12 or 20 (second series) questions with Mallory Tater

Mallory Tater is the author of four books: This Will Be Good: Poems, The Birth Yard: A Novel, Lockers are for Bearcats Only: Poems & Soft Tissue: A Novel (forthcoming with ECW Press in 2028). She was the publisher of Rahila’s Ghost Press, a now-retired chapbook press. Mallory currently lives in Vancouver, where she teaches at the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

In all my works—be they poetry or fiction—I am fascinated by the way patriarchal systems shape the body, identity, and society. My writing often explores the enduring effects of childhood experiences, purity culture, and institutional religion, analyzing how early lessons on gender roles, shame, and family disconnection arise from the body. This collection poses queries about the survival of friendship and selfhood, how we bear the marks from the organizations and connections that mold us, and how we can transform those into something healing or creative. All of my work circles the same themes I feel like—whether delving into friendship and grief, motherhood and personal agency, or the struggle between genuine self-expression and aspiration—to understand what it means to live meaningfully within (and against) structures that seek to restrict and constrain us.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I find working with an editor awakening, encouraging and vital to transform my work into something beyond the self. My spouse, Curtis LeBlanc, always says writing is a selfish endeavor with the most compassionate results. An outside editorial eye is the initial cultivator of that shift from the individual to the collective. For this collection, working with Jim Johnstone was invaluable as he helped me embrace the mess of the page and to experiment with lineation and shape/form more than I typically do. Editors invite risk and risk enhances the poem.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

So simple—write the work that you want to read.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I welcomed a baby last spring, so I do not write on a daily basis. Writing when I'm not always particularly inspired, but when time allows, is a new experience for me but I am trying to embrace it and treat it as time well spent no matter if it’s a generative or ‘good’ sitting. Every day for me starts with baby cuddles, a french press amount of coffee and watching old fashioned, dread-filled cable news.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

My friends here in Vancouver (Hi, Jocelyn Tennant, Mica Lemiski, Rachel Jansen and Selina Boan!) are really talented writers. I meet them for coffee or a walk and we talk about our stalls, our hopes, our process. I always want to write afterwards. Their company and conversation is a magic balm!

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Gain laundry detergent.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I love television as an art form and escapism. A good docuseries deep-diving on an unconventional family or a travel show exploring somewhere I’ve never been instantly captivates me. I can lose an entire day to television if I let myself. Sometimes I do.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

The collections of Canadian poetry that I’ve enjoyed most from recent years are The Program by Megan Fennya Jones, Exhibitionist by Molly Cross-Blanchard, and Midway by Kayla Czaga. These are books that boldly embrace intimacy, humor, and sadness in a way I always want my own work to.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I’ve always wanted to write a horror screenplay with Curtis LeBlanc and Shaun Robinson. We watch a lot of horror movies together and I think we’d come up with something really beautiful, contemporary and intense.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I love the origins of language and etymology and helping people. If I had a keener science-oriented brain, I think I would’ve loved to have been a speech pathologist.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I’ve been writing since I was very young. My first story was entitled The Dragon That Couldn’t Blow Flames. I think it’s because I love to talk but I can’t talk all day—not enough people will listen that long. Writing is a place I can continue conversations with myself in peace and in solitude without annoying everyone.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves by Sophie Gilbert.  And I just rewatched Parasite on a plane and it held up even better than I remembered!

20 - What are you currently working on?

I have a novel coming out with ECW Press called Soft Tissue and I am in the midst of working with my editor Pia Singhal and darkening the tonal arc of the book. It’s about reality television, stage parenting, dance culture and the darkness of social media fame.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;