, like a lot of people who write on the internet do, with fanfiction. I think that's the classic origin. And it's actually a bit how I ended up, weirdly, gravitating to Strange Horizons. Just walk with me on it.

So, I like fandom. I like a lot of IP things, but I think what's most relevant is I used to write a lot of fiction related to Warhammer 40k and the Black Library. And then there's this great collective called Cold Open Stories. So, for those who aren't familiar, Cold Open Stories does these anthology short fiction contests, where people can submit different works related to Warhammer 40k and get published, and I actually inadvertently heard about Strange Horizons because Joyce (Chng), I believe, is an editor and writer with Cold Open Stories.

So obviously, I was looking through their works and I was like, what is this magazine? Because I really liked her work for Cold Open, and then I ended up finding my way to Strange Horizons.

Kat Kourbeti: That's amazing. I love Joyce. I think they're a great writer, first of all, but also a great champion for voices from the Global South and just like voices from elsewhere that aren't just what we would consider your typical science fiction writer. That's so interesting.

So did you end up submitting to this anthology call?

Kyle Tam: I did. I ended up submitting a couple of stories that are with Cold Open. I think they're still up, but a little harder to find (Editor's note: here is The Tale of the Mirror Unfettered). I've never successfully submitted to the Black Library. I do apply. I've applied a couple of times. I know Joyce has as well, and I think a hundred thousand people across the world have tried.

It's really hard. It's really hard to get in, but I guess it's because writing for an IP is so very different to writing original fiction, because especially with Warhammer 40k, they have a very specific take on that world. It is the grim darkness of the far future where there is war, so there's an expectation of violence, even when you don't want it to, kind of has to be ingrained into the work.

And that's actually what I really liked about the fabric of Strange Horizons, and what a lot of the magazines do now outside of IP. I think specfic is in a really cool place, just right now. I think it was Rick Holland posted something really great, which is just like, the magazines now are printing work that is so much better and just so much more imaginative and creative than what was being published by the big authors like 20, 30 years ago. Like, we are living in the science fiction they were writing about.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. Gosh, with a lot of, especially all this AI stuff that's happening right now, like we—

Kyle Tam: Oh my god.

Kat Kourbeti: —are living in someone's science fiction vision for sure.

But I do agree with that statement, actually. I do think that because of the liberty of being able to just start an online magazine, and just come up with your vision and just start publishing, there are so many more avenues to tell new things. And I hear you about Warhammer, the very specific world that they have. I've spoken to a lot of people for whom that was their beginning, whether it was short fiction like that or through the Black Library, and it's at the same time liberating because you get your sandbox to play in, kind of in the same way that fan fiction can provide you with that framework at first to start on and then you can build your own, whatever it is on top of it, but at the same time, perhaps that limitation can be contrary to what your vision and what your kind of intention is as a writer.

So it's interesting, but I'm glad that a couple of your pieces got in there. That's really cool. We'll link everything in the show notes for people to have a read.

So did you first start off as a fiction writer then, would you say?

Kyle Tam: Yeah, I definitely—I blame my uncle for this. He had all these, those big Best American Science Fiction and Best Science Fiction of the Year anthologies. And I grew up on those, just reading those, devouring them. And I'd think to myself "wow, I'm going to grow up, I'm going to be like Ursula K. Le Guin. I'm going to be Harlan Ellison. It's going to be so easy." And then you grow up and you start to write and you're like, actually, it's really hard. It's not that easy.

Kat Kourbeti: The challenge is immense. And do you always write short formats, or have you tried longer works like novels, or maybe something in between?

Kyle Tam: I think everyone tries their hands at novels, whether you actually finish it or not. I think just the act of finishing the novel or finishing any piece is a great accomplishment in and of itself. I'm working on the novels, but in the meantime obviously I have submitted and done some short fiction, but not as much as I think the nonfiction stuff like the review and analysis. I'm also primarily more known in the tabletop space, where actually I've crossed paths with Joyce in a lot of strange ways, which is why I think we've become, I won't impose and say friends, but we've become people who like regularly talk and connect, and have that kind of appreciation for each other. And I really respect her, especially because she is like me, in that we're both pushing Southeast Asian voices in writing.

But coursing back, the second way I crossed paths with Joyce is that she, I think, was on the committee for the Indie Game Design Network, because the Indie Game Design Network does a yearly sponsorship program. And I believe it was, I applied in 2022 and they sponsored me for 2023, for tabletop writing.

So I primarily do a lot of tabletop game writing. I make my own independent games. I've also done a lot of supplementary writing for some IP publishers, which is also what you were saying earlier about like, playing around in the sandbox and being constrained by the rules is especially prevalent when you're writing for an IP. I've written for Paizo, I did work on Howl of the Wild. I did two pieces for them, which is one short, very short fiction piece, and then one which was stat blocks. And doing stat blocks is, the numbers do my head in, because you really have to balance out the parameters. Oh my goodness.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm a big tabletop fan, but not really a numbers gal. The tabletop games that kind of rely on that sort of mechanic are not really for me. A lot of my tabletop friends don't mind that at all, and that's great. But for me, I'm more into it for storytelling,

Kyle Tam: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: The easier you make that for me as a player, the better I'll respond. But I totally love seeing the different things that exist, and especially in the independent space.

So talk to me a little bit about that. How did you get into tabletops in the first place?

Kyle Tam: So I think that one of the really great things that has come out just out of anything in general is the desire to do jams, whether it's a game jam, music jam, writing jam, whatever. I got into the tabletop space because of a game jam for a great game called Artefact. It was a jam based on the mechanics that are in Artefact. I believe Artefact's from Mousehole Press, just for that linking. Great game, great designer.

But in any case, I ended up making a short game called Beloved, which is a solo journaling game which kind of puts you in the shoes of a Toy Story type toy, where you're growing up and you're being passed from child to child, and you're talking, and you're writing your experience of what it's like to be a toy that is loved, but also abandoned and what that might be like. And I really enjoyed that, and I realized, I'm not going to be annoying and say, wow, I'm amazing at it, but I really like the flow when compared to writing fiction. Because I think with fiction, it's very difficult in that you're creating a very fully realized story from plots, characters, and you have to propel that forward. But when you're creating a game, especially a tabletop game, you're creating half the story, you're giving the players just enough so they can write the other half. Because one of the most frustrating parts when you're writing your own stories is really, you have to come up with everything from scratch.

And I think part of why people really, as you say, really take to tabletop is the ability to tell stories. And someone's just giving you a bit of a nudge.

Kat Kourbeti: That's so interesting to me because as a writer, I find that I'm challenged in leaving those gaps that other people would fill. I'm more keen to like, tell you that full story. This is what happens, that's it. It always fascinates me when I talk to people who do interactive fiction or tabletop gaming or any kind of video game writing, because you have to leave those gaps purposefully and leave those kind of different choices that perhaps people can make, and anticipate that and respond to those choices. I find that very interesting as a writing method. I think it's a different skill set to a lot of typical prose skills.

How would you say that you approach a story that is a game or, is intended to be a game, and how do you leave those gaps intentionally?

Kyle Tam: I think the first thing I tend to do is, obviously you'll have the base concept for a game. And then what I like to think about is "what are the themes I want a player to think about as they play the game?" Because not every game has to have a purpose, but a lot of what I'm designing when it comes to either a game system or an adventure is, what do I want the player to think about, and also what kind of choices do I want them to make? Whether it's as simple as are you going to loot this or not? Like, when you design, there has to be purpose in what you're placing where and why you're placing it there. And then when we talk about that, leaving the gap, it's because you also have to understand there's someone, whether it's a game master or it's the players themselves, who will be telling parts of the story, which is why I started with and why I like that solo journaling space, because a lot of it comes down to scenarios and questions.

It's a what if. So you're saying, okay, this is the situation, how are you going to deal with it? I can't tell you how to deal with it, because there's probably a hundred different ways that a thousand different groups would deal with this.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, that's really cool. I can't say that I've played too many solo journaling games. So that's very interesting to me.

Kyle Tam: What kind of games do you usually play, out of curiosity?

Kat Kourbeti: I think it would mostly be like, maybe with a small group, or like a one on one type thing. I really like—or used to anyway, I haven't in a long time played—the White Wolf games, so like the darker world that exists within our own and, Vampire the Masquerade, and Werewolf, and Changeling, and Hunter.

Kyle Tam: Yes. Oh, I love Changeling, Yeah that's where I got my start, which is a very weird start, I think, compared to most people. A lot of people, their first games are like Dungeons and Dragons. I think I got spoiled because my first game was Lacuna, but the first game I really big time played was Wraith: The Oblivion, which is a very weird introduction to role playing games, may I say. That was, like, the most depressing, the most grim introduction to tabletop gaming I could have had. And I played like three campaigns of that.

Kat Kourbeti: Wherever there's a door, we take it. Yeah. I used to to play live-action, so LARPing, in the White Wolf world, with my mates back home in Greece. A friend of mine designed this beautiful Changeling campaign, that we played like in the streets of my hometown, there was like a whole treasure hunt that we had to go around and find all these clues and solve a riddle, and then come back and then he'd be like dressed in this other costume and have this other character going on... and that really opened up my world to a different way of telling stories, which was collaborative. There's a system that you have to—I think, instead of dice, we had playing cards, where we would draw a playing card and we would, "well, you know, succeeded or not succeeded" or whatever.

But ultimately that doesn't stand in your way of telling that story. And I love that.

Kyle Tam: No, it doesn't. And I think it's great because such unexpected things happen. I don't act, but I have a number of friends who do, and it's really like that "yes, and" thing, just being able to build on energy.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. And I think the biggest part of it is who you're playing with, and what they're bringing to the table. That's why, like, the solo journaling stuff is a very different world to me, cause I've only ever done things with other people. So having that just be you and the game and just responding to those things, I'm interested in that. I would definitely like to try it.

Kyle Tam: Yeah, I think it's something that because I started seriously writing basically at the start of pandemic and the start of a lockdown, was my only choice. It was either that or you'd try to like Skype or Zoom. But it was easiest for me to do solo journaling, cause I had so much time to myself to think and be stuck in my own head. But I didn't want to be in my own head, so it was nice to be in someone else's head. Being in a character's head.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, fair enough, I think. I found myself, during covid, being unable to think about my fictional stories, it all felt a bit too difficult to leave the headspace that I was at, which was just intense despair and anxiety. And I couldn't quite find my way back into the fiction that I used to just do routinely before, and so now I'm working my way back to that eventually, hopefully.

It's interesting seeing how people responded to the kind of intense changes that the pandemic brought, and how for some people that became a window that they could then maybe go through and try doing something else. In my case, I got into podcasting, which is why I'm talking to you today. I got into Strange Horizons specifically in 2020, I started volunteering here. And yeah, it's been an interesting realisation of "Oh, I should have been doing audio the whole time," because I really love doing this.

But yeah. I'm looking at all of your games, you've done a fair bit by yourself. And then you've also contributed to a bunch of stuff. I know it's difficult to pick from your children, but is there something that you would recommend people kind of start with or check out first, or perhaps your favorite one, if you have a favorite?

Kyle Tam: It's hard to choose favorites, but I think since we're talking about my trajectory, and I started during lockdown pandemic, I think probably the one to get the best sense of my style is Moriah. It was written, really, and created as a direct result of my frustration and, as you say, the despair of being in lockdown. At some point you're grappling with the reality of the situation of this pandemic, everything that is happening out in the world. But the essence of Moriah is that you are a group that are taking a pilgrimage up a holy mountain to try and petition the gods of the world to prevent this immense disaster, which has befallen everyone as a result of greed and the destruction of the world. It's a bit strange mechanically, because you do have dice, and you are trying to overcome obstacles by rolling dice, but you can also augment the dice and the rolls and numbers by giving up parts of yourself, like literally sacrificing parts of your body or your memories, or even if necessary, if members of your group sacrifice themselves to the mountain. And then when they do that, they are no longer players in the technical sense, but they become part of this Greek chorus of game masters who are watching and who bear witness and they narrate and push the obstacles against you. And this is really me grappling with the crisis of faith, which is living in a global pandemic, and also just trying to make sense of what was happening in the world.

But it was something that resonated a lot. People seem to really like it. I think, because as a game, it's easy to say "it's not a typical role playing game". That's what everyone wants to sell. But I wasn't really designing it for people. I designed it for me, and then I released it and then people were like, actually, no, I'm really vibing with this. I'm like, Oh, that's good. I'm glad you like it.

Kat Kourbeti: Accidentally connected with a bunch of people. That sounds fantastic, actually. Just turning that desire to turn back the clock and prevent a disaster, I feel that very strongly. So yeah, definitely will check that out first, I think.

So let's talk a little bit then about your journey with your analysis and articles, and your nonfiction. A lot of what you've written is about anime, which I personally love a lot. I was actually reading your article about isekai, or the literary significance of isekai, which I wasn't aware of very much at all. And so it was really cool to read about.

Kyle Tam: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: How did you get into writing about other media like that?

Kyle Tam: I think I got into it the same way a lot of Twitter pundits do, by posting on social media, and then realizing that 140 characters on the site formerly known as Twitter was really not a lot, and it got very annoying to just make it as like different separate threads. I used to post this kind of thing on tumblr, cause I was trying to do like creative non fiction as well, but stuff ended up becoming more like a rant and less like a fiction type piece. So I was like, okay, let's rework this a little bit. Like many people, I love to talk about my specialty interests in a parsable form. So I ended up writing a lot about anime, sometimes I write about video games. I think once I wrote about Trixie and Katya, who are on I Like To Watch. That's fantastic. Everyone should watch that, I think.

I like the analytical form just because I grew up in a family that likes media, and we like to dissect media. All the shade to Todd Phillips's Joker. I watched that with my family, and when we came out of the theater and we're in the car going home, and I'm in a family of six. All of us dislike the movie, but for different reasons. The whole car ride home is just a full discussion. Full blown.

