Miranda Schreiber [photo credit: Sarah Bodri] is a Canadian writer and researcher. Her work has appeared in places like the Toronto Star, The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, BBC, and the National Post. She has been nominated for a digital publishing award by the National Media Foundation and was the recipient of the Solidarity and Pride Champion Award from the Ontario Federation of Labour. Iris and the Dead is her debut book.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Writing this book felt extremely time-sensitive because there was a certain perspective I wanted to communicate from. I felt like I had about a year-and-a-half. I intended the book to be forward-facing, like an opening of a set of questions, so I would like to look into those more in the future.
4 - Where does 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?
For this book I started with a sixty-page document and then gradually filled it in. I was always worried about saying too much and I was always trying to keep it short even after I decided it felt more like a book than short fiction. It’s also kind of a letter and the character being addressed is theoretically fundamentally distracted, so attention was a concern throughout.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I find that written work sounds better spoken usually, although some of it is lost. Talking about reading can be social but it’s really a solitary act, almost inherently so. Maybe the best way to experience writing is through reading alone, but reading out loud can be a helpful, elaborative part of making a book.
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?
I definitely do. I think it’s important for writing to have a political position, and I try to resist falling into a nihilistic or relativistic perspective. I don’t like the theory some stories end with that effectively says, well, so what? I hope that writing can attest to the sacredness of human existence, that it is essentially better to write your friend a message than to ask ChatGPT to do so because for our own safety we must maintain our freedom of thought and expression. I think it’s an important time to believe that things actually do matter.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
I definitely prefer writing that sets out a serious, objective claim but isn’t cruel. There is something really, really boring about writing that is contemptuous of most people. This kind of work is usually just repeating what the most powerful people in the world want us all to think about each other. I think good writing figures out how other people, and we ourselves, have been lied to, and – within reason – finds points of commonality among us.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Working with a good outside editor who is invested in the work as art, not as a commodity, is literally amazing for me. It gives the text its own life when someone else can tease out an aspect for further development. Of course it has to be the right person.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
The best piece of advice I’ve ever heard is something my grandpa used to say, which is that where there is breath there is hope. I think as an assertion it’s kind of the antidote to fascism. It elevates life over productivity and endows human experience with certain rights.
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (non-fiction to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?
I feel more natural writing fiction, and I feel more convinced when I’m writing in that genre that the work is actually finished when I send it off. Arguments made through non-fiction I think have to be incredibly specific and anticipatory of the reader’s healthy skepticism, particularly if they are challenging the climate of opinion in some way.
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 try really hard to keep writing as something I can theoretically do anywhere, independent of where I am or what time it is. I do find I write best if I’m alone, or at least no one can see what I’m working on. When I start getting too picky about where I feel like I can work I hear my Czech grandma saying “just sit and do it.”
12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
Favourite passages from literature I think are a good place to come back to, no matter how I feel about something I am working on. Music, nature. I think anything related to the sublime is inherently generative and plays a role in artistic expression.
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 think all of those forms are influential. I did a lot of reading of scientific texts and the philosophy of science for Iris and the Dead, especially ancient Greek science. Certain songs were also determinative in how I approached it as a project when I was conceptualizing it. I like the approach some musicians have to their craft: the fixation, the relentlessness. There is something very theatrical, sort of epic, about it that can be a good template.
19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
The last great book I read was Last Words from Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin. The last great movie I watched was the documentary Drunk On Too Much Life by Michelle Melles.
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