This afternoon’s Pride Month interview is with author Nisi Shawl:
Hi, Nisi! I hope you’re staying safe and healthy during current events. What are you doing to stay creatively motivated in these unusual times?
I’ve been meeting daily with other writers via Zoom and doing a combination of talking about craft, talking about what’s happening in the world, and writing silently. It seems to have really helped so far--it’s keeping me going and inspiring others, too. At the moment my co-writers are L. Timmel Duchamp, Joanne Rixon, Kristin A. King, K. Tempest Bradford, Manjula Menon, Teri Clarke, Leslie What, and Eileen Gunn. There are two distinct groups, and we get together for two separate sessions of two hours each. Virtual presence seems to provide the right mix of community and solitude for me, and the socializing punctuates the work focus very nicely. I’ll be adding a series of Saturday sessions in July which are supposed to be attended by some of the participants in Clarion West’s Write-a-thon fundraiser.
Since June is Pride Month, I have to ask: how has being non-binary influenced or informed your writing?
It’s made me open to the possibilities of the many-faceted aspect of life, and the myriad ways of representing that. It’s also led me away from the trap of mapping the binary onto most elements in life’s literary depiction. I very much hope that it has helped me understand the marginalization of other identities--especially the intersections of those marginalizations. I’m sure there’s plenty more--I plan to keep figuring it out as I go along.
It seems like non-binary and gender-fluid folk often get left out of conversations about LGBTQIA rights (and even left out of most acronyms for the community, as evidenced right in this question!), as do queer POC, despite being at the forefront of the movement from the beginning. How do we change that?
I think this interview is a great start! Also, can we make weirdness equal coolness? Can we set up some sort of scoreboard where people get geekpoints or something along those lines for every difference from the dominant paradigm? Because being counted as weird even among the weird should be like a feather in my cap. It should add to my luster, and the luster of all the other ultra-outsiders. But in line with my point concerning the interview, the thing is that stories are what move and motivate people. More relevant fiction, more movies, more songs, will change the narrative and render it much more inclusive. This will allow people to see themselves in less distorted ways--they won’t have to throw their necks out tilting their heads to get a glimpse of someone with at least one of their traits. And that atmosphere can encourage yet another increase in examples--another wave of stories to model the next on. I’ve seen it happen with BIPOC representation, so I know it works.
Back to writing, what inspires you? What does your creative process look like?
Everything inspires me: weather, animals, machines, songs, wounds--you name it. Ideas are everywhere. I know I’m onto something when one of these elements stays with me, looping on constant replay, carrying a powerful emotional burden. Sometimes I’ll see that an issue is touching other people as well, and that’s even more motivation to explore it.
The creative process for me begins when these ideas come together and form a critical mass. The ideas are usually embodied by characters, the plot by questions. Finishing the story doesn’t necessarily mean answering the questions; sometimes the end is about understanding enough to ask it.
I always pray when I write. I practice an indigenous West African spiritual tradition called Ifa. The divinity in charge of stories is the Trickster, the one who makes the impossible not just possible, not just probable, but true. Writing is a religious process for me. I’m creating worlds, inhabiting them. That’s holy work.
And it’s work readers do too, creating worlds from writers’ words. Every day.
Everfair was such an amazing alternate history novel, and inspired me to read more about the actual history of the region. Is there any chance you’ll be returning to that world?
Yes. And no. I’m drafting a sequel to Everfair. It’s called Kinning, and I’m a few chapters in, and so far we’ve had scenes in Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Egypt, and Kenya. I’m hoping to reach Everfair’s borders soon.
There are already a couple of Everfair sequels published. They’re short stories, though, not novels. And neither of *them* takes place in the country of Everfair, either: one’s in Cairo, and one’s on Zanzibar. “Sun River” is in the anthology Clockwork Cairo, and “The Colors of Money” is in the anthology Sunvault.
I also published “Vulcanization” at Nightmare Magazine, online. It’s Everfair-adjacent. It’s a horror story from Leopold II’s viewpoint.
Finally, I put a few Everfair-related pieces on my website, like an essay about nonstandard sexuality in African countries, and an outline of Matty’s play “Wendi-la.” Check it out.
What are you working on now and what do you have coming out soon?
As I said, I’m mostly focused right now on Kinning. A couple of months back I finished revisions on a Middle Grade historical fantasy called Speculation. That should be coming out next year. Sometime this year an anthology called Sword Stone Table will be published with one of my stories in it: “I Being Young and Foolish.” It’s a subversion of the Merlin/Nimue episode of the Arthurian mythos.
I have an essay due next month on how to describe African-descended people’s hair, and that anthology, Pocket Workshop, will appear this December.
And finally, where can people find you and your work online?
NS: Google me! I have a very Google-able name, don’t I?
I did just get a piece of flash fiction featuring a nonbinary character published on the Arizona State University website. The story is called “Fourth and Most Important.” The character is called Mx. Pickell. Read it--it’s short!
Nisi Shawl, winner of the 2019 Kate Wilhelm Solstice Award, wrote the 2016 Nebula Award finalist Everfair about an imaginary Fabian socialist Utopia in the Congo, and the 2009 James Tiptree/Otherwise Award collection Filter House. Shawl co-wrote Writing the Other: A Practical Approach. Their story collection Talk Like a Man is part of PM Press’s “Outspoken Author” series. They live in Seattle and take frequent walks with their cat.