Kat Kourbeti: That's fun. I think, in fact, it's more fun to dissect something you didn't like and finding the reasons why, because that can really inform your taste. It can bring out into your consciousness the things that you're unconsciously thinking about when you're consuming something. Which is why I always tell people, even if you watch something that you hated, it's never a waste of time because through that you'll respond to something and then it's like, oh, okay, I understand myself a little better now. And maybe, in the same vein as saying, I like this genre or this type of thing or this director, you can then also say, I don't like this. And now that I know why, it just makes me a more informed consumer of media and stuff, but also a more informed creator.

I think it really helps if you're a writer or a creative of any type to find those things and to name them and then be like, I hated that. Why? That can just explain a lot of things. So I think that's great. And I think that's great that your family's like doing that just as a habit.

Kyle Tam: Yeah. We're just like a talkative family. Also, what was important to me, and I think is important when you look at the stuff I've written for and about for Strange Horizons, the importance of garbage. Schlock and trash. Because I make it a personal point not to trust people who only read highfalutin stuff or who only watch prestige shows.

Like, you have to watch a little bit of the lowbrow to understand. I'm interested in opera and I like wrestling, and this is something that always confuses my dad because he's like, why? These are so far apart. And I'm like, well, yes. But also no. Because kind of the concept which binds wrestling and opera together is that this is exaggerated emotion as expressed through the peak of human physicality, whether this is human athletics, or this is through human vocal prowess. But it's always with the essence of telling storylines through impressive solo or joint action. And that's something that carries through in both mediums, but it just looks different, and I find that fascinating.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. And I highly agree with you on the importance of garbage. And I think everybody has something that they're interested in that would be classed as garbage or considered lowbrow or whatever. And if you don't, you're lying to yourself.

Kyle Tam: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: Tell me a little bit about your Strange Horizons journey. You've published two pieces with us in the nonfiction category. The first one was a review of Outer Ragna volume one.

Kyle Tam: So that comes back to the appreciation of garbage. I say garbage, but like the light novel format is something that's exclusive to Japan. They're lighter weight novels. They're not as long, they tend to be illustrated with a couple of black and white or color illustrations in each of them. It tends be stereotyped into a number of genres, like isekai, the Another World stuff, or these dreckish romance or power fantasies. And part of what I wanted to do in my nonfiction work, not all of it, but some, is just to bring a more critical and also more appreciative eye towards what would be considered low forms of media.

So in this case, even though this is a light novel, still has some measure of literary and cultural significance, especially when you consider the context that it was written in. First, Outer Ragna is certainly a flawed piece, but the themes that I think it tries to tackle in terms of 'by what measure is one considered a god or divine?' What is the nature of belief between men and their God, and how does that manifest? It is something that I think is an important theme. And I think this was certainly an interesting way to explore it.

That's one of the great things that speculative fiction really does is that, it allows us to live and experience another world, but also abstracts themes and questions that we have in our world. And it allows us to recontextualize, reframe and just think about these from a new point of view and just challenges our preconceptions.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. I'd never heard of Outer Ragna until I read your review. So it's really interesting to me how light novels are considered, you know, lowbrow or something when a lot of media that is really enduring that has come out of Japan, started off as light novels. And media that's like very famous and very lasting. Can we talk about the Fate games, slash light novels, slash anime? I recently rewatched Fate Zero to get my partner into it, cause it's favorite of the installments.

Kyle Tam: So good.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh man. And all of that started as a light novel. So in the same breath it's like, oh well, that's silly or it's nonsense, but actually, there's a lot in there about war and about what does it mean to have a wish, to desire something so bad? What would you do to get that in reality, and what if, what you wish for isn't really what you want, but you get that anyway? The idea that's like somehow less worthwhile because it's a light novel, because it's shorter, because it may have illustrations, because it's aimed at a younger audience, because of the speculative elements, like all of those things, don't necessarily make it any less worthwhile. So I'm totally with you on that. A hundred percent.

Kyle Tam: Yeah, for sure. It's a lot of the stigma that's around speculative fiction and anime, and not just the light novels, but just the idea that these are not necessarily as cultured or as highbrow. You don't see as many speculative fiction pieces of any kind up for the major literary awards when they have just as much merit. And arguably, the authors of spec fiction have as much, if not more, staying power than those of literary fiction. If you think about Bram Stoker, most famous for Dracula. Mary Shelley, most famous for Frankenstein. H. G. Wells. Just like, how many notable old time authors wrote speculative fiction instead of literary fiction?

Kat Kourbeti: I certainly come from a country where that's the normal approach. Speculative stuff is considered less interesting, less cultured, less valuable, and there's definitely a resistance to enjoying anything like that seriously, by a lot of cultured people. It's considered lowbrow, which to me was never my response to any of that. And as I grew older and that response never changed, my mom at one point said, "when will you write a real book?"

Kyle Tam: Oh no.

Kat Kourbeti: Which, the answer is never. Cause if it's not speculative, I'm not interested. It's just, that's the typical Greek response to things like this, and I've spoken to a lot of people from different places.

Certainly, I think you're based in the Philippines, right?

Kyle Tam: I am.

Kat Kourbeti: That's a Filipino approach too, is it not? There's a push against it, not that there's no speculative writers, right? You guys have a really rich tradition, and especially currently. And I've read a lot of Filipino work being published right now, and I know that there's a lot of publishers who do that. There is a push against that narrative—

Kyle Tam: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: —that it's not as interesting or as cultured or whatever, we still have to fight against that mainstream approach, which is quite frustrating, I think.

Kyle Tam: It is frustrating, especially in the light of, I don't know if it's quite the same in Greece, but we have such a strong tradition of horror and the supernatural. Literally, I was at a recital with my mother yesterday, and we're just casually walking and she's like, "this is the kind of place that has ghosts in it. Let's walk faster." It's part of your everyday life. It's terrible to say, but horror and the supernatural and the fae are so ingrained into daily life. So to put that kind of speculative fiction as like lesser... we live with this. We are surrounded by it on all sides. It's just a different way of appreciating our culture, really.

Kat Kourbeti: I agree with that. I think for us, it's certainly superstition and not, I don't know if I would call it horror—folk horror, maybe. There's always stuff about places being cursed or haunted, because we've had a really bloody history in our recent years, even. My city has only ever been independently Greek for 100 years, 112 now, but we were under Ottoman rule for 500 years, so there's a lot of stuff about oppression and not being allowed to have your own culture and your own language and your own religion and things like that. And all of that has seeped into some really dark kind of folk horror, which can be seen in a lot of the work of Greek speculative writers, like Eugenia Triantafyllou and Avra Margariti and Eleanna Castroianni, who have all been published by Strange Horizons, they almost exclusively write folk horror, and it's because it comes from a real place of, that stuff is in our culture, absolutely.

And so it's just frustrating, as someone who wants to write this sort of stuff, to have always felt this rejection outright. Your genre is lesser, your area of interest is childish. But that's not really true, if you think about it.

Kyle Tam: Absolutely. That being said, people brag a lot about the Marvel movies, me included, but I think if there's one thing that Marvel and this whole kind of nerd wave has really done, it's pushed that culture so much into the mainstream that now speculative superhero action, more fantastical things are now being more accepted. Even if I think Marvel really needs to stop, but I think it's great that we're starting to see more people be like, oh, okay, this is a thing for everyone. It's not just for the nerds. Now the nerds is everybody. But now it becomes, oh, so when you write a novel, can you like sell it as a movie? Can you sell it to Netflix?

And I'm like, I don't know. Please don't ask me about optioning.

Kat Kourbeti: Where do we even begin with that? Yeah, it was very interesting seeing the effect of not only Marvel for the Greek audiences, but Game of Thrones. And how the show had such an impact, it got mainstream, grandmothers in the street were into Game of Thrones, the people who would laugh at speculative sort of stuff before, they were then really invested in the Stark saga.

Kyle Tam: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: And it's like, ah, so now you're into fantasy.

Kyle Tam: Yeah, I mean that being said, I asked my mom, cuz she really hates fantasy stuff. We watched Lord of the Rings with her, she calls it "too much world building" and we're like, okay. She binged six seasons of Game of Thrones in a week in prep for the last season and I was like, what is this? What? Why? And she's like, no, it's like my teles. It's that intrigue. It's the backstabbing.

Kat Kourbeti: It is like the teles. Yes!

Kyle Tam: It is. That's why she was so into it That's why we watch House of the Dragon together, she's like, it's like the teles series.

Kat Kourbeti: That's the thing. It's what we were talking about earlier. The operas and the wrestling. It's all just high drama, high stakes, conflict. And I think what happened, especially with things like Game of Thrones, is that they felt grounded because the magic was in the background and not really like actively being used.

Kyle Tam: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: It was an easier way for people to get into it, because it was just watching almost like a historical drama, despite the fact that it wasn't our history necessarily. And I find that really interesting that that allowed people to drop those inhibitions and just enjoy.

Kyle Tam: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: I will say, in my lifetime, certainly, I think you're a little younger than me, but in my lifetime, certainly watching nerd culture become more mainstream has been amazing. There's not one, I think there's multiple anime figurine shops in my hometown in Greece now. We, I think, didn't have any when I was growing up and I was getting into anime. We had to order stuff to the comic book stores and hope that we can get stuff from abroad. But now there's multiple places.

There's cons in Athens. There's cons in my hometown. Cosplay is a thing. When I cosplayed it was just this strange thing, walking down the street with my friends in wigs and just attracting a lot of really strange looks. So it makes me happy to see teenagers being able to just enjoy that stuff openly now, and not have to really rummage through the—

Kyle Tam: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: —through the stuff from abroad and see what we can get.

Kyle Tam: Yeah. I think that's the same for fantasy and regular comic books. But if we're talking about anime, I'm not the expert, but I know that the Philippines has an interesting relationship with anime because during the martial law era my parents lived through, I didn't live through it, but they said that there wasn't a lot of foreign media that was allowed to come into the country. Of the little stuff that they were allowed to watch was anime. So you've got like a subset of the population where they know these like obscure ass anime like Candy Candy and Vultus Five. And I'm like, what is this? And they're like, that was what was on TV.

Kat Kourbeti: We had Candy Candy in Greece, too, actually.

Kyle Tam: Oh, there we go. Yeah. I'd never heard of it, but they're like, yeah, that was it. You had Candy Candy and Vultus 5 and all the robot shows. Even my mom who doesn't really get into the nerd stuff, she's like, yeah, I watch Candy Candy every Sunday.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, my best friend and her mom bonded over watching Candy Candy in like the 90s and early 2000s.

It's so fascinating to me, the connection that we find with foreign media. For me, most speculative media was foreign. Finding Greek speculative stuff was quite strange. It was always stuff in translation from elsewhere. And so my initiation to lot of the genre was also finding out about cultures that weren't mine. And that ended up making a big impact on me. I moved to the UK, I live here now and I can trace it all back to like, reading books that I loved and wanting to find out more, wanting to speak the language well enough so I can read it without the translation.

I have a lot of friends for whom that happened the same way, but for anime and Japanese things, and they've ended up learning Japanese, moving to Japan, some of them got married and stayed there... it's just fascinating, the impact that media has on people, no matter where they're from.

Kyle Tam: Absolutely. The universal language is just admiration and just this shared happiness that is fandom.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I think I definitely come from the same world as you, as I wrote a lot of fanfic as a teenager, continued to write long after I was a teenager. Also that freedom to engage with that through early internet fandom, I think was really great. In the years since it's decentralized, and it's become harder in my experience to find that community again. I was around for Livejournal and for golden era Tumblr before... the stuff.

Kyle Tam: Oh.

Kat Kourbeti: I miss all that. I miss being able to find that community more easily, but now...

Kyle Tam: Oh, why are there so many Discords? I can't handle this.

Kat Kourbeti: I don't even know how many Discords I'm in, frankly.

Kyle Tam: I know. I'm at 100, because I don't have Nitro. And every time I need to join a new one, they're like, you've hit the max server limit. So I know I'm at 100.

Kat Kourbeti: You have to leave one to enter one. Wow. That's a lot. I haven't hit a hundred, I don't think, just cause I get overwhelmed with having to check what's happening. So sometimes I'm just like, have I been here in a year? No? I think Imma dip. But that's just me.

So I want to talk a little bit about your fiction now, because I'm looking at your bibliography, and it's quite extensive. I know we touched a little bit upon the Cold Open stories and that kind of beginning, but walk me through some of your more recent ones.

Do you have any particular favorites from say, the last year?

Kyle Tam: I actually I don't know if it's on the bibliography yet, but I published a piece recently with Cosmorama called Painting a Path Across the Stars. It's basically a former goddess who's doing what it says in the title. I think what I've found difficult in writing fiction is not writing moments, because I understand that's not really, necessarily what a lot of the magazines are looking for.

They want like a concrete beginning, middle and end. It should progress forward. And I find myself writing vignettes and moments, which is great, but not necessarily what people want to read. But I think that's also what ended up becoming my strength in tabletop is, I carve out the moment and then the players end up pushing the moment forward for there to be a resolution. It's the same as scenario writing.

I think one of the ones I did is literary fiction. It's Polyptych of an Invisible Boy, which is basically like the different dimensions of the situation surrounding a troubled young man who brings a weapon to school. So it was a weird little thought exercise. It subverts that slightly, but I don't know.

I'd like to write a lot of different things, but they do just end up moments, because that's what I like to capture, which is just like a window in time. But I think that's also part of the fiction process, is learning how to write more than just one moment. You have to learn how to string several moments together and then suddenly that's a story.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, exactly. I think this kind of brings me to something within your Strange Horizons nonfiction, which I think was part of your Princess Murders the Hero review, which was your other review that you wrote for us—

Kyle Tam: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: —in 2022, where you talk about the significance of the Hero's Journey in Western storytelling.

Kyle Tam: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: And how storytelling from elsewhere can break that format. How important that is. So could you tell me a little bit about, first of all, that piece, but also a little bit about that, about writing from a non Western perspective?

