Ben Zalkind lives and works in
Calgary, Canada. His debut novel, Honeydew, was released by Radiant
Press in October 2025. A Salt Lake City native and naturalized Western
Canadian, Ben is happiest outdoors, where he can cycle, drink coffee, and
adventure with his wife and fellow traveller.
1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent
work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
My first novel, which has long been shelved, was a monumental
accomplishment. Before I finished it, I wasn’t sure I could plan and execute a
large and complicated project without external pressure. The novels that
followed haven’t necessarily been easier to write, but I no longer doubted
whether I could complete them. It was just a matter of juggling time, life
responsibilities, and writing cadence.
As I consider it, I’m not sure there’s a clear throughline connecting my projects.
Each one expresses a different stylistic impulse and dimension of self. Honeydew,
which was published by Radiant Press on October 7, 2025, is a wacky
dystopian satire with an ensemble cast. In contrast, Only by the Grace of
the Wind, which I serialized on Substack in 2024, is introspective and lyrical.
It draws from my own medical
training experiences, which I sieved through a surreal mesh.
Honeydew’s tone is probably my default, and I wrote
it quickly in the wee hours of morning before clinic. I find that humour is a
ready prism, especially when my guiding preoccupation—in this case, the rise of
big tech—is so baffling and infuriating. How does this one feel different?
Well, Honeydew is my traditional publishing debut, so it will be the
first of my novels to have wings, so to speak, and make its way into the world.
It will be the conduit through which readers meet me. And there is certainly
something daunting about that.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or
non-fiction?
Fiction is my first love, and I’ve always been drawn to the novel as a
form. But I also have an affinity for essays and long-form non-fiction, which continually
scrub and refocus my perspective. In a past life, I worked in journalism and
entertained atavistic and extravagant fantasies about being a man-of-letters
and writing for The New Yorker and Harper’s Magazine. These days,
I read a lot of nonfiction as research for my novels, which I feel demand an
up-to-date cache of knowledge about big tech, cultural history, and current
events. But when I sit down to write, I chafe against anything I perceive as a
restraint, and so I return to storyland, where I’ve always wanted to be. With
the exception of Robert Caro’s doorstopper biographies, which I believe to
contain some of the finest prose ever published, fiction has furnished my most
treasured reading experiences. It’s where I always land, if that makes sense.
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?
I’m quick. Once I have an idea, it dilates and unfurls itself, and I have
to wrestle it into an outline. As I write, I continually compile notes, some of
which I actually use. When the story is finished, I edit and revise like a
fanatic. The image that comes to my mind is of a crazed painter ransacking a
room they’ve just finished. They shave some of the paint off the rear wall and
repaint the segment over and over. Then, in a fit of pique, they kick a hole in
the drywall. And after a bit of reflection, they return to the room and sheepishly
repair the damage they’ve done. The cycle continues until the exhausted and
chastened painter throws up their hands, removes the blue tape from the
baseboards and ceiling, and says, “good enough.”
4 - Where does a work of fiction 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?
Though I enjoy short stories and admire writers who have mastered the
geometry and mystery of the form, I have always found myself planning long-form
projects from the outset. I love long, arcing, unwieldy stories, and though I
tend to want to make my stories really ponderous, I eventually pare them down.
They begin, I suppose, with a germ—either an image, an idea, or even a phrase.
And the process of writing is iterative. Even when I have a tidy, complete
outline, I still add and remove elements. A sort of Frankenstein’s monster
emerges in the margins that (I hope) only I can see. Somehow, it gets carved
into a bounded, coherent story.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are
you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I like doing readings, though I’ve never publicly shared anything unfinished.
I can see the benefit of doing so, however, and would certainly consider it in
the future. For anyone who might come to one of my book launches in October, I
do voices!
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?
This is such a good question. Ultimately, I’m interested in why, as the great
cultural critic, Thomas Frank, wrote in an essay for The Baffler magazine
in the early 90s, Johnny still can’t dissent. The machinery that organizes and
immures our lives (read: late-stage capitalism) seems to foreclose political
imagination and coopt any attempts at resistance. My primary preoccupation is how
that shapes the inner lives of would-be rebels. This could just be a reflection
of a personal psychological quirk, but a current of fecklessness runs through my
stories. The desire to change oneself or the world is ultimately stymied by
something, or someone, more powerful. More often than not, my characters tend
to suffer for their clear thinking. In my next novel, however, a victory of
sorts is on the horizon.
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?
To be honest, I don’t know if a truly shared culture still exists in
North America. At least, not in the way we might have discussed it in previous
decades. The eminent historian Daniel Rodgers describes our current era as
“fractured.” We’re atomized, isolated, siloed. Depending on our social
locations and unique configurations of identity and ideology, we all seem to
inhabit different currents in the slipstream. It’s kind of scary, I think.
