12 or 20 (second series) questions with Ben Zalkind

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;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Zachari Logan

Zachari Logan is a queer Canadian settler poet and artist whose artwork has been exhibited throughout North America, Europe and Asia. Logan’s work can be found in collections worldwide, including the National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, Remai Modern, Peabody Essex Museum, McMichael Canadian Art Collection and Nerman MOCA among many others. In 2014 Logan received the Lieutenant Governor’s Emerging Artist Award, in 2015 he received the Alumni of Influence Award from the University of Saskatchewan and in 2016 Logan was long-listed for the Sobey Art Award. In 2010, his chapbook, A Eulogy for the Buoyant, was published by JackPine Press and in 2021, A Natural History of Unnatural Things, was published by Radiant Press. Logan’s artwork and writing has been featured in many publications throughout the world. Zachari Logan lives in Regina, Saskatchewan.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different? In 2010 I had a chapbook published with JackPine Press, a lovely project driven publisher in Saskatoon that invite poets and visual artists to co-create hand made books, only 75 copies are ever made. I submitted a project as both poet and artist and my project was accepted. That chapbook titled, A Eulogy for the Buoyant, consisted of 11 poems all engaging the process of grieving my late father who died suddenly of liver cancer when I was 22. It was a very powerful project in many distinct ways, primarily it allowed me to creatively process the trauma of losing a parent. I often process everything in my life visually, in one way or another- but with this experience I was entirely unable to. I began simply writing things down, strange remembrances, stranger feelings, and memories always memories, some tied to my dad others simply about a childhood that included him… I had years before taken a poetry class with the wonderful poet Tim Lilburn during the final year of my undergrad at the University of Saskatchewan. I hadn’t had the inclination after the class that I was a poet or writer by any leap of the imagination, but that I really appreciated how visual and philosophical poetry could be (like visual art) a conductor of great questions about life- a mode of communication that was textual by nature, but could also be incredibly visual. My first full length book was A Natural History of Unnatural Things, (2021) and it was it was a catalyst for my continued desire to write much more regularly, and with a more centred confidence in my own voice.

2 - How did you come to visual art first, as opposed to, say, poetry, fiction or non-fiction? I was always drawing from early childhood. and for many years into my schooling could not either read or write without great difficulty because I have several overlapping forms of dyslexia.  It was noticed at a young age, and fortunately for me I was in special classes throughout the course of my education. But it was definitely a struggle for me.

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? For the past several years I have listened to what I refer to as a ‘small generator’ of particular thoughts or kernels of ideas. I simply jot the bones of whatever that is down when they occur to me- and later I either carry the thought further, if it needs it- or ignore it all together if it no longer appeals to me as an idea to pursue. There isn’t really a rhyme or reason to my writing in regard to speed, sometimes they pour out in a matter of minutes with little editing- other times ideas grow small and need multiple versions before they are fully formed.

4 - Where does a poem 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? Generally, thus far, my poetry begins with an accumulation… somewhere in the middle I begin to see threads that tie a theme, of course that is, aside from the chapbook I mentioned, which was a more or less fully formed thing when I proposed it.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings? I think poetry in particular has two lives, that of the reader enveloped in their own take on your writing, they are perhaps clothed in you while reading your words- and then there is the second life, which is the performative act of reciting, reading as a source of origin, putting your words on to read them out loud to an audience.

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 often reflect on past personal experiences in an attempt to relate them to both my present self and to what is happening more broadly in the world. My personal thoughts on my queerness, atheism, the nature of creating, and my continual enchantments with nature and art history are mainstays. Also rumination on places I have visited that help me to understand the world around me and reinforce a sense of place in the local.