Kyle Tam: That was actually a piece that was requested by your lovely team because you were putting together a Southeast Asia issue. And I was a Southeast Asian author you've worked with before, and they asked, was there a speculative fiction that you wanted to talk about? And I brought up Princess Murders the Hero, because it was a serial novel that I was reading at the time, and which I thought was interesting because the concept of the Hero's Journey is very unfortunately ubiquitous with storytelling, which is you have the hero and he goes through these trials and he must overcome them and the hero is pushed onto a path because they are the right person for that.

But I found, not exclusively in the Japanese stories I've read, but also if you look at Journey to the West, which I think is the Ur-Example of an Eastern style of writing where it's an ensemble story. You're not just contending with one hero who rises above the rest, but it's really the journey of many people who are equal contributors pushing the narrative forward. And these are people who stumble and they meander, and they don't necessarily go through the Hero's classic trials, because sometimes their trials are each other. That was just important for me to discuss and it's also interesting in terms of not just non Western writing, but I think a lot of short fiction, because I find a lot of good short fiction I like very much, does not ascribe to the Hero's Journey. I can't actually think of short fiction that follows the Hero's Journey, like you can absolutely have a very solid story that doesn't follow that rise and plateau, that rise and fall. So it's not necessary, and I don't understand why it's become so ubiquitous with writing structure. You don't need it. You can just toss it. It's fun.

Kat Kourbeti: I think some really interesting ideas about storytelling from a non Western perspective and from a non Hero's Journey kind of mold, come from, in fact, your corner of the world, where authors who are working right now are actively challenging this notion. Vida Cruz Borja has, I think a whole workshop (editor's note: it's actually an essay! but there is also a presentation from Flights of Foundry in 2021) about writing a passive protagonist, which we're always told, oh, you can't have a passive protagonist.

And Vida was like, actually, there's a whole rich tradition of storytelling in the Philippines and in my corner of the world where we don't have to have agency as part of what would be considered "a good character". Just limiting that view can limit the kinds of stories we can tell, and I love that there's people who are actively fighting against that notion and just saying, actually, let me teach you a thing or two that you could learn from me.

Kyle Tam: For sure. If you think about Western ghost stories, versus an Eastern ghost story, you would never have a Western style ghost story in the Philippines because people know too much shit about ghosts. Where people are like, going into the weird basement or like actively looking and no, we know too much crap! Stuff has to happen to the Filipino protagonist, because we will not touch it. We will be like, okay, let us go to the priest. We will go to our local, like fortune teller.

There's a famous movie in the Philippines called Feng Shui, which came out in like 2012 (editor's note: it was actually 2004!). This woman basically, it happens to her. She finds this this old Chinese mirror, bagua mirror, and then she hangs it up, and then bad stuff starts to happen to her and her family, and she's like, oh, that's bad. So she goes to her local fortune teller and goes, "oh, my God, what's happening? Bad things are happening in my house". And the local fortune teller is like, "take the mirror away, take it down". And she's like, "yes, I will take it down". And someone else puts it back up, and bad things start happening again.

It's that kind of thing where, you don't have this willful stupidity that, unfortunately, some of the Western ghost story protagonists seem to have, where they kind of have blinders, and they're like, "I simply do not see the misfortune happening in my house". And you're like, why? You don't have to keep going in this direction. It's fine.

Kat Kourbeti: It's refreshing to see those tropes and those genres that we think we know from the perspective of someone completely elsewhere in the world where that is not how they handle those things. It's important, I think, for Western audiences to become familiar with that, to push aside those notions where all stories are the same, and all the tropes and the genre conventions that we expect and often with speculative stuff in particular can be very... specific? Perhaps a little too specific. So taking that left step and saying, actually, here's a different way you can look at that, I think that's only enriching.

So yeah, is there anything else you wanted to plug while you're here? I know you've got a few other things going on.

Kyle Tam: I am part of an anthology called Devil's Due, which is on Backerkit. I think that starts November 12th, which should be within the time that this is published. It's Mothership content on a pirate planet. I'm one of 12 writers and a bunch of different artists. I know Mothership is the hot thing for science fiction tabletop gamer fans, so please look at that.

And I also have a piece that'll come out with Strange Horizons at some point next year. I don't know if I'm allowed to say what it's about. Please be excited because it will be there.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, that's awesome. I'm very excited to hear that. Is it fiction?

Kyle Tam: No, it is nonfiction. It's not a review. It's a nonfiction article. It's a piece about Perry Rhodan. Perry Rhodan is great because it's one of those lowbrow things, but the Perry Rhodan series is actually the best selling book series in the world. And I don't know how many English speaking fans know who Perry Rhodan is. But basically the series started as a classic pulp fiction science fiction serial in the 60s about Perry Rhodan, astronaut extraordinaire with his buddies as they bring peace to Earth and the galaxy at large. So it's about the original Perry Rhodan and about the re released Perry Rhodan Neo, which rectifies a lot of what the original intended to do, but was bogged down by sexism, racism, and a lot of the isms of the sixties. So it's just talking about that and how I think it elevates the message it tried to portray, which is of an even humanity and spreading peace across the stars, which ended up feeling like it's an even humanity for white men only. You're like, yikes.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I haven't heard of Perry Rhodan. So I'm interested in reading this. I think that will be a great little piece. So we will look out for that.

Thank you so much for taking the time to chat to us today. This has been really fun and really varied. We'll look out for all of your stuff coming up in the future, and all of your games and things. All the links will be in the show notes for folks to check out and, where can we find you on social media?

Kyle Tam: You can find me on BlueSky as KyleTam at PercyPropa. I also have a website which I think can be linked below, but if you need me, I'm mostly posting on BlueSky.

Kat Kourbeti: Great. So we'll follow you there. Thank you so much for joining us, Kyle.

Kyle Tam: No, thank you so much, and happy 25th!

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you!

In the third episode of SH@25, editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with author Arkady Martine, whose Strange Horizons debut was in 2014, for an in-depth interview on her multifaceted career, her review writing, and the history that inspired her two-time Hugo Award winning Teixcalaan Empire series.

We also present a reading of Arkady's poem, Cloud Wall, which marked her Strange Horizons debut, and remains to this day one of three poems she ever published, with reading by Kat Kourbeti and sound design by Michael Ireland.

• The music heard in the poetry segment is 'Uprising' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0.
• Want to leave us a happy birthday message? Click here to record an audio message, and here for video.
• Join our Patreon for early episode access.

• Follow Arkady Martine on BlueSky (@byzantienne.bsky.social)
• Buy Arkady's books through Bookshop.org
• Read Arkady's reviews in Strange Horizons, linked in her author archive page
• A full list of Arkady's short fiction can be found on her website
• Find more links to Arkady's work as you read along the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello, Strangers, and welcome to SH@25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it's my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres. Today's guest is is none other than the fantastic Arkady Martine, who was first published with us a whole host of 10 years ago, and has since gone on to win multiple Hugo Awards, to write fantastic novels, but also to have her own separate, perhaps a little secretive, career in the government. Sort of. Almost.

Arkady Martine: Weird public policy with energy in it.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm so excited to dive into all of this with you, mostly your writing really, and to see like how it's all gelled together over the course of a decade plus. So welcome.

Arkady Martine: Thank you. It's great to be here.

Kat Kourbeti: So you write a lot of, really interesting stuff that comes from a place of love for history, but also intense love of science fiction, space operas, really.

Arkady Martine: Oh, yes. I think I've said this somewhere, but I write science fiction when I'm trying really hard not to. It's kind of the default genre for me, and that comes from starting to read it when I was very, very small, like under the age of six, maybe. My dad was a big science fiction fan and he left books around and thus, so am I.

Kat Kourbeti: What were some of your earliest memories of science fiction?

Arkady Martine: I read a lot of stuff that probably I should not have been reading at that age and didn't understand entirely. Like I read Melissa Scott's Burning Bright at like age nine, which is young for that novel, but formative, one could say.

Kat Kourbeti: So I'm really interested to hear about your background as a historian. We're gonna dive into it a little bit because, as someone who's from Thessaloniki, which is in Greece, but in a formerly Byzantine place—and you're a Byzantienne—I've always loved seeing something that comes from, sort of my corner of the world, but with a touch of space. And I want to pick your brains about how that happened.

Arkady Martine: Oh, sure. So I am professionally trained as a Byzantinist. I have a Ph. D. in Medieval History, which is basically a PhD in Byzantine history, and I spent a decade of my life doing that professionally. I specialized in the late 10th, early 11th century, mostly in the imperial east, so, what is today kind of the Turkish Armenian border, and I ended up doing a subspecialty in Armenian actually, to really explore how imperial contact on borderlands was working in that time period. And I've always been super interested in, I'd say cultural imperialism and how it works. And the medieval cases, of course, different than later cases. But it's a deep fascination, and I fell in love with Byzantium in undergrad.

Actually, I was a religious studies and physics double major for 18 year old reasons, like when you're 18, you think, ah, I will figure out the universe one way or the other way. Turns out that I couldn't really get past partial differential equations. So not a physicist. I got fairly far, but not a physicist. And, for the religious studies half, we had a required course that we needed to take a course on Islam, which you should as a religious studies major. And I happened to select a course on Byzantium and Islam and the early Arab conquests in the seventh century, taught by a specialist in that area, professor named Walter Kege, who sadly passed away a couple of years ago. And it was very old school. It was a three hour lecture, and I was an undergrad, three hour lecture. You sit there, he talks, you take notes, and then he gives you 200 pages of scholarly reading.

Now, if you're a complete nerd, like I am, that worked great. And I got absolutely fascinated with kind of the interaction between religious ideology and imperial power and literature and how all of those things get knotted together in a really fascinating way, in the Byzantine slash later Roman empire, and stuck with it and ended up doing a PhD on it. My dissertation focused on diplomats and how they wrote letters and what kinds of cultural production they were engaged in, when they were "out in the field". Because I'm always interested in what people do when their systems of understanding the world are challenged, especially people who come from an imperializing culture, because their reactions are very powerful and very interesting, and sometimes very destructive, and sometimes very surprising.

So as you can probably tell, all of this ended up in my first two novels. I was simultaneously writing A Memory Called Empire during a postdoc I was doing on narratology historiography in the 11th century, when I was living in Sweden. I sort of did half of that and halfway wrote a book about—not the same things, there is no one to one, if anyone was hoping that there was, that you could find a secret plot key—but more the ideas that I was thinking about in an academic way became the ideas that I was obsessed with emotionally, and that always ends up being what I write about.

Kat Kourbeti: I think very recently there was a discussion online about the themes that writers find themselves returning to in their work. And I don't know if there was some kind of resistance to that idea initially, because I think all the responses I've been seeing and certainly mine was, "but don't we all just return to the same stuff?"

Arkady Martine: I think we do. Everyone has core obsessions and filters. I think that there is also a certain amount of pressure for writers to worry about being repetitive. I know I do worry about being repetitive, or worry that I've said what I meant to say and now I need to find something else to talk about, but I'm also a very theme and structure oriented writer to begin with, which means I probably think about this more than I need to. And certainly as a reader, I love when writers have continuous, career long thematics. Even in books that have no actual connection to one another. So, if that's true for me as a reader, I have to give that grace to my readers, too.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. I just think that there needs to be room for artists of all formats to iterate and to play around with those things that they are fascinated by and they're trying to figure out or they're trying to kind of explore. And maybe there's an answer to those questions and maybe there isn't, but the joy is in the iteration, I think.

You weren't always writing novels. A lot of your earlier work is short, and in fact, you also wrote speculative poetry, which I think is fantastic.

Arkady Martine: Actually, the first thing that Strange Horizons published of mine, and that was probably the first poem I had ever published. No, it was the first poem I'd ever published, I don't count things I wrote in middle school.

So I've published three poems in my whole life. If you don't count things that are inside books, which I don't really, because they're different. And I don't know how to write poetry. Sometimes I manage it. For prose, I have a pretty good sense of craft at this point, and I know how to edit it, I know how to make it better. For poetry, it's still that lightning strike kind of thing. So it doesn't happen all that much. I actually, when I wrote the poem that you all published, which is called Cloud Wall, which is probably still maybe my favorite poem I've ever written, I was completely doing one of those, "Oh, I'll just send this to a really good market because they won't buy it". Cause I've never really written speculative poetry before. And then was very surprised and delighted when you all did back in, I think 2014.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. I love that. I love that story. I love that it was a Hail Mary kind of, and it just kind of goes to show, don't self reject. Sometimes the thing—

Arkady Martine: Oh yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: —will find a home immediately.

Arkady Martine: I say I'm not a poet and I'm really not like it is not my native form, but, if you write something, no matter what genre it's in, poetry, prose, speculative, otherwise, and you know it's good, it probably is at least not bad. So.

Kat Kourbeti: Exactly. Have, have that faith.

Tell me a little bit about that journey. First of all, of finding Strange Horizons as a reader, initially. Like, were you reading it for a long time before you decided to submit?

Arkady Martine: I don't think a long time, but definitely several years. So I got kind of serious about professionally writing in maybe 2011, 2010. I'd always written, like as a kid I'd written stuff, and then I'd written a bunch of fanfic, which is a delightful and wonderful way to write, but I made a decision around 2010, 2011, that I really wanted to write original stories for publication, and I was very deliberate about it. But part of that was that I had fallen in with some good friends who were already professional writers, and who passed around short stories from many magazines, and Strange Horizons was one of them. And it turned out that I tended to like the stories in Strange Horizons with a much higher hit rate than a lot of other places. There's some other magazines that have good hit rates for me, but Strange Horizons is still up there, that if someone sends me a Strange Horizons story, I think, Oh, I'm probably really going to enjoy this. And there's a particular tonality and, focus, I guess, sense of, expansive openness to the weird without being a "weird fiction" magazine, which is another thing that I really like.

And also that fits pretty well with the kind of short fiction I tend to write. It's funny, I was looking back for this interview on what I have published in Strange Horizons and it is actually dominated by fantasy, which is fascinating to me, because I write less of that. But I guess it turns out that the fantasy I do write is a very Strange Horizons kind of fantasy.

Kat Kourbeti: Just kind of ethereal and like weird without being " weird fiction", but there's always kind of a nebulousness about the fantasy in a Strange Horizons story, which was what drew me to volunteer here was, I really like this sort of stuff kind of the most.