My idealized writer archetype nettles, metabolizes, challenges, enthralls,
dazzles, and poetically witnesses. In an interview with Bill Moyers years and years ago, the late political scientist and all-around lucid thinker Sheldon Wolin remarked that the humanities’ most important role is to help us make
sense of what’s being done to us. I’d add only that I believe it’s also the
task of writers and other artists to irrigate their corners of reality with
aesthetic novelty, light, and energy. After all, what is justice without
beauty?
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult
or essential (or both)?
Like all intimate relationships, editorial arrangements can be tumultuous,
rewarding, infuriating, illuminating. Robert Caro and his longtime editor,
Robert Gottlieb, were close friends and enthusiastic opponents. Their shouting
matches were legendary. But Caro has been quick to credit much of his success
to Gottlieb, who’s perspicacity and farsightedness helped to shape Caro’s epic
biographies of so-called great men and the historical periods in which they
were ensconced. Theirs was a relationship backstopped with mutual trust. I also
suspect that Gottlieb’s understanding of Caro, what we might view as a sort of
writerly empathy, guided his textual sculpting. It’s delicate work.
I have had both good and bad experiences with editors. If a writer finds
an editor who really gets them and their project, it’s a special
feeling.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given
to you directly)?
Be curious and make conclusions sparingly.
10 - 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 tend to do almost all my writing in the early hours of morning, before I
head to clinic. I set a goal, usually 500-1000 words, and I meet it come hell
or high water. Sometimes, this means I write 500 tortured and flaccid words.
But I always meet my quota. Coffee is involved.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for
lack of a better word) inspiration?
My bookshelves. When I’m stuck, I go back to the bigs.
12 - What was your last Hallowe'en costume?
I can’t remember the last time I properly celebrated Halloween, but my
most memorable costume came from a mail-order catalogue in the mid-90s. When I
wore it, it appeared that I was a small elderly man on the back of an
pucker-faced elderly woman wearing a wedding dress and veil. I had a convincing
bald old man mask that I wore as well. It was a smash hit with adults and my
fellow teens alike.
13 - 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 have found tremendous inspiration in graphic novels, comics, and
animated films, especially in depicting the lineaments of human faces and
expressions.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or
simply your life outside of your work?
I’m grateful for radical thinking and unfettered imagination, which have
been recorded and preserved by intrepid, courageous publishers. These include
novelists, scholars, anti-capitalists/free-thinkers, poets, and mystics. Books
have always been my portal into the universe outside of (and in some cases,
inside of) my head. I tend to see their influence as a gestalt, a meshwork, and
it’s difficult for me to tug on one thread without bringing all the others with
it.
Some novelists who continue to inspire me include John Steinbeck, Robert Penn Warren, China Mieville, Willa Cather, Olaf Stapledon, Mervyn Peake,
Cynthia Ozick, Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Iain Banks, John Kennedy Toole, Ursula Le Guin, W. Somerset Maugham, P.G. Wodehouse, Philip K.Dick, Ralph Ellison, Terry Pratchett, Michael Chabon, Philip Pullman, Roald Dahl, Jules Feiffer, and Stanislaw Lem.
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
In my writing life, I’d like to tackle a really big story, an epic whose
arc spans a trilogy or perhaps a really big book with a bowed binding.
16 - 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?
As I get older, I can imagine so many alternative paths. My life trajectory
has been a bit meandering, with factotum stops in some unusual corners of the
work world, so I wonder what it would be like to fulfill a monomaniacal
mission. I’ve fantasized about all sorts of occupations—historian, scientist, professional
athlete, astronaut, freedom fighter, bagel baker.
I come from a family of professional classical musicians, so I can also
imagine a symphonic life.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
My mom says I started talking at 9 months (and never really stopped).
I’ve always admired visual artists, performers, and other “creatives,” and I
can imagine alternate realities in which fate endowed me with more ability and discernment
in these areas. But my preferred mode of expression has always been language. I
seek out stories others have written and I’m compelled by some inner fire to
put my own into the ether.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
In the past several months, I’ve been in research mode, so I’ve had the
good fortune to thumb through a number of truly excellent nonfiction books. But
the last great novel, which I read and savoured for its prose and imagination, was
Mervyn Peake’s 1946 masterpiece, Titus Groan.
As for films, I was astonished by the emotional sophistication of Anatomy of a Fall and the manic comic energy of Bottoms.
19- What are you currently working on?
It’s a sort
of follow-up to Honeydew, but not quite a sequel. I don’t want to say
too much, but we will see much more of Mo Honeydew, whose story will be one
strand of a three-part braided narrative that will expose new cracks and
crevices in Bonneville City, which is once again at the centre of a tectonic
technological shift.
12 or 20 (second series) questions;