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? Writing has many roles. I believe literacy is power. Writing a really good editorial requires a talent for persuasion, writing an article for a scientific journal requires a different type of discipline and relationship to specific information and how it is communicated; writing poetry is vastly different from the first two forms- but in it's own way, equally important and impressive when done well. The ability to reflect on ideas and experiences of the world around us is uniquely human. It is an important way to decipher how people and, more broadly how human systems operate. I am of the opinion that oral storytellers as well as those who write down stories in the form of prose or poetry are at their best a mirror to the reader or listener. If you see yourself the communication has resonated in some fundamental way. In my experience this can cause revulsion, adoration, sympathy or more subtle reactions that echo the former. At present there has been a resurgence in readership of novels like 1984, Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale- it’s really not that hard to imagine why- they have become classics relevant to the present moment because they mirror human experience.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)? Essential. The clarity it provides is akin for me to the difference between viewing one of my finished drawings in the studio and seeing it in context installed in a museum or gallery.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)? Never take rejection personally. Very few people are going to win big art or writing prizes- if you expect a lottery, don’t bother. Write or create because you cannot do otherwise, not for praise alone.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to visual art to collaboration)? What do you see as the appeal? I have not found it difficult at all. Each takes its time and requires its own process. These mentioned genres all seek at the same outcome- to share and acknowledge our experiences of the world around us.

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 don’t really have a routine when it comes to writing. It fills time when I have it to give. I would really benefit (I think) from a writing residency. Like the multiple artist residencies I have done, I think it would help to structure my practice a bit more. Maybe this would be a hindrance, I don't know- but I don’t getting the impression it would be.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration? I’m not sure I’ve ever been stalled, because I just let ideas come when it they do… I’m not beholden to any particular deadline because I’m often required to be absorbed, time-wise by my visual work.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home? Coffee beans. My morning coffee ritual.

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? Nature, art history, music and science have all been influential- as well as the quotidian, the reality of passing existence without fully knowing why- I guess I like a good question, but I’m not always interested in concrete answers. Green, my new book engages all of these forms- it also includes a visual component that are observations of artworks, plants, animals and other inanimate objects, a compendium of 5 years of experience in no particular order.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work? As a queer person, I am fascinated by religion, by religious texts, particularly the Bible. I was raised Catholic, but am no longer. It did however leave a mark. I have been deeply influenced by its visual tradition. In my visual practice, I often use catholic tropes to return a queer gaze on historical depictions of the male body. In my writing I have explored similarly the fears and fixations these teachings and writings provoke in their adherents. Notions of naturalness that exclude the queer experience, or work to other it- rather than understand it as a perfectly natural occurrence. I love the hypnotic language of fairy tales and often reference in particular the Grimm’s tales as well- I return to several Classical mythological characters often, Daphne and Persephone are particularly interesting to me due to their connections to rebirth and transformation.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done? Maybe write a novel.

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 would have worked in Theatre or film.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else? In a strange way, my dyslexia drew me to both visual art and writing.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film? Book: Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses. Two recent films I'd like to list: Night of The Hunter (1955); and A Face In The Crowd (1957)- which is frighteningly relevant in relation to the current American administration.

20 - What are you currently working on? I’m just finishing up a one-month artist residency and exhibition between Vienna, Austria and Sofia, Bulgaria. In the studio, I have several big projects presently in production for exhibitions in Italy this September and across Canada over the next 2 years. I’m also carrying on writing in the midst.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Courtney Bates-Hardy

Courtney Bates-Hardy is the author of Anatomical Venus (Radiant Press, 2024), House of Mystery (ChiZine Publications, 2016), and a chapbook, Sea Foam (JackPine Press, 2013). Her poems have appeared in Event, Vallum, Room, PRISM, and the Canadian Medical Association Journal, among others. She has been included in The Best Canadian Poetry 2021 and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She is queer and disabled, and one third of a writing group called The Pain Poets.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first book, House of Mystery, was proof that I could do it, I could write a book and get it published, and people would even read it. My second book, Anatomical Venus, was different from the first because I really wanted to take my time with it and be picky about the poems I included in it. House of Mystery was very inspired by fairy tales and the ways I could mix them with stories from my childhood and young adult years. Anatomical Venus became much more concerned with the chronic pain I was experiencing after being in several car accidents and I started to write about disability and pain through the lens of movie monsters and anatomical art.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I can’t recall if I wrote a poem or a short story first when I was young, but I kept going with poetry in a way I didn’t really with fiction or non-fiction. It’s much more difficult to find sustained amounts of time for fiction and non-fiction, so I’ve stuck with poetry. I love poetry and what I can do with it that I can’t do with fiction or non-fiction, and my brain tends to think in poetry-sized chunks, so it works out pretty well.