Tell me a little bit about Cloud Wall, because it is the first and, we're in a landmark year where, speculative poetry is on the kind of map and, Seattle's introducing a speculative poetry Hugo and all of that.

Arkady Martine: That's so exciting. I'm so happy about that.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm really happy. Yeah. So tell me a little bit about the inception for Cloud Wall, what drew you to this idea, what you wanted to write about.

Arkady Martine: I'm a New Yorker. Cloud Wall's a love story, but it's a New York love story. So it's not very nice. It's good, but it's not nice. I am, as a writer and as a person, deeply fascinated by cities and by the way that cities have a possessive quality to them. And I mean possessive in the sense of possession, but also in the sense of belonging.

I mean, I haven't formally lived in New York for more than a decade, actually, but it is still home and it is still the thing that animates me as a person in the world, is that city. I was in London earlier this summer and I thought again, "Oh, London doesn't like me very much," because I'm too much of a New Yorker with that kind of like city magic. It can tolerate me, but I belong to something else. And that kind of thinking is behind Cloud Wall. The title actually comes from a Mark Halperin novel, which is called Winter's Tale. They made a movie out of it a couple years ago, which I don't like and don't recommend, but I highly recommend the novel. If you love New York, it's a touchstone book for me. And there's a thing in it called a "Cloud Wall", which is sort of a manifestation of a perfectly just city, but also an apocalypse. And that poem is a very small version of that idea, I think. And it's also a little bit about what happens when you marry a God, when the God is a city.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I always subscribe to the idea that cities have personalities. I live in London and I can definitely feel that, like the spirit of that city. And everywhere I visit, I think that there's a different energy, a different something. So that's beautiful.

Arkady Martine: London just doesn't do nice things for me. There's nothing, it's not against me or anything, but little things that normally I have good city luck, like lights turning for me, or knowing where things are, or never getting lost, or being able to like, produce sushi at one in the morning. In London, all of those things seem possible and don't work, so it's just like the city is sort of amused.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, thinking about it now, I don't know where you can get sushi at 1am in London. So to be fair... maybe it's just the city being like, no, you can't have nice things.

Arkady Martine: Upstart New Yorker, what are you doing here?

Kat Kourbeti: So what was the journey of this poem to getting published? It was part of our fund drive special, so it's probably slightly different, maybe, to a normal poem publication, I guess.

Arkady Martine: I have no idea, because it was the first time I published a poem. It was also the first time I published with Strange Horizons. So, I just sent the poem in the normal submission queue. And when I got a response, it was a yes, and can we put it in this fund drive? And I was like, I have no name recognition. No one knows me, but I guess you like this poem. So sure.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, the hindsight. Now that we're looking at it in the archives, it's like, ooh, we published an Arkady Martine poem.

Arkady Martine: There are only three! And one of them is really hard to find.

Kat Kourbeti: So was this wholesale what you sent? Was there a lot of editing involved?

Arkady Martine: Very little. I did a lot of editing before I sent it to you. I asked a friend of mine who had studied poetry, to read it and to help me get the prose out of it, basically. The very first version I wrote, I remember being more prose heavy than it needed to be. And that's always why I don't think of myself as a poet, is that I write a very lyrical, very high language. I'm interested in prosody as a prose writer, and sentence rhythm and sound. But as a poet, I tend towards an unnecessary wordiness that comes from being a prose writer. So getting that out without losing the feeling is a trick.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I'm always happy to hear that the editing approach that our staff has had historically and also currently is very much, letting the work speak for itself. We don't tend to try to morph it into something else, which I know that other venues sometimes do. So it's nice to know that. But you've also published short fiction with us, and also some nonfiction, some reviews. Tell me a little bit about the reviewing.

Arkady Martine: Oh gosh, I am a deep believer in the art of the critique, in a critical culture, in criticism as a kind of appreciative, deep exploration and an art in and of itself. Strange Horizons is one of the very few places in the universe of speculative fiction reviewing, which is not a review blog. It doesn't tell you what the book is about and what you can expect as a reader.

It tells you what the story is about, and how it relates to other stories and other literary movements. This is something I adore about Strange Horizons reviews. I really enjoyed doing the work of trying to produce them. They are not easy. A good one is like writing a very accessible academic article, especially with what you all gave me to review. I mean some of the stuff that you gave me was hard. Hal Duncan's Testament, that was like, okay let's actually dig out the religious studies chops, and I could have gone on for about 30 more pages, but you know, there are deadlines.

But I don't really have time to do that work anymore, and that's a regret of mine because I think that it's super important, and also a deep joy to produce. I really love writing critique.

Kat Kourbeti: Did you put yourself forward for this, or were you asked to review stuff?

Arkady Martine: God, at this point, I cannot remember how that happened. I know how I ended up reviewing for NPR, which was Amal El Mohtar had a conflict of interest, and therefore suggested me, but I think I may have applied based on that. Like, my God, I wrote a review for NPR. Surely other people will let me do things.

Kat Kourbeti: I love reading what other writers think about books in a deep kind of engaged way, which I think the Strange Horizons review style is very much, "tell me what you think or what you feel or how that connects to other things" rather than, as you say, just a summary. It always gives me joy to see writers doing that, not just like folks who are not engaged with the craft themselves. Do you think that as a writer, do you engage with the books you read in a different way, because you know the craft, if you will?

Arkady Martine: You can't help not to, because I am a really craft oriented writer. I enjoy it. I actually enjoy the analysis part. Some of the deepest fun for me is reading a very good book that I'm having a wonderful time reading and being like, okay, so how did they do it? On a very technical level, like. How is this plot beat set up to cause this emotional reaction? Sometimes you can have a lovely experience of watching someone learn how to be really good. If you're reading a series that they wrote over time. I recently reread all of Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence, and Max is a friend. But I had read them, the first couple of them, when we didn't really know each other very well.

So I had this fantastic experience of watching my friend learn how to be really good. Like he was always good, but there's a point, like in the middle of his third novel, that maybe the two thirds mark where it suddenly clicks over and you see him learn how to do pacing, like live on the page. And I don't know if that's something that's accessible to people who don't write. And it doesn't have to be, like the books work without knowing that kind of thing, but it's part of the joy I get out of reading, is a kind of analytical examination.

Kat Kourbeti: So this reminds me actually, a long time ago, you and I were on a panel about learning how to write through writing fanfic. And you said something—

Arkady Martine: Was that in Helsinki?

Kat Kourbeti: Helsinki, yeah, a long time ago. You said something then that I have taken with me and I have been disseminating to the masses whenever I can, that "we each as a writer get one thing for free."

Arkady Martine: Oh, yeah, this isn't mine.

Kat Kourbeti: Haha, see, whoever you got it from lives on in me.

Arkady Martine: Good. I got it from the people who were teaching Viable Paradise, the year I went to Viable Paradise, which include Elizabeth Bear, Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Steve Bruch, but that was like a common metaphor that they use to help students recognize both their own talents and their own areas of weakness.

Which all writers have both, and it's equally useful for me. I'm glad that you repeat it because I love that one. It's the thing you get in the box. Everybody has at least one thing.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Yeah. And I remember you said that yours was setting.

Arkady Martine: Yep, still is. Still deeply annoying because I can write you pretty buildings for ever on cue, five cents a building, but there is still, 10 years on in a fairly successful career as a writer, the idea of pulling an entire story out of thin air and creating a plot with momentum, is terrifying every time. I'm not good at it.

Kat Kourbeti: I've always said my free thing is characters. I can come up with people and their motivations and their backgrounds and all of that. Super easy. But setting actually really scares me, which is why I don't really do secondary world things. And it's the sort of thing that I have to work at a lot, but I always think of you and I talk about that piece of advice because it helps a lot of people get out of their own head about stuff.

Arkady Martine: Yeah, it does because you don't have to be good at everything.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, and you can't, and that's okay, but you're good at something. Start from there, and that's—

Arkady Martine: Find out what that is and start from there.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. So in the decade that's come since your first publication with Strange Horizons, there's been a lot more short fiction, which you can talk a little bit about if you want. I don't want to make you pick your favorite child, but you can tell me a little bit about your short fiction in general, if you like.

Arkady Martine: Sure. Do I have favorite children? Yes, because every writer has favorite children. I think my favorite short fiction children are probably the ones where I have been as experimental as I know I can be and pulled it off. So, one of the stories in Strange Horizons is really experimental, though it's not my favorite of the two.

My favorite of the two is City of Salt, because I've been carrying that place, and those three people around since, like, college, in various versions. Sometimes you get to write the people you made up for, like, an RPG in 2005, in a completely different version where they are unrecognizable from their original state, but that you love very much and have carried around with you.

Arkady Martine: I really like the ability of short fiction to let me do formalist and experimental things. Recently, my most recent short story, which is in Uncanny Magazine, is half of an academic article and half a commentary on, like, RPGs, mass multiplayer RPGs, and half a commentary on writing during a genocide. So that's three halves, which is probably as many halves as that story deserves.

But my other favorites have also been pretty experimental form-wise. I love the intensity of short fiction, and some of the games you can play. I have a story in a collection called The Mythic Dream, which came out from Saga a while ago, which is a retelling of a Sumerian myth in space opera format. And it's actually a very Strange Horizons story, and had it not been commissioned for that magazine, I probably would have submitted it. But it's also, like, me trying to figure out if I can do the translation from fragmentary Sumerian poetry that is extremely filthy to somewhat not fragmentary, but still fairly fragmentary, modern short story, which doesn't stop being extremely filthy. I read it aloud once at ReaderCon and I cannot believe I did it.

Kat Kourbeti: I love that though. Oh, what a room to be in.

Arkady Martine: Well, it was sufficiently late at night and I was like, "Oh my God, if I don't try it, I will never know if I can say these things that I wrote down, but out loud, to strangers."

There were no children, it was fine.

Kat Kourbeti: Well, there you go. And then of course, you know, the bigger success, certainly awards-wise has come with your novels. What was it like coming up with this incredible world? We have talked a little bit about the background of it, but the coming up with your free thing in the box, your setting. Tell me a little bit about the Teixcalaan Empire.

Arkady Martine: Teixcalaan is so easy to write. I wrote the empire that would seduce me. Just straight up, that is exactly what I did. I wrote the one that would get me. The one that would make me break my own ethics because it's the nastiest one I can come up with. It probably wouldn't break other people, but it would break me.

But it was also easy to write because a lot of it, a lot of it is space Byzantium, but it's also some other stuff. There's a lot of American imperialism in there. There's a lot of Mexica imperialism in there. People think there's Imperial China, but there really isn't. Other people have civil service exams, guys. That culture formation happens a lot. It's a very sensible way of sorting people into classes. And large bureaucracies love to do that.

It was the first novel I'd ever written. I have a couple of, wouldn't even call them trunk novels, abortive juvenilia from my early twenties. Never longer than like 15 K, like I could not do it. And I wrote Memory because I was tired of being a person who hadn't written a novel, which is a weird reason to write a novel. I'd also just finished my dissertation and possibly I was worried that if I didn't have an enormous project, something would go wrong.

So writing novels is very difficult for me. I find short stories much easier. I would call myself a short story writer, if I was classifying people into short story writers and novel writers. Novels have too many words, they go on for a very long time, and they cannot be as dense as I feel like all stories should be, because readers get very tired if you do that to them. So to get myself through writing a novel, I told myself I could put in all the things I liked. So I put in giant cities and people who communicate in a language of flowers and fashion and architecture and citation culture and poetry battles. And a lot of it was just, these are the things I always want to see in space empires, and they're never there because a lot of the tradition—they're not never there, they have rarely been there. A lot of the Anglophone science fiction tradition comes out of writing space opera as a kind of military history, military science fiction. I like military science fiction. The second Teixcalaan book is a extremely dull military science fiction novel or a rather exciting spy novel, depending on how you look at it.

But I always wanted the, "and what were they wearing when they did the fascinating political thing in the back room?" So that's what I made. I used the raw material of having thought very hard about imperialism and assimilation for a decade, and there was a lot of raw material, there still is.

Kat Kourbeti: I'm probably in the opposite field where, like, you're comfortable writing short and writing long is difficult, whereas I can't keep things short to save my actual life.

I started a short story a few years back for my writers group. We do this, like, contest every year, and I was like, yeah, I've got this idea, you know, 5,000 words, no problem.

I blow past the 5,000 word mark and I haven't even introduced like the theme that we were writing about. And I'm like. "Oh, no. I've made a mistake."

Arkady Martine: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: That's kind of the story of my life. So I always admire greatly folks who can keep things short and punchy and full of meaning and feeling. And it's contained. Witchcraft.

Arkady Martine: Well, the nice thing about short stories is that you are not obligated to explain yourself. In a novel, you really do have to, and that is still something that, I will probably always be figuring out how I want to do that. The line between accessibility and complexity. Because I do want people to read what I write and enjoy it and have access to it.

But at the same time, I think I'm a relatively uncompromising writer. I'm not terribly interested in markets or having things be easy.

Kat Kourbeti: And yet, somehow, that has never been a problem.

Arkady Martine: I don't know. Okay? I really don't know. I thought the book was good enough to sell. Which is why I tried to query it. But I expected a very enthusiastic cult following about 500 people, ever. That is not what happened. I don't know why.

Kat Kourbeti: Think we were all just hungry for that kind of complexity, and that passion with which you approach that whole world, I think is very evident. And so I think that's what we wanted. That's what we always want. We just want a good story and a good world.

I wanted to ask a little bit about your latest, well, novella that's just been announced that will be re-published or rather, re-released, Rose/House.

Arkady Martine: Yeah, Tor is re-releasing it. It was originally with Subterranean Press. It did a limited edition, very gorgeous limited edition. And now Tor is releasing it widely. It'll be out in actual hard copy in most bookstores in March of 2025, and in ebook in November of this year, 24. And that's lovely.

And I, again, unexpected and delightful that Tor was interested in doing that. But, Rose/House is my weird art house book. "Art house" only slightly a pun. It's a locked room horror mystery with deserts and strong AI, that has nothing to do with the kinds of AI people talk about, and I have very little interest in talking about the kinds of AI that exists currently.

