1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Personal Attention Roleplay is my first book. Too early to say how its publication will affect my life, but the writing of it has been a revelation, in terms of finally taking my own writing seriously.
2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I did publish a poetry chapbook before this book of fiction, but fiction comes first for me, it’s the medium I feel most comfortable in, possibly because I read more fiction than anything else. I continue to be compelled by narrative structures (or un-structures) and by characters’ inner workings, I am always experimenting with how to pull those elements together into something like a whole.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
It takes me forever to start a new writing project, whether it’s a story or a series of poems, or dare I say, a novel. I have to mull the thing over in my head for weeks, or months, or possibly years, before I can commit even the first word to paper (or screen). First drafts are more like fifth or tenth drafts, because I’ve thought about the piece’s shape for so long, so they do tend to predict the piece’s final shape fairly reliably. I’d like to write a story or a poem that changes shape completely, though. Seems like a worthwhile exercise.
4 - Where does a poem or work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Up until this point, I’ve never had the confidence to approach “writing a book” from the get-go. It’s been a slow accumulation of shorter pieces into some sort of final product that I never would have imagined from the beginning of writing. Now that I’ve published a chapbook and a book, however, I worry that I’ll start approaching projects as “books” and that that will somehow hinder my ability to write anything risky or interesting. The idea of “writing a book” makes me overly aware of an audience.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love reading in public. In a previous life, I was the lead singer in a band, and I haven’t lost that desire to perform. I also love hearing other writers read. Words spoken aloud ring differently than they do on the page.
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?
A concern I have is how to write characters whose material realities and backgrounds are deeply considered, without resorting to a tepid form of identity politics that I see being promoted a lot in reading and writing circles these days. As a writer of “hyphenated experience,” I do tend to write characters who have similar identity markers to me, but I never want my stories to be driven by identity alone, or to imply that because a person is, say, Asian and queer and nonbinary, that they would experience or view the world in the same way as any other Asian, queer, nonbinary person, or that they need to represent a specific identity “correctly.” I am deeply uninterested in didactic fiction-writing, or fiction-writing that is meant to “build acceptance” for certain groups of people. Otherwise, I am concerned with how to write queerness, and I don’t mean how to write queer characters, but more so how writing itself may be queer, in its structure. Gail Scott, for instance, is a helpful writer to me, as she has been thinking through and working with this question for years.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
As mentioned, I dislike didactic writing, writing that tells us what to do politically. I think that fiction writers, if we have any useful role at all, should be asking difficult questions, though. Puncturing the veneer of the status quo! Not in an edgy, shock-value kind of way, but in a way that illuminates power structures, emotional complexities, historical contexts, cultural dissonances. I think that asking questions is more important and more desirable in fiction, than answering them. I also think that humour is important in fiction-writing, that making people laugh or grimace, sometimes in self-recognition, might be an essential writing role: being a funhouse mirror?
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential! Once I feel I have a final draft of a piece, that I’ve gone as far with it as I can alone, I welcome collaboration with a thoughtful, incisive editor.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Being on the internet too much means wading through a constant maelstrom of conflicting advice about everything, so it’s hard to say. I’ve definitely heard people recommend reading dialogue out loud, so as to illuminate any excess or clichés, and I think that’s pretty solid advice.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to prose to reviews to songwriting)? What do you see as the appeal?
I enjoy moving between genres. If one form is feeling tired to me, it is energizing to turn to another form. I’ve been trying to work on a novel lately, and when it’s felt like drudgery to write prose, I’ve turned to a perfume-review-based poetry project that I devised as a distraction. Even reading in other genres helps—reading a lot of poetry has helped me shape my prose, to cut out what is superfluous, to make phrases sharper.
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 am terrible at having a writing routine. My first book was written mainly when I was supposed to be doing something else (my day job). I am trying to figure out how to be a writer first, and a worker second, if that makes any sense, and a lot of the struggle has to do with discipline. I’m used to writing being a thing that I do to procrastinate on my actual responsibilities. If there is nothing I need to be doing except writing, how do I stop myself from turning away from that? When it’s the only thing left to be done, how to do it?
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Other writers and artists. I read a lot, and I watch a lot of movies and listen to a lot of music. I never want to be creating in a void. Other artists are the only people, usually unbeknownst to them, who can unstick me.
13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I’ve gotten into perfume during the pandemic, as a way to subtly differentiate one day from another. I spilled a sample of Zoologist’s Tyrannosaurus Rex, which is this gargantuan scent filled with bright flowers, smoke, leather, and incense, all over my kitchen table a while ago, and now my apartment smells like the late Cretaceous, which is fitting since we are now in the middle of another massive extinction event.
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?
Music always makes its way into my writing. So does whatever I’m watching. So do the things I overhear on the bus. So do the things my friends say. Everything eventually makes its way in—look out!
15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
So many. Renee Gladman, Gail Scott, Julio Cortázar, Yoko Tawada, Kiese Laymon, Hoa Nguyen, Jamaica Kincaid, Clarice Lispector, Silvina Ocampo, Qiu Miaojin are some favourite voices. I certainly wouldn’t claim to be able to write anything near any of them, but I keep them around, to help and challenge me. I also like to read gay smut (e.g. Straight To Hell), which is direct and filthy and keeps me honest.
16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Go to Hong Kong.
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 actually love being a bookseller. I did it for five years and would have happily kept doing it forever, had it been financially viable.
18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
I tried doing a lot of other things first, partly because I was too scared to write, even though I’d wanted to since I was a kid. So I guess it’s a deep compulsion, because finally, at 33 or so, I couldn’t stop myself anymore.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Minor Detail, by the Palestinian writer Adania Shibli (translated by Elisabeth Jaquette) is a book that marked me recently. Isabel Sandoval’s film Lingua Franca stuck with me, and made me search out all her other work.
20 - What are you currently working on?
I am slowly and painstakingly learning Cantonese, my mom’s first language. It is a humbling experience. I’m also working on a novel and a series of poems.
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