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 really depends on the poem. Some poems come quickly and appear looking close to their final form, some need more notes before I even start writing and go through multiple drafts, and other poems change completely from conception to final draft and might not even look like the same poem.

4 - Where does a poem 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?

Typically, I have an overarching idea for a book in mind but it might shift and change as I start writing the individual poems and do more reading and see what comes up.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

They should be more a part of my creative process. I try to read my poems out loud while I’m editing to get a sense of them but reading them for an audience gives more information about how the poems are landing—what lines are working, what parts are funny, which poems resonate. But there are always some poems that I’ll never feel comfortable reading at a public event, if I feel they’re too personal or too emotional to read though. I enjoy doing readings, although I do get nervous. I’m always happy to hear from the audience about what resonated for them, even if it’s just in the “hmms” and “aahs”.

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 Anatomical Venus, I wanted to answer the question about disability posed by Amanda Leduc that I included as the epigraph to the book: “What sort of happy ending can be found in constant struggle?” The final poems in the book are my response to that question.

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 write because I enjoy it and because I like to create meaning and art out of my life and my interests. If other people read my work and feel that I have captured something that they have felt or experienced, that makes me happy. If they read my work and it shows them something they haven’t felt or experienced before, that also makes me happy. I’ll leave the question of the Role of the Writer in Modern Society to the philosophers and greater writers than I.

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

I find it essential. I need an outside eye to tell me what they see in the work and what they don’t. Sometimes I need that extra little push to put something on the page that I’ve been dancing around in a poem. I worked with Jennifer LoveGrove on Anatomical Venus, and her feedback was immensely helpful.

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

My supervisor for my Master’s thesis was Kathleen Wall, and she told me that if I ran into a problem or a block in my writing, to put it in my back pocket (figuratively speaking) and let my subconscious work on it for a while before returning. It’s served me well.

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 don’t have a regular writing routine. Work takes up a lot of my time and energy, which is why it took eight years to finish and publish my most recent collection. I write when I can, when inspiration hits, when I go to writers’ retreats, and whenever I can type something into my notes app.

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

My reading. I’m always reading something, so I’ll turn to other books for inspiration or to learn more about something I would like to write about.

12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The smell of my girlfriend’s hair, my cat’s fur, and good food cooking on the stove.

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?

Absolutely, you name it: visual art, film, tv, nature, science, music, ballet, on and on. Some of the inspiration for poems in Anatomical Venus came from the tv shows Penny Dreadful and Hannibal; monsters from Godzilla, Hellboy II, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Blob; and anatomical art by Ercole Lelli, Eleanor Crook, Jaques Fabien Gautier d’Agoty.

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

Oh my goodness, so many. Amber Dawn for her queer poems, Amanda Leduc for her writing about disability and fairy tales, Joanna Ebenstein for writing about the history of the anatomical Venus in the first place, Sandra Ridley, Katherine Lawrence, and Jennifer LoveGrove for helping to shape the collection at different stages in the process. I’m also endlessly grateful to my writing group, The Pain Poets.

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

I’d like to go on a writing retreat at Banff, I’d like to be guest editor for a literary magazine, and I’d like to publish some of my non-fiction someday.

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?

Considering my full-time job is in marketing and communications, I don’t know that I would be doing anything else except writing. I thought about other things: teaching, publishing, library sciences, but they all circled around writing or reading in some way. If I could write full-time for myself, that would be a dream come true but that will have to wait until I can maybe, someday, hopefully retire.