Rose/House is an alien that happens to be made out of computers. But then most of my work in some ways is interested in otherwise minds. So Rose House is one of those. It's really a book about what happens when I thought about Raymond Chandler and the Haunting of Hill House at the same time.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh.

Arkady Martine: Plus a bunch of very weird architects, because I did a second degree in urban planning and therefore I read a whole bunch of really weird architects and planners and designers and people who think up cities that cause the people who live in them to behave in certain ways. There's a whole modernist movement in urban planning, Le Corbusier and people like that. Believing very strongly and those beliefs persist in some pervasive groundwater-y type ways in modern Western thinking, about how cities work and how zoning works and how people live. That if you change someone's environment you change their behavior, which is true, but not predictable. So putting everyone in little suburban houses definitely does things, but it does not necessarily reduce crime, which is the Victorian idea of garden cities is that if you reduce density, you're going to reduce crime and indigents, which is completely wrong.

If you raise wages and let people join unions, you reduce crime and indigents. Density has nothing to do with it, but urban planning is one of those grand imperial projects that doesn't get thought about as imperial. And I am very interested in the built environment, in infrastructure, in how people interact with the places they live in and around. And Rose/House is all of that just in a very creepy way. And some probably unpleasant thoughts about mentorship and art.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh. I'm very interested in how this is almost like a little Venn diagram of your writing world and your non writing world, closing in together a little bit.

Arkady Martine: All of my work is that. People have asked me why I haven't quit my day job, any of the day jobs I've had. Currently, I work at a non governmental organization where my job is basically to yell at utilities and also public regulation commissions to make them, you know, have more renewable energy on the grid. That's a very simple version of a very complicated thing. Previous versions have been "do policy for a state energy agency" or "be a Byzantinist and do research and teach people about medieval imperialism and the apocalyptic".

I continuously refuse to quit my day jobs because it is where I get good ideas, and also because I like being in the world. I'd probably write faster without one, but I am not entirely sure that would be true. I need to be obsessed with things to write about them. And I've been lucky enough that a lot of the work I have done for pay has been in fields and doing things that I find deeply compelling.

Kat Kourbeti: I think that's fantastic. And just a very interesting place to be, because a lot of writers tend to get into publishing jobs, which are fine, but they're not necessarily like 'part of the world', as you say. And so seeing what writers whose non writing life is very different, where you've got like other things going on.

Arkady Martine: I do things that don't have to do with books. I think as a writer, I wouldn't—I mean, I've thought about, occasionally thought about like running a magazine because I like curation, but that's more of a, "I like curation so I want to make an exhibit", not "I want to do this as a career". As a writer, I want to write, not work on writing, if that makes sense. I actually felt this way as an academic, too, that one of the reasons I switched careers instead of staying in a university but not doing the pure research with a small amount of teaching that I really wanted to do, was that I'm not great at being support for something that I could be doing.

I think that different people react differently to that. Like sometimes some people seem to get a lot out of just being around and being part of the thing that they are also making. I know editors who are writers and vice versa.

Kat Kourbeti: I think I'm a little bit the same as you in that I really early realized that I don't think I want to work in publishing. I had an internship and I was like, this is fine, but I'd rather write than do all of this other stuff, and then I got into working in theater, and so I'm doing this now. But I do like that it doesn't have to do with writing or like with science fiction and stuff.

Arkady Martine: It's useful to have space, space inside your head to write actually. Having other things going on.

Kat Kourbeti: Hmm. Yeah. I just find it really fascinating. And you've done all of these degrees and stuff, like, how do you see yourself? Obviously, you can't sit still very long.

Arkady Martine: Yeah. I hate being bored. I come from a family of people who made weird and interesting and sideways career shifts. My grandfather was a chemical engineer who then became a lawyer, in a completely different field. And most of the rest of my family are musicians. So I'm bad at being still.

Kat Kourbeti: I think that's good, probably. I admire it anyway.

Thank you so much for taking the time and walking me through your career trajectory. You've got so much rich worlds to explore. I'll link all of the stuff in the show notes for people to have a perusal and to read some of your short fiction that perhaps they might've not seen.

Is there anything else you would like to plug while you're here?

Arkady Martine: I mean, Rose/House basically. If you did not get a chance to read it in the limited edition, I hope that the wide release finds you, and finds you interested in getting trapped in a desert.

Kat Kourbeti: Spooky. I love it.

Arkady Martine: It's a good spooky.

Kat Kourbeti: Great. And where can people find you on social media? If that's a thing you do?

Arkady Martine: It is. I am mostly on BlueSky as @byzantienne.bsky.social. I should probably fix that at some point, but I'm fairly easy to find there. I'm no longer on Twitter. I have an Instagram, but forget to use it.

Kat Kourbeti: Very well, then we'll find you there. Thank you so much for spending your time with us.

Arkady Martine: Thank you.​

In the first guest interview of this series, editor Kat Kourbeti sits down with author Kate Heartfield, whose 2015 story 'Limestone, Lye, and the Buzzing of Flies' marked a turning point in her publishing career.

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• Follow Kate on social media @kateheartfield, or sign up for her newsletter on her website⁠
• Read Kate's story "Limestone, Lye, and the Buzzing of Flies"⁠
• Kate's 2017 fund drive essay "Expanding Ambitions"⁠
• Buy Kate's books through Bookshop.org
• Find more links to Kate's work as you read along the transcript below.

Transcript

Kat Kourbeti: Hello, Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of the speculative fiction magazine Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to our first episode looking back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres. Today's guest, Kate Heartfield, was first published with us in 2015 and has since gone on to publish novels, win awards, and have an illustrious career as a journalist. It's great to have you here, Kate.

Kate Heartfield: Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here.

Kat Kourbeti: And thank you very much for taking the time. This is in fact, our second time recording this, because we've had some technical issues. So we really appreciate you taking the time to be here with us.

Kate Heartfield: No problem. I think we've cleared all the bad luck now, I hope.

Kat Kourbeti: Me too. So yeah, I think you're kind of the ideal first guest to have because you've been very public about your appreciation of what Strange Horizons does, and our ethos and everything that we try to do within the genre.

First of all, before we get into the Strange Horizons side of things, I want to hear about your writing journey. Because I know that you always had stories and novels that you wanted to tell, but life took a different way to get there.

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, definitely. I have a long story, which I do try to tell people a lot because I hope that it's helpful for people who are on a long journey of their own. So I am a person who's always written, since I was a kid. I've always enjoyed creative writing and I always wanted to be a novelist as far back as I can remember.

So I wrote some short fiction and started some novels when I was quite young, and then I finished my first complete draft of a novel manuscript when I was 19. I was also writing some short fiction back in the 1990s as well but in a sort of desultory way. If a story appeared in my head and I was able to get it out on the page, generally very short vignettes, sometimes I had some luck in placing those, but I didn't really know a lot about submitting short fiction.

I had a few pieces appear in literary magazines, and then for about 15 years or so, I was trying to get an agent and I wrote four different novel manuscripts, and in the meantime, developed my career as a journalist so it took me a while, and it was around 2012 to 2014 when I both got an agent for the novel side of things and I also started to sell short fiction more regularly.

Kat Kourbeti: You've always worked, or at least the stuff of yours I've read is historical fiction, but with a speculative kind of twist to it. What draws you to different eras of history and different kind of places in the world and their various histories there?

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, I do tend to go back to historical settings a lot. Sometimes in my short fiction especially, I will bounce around a little bit more and do some futuristic things and contemporary, but even in shorts I do write about historical settings a fair bit, and all of my novels are historical as well.

And I think one of the reasons that I do that is because I'm really interested in political and social questions and how we got to this place and the story that we tell ourselves about how we got here, has a lot to do with how we move forward. So I think telling and retelling and reshaping and asking questions about the story that we've told ourselves about history is fascinating to me and also I think very important to do. I think it's one of the things that fiction can do, is shift the lens a little bit on the narratives that we've all grown up with, or haven't been told in many cases. A lot of times history gets forgotten more quickly than we might like or realize.

So that's one part of it. Also I'm a big history nerd. I find it really fascinating. And I also find it a little bit uncanny and it gets under my skin in a way that the speculative elements do. So those two things go together in my mind, the past and the strange or the uncanny.

Kat Kourbeti: I think I'm the same in that, I rarely get drawn to completely secondary worlds. I love to twist ours in ways that fit the story that I'm trying to tell. But also it's just that question of what if this but like that.

And how in tandem has it been for you to work on different lengths in fiction, like your shorts and your novels? Do you always find yourself working on things in parallel? Or do you have maybe periods where you work on shorts more than novels?

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, for the most part I've worked on them in parallel. And as I mentioned, about 10 or 12 years ago is when I started to have a little bit more success with publication with both shorts and novels, and I don't think it was a coincidence that they both started to move forward at the same time, both in terms of being able to get published and also just feeling a little bit more confident about my ability to tell a story in the way that I wanted to and to experiment in the ways that I wanted to without it falling apart and the cake collapsing in the oven, which can happen sometimes when you experiment, which is part of the fun.

So yeah, I think those two things have worked in tandem for me, the different lengths. And I started to deliberately write more short fiction around 2012, because I was finding that a lot of my struggles with long form fiction and a lot of the rejections that I was getting and the frustrations I was having had to do with the shape of story.

I was fairly confident with elements like description and dialogue, and a lot of the prose level things I felt like I could express myself the way I wanted, but at the story level things were not maybe as coherent as they could be, or I was not expressing them in a way that the reader was getting what I was trying to put across.

So writing short fiction was great for me as a really deliberate direction in my career, because it allows you to iterate over and over again in a shorter period of time. So instead of taking six months to a year to write a novel, you can write several short stories in a month and practice endings and character arcs in a way that can really help with those issues as a storyteller, and help you to understand what you want to do as a writer, in terms of telling stories and the kinds of stories that you want to tell. I always hesitate to suggest that it's some sort of training ground, because I don't think that short fiction is a training ground for long fiction at all. But because it's so short, it's a little bit flexible in terms of allowing you to try things and to stretch yourself as a writer, and to get to know things about telling stories.

So once I went on that path of really deliberately trying to write a lot of short fiction while I was writing novels, I haven't really stopped. I do go through periods of time, several months at a time when I don't write any shorts just because I've got novel deadlines. But it is always nice to take the time to write a short story just to break it up, to give your mind a little bit of a change, a different track to work on.

And so in between novels, or if an idea strikes that I really have to get down, or I get a solicitation or something, I definitely will write a short when I can.

Kat Kourbeti: I gotta ask about the story that you submitted to Strange Horizons. First of all, before we even touch it, tell me about finding Strange Horizons as a reader. Do you remember coming across it for the first time?

Kate Heartfield: I don't remember my very first time, but I remember being aware of it in the early two thousands sometime, maybe around 2005, 2006. I remember being really aware of it both as a reader and as a writer, that this magazine was publishing things that were resonating in both the literary community that I was part of at that time, I had a lot of friends who were writing mainstream and literary fiction and my very first critique group, I was the only speculative fiction writer.

The other writers tended to be literary fiction writers for the most part, we all dabbled, but, they were aware of Strange Horizons as well, and really, it seemed to have this big impact in a lot of different fields at once, and because it was a very established online magazine that had a reputation for treating writers well and having a really transparent process.

It immediately became a goal for me that I really wanted to get published in Strange Horizons and I would read whatever I could there. And there are a lot of writers that I encountered in Strange Horizons for the first time, like Tim Pratt and Sofia Samatar and probably many others, and it really shaped not only my opinion of the magazine, but also of the field that I was going into and the genre.

Kat Kourbeti: Did it influence at all, do you think the sort of speculative stories that you were thinking about, in any way? Cause we, I think we tend to publish, historically anyway, quite introspective sort of stories. Did that influence you at all in thinking, oh, I should write a story that might fit Strange Horizons?

Kate Heartfield: I think it gave me the permission to try different things and definitely gave me confidence that the field of short fiction in the speculative short fiction is broader than people might believe, because Stranger Horizons will publish a wide range of things and it doesn't have a, really rule set for, only this counts as speculative fiction, or only this counts as good fiction. It's interested in telling all kinds of stories from all different parts of the world and all the different kinds of writers. I say as a reader, I've never been on staff, so I can't speak for the magazine, but that was definitely my impression as a reader.

And so I think it didn't really lead me to want to tell a Strange Horizons story per se, but whenever I had written a story, and I was thinking about where to send it, often Strange Horizons would be at the top of the list because I felt like it would get a fair hearing there.

I always felt like anything that I wanted to try, I felt like the editors were on my side, even if they decided it wasn't a good fit, which most of the time they did, as is the way of all magazines and all submissions. I felt like they would be coming to it in good faith and with an open mind and that I could put myself on the page and be respected in return.

I think that's a really beautiful thing that does influence your career as a beginning writer.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow. That's a beautiful answer. Everything you said is pretty much true for the staff. I'm not on the fiction team, but just seeing the way in which the fiction team does discuss how to approach, say, a special issue, when we all talk together about a topic or, if we're going to do a focus on a geographic region, like the fairness with which we just blanket the topic and are like, okay, so anything goes. So let's see what people come up with. But there's no specific answer to what that is that they're looking for. And so that means that, yeah, you're free as a bird to try and find your version of whatever that is.

Kat Kourbeti: So let's talk a little bit about your short story that was published in Strange Horizons in 2015. Can you tell me a little bit about how the idea came to you originally?

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, so the story is called 'Limestone, Lye, and the Buzzing of Flies' and it was published in 2015, and it's probably my most autobiographical story, at least on the surface; although the actual characters lives, I always hasten to add, are not my own, and their families are not my own, and that kind of thing.

It is about a girl who is a kid in the eighties who lives in Manitoba, very close to Lower Fort Garry, which is a fur trading fort that has now turned into a museum. And so the autobiographical part of it is that I was also a girl in the eighties who lived very close to Lower Fort Garry.

And I used to ride my bike there every afternoon with my best friend after school. Gary, if you're out there, I haven't seen you in decades, but we used to ride together to Fort Garry and just quietly walk around the grounds and there was a back way in where you didn't have to pay and we would just walk around and watch the interpreters and yeah, I don't know if that contributed to my love of history or not, but it probably did because it was just my playground.

So I wrote this story set in the Fort and in the interpretive aspects of it, about what if these two children that had grown up near the fort then got jobs as teenagers and dressed up in costume and started to play historical characters there. In the story, there are the remnants of two old souls that seem to be affecting the people who are dressing up in the costumes. The sort of deeper aspects that I wanted to get into with the story have a lot to do with growing up as a white settler in Manitoba and just starting to ask questions about what that meant to be on stolen land and the kind of stories that we brought over and the sort of toxicity of that, and engaging with history in that situation. Because I think that, even as a historical fiction writer, telling stories about Canadian history has always been somewhat of a struggle for me because of the colonial history that I'm writing about and finding ways to write about it, I think, is something that we're still learning as settler Canadians. So it's a lot to put in a short story, but that's the undercurrent underneath it, and then the higher more obvious surface levels, it's basically if anyone's ever seen the movie Dead Again, it's a lot like that. It's about old stories coming back and coming back.

Kat Kourbeti: It's a beautiful story. I do think that the autobiographical elements make it feel incredibly grounded, because I got a sense of place from your descriptions that I was like, she has to have been there. And so it's really cool to hear about how that came to be.

So what was the journey from submitting this story? Obviously you said, you'd been reading for a little bit. This wasn't the first story you submitted, correct?

Kate Heartfield: Correct. Yeah, so I don't know when I first started submitting to Strange Horizons but the earliest submission rejection that I have in my email is from 2007. So it was at least as far back as 2007. And my first story was published there in 2015.

Kat Kourbeti: So a journey.

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, a journey. I'm happy to be the poster child for people who get many rejections.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I think that's normal for most people. And if anything the story of 'that was my first submission and it also got accepted' is astronomically unlikely, so I do think that hearing these stories and telling these stories about how long it can take to get to a place, of being publication ready, is important. So when you submitted this, was this in 2015 or before?

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, it was the fall of 2014. So not only do I still have emails of my old rejections, but I also have the acceptance email right in front of me. So I will read it, from October 10th, 2014. So almost exactly 10 years—actually, 10 years ago the day that we're recording!

Kat Kourbeti: Oh my God. That's amazing!

Kate Heartfield: Yeah! So I just wrote back saying "dear Julia," as Julia [Rios] had sent me the acceptance:

"Dear Julia and the rest of the team,

My goodness, I actually just had to put down my coffee to avoid spilling it in excitement.

I've been a reader and admirer of Strange Horizons for so long. I'm beyond thrilled."

So clearly I was happy to be accepted at last. And yeah, I do think that this story, because it did have so much of myself in it and was trying to get at something that only I could tell, or that felt very much like something that I had to say to the world, I could definitely see how that in hindsight was my best chance. I think that trying to get to that place of just clearing off the mirror so that you can reflect yourself back to the world in the best possible way takes a lot of work, but sometimes those moments come through and I think the story is one of those moments for me.

Kat Kourbeti: What a beautiful happenstance that we're recording exactly 10 years to the day since then.

Kate Heartfield: Exactly 10 years. Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Incredible, that's awesome. And so then, would you say that the final story that we saw in the publication is mostly what you sent in?

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, it was a pretty light edit, as I recall. There were a few little suggestions, and of course, very respectful and professional process. I recall a few little things where a couple of the phrases and dialogue tweaked a little bit. But not a lot of edits, and the process was really smooth and yeah, it was just a joy to work with everybody. Having that same sense that I was talking about earlier, about feeling confidence when submitting that you would be read by somebody who was rooting for you. I definitely felt that during the editorial process as well, that everyone was on the same page and just wanted to make the story

Kat Kourbeti: There was another piece that I discovered in my, kind of digging through the archives for your name in relation to anything within the Strange Horizons archive. And I found a really lovely piece that you wrote for, I think a fund drive in 2017. Can you tell me a little bit about that? I will also, of course, link it in the show notes for folks to read, but it's a beautiful, kind of, "here's Strange Horizons, please submit, I love this magazine so much."

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, I had forgotten about this until you found it and mentioned it. This was a little nonfiction piece that I wrote about the magazine. I think it was Kate Dollarhyde who wrote to me in I think it was 2017, in association with the fund drive for the magazine, and I wrote about what a Strange Horizons story was for me and as a reader what I tended to enjoy about that fiction, and also how that helped me develop as a writer. So a lot of the same things that we're talking about today.

Kat Kourbeti: Upon finding it, I was really overjoyed because it shows that the readers who read us, who then become the writers who submit, really get a sense of exactly what we try to do. And it also warmed my heart because we still try to do the exact same thing now. I think it's impressive, and I will keep saying this all this year as we record these interviews, that I can't believe how it hasn't been diluted, it hasn't changed. If anything, it's grown stronger. And it's great to see that reflected in your earnest letter and urging for people to fund and to submit to us.

Now I want to jump into slightly more fun stuff. I want you to tell me about your work.

You and I go back a little ways. We were on a panel together, I think in Eastercon or some such, virtually, a few years back. And I've also interviewed you for a different podcast for your novel, The Valkyrie. So I have read bits of your work, but I want you to tell the audience as well, because I think there's a lot of really fascinating historical periods that you delve into, and some really cool plot lines that in our last conversation, I was like, oh man, put these on my TBR, and in fact, put them at the top.

So with your novels, because that's your bread and butter, how do you start working on a historical fiction idea? Does it come from the historical period usually, or do you have a sense of perhaps bits of politics that you're like, maybe I want to touch on this?

What's a period that works? How does that manifest for you?

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, often it's two or three things coming together, and then they'll sit in the back of my brain and in the back of my email inbox, because I email myself when I get ideas for a while until I'm able to work on that thing, and if it's been percolating all that time, generally it starts to coalesce into something.

I'll talk about my debut novel which was called Armed in Her Fashion, came out in 2018. And it has since been re-released as The Chatelaine. So it's the same book with some edits and prologue added. But the two books are the same, The Chatelaine and Armed in Her Fashion.

And that one, it came to me as I was researching for a different novel that hasn't been published, and I was looking for names of canons. I needed a couple of different names of canons, like actual historical canons, and I came upon one, it's actually technically a bombard I think, in Ghent called Dulle Griet, which is named after a figure in folklore, a particular story about a woman who raided Hell, armed only with pots and pans.

And there was this beautiful painting by Peter Bruegel that depicted this figure, this woman, who was raiding a Hellmouth, and as soon as I started reading that story and I saw the painting, I immediately knew that it was a novel, and I knew that I was going to write that novel. It immediately said things to me about the legal rights of women, especially in terms of dealing with family life and death and the sort of power of spite and stubbornness and determination for middle aged women, as I was becoming a middle aged woman myself.

It immediately just conjured up a lot of things that I wanted to talk about, and I had a lot of fun writing this novel, which is set in the 14th century during a revolt in Flanders, at the beginning of the Hundred Years War. There's a lot of a sort of a Hieronymus Bosch vibe, there's just very strange dark creatures and an actual hell mouth that is actually attached to a hell beast. It's the darkest of my novels and the strangest. I think in a lot of ways it's similar—even though on a superficial level there's almost no connection between it and the story that I wrote for Strange Horizons, they're different tones, different settings, everything—but they're similar in some ways in that they're both very much drawing on things that I felt were very genuine to me, and that probably nobody else would write in quite that way.

So I think there's a lesson to be learned about really writing from your heart the things that you want to tell, and just having some faith that somebody out there will get it.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely, and this is the book that's jumped to the top of my TBR immediately, because I am familiar with that painting, and with that story. Side note, back in the Twitter days (RIP), I was following a bot that would post a different Hieronymus Bosch like little bit of a painting. Every day it would kind of have like, Oh, here's this a little bit and I'd be like, ooh, I like that one. It's a vibe.

Kate Heartfield: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: I know that for The Valkyrie, it was also a similar idea where you had the concept of retelling a traditional folk story/mythology, but putting your own spin, for reasons.

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, exactly. So the Valkyrie is a retelling of this collection of Norse and Germanic stories. They were historical fiction when they were told. Our oldest versions are from about a thousand years ago, but they actually tell the stories of 600 years before that which was the stories of, a little client kingdom on the edges of the Roman Empire, in the final days of what we think of as the Western Roman Empire, and the coming of the Hunnish army and of Attila. And these stories have been told over and over again about this great catastrophic event for this kingdom, of the Burgundian people and how they were then exiled and had to go to France, which is why Burgundy is in France.

But as the stories have been told over and over the centuries, they acquired a dragon, and a hero with a magic sword, and a cursed hoard of gold, and various other elements. And those stories then really inspired Tolkien, and inspired a lot of the modern fantasy that I grew up reading.

The exercise of The Valkyrie, it actually started as a piece of short fiction. I was writing for a little weekend flash fiction contest among friends. I started writing the story of Brunhilde, the Valkyrie, who is a figure in these stories, and I was thinking about her perspective, because in the versions that I had read her behavior and the behavior of Gudrun, who is her great rival, this princess, their behavior didn't really make a lot of sense to me. And so I thought well, I wonder how she would tell the story. And I wonder whether one could explain the same events, but with different things happening in the background. Maybe what was happening behind closed doors is not what people then saw and told later.

So in my version, instead of rivals, these two women actually fall in love, and the choices that they make for their community lead to this great downfall. So it was in a similar way, it was finding the seeds in history and in old stories, and then thinking about how I could use that to talk about some of the concerns that I had about just the way that we tell stories about women and the way that we think about war and all kinds of things.

So I think there is always this tension for me between finding inspiration in old things and then trying to bring my concerns of today into it.

Kat Kourbeti: What's really fascinating to me from like just a craft perspective, is how you use language and vocabulary. Every single piece of work that I've seen from you has its own voice, it's not ever formulaic. You really attune to the historical periods that you work with.

Including the short story in Strange Horizons, which is very modern and punchy, and then it switches a little bit when the old souls come in, and like the vibe completely changes. How do you do that? Cause especially with The Valkyrie, I think you tap into that kind of prose poetry kind of language, which is quite difficult to do, I think, and it fascinates me. Teach me your secrets. Me and the listeners, of course.

Kate Heartfield: Oh, that's wonderful to hear. It is something that I've worked on very deliberately and didn't come naturally to me, so it's really wonderful to hear that it's working at least part of the time. I think a lot of it has to do with immersing yourself in the research of whatever you're trying to write about. That can really help.

I think another key part of it for me too is just recognizing the glory of revision, because it's a lot of pressure to put on yourself to say, "well, everything's got to pour out perfectly and also in the voice that I'm looking for in the first draft." Sometimes it just does flow when it's been building and you've got it there in your head, but often a scene will take a few passes to say, okay, actually this line, what if I had a different word choice here? Or what if I borrowed a rhythm from the sagas, or sometimes I'll even find a sort of sample piece, like something that has the kind of musicality that I'm looking for. And I'll think, okay well, what if I were to write it in that rhythm? Not copying it or not doing a pastiche, but thinking, what is it about this work that I can borrow for my own work and reflect back in some way?

For example, I've written a novella that was in a shared world that was inspired by Shakespeare. It's called Monstrous Little Voices, and I wrote a novella for that. And I'm also, right now, working on a novel that is Shakespearean. It's a prequel to Romeo and Juliet. I'm not trying to be Shakespeare. That would be silly and ridiculous and also probably impossible for me. But I am always thinking about, it's like a bumper sticker, what would Shakespeare do? If I'm faced with a decision about a rhythm in a sentence or about wordplay or a particular word choice or something like that, I will just always remind myself, okay, what is the more Shakespearean choice in this regard?

So sometimes it can be very deliberate, and it's not as if you just put on the mantle of the voice and then write the piece necessarily. Sometimes it works like that, but sometimes it's more actually getting down there in the nitty gritty in the mines and revision and doing it very deliberately. And then ideally, it will read to the reader as if it just came to you from above.

Kat Kourbeti: Well to me, it definitely does, so I would say your hard work is paying off, for sure. And thank you for sharing your wisdom. I think a lot of people, when they try and do that—and I'm certainly guilty of this—where if the first draft isn't a reflection of what I want it to be, then I get very disappointed and frustrated. The importance of revisions, I think, cannot be overstated.

Tell me a little bit about, you have two books with similar titles that are in fact not related.

Kate Heartfield: Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: Which at first I totally thought one of them was a sequel. It is in fact very much not a sequel. But there is a common, uh, thread. [Ba-dum-tiss!]

Kate Heartfield: Yeah. My novel The Embroidered Book came out in 2022, and that is my big, fat novel. It's 672 pages and it's the story of Queen Marie Antoinette of France and her sister, Maria Carolina of Naples. But the twist is that they are magicians and they are in fact rival magicians. Sort of like Strange and Norrell if they were sisters and queens. It's about sort of 30 years of 18th century politics leading up to the French Revolution, and the secret magic that these women learn and develop, and the kinds of things that they give up in exchange for that power.

So there's a lot of literalizing metaphors about political power, and yeah, it is called The Embroidered Book because embroidery plays a big role, and there is an actual embroidered book cover that is central to the story.

And then the other one that has a fibre arts title is The Tapestry of Time, which is my latest book. So that one just came out in the UK and in Canada and in all of the markets that the UK exports my books to. It's not coming out until June 2025 in the United States, but you can pre-order it now, and it's out everywhere else pretty much. So the Tapestry of Time, even though it also has a similar title, it's not connected to The Embroidered Book except in that it is about sisters and politics again. There is a piece of embroidery that figures very largely in it, so it's connected in those ways.

So The Tapestry of Time is about four clairvoyant sisters in the summer of 1944 in France and England, and it is based on the true story of what happened to this famous piece of embroidery that is in a bit of a misnomer called the Bayeux Tapestry, which is a record of the events of 1066, the Norman conquest of England.