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

I loved any kind of art growing up, but writing drew me in because I felt like I was better at it than things like drawing or painting. I had a poem published in the school newsletter in grade one, and that was it, I’ve been chasing that high ever since.

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

I recently read Jes Battis’ forthcoming collection of poetry, I Hate Parties, and I’m very excited to read at their launch in September. It’s a beautiful collection, so tender and meaningful, all about growing up queer and autistic. I also loved Joelle Barron’s new collection, Excerpts from a Burned Letter (historical lesbians!), Emily Austin’s Gay Girl Prayers (queered Biblical poems!), and Kayla Czaga’s Midway (stunning poems about complicated grief).

I just watched Alien: Romulus in theatres, and I loved it. I’m a big fan of the Alien movies, so I was pleased to see a new Alien movie that was so much fun to watch and paid tribute to the previous installments. Monkey Man with Dev Patel was another great one I watched recently that was a total surprise.

19 - What are you currently working on?

I’m working on my next collection of poetry, which doesn’t have a working title yet. So far, it’s about my experience of coming out as queer and polyamorous and reckoning with the religious trauma of my past while also celebrating the joy and care of having two loving partners. I’m doing a lot of reading on queer and lesbian figures from the past that I think will come into the collection in ways that remain to be seen. It’s a fun stage to be at and one of my favourite parts of the creative process.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Melia McClure

Melia McClure is the author of the novels All the World’s a Wonder and The Delphi Room. After a childhood spent dancing and acting, she has been seen on film, television, and the stage of The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Favourite acting memories include a turn as Juliet in an abridged collage of Shakespeare’s classic and a role in the much-loved TV series Stargate Atlantis. Film and theatre along with visual art are the three muses that inspire her writing. They kindle her fascination with the book-to-film metamorphosis. Her fiction is a confluence of magic realism, black humour, and abnormal psychology, opening unexpected backroads to elements of the metaphysical. Melia is a graduate of The Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, where she was born. She now divides her time between Canada and Europe.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

The publication of my first book vindicated my conviction that I could do something unusual with the novel form and see this odd literary concoction enter the wider world. The Delphi Room mixes prose—much of it in the form of an epistolary relationship—with screenplay and is a nod to cinema. My most recent work, All the World’s a Wonder, is a hat-tip to the theatre and marries playscript with prose, some of the latter as diary entries and emails, but almost all as character monologues that speak directly to the audience. One of my aims with this book was to transform the novel into a stage performance, with the reader in the front row. A play within a novel.

The Delphi Room is a love story about two cinephiles trapped in adjacent rooms which they believe to be hell; it uses an insular setting to access the expansive internal realities of its characters. In contrast, All the World’s a Wonder traverses from Manhattan to Corfu, and from modern day to the Jazz Age; it likewise plunges into emotional abysses and psychological chasms, but through a broader scope of storytelling.  

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?

I’m an actor, and for me, fiction is a natural extension of performing. When I write, I’m channelling the characters the way an actor does, and for that reason my fiction is voice-driven and dialogue-rich.

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 can be slow to commence and slow to proceed. My approach is careful and intuitive. I can also write scenes at a rapid pace once I’ve said to hell with it and stepped on stage, so to speak. I often have an opening scene in mind. Because I work by listening for direction from the characters, who frequently say surprising and inconveniently illogical things, I must make an epic pact of trust that what they say is leading somewhere, preferably not off a cliff. Although the editing process is invaluable, my early drafts look quite similar to the final result. Perhaps this is because I need to be loving the language and the voices and feel that the bones of the piece are strong to continue the journey.

4 - Where does a 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?

I began my writing life with short fiction, but now most of my prose begins with the idea that what I’m writing will become a book. That said, a novel is constructed scene by scene, and because my work tends to spring from the perspective of a dramaturge, I venture forth with a focus on the dramatic microcosm and let the macrocosm take care of itself.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

My novels are written for live performance. Storytelling is an oral tradition. I love to put on my actor hat and share the work with an audience.

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?