In 1944, as the Allies were approaching, and as Paris was rising up, Heinrich Himmler, a very high ranking Nazi, did his utmost to get the Bayeux Tapestry out of France, and basically loot it the way they were trying to loot everything. He was very interested in it as a historical artifact and as a propaganda tool, and he was also the head of the Nazi occult wing, I guess you could say; this branch of scientists and archaeologists and occultists that Himmler was the figurehead and leader for. And so his ideas about history and artifacts, and this true story of how he tried and failed right up to the final hours to steal the Bayeux Tapestry—what happened was he sent two SS men to Paris in the final days when Paris was rising up, and the resistance captured the Louvre where the tapestry was, hours before the SS men got there to steal it.

So this story was really inspiring to me and I thought well, there's a lot to say here about the rise of fascism, and how people have resisted that in various ways, and how fascists try to manipulate history for their own ends. And getting back to that idea of the stories that we tell about history and the political ends that people can put them to, and how they change and change over and over again.

So that's The Tapestry of Time. It's probably the most Indiana Jones-ish of my books, and also the only one that's set in the 20th century.

Kat Kourbeti: It sounds very fascinating and sadly, really timely. I think we all need a little bit of this, to know how to bring those elements of resistance in our own lives, because unfortunately it is very much Happening right now, across the board. Especially as we record now, the misinformation around climate change and the political situation in America, and for some reason, conflating the two? So yeah, it sounds like a really fascinating book.

And then, I don't know how much you can and or want to talk about your next one, but maybe give me like a bit of a glimpse because you say "prequel to Romeo and Juliet", and I am all ears because I am such a Shakespeare nerd that I want this in my life. Tell me about it.

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, I can talk about it. The Publisher's Marketplace announcement went out, so it's out there in the world, so I can talk about it. I finished the first draft now, so it's also not in that awkward stage when you don't want to mention it for fear of upsetting the elves or whatever. So I don't feel superstitious about talking about it now.

It's in the revision stage and it's called Mercutio and it will be published by Harper Voyager UK, like my previous few books. It is about the character of Mercutio before the events of Romeo and Juliet and where he came from basically and who he is.

He's just, he's always been under my skin for many years. And this book has been just building and building over this time. The basic premise is that it's set a couple of hundred years before Shakespeare because, again, Shakespeare was telling historical fiction about the feuds in Italy a couple of hundred years before, and it begins with him on a battlefield in a real battle that happened in Italy and he's fighting next to a young poet named Dante Alighieri who is there at the same time, and they accidentally, as one does, open a door to Faerie during this battle and then they have to deal with the consequences.

So it's been a lot of fun to write and it is in that stage now where I'm just trying to really work on that voice and get it to where it needs to be.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh my gosh. Amazing. Also, like, Dante? Are you writing this for me? Like, thank you?!

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, a few people have said that and I think, okay, clearly I'm not the only one who is like, "and I'm going to put in Dante!" It's like all the things that I love too and it is kind of like, "I can't believe I get to write this" feeling because it's just lots and lots of candy for people who love this sort of thing.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, that's excellent. Oh, man. Cannot wait. That's gonna be awesome. I think in your long fiction, I'm looking at the list of your publications here, there's also a little really interesting thing, which is your side hustle in the franchise business of writing video game novels, which is super cool in particular because you have a couple of books in the Assassin's Creed universe, which is very historical. So that's a perfect glove fit. How did that happen?

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, so I have two books that I've written in the Assassin's Creed universe, and doing the thing I always say when people ask me "is it a good idea to write for someone else's intellectual property," or in someone else's franchise. And I think it makes a difference when it's something that is a good fit for you as a writer. Assassin's Creed was for me because, as you say, it's historical periods, and it allowed me to write the kinds of books that I love, which is all kinds of weird and convoluted plots, tangled up in the real events of history, and talking about the political aspects of history, but also this incredible adventure.

And also talking to readers who might not otherwise have encountered my work which is really nice. One of the things that I've really enjoyed about writing for Assassin's Creed is that I occasionally will get emails from someone who says "I hadn't read a book in 10 years, I went through this long, dry spell of not reading, and now I'm reading again because I picked up one of your Assassin's Creed books." Or I've heard from very young teenage readers who are encountering some of the history for the first time, so that's been really gratifying. And yeah, it's been lots of fun.

I've written interactive fiction as well, and a little bit of video games. That is another part of my writing career.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, that's really interesting. I've always found interactive fiction fascinating because you can't just tell one story; you have to leave open avenues for people to make those choices. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Like how does that kind of work for you, when you think about the narrative? Because normally you would follow a character's story, right? But how do you let it be something else, maybe?

Kate Heartfield: That's a really good point. I think it's really been central for why it's been fun for me as a writer. I've written two big interactive projects for Choice of Games, called The Magician's Workshop and The Road To Canterbury, and they're both historical as well. I'm one of several writers on a new piece called A Death in Hyperspace, which is a fun interactive project that's out there that should be able to Google.

Yeah, interactive fiction is always something I try to do when I get a chance, and that point about choosing the pathway as a writer, I think was actually really helpful for me because it gets back to what we were talking about, about understanding the shape of story and also working in revision. It helped me to break out of the mindset that there was some sort of perfect platonic ideal of the story, and if I could somehow attune myself like a tuning fork, to the muse, I would be able to channel that ideal story onto the page and that if it was not coming out perfectly, it must be a problem with me. I was not the best instrument for that story or something like that.

Which might be a perfectly valid way of looking at it for some people, but for me, it was just getting in my way. It was creating a lot of pressure and writing interactive fiction allowed me to see that actually, there are multiple possible ways of telling any story. There's no canon version of anything, really. And if you tell it one way rather than the other, it's not right versus wrong, they're just different choices, and they could all be interesting and take you down an interesting path as a writer and a reader.

So it really helped me to open up a little bit in that regard, to play around more and to understand that you're not just beating your head against the manuscript trying to get it perfect, but just allowing yourself to try different things and see which is the most interesting for you.

Kat Kourbeti: This sounds so interesting. What about the video game writing you've done?

Kate Heartfield: I wrote for the game Evil Genius 2 which came out from Rebellion a few years ago, and it was lots of fun. I'm so glad that they brought me in on that project. I wrote several of the characters and some of the scenarios and dialogue. Other than interactive text based fiction, I think that's the only video game writing that I've done. It was a lot of fun to do, and I'm certainly hoping to do some more at some point, because as a game player myself, it's really fun to be able to contribute to that and see the other side of the industry.

Kat Kourbeti: And just hone a different skill set. Cause dialogue is a different beast to narration and descriptions, and not necessarily a fixed form where you have the rhythm of narration to contend with the dialogue and with everything else.

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, it's fun to be a part of a collaborative project like that, where you're only contributing one aspect of it and then you can see the final thing with all the animation and the art and sound and amazing voice actors and everything else. And it was fun for me because Evil Genius 2 is a retro science fiction, like James Bond-y evil lairs, volcano lairs and that kind of thing, which is a different kind of vibe than I usually write, so it was really fun for me to just do something out of my wheelhouse.

Kat Kourbeti: So thank you so much, Kate, for taking the time to talk us through your career and to share your Strange Horizons story with us. I'm really happy that we played a part in your career somewhat.

Kate Heartfield: Yeah, thank you so much. I can't overstate how important Strange Horizons has been and especially I think the openness to writers telling their own stories and from all parts of the world and in all English-es, and keeping that going for 25 years is an amazing feat.

Kat Kourbeti: Thank you.

A brand new podcast project from the Strange Horizons team, SH@25 is a new, year-long interview and feature series that will delve into the archives, celebrate the work of past contributors and staff, and highlight the contributions of Strange Horizons to SFF publishing and the wider community.

Listen to our first episode, a short conversation with Podcast Editor Kat Kourbeti and Producer Michael Ireland, announcing the project and where we are going with it.

For the curious, the narrator recruitment form can be found on this page. Shoot us an email with any questions at podcasts (at) strangehorizons.com.

Click here to leave us an audio voicemail for our episodes or video message for our socials.

Michael Ireland and Kat Kourbeti sit at a table in Hall 4 of the Glasgow SEC, scheming plans for SH@25.

Transcript

Hello, Strangers, and welcome to SH at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and with me is my new producer and also your host, Michael Ireland.

Michael Ireland: Hello!

Kat Kourbeti: We have expanded the Podcast team. We've had a few ideas and seeing as we're in already our 25th year, we figured what better way to celebrate than to highlight all of the incredible work that Strange Horizons has done and is doing in the field. Welcome to the team, Michael.

Michael Ireland: Well, thank you very much, Kat. It's nice to be here, and it's nice to have been working with you for the last little while. Just bringing up all these ideas and overwhelming you with my ambitions. It's been welcoming. Thank you.

Kat Kourbeti: It took me ages to figure out that I could get more people involved, and not just kind of have it be a a solo thing for me and for Courtney, who has now left the team. And also we could do new things. How about it? The fabulous people over at the Reviews department, Dan and Aisha, have been doing like this great Critical Friends podcast that has taken off and it's really fun and it's not really what we used to do with this podcast feed. And that kind of gave us a bit of a nudge to like expand the formats, think differently. I mean, this SH at 25 thing kind of happened really organically while we were at Worldcon.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, luckily that was in my back garden in Glasgow. And it was nice to meet you for the first time after talking for the past year about what we're going to do with this podcast Alongside the normal episodes that we'll be doing which is now going to be more curated rather than just following the written format publication, we came up with Strange Horizons at 25.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it was just fun to actually experience, like an idea really form in real time. Cause you said, "Oh, It's 25 years, we should do something." And I was like, " Oh yeah, and all of these people that we already know who like, are still in the field and they're still doing stuff, but they started at Strange Horizons, maybe we should talk to them... Yeah, let's email people and let's do stuff." And so it was just kind of like, yeah, I haven't felt that excited in a really long time about something, because specifically, I guess, of how important Strange Horizons is in the field. And this was before the Hugo win, by the way.

We were fully prepared to lose again. And that was fine. We're still just doing our thing. You know what I mean? We have been for 25 years. But in that moment it was like, "Oh yeah, like we should recognize that." And then also people recognized us, which was really nice. And thank you. It feels surreal to be Hugo Winners.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, it's still, it's still very surreal as well for me as I've—

Kat Kourbeti: You've just joined, haven't you?

Michael Ireland: Yeah, I'm part of it now, and I'm just like, okay, this is wild.

And with myself as well, joining the team, coming from a bit of an audio background but not necessarily in speculative fiction, it's been more of either audio fiction with my show, The Secret of St. Kilda, or I have done music production in the past and sound production for short films, and even directing wrestling TV shows back in the day as well.

So when joining this team and coming in to Worldcon for the first time, because that was also my first Worldcon, and meeting a lot of the team in all the different departments, it was really eye opening and welcoming to meet all these different people from all these different backgrounds and just how open and funny and affable everyone is. It's been really nice to join a team, especially with the ethos that Strange Horizons has as well.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It really well and truly takes all of these different people from all these different backgrounds to make this sort of thing happen. We've been kind of looking back at some of the stuff that we have done to celebrate the magazine in the past. And about 10 years ago, there was an ebook that was the culmination of the first 15 years of Strange Horizons. And there were loads of bits and bobs in there, fiction, poetry, but also some bits of history on the magazine. And it's really been interesting to see how we have followed on in the ethos that Mary Anne Mohanraj started this magazine with, which is to highlight new voices, to bring up the parity within the publishing world of all of these voices that weren't in the foreground before, to try and change that. And 25 years later, we're still doing it. And from even more interesting perspectives, because we're more global now, and I really, truly think that like, because we're this global, we can make this happen. Because we have all these different perspectives and different experiences, we can think outside of the box that SFF publishing has been stuck in. We can expand that and we can make what we think is, well, kind of a global box, if you will.

I'm gutted that I had to leave Worldcon halfway through before the Strange Horizons team got together. So a bunch of those people that were at Glasgow, I never actually got to meet. But I caught COVID at the con, so I had to skedoodle. So it is what it is. And I'm sure that we'll cross paths again.

But I'm glad that you felt that welcoming spirit because honestly, when I think of Strange Horizons, that's, I think, the biggest element: that there's an open hug ready to receive anyone from anywhere. And If you want to volunteer with us, we're here for you. And if you want to write for us, our fiction submissions are open right now, actually. So maybe send us your story. Poetry, your reviews, it's super important to all of us that we open up that door to people. And yeah, it's just been great looking back all of that output and seeing the effect that it's had.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, and that was really visualized at Worldcon as well, because it wasn't just the Hugo win, it was having those conversations with people from all around the world who've came here. And then they see your little Strange Horizons ribbon and they tell you how much they love the magazine. And that goes from fans as well as peers within the industry as well. It was fascinating to be part of it. And to witness just how nice everyone is, because I've been to a fair amount of cons in the past. I've not felt as as you said, as welcoming on there. And I think Strange Horizons are a great leader in what the industry should be.

Kat Kourbeti: 100%.

Michael Ireland: And with Strange Horizons at 25, we're going to be looking at having these conversations with all these people from the past and the present, about the impact the magazine has had on them as well.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, we really want to hear from readers and listeners, too, to be honest, not just people who have contributed to the magazine in like a material form with their fiction or their art or their poetry, but also, to hear from people who have been reading us for however long, and to hear how this particular approach has impacted them as SF readers. If we've opened up your horizons into new and strange places, we will be leaving ways for you to send us perhaps like an email or a voicemail, and we'll be doing listener grab bags as well. Because we really want to hear from the wider community. Sometimes it's easy to think that we're just making something and putting it out into the void, and then moving on with our day. But it's cool to actually hear from the people who are connecting to that stuff, and who are enjoying that and what they're taking away from it. So we really want to hear from you.

Michael Ireland: And this is not just a one off, this is a year long celebration.

Kat Kourbeti: We will be at this for a while.

And we've got some great guests lined up. I put out a call on Blue Sky a little while ago and we've had some great guests who volunteered to talk to us. So we'll be hearing from them, and we'll also be reaching out to other past contributors and seeing if they want to talk to us as well.

We want to widen the net of people who have their first publication with us 23 years ago, and seeing where they're at now, and what they've done since, and where their career has taken them. But we'll also be sharing some fiction from those days, because the podcast didn't exist yet. So we have a new opportunity to bring some of that to life in a different way, and to give some old stories a second lease of life. Cause just because it's 20 years old, it doesn't mean that it's not good still. And we would love to take that opportunity and share it with a wider world.

Michael Ireland: And if anyone's listened, and they have been part of the magazine in the past, how can people get in touch with us?

Kat Kourbeti: Well, we do have an email which is podcasts at strangehorizons.com. So you can drop us an email there. You can also find the Strange Horizons social media, and you can reach out through there. And we'll get back in touch with you and we can set up a date, have a chat.

Michael Ireland: We're gonna have fun with this, Kat. I'm really looking forward to going back through those old stories, because as you said, it's not that they're not going to be good, but in some cases, it's the start of people's careers. Because we are focusing on those new writers, on a consistent basis.

I've looked through the archive just to have a look at some of the names and the faces that we've spoken to and, being able to elevate their stories to this space. It's so fascinating to see that, especially people who have went on and been able to continue work in the space. Or in some cases, they've done something adjacent, where they're still following the ethos of Strange Horizons, such as charities and things like that.

Kat Kourbeti: That's, well, that's the thing. Sometimes when you get involved, like in my case, for example, I didn't think, oh, I have some skills, but I don't think that they quite translate, and it's like, well, actually, yes, they do. And conversely, the things that you might learn from here can take you on to other planes in, perhaps a day job environment or whatever.

But those skills, it's so easy to overlook them, and to think that they're not relevant, but they are. And I say this for myself to hear it, because a lot of the time I'm very dismissive of my own skill sets and things that I've brought to the table, from just years of milling about on the Internet. And then suddenly all of that stuff becomes useful. So you just don't know.

But as you said, it's been great to kind of look back at that list of people and realize, just how pivotal Strange Horizons has been in giving some of these people their first publication. And we're still doing that. A lot of what we publish is people's first pro sale. And to watch those people then publish novels, and take off in their own way... I mean, our very own former fiction editor, Vajra Chandrasekera, was just up for a Hugo this year, with his novel. He was our fiction editor not that long ago, about a year and a half, maybe two years that he's left the team.

And it's just been wonderful to see people that we gave their career like maybe a slight nudge, and then look at them go.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, it's been real exciting to actually go back and read these stories for that second time, because you are looking at a museum, essentially, of all these amazing writers throughout the history. And it's not just the writers, it's the reviews team as well, the art that we've had, the poetry that came through. It's not just the fiction that we've been lucky to have. And I'm excited to see how the year turns out.

So, the format that we're going to look at taking is...?

Kat Kourbeti: It's kind of a mix.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, it's going to be a mix. Every second week we're looking to, if not have a guest, to feature a particular person or persons, and that will be interspersed with the relaunch of the curated fiction stories as well. So every other week will be one of those.

And if we do have any of those guests where they've got those stories, we might also have a back to back for the stories as well.

So, are you feeling about it, Kat? How have you been since we came up with this idea less than two months ago?

Kat Kourbeti: We really ran with it, is the thing. I have been flying on a renewed level of motivation and joy. I've been trying to get the podcast reorganized and reimagined for a little while, and since you came on the team about a year ago. And this idea was, I think, the push that I needed to see new potentials for what this podcast could be. We had this, let's say, synergy with the fiction team, but at the same time it was quite difficult to keep up, because the fiction team could very last minute have new edits and things, and we'd have to respond to that and do the podcast recording kind of really, really on the fly.

And it's been revitalizing to take a step back and say, okay. We've been responding to things, but what can we do in a more proactive, more intentional way? What do we want this to be? And the answer is, way too many things, and that's okay! We have so much good stuff waiting in the wings for everybody, and I'm really excited to share it all. Both the revitalized fiction side of things, where we'll be curating the stories, and there's a big 25 year old backlog that we can look at and draw from and share. And at the same time, start something new, this SH@25 series that will be a lot of things.

It will be interviews, it will be features, it will be listener messages and all sorts of stuff. To kind of really take a step back and look at, pun very much intended, the Strange Horizon that we have been part of, and to not just look at the past, but also kind of look ahead and see where the genre is going, how we've helped bring it to this stage where we are with short fiction publishing, and with art and with poetry, which is not very common in SF markets; there's only really a handful of places that publish science fiction and fantasy poetry at a pro level, and it's great to see that recognized. There's going to be a poetry Hugo next year in Seattle. And it's great to have been part of that tradition, and to see where that is going is very, very exciting.

So I'm, to answer your question in brief, super stoked. I'm stoked to get this going, and to see where it goes. It's going to be a very fun year, I think.

Michael Ireland: Yeah. it's going to be exciting. I like when I'm challenged, happen to be quite creative in how we approach a new project, and I think we've hit the nail on the head with this one, because I like to get ambitious with what I do. And I think that's why you brought me onto the team as well. Coming up with these different angles and trying to prod you about what can we do and what can't we do. And then, getting those different things not just okayed by you, but like, it's motivated you as well to be part of that, which is the best part of this because I like to talk to you and I like to go over these ideas with you and all the things that we've had to put in place so far over not just the last few months, but the last year as well about how we approach the podcast. I do love seeing the paper trail as it was of where the project's going, because it's never a standstill. And that's why we've got so many different documents and different templates and different things all ready to go at any given time.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. We were laughing before we started recording about just how many documents—I got a little overboard! "We need a document for this and we need a document for that. And let's format it this way." And like, yeah. I'm sorry, but also you're welcome.

Michael Ireland: It is great to help give you that motivation.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, no, it's been great expanding the podcast team, because it's not just you, we've got another producer in the wings working on the fiction side of things, our producer, Lauren. It's been great to have more people to bounce things off of. I certainly thrive in a collaborative environment where I can bounce things off of people and elevate each other's ideas where it's like, "oh, we should do this. Yes. And also, what if we had that?" We 'yes, and' each other quite a bit. And that's been great.

And I think that's really the spirit of Strange Horizons: let's bring a group of people together and just see what we can make. Let's see what we can bring forward into the world. And all the different departments, I think, do a fantastic job of that in their, perhaps little siloed ways.

We have a "flat anarchic structure" as our editor Gautam says, where we don't have a boss, and every department has the freedom to do what they want, and then we all come together and we make this magazine. And so it's anarchic, it's chaotic. But also it's liberating, because we have a house style that has evolved over 25 years of just aesthetically like what we want to raise up, in terms of voices and in terms of themes and things like that. We publish a lot of really introspective stuff from all around the world.

But, you know, what makes a Strange Horizons story? When people ask me what they should send us, you know, I always say that it has to have something from within your heart that resonates and that is true. The packaging doesn't matter: is it science fiction? Great. Is it fantasy? Great. Is it based on our real world with some flavoring of the speculative? Awesome. Is it in a different world entirely? Also great.

Really what it is about is that emotional core. And yeah, just watching all these different departments find their own way to do that, really motivated me to see what the podcast could be, not just a response to what the fiction and poetry departments do, but in its own way. What is the Strange Horizons podcast? And part of it is this, now.

Michael Ireland: Yep. I think that's one of the first questions I asked you as well when I joined. I'm like, what can we do? And you're like, yeah, we can do anything we want. I'm like, yeah, but, what can we do?

Kat Kourbeti: But what is that?

Michael Ireland: So there was a lot of questions that I was firing at you over the space of the last year. And the answer was usually a yes, or "no one's going to say no". And that's really freeing. Obviously it can be quite scary to just have that free reign.

Kat Kourbeti: And is this idea even going to work? I think it will, this one in particular, I have a really good feeling about it just because it's so all encompassing. And that freedom, as you said, is there a format that we're tied to? Not really. And therefore, you can expect a lot of different stuff every week. It's not going to be too formulaic.

Michael Ireland: That does kind of showcase as well what Strange Horizons is about, because as I said, we're not just looking at the past, we're looking at the past in a format that hasn't been done before. So we're treading new ground on old ground.

We want to be able to help tell those stories in an audio format. It's been interesting for me trying to curate which stories are going to be the focus, and things that I'm looking into when I am reading them, is how important the culture's been for each of those stories. So as you're saying, where it's got to come from within. You can see and you can feel that is with the culture that's surrounding that, and the person's personal experiences, and what I want to do when I am curating some of these stories, at least my workload is, I want to make sure that we are giving each story justice in an audio format, and working with the expectations of the rest of the magazine to put that forward, because we want to make sure that from the podcast perspective, we are helping provide that outlet for these people, to give them voices as well.

Kat Kourbeti: And we're adding new voices to the Fiction roster, so it's not just going to be you and me doing everything. We're bringing in loads of external narrators, some lovely voices to tell those stories more authentically than we could, and to also just jazz things up a little bit.

Thank you very much to all the people who have told me in the past that they've enjoyed my reading of the Strange Horizon stories. And I'll still be around, of course, and I'll still be doing some of the stories on the off weeks from SH @ 25. But you will also be hearing some new voices, and I'm very excited that we get to expand that.

Michael Ireland: Yeah. Are we opening up the narration?

Kat Kourbeti: I mean, it's never closed. Technically our call for narrators is always ongoing. So if you're hearing this and you're like, "hey, maybe I'd like to take a crack," there is a link which I will put in the show notes, and it's on one of the Azimuth pages, I think, and on the volunteer call page, where we have a form and you can fill that out, send us a sample of your recording, let us know what your tech setup is and so on and so forth. And we'll just get in touch and take it from there.

Michael Ireland: Yeah. And as I said, it's not just the new stories that we're looking at. It's also the old stories from the archive, the story from the featured guests that we've got over the next year as well. And if there's stories that you even like, and you are successful with putting in for the narration, we're always going to take into consideration what your favorites are that you resonate with.

Kat Kourbeti: If it hasn't been podcasted before, and you would like to help us do that, just let us know.

Michael Ireland: We have got this curated approach that we're taking, and everyone involved should be having a nice time.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, that's what it's about. It's about doing all of this fun, artistic work, but having it be a good time too, because otherwise, what are we doing?

Michael Ireland: What are we doing indeed?

Where are you going to be over the next couple of cons through this year, in case people want to say hello to us?

Kat Kourbeti: Well, I mean, yeah, we are attending a few over the next 365 days. I think my next one is definitely Eastercon in the UK in, I want to say mid April, it's in Belfast. But I think you're going to a couple, or at least one sooner than that, right?

Michael Ireland: I'm going to FantasyCon in Chester in the UK. That is October 11th through 13th. I think a couple of the narrators are going as well. So it'll be nice to catch up with them. But yeah, you'll be able to find us there. I will also be going to Eastercon and aiming for Worldcon next year.

We can get that done. It's far, far, far away.

Kat Kourbeti: It feels far away. It's going to zoom past, I think. Yeah, I'm also aiming for Seattle, so I should be there. If you see us, come ask us for a ribbon, we'll have all sorts of Strange Horizons goodies and stuff to give away. And we're excited to meet all of the people who listen because, I think it was Esther McCallum, who was the chair for Worldcon in Glasgow, who at an Eastercon a couple years back said, "Hey, I know your voice." And I was like, "Oh yeah, I read the stories for Strange Horizons," and she said, "I listened to that to fall asleep." And I was like, super moved by the idea that someone is actually falling asleep to my voice. So if that's you, dear listener, thank you. That's amazing. Yeah, so if you see us or you recognize our voices and you want to say hello, please, please do. We love to actually see the faces of the people who listen.

Michael Ireland: I'm lucky I don't fall asleep to your voice. Otherwise our meetings would be dozing off!

Kat Kourbeti: You would be asleep right now!

Michael Ireland: So I hope everyone is ready for the next year of anarchy with all these lovely guests that we've got on, who have given the time and the creative input to us over the years, and they are happy to do that for us once again. So really going to appreciate that, and I hope everyone has an amazing time listening to this project.

Please do get in touch, @ us on the socials, you'll be able to leave comments on Spotify now as well on the new episodes. So if there's any stories that have resonated with you, or any authors that have came through us in the past that you have enjoyed the work of, tell us when you got started listening to us, or when you started reading us, it'll be lovely to hear from you.

Kat Kourbeti: Absolutely. Let's kick this celebration off with a bang.

Michael Ireland: Oh, we got new music as well!

Kat Kourbeti: Oh yeah, which you composed, didn't you?

Michael Ireland: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: Tell us a little bit about that before we close off the episode.

Michael Ireland: Yeah, so I pitched to Kat, let's get some new music for this project as well, please. And her response was, who's doing it? And the answer was me. I've pitched it, so it's my responsibility to figure that out. So, one of my close friends Andrew Gorman, he has helped to create the sound of Strange Horizons @ 25, which you would have heard at the start of the show, and you'll also hear a different version of that at the end through the credits.

It's been fun to go through that creative journey about what we want the sound to be, and getting the feedback from Kat as well to see, is this good enough?

Kat Kourbeti: I think at every stage I was like, "oh my God. It sounds great." And then you'd bring in new iterations and new instruments and new layers to it. And I was like, "I don't know, man, it all sounds great." I have zero composing background, you know? So to me, it all sounds like magic, honestly.

Michael Ireland: I'm in the process of mastering that just now, so by the time this episode goes up, you will have heard it. So hope you enjoyed that as well. Any feedback on that, any criticism, please let me know.

Kat Kourbeti: Be kind, but let us know your comments.

Michael Ireland: I think that's our first episode down, Kat.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes, it is. It's just a little, a wee introduction into where we've been, what we've been thinking and what we're planning and how we're feeling about all of this, and about our 25th birthday, which is an astounding amount of time to have been around for a volunteer run magazine that relies on public donations. We have been this since the beginning and we're still going strong and dare I say, we have plans for even more amazing stuff over the next year certainly, and even further, just going by some internal conversations we've been having. Everyone just loves being a part of this.

We love making this magazine, and we hope that all the listeners will join in this big celebration.

Michael Ireland: Thank you.

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