When I began writing All the World’s a Wonder, I was musing on how one might go about bringing to literary life the mysticism and theatrics of the creative process, its devastation and exultation. My lens was on the artist as conduit, on the artistic impulse being dictated by deathless otherworldly characters.

All my work asks metaphysical questions, bends time and space while remaining rooted in realism, and probes the possibilities of the mind, love, and redemption.

Art is a call and response about the search for meaning. So, although the questions posed by a given work may be coloured by the details of the day, the answers we are striving toward are intemporal. An artist offers incomplete answers which are perhaps fragments of an ineffable completeness.

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?

Art reminds us that what we refer to as reality is just one possibility plucked from an infinite spectrum of potentials. The writer opens the door to dimensions which are not already unveiled in the temporal world, and these dimensions would never be actualized here, were it not for the artist’s insistence on prying into shadowy corners.

It is through the stories we tell and the stories we read that the stories we live are revealed anew.

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

A keen editor is the essential first audience member, and the editorial process is an extended dress rehearsal, to lean on theatre jargon. Is the performance playing to the back of the house? Will tomatoes be tossed?

Still, the process is delicate, and thus stepping into it involves a degree of trepidation. To feel protective of one’s creations is only natural; for the writer, a difficult balance of defensive vigilance and open-minded serenity is required.

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

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (writing to acting to dance)? What do you see as the appeal?

Dance was an important part of my childhood and my introduction to performance. Acting also began early, as did making up stories and writing them down. Storytelling and self-expression were always essential, no matter what form they took. Writing and acting seem a natural pair to me, the internal and external versions of the same expressive imperative. With writing, I love that I can both become the characters as an actor does—even though no one can see me—and perch in the director’s chair, guiding the action.

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?

Morning, when the mind has just journeyed back from the other side of elsewhere and life has yet to pounce from all angles, is preferred. Tea, reverie, write, celebrate wee victories.

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

Years ago, I began dabbling with paint. It is a way to experience the pure freedom and joy of creation without the pressure of striving to excel. The art of child’s play.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

The scent of backstage, of a slant of spotlight streaming with dust.  

My parents gave me the chance to taste the stage early on. Their support is my talisman. Even when I was a very young child in a ballet recital, the scent of an old theatre and the warm smell of bright lights felt like a second home and meant both a deep connection to my family and to grand unknown realms, soon to be born.

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?

Books are sensory experiences that come from other sensory experiences. Henry, a character in All the World’s a Wonder, is a violinist. I was inspired by the singular transporting sensation of a solo violinist playing Ravel. Anais, from the same novel, is passionate about cuisine, her culinary creations paying homage both to her Hungarian grandmother and to the beauty of Greece.

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

I will read the gamut from crime fiction to haiku to stage play. I am less concerned with my taste and more simply curious about the possible majesty of words and story. Many of the writers I’ve long loved—Alice Munro, to name a beloved icon—have a style very different from my own. If anything, I am drawn to what is far departed from my favoured stomping ground. I love reading stage plays as it feeds my fondness for dialogue. I adored The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh when I saw it on the stage and recently loved it again on the page.

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

Travel the Silk Road. When I think of storytelling as a spoken-word tradition, I think of a caravanserai full of traders bearing tales. The chronicles collected and shared along these fabled routes doubtless served as spiritual lamps for weary travellers in the cold firelight, and likely influenced the world of then and now in far more ways than we can imagine.

As both the traveller and the storyteller know, and in the words of André Breton, “…literature is one of the saddest roads that leads to everything.”

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?

The healing arts. Words can heal, but if not words, then herbs.

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

It is in writing the voices of others that I feel most myself.

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

I reread Lisa Moore’s short-story collection Open. A white napkin, marked with red lipstick and fallen to the ground, is a wounded dove. Arresting.

One of my treasured films is The Road Home, directed by Zhang Yimou. Simple, gentle, graceful, timeless.

20 - What are you currently working on?

There seem to be characters chattering in my ear, flinging themselves between Southeast Asia and New York, barking out another novel. Heaven forfend.

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