Enter the Octopus

After reading Jeff VanderMeer’s post praising the work of women in fantastic literature, I thought that it might be nice to interview as many of these significant authors as possible for their take on writing, their own work and sexism in their chosen field. The following is part one of an ongoing series. Please note that each author received the same set of questions.

Interview with Kelley Eskridge

Would you mind introducing yourself?

I’m Kelley. I write fiction, screenplays and essays. My novel Solitaire was a New York Times Notable Book, a Borders Books Original Voices selection, a finalist for the Nebula, Endeavour and Spectrum awards, and is currently being adapted for film. My short fiction collection Dangerous Space is out from Aqueduct Press. The stories in DS include an Astraea award winner, a Nebula award finalist, Tiptree Honor stories and a story adapted for television. I live in Seattle with my partner, novelist Nicola Griffith ( http://www.nicolagriffith.com).

When did you first consider yourself a serious writer?

I knew I was serious about writing when I was still in single digits. I wrote poems, and one day I wrote something that made me feel… bigger inside. I just kept wanting to feel that way.

I started believing I was a serious writer when I went to the Clarion workshop in 1988 and realized that my work could make other people feel that way too.

How would you describe your writing style?

In its best moments, transparent and ecstatic.

Who are your strongest influences?

Every human being I’ve ever met.

What is your greatest strength as a writer?

Character and relationship. Big feelings. The psychology of identity, relationship, love, hope, fear, and joy.

What is your biggest weakness?

My constant temptation to believe that writing about big feelings is enough.

What is your favorite piece out of everything that you’ve written?

My novella “Dangerous Space.” Music, sex, love, identity, speculative technology that plugs into big feelings… It was so much fun to write that I didn’t want to leave, which is of course what the whole story is about. Very meta that way.

As a woman, have you ever experienced sexism, bias or exclusion in your chosen field?

Sure, there’s sexism in writing — as there is racism, heterosexism, and every other way to exclude each other based on difference from cultural norm. Have I experienced individual exclusion? I don’t know: one of the ways in which these biases work most effectively is to be so systematized into our culture that we — those who act from bias and those who receive it — are often unaware of it on an individual basis. And I’ve also experienced the privileges and benefits of being white, well-educated, and hearing, so this is not a zero-sum game for me by any measure.

There have been about a million online discussions (many of them unpleasant and unproductive) about this issue. An interesting one is going on right now over at SF Signal ( http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/006846.html).

In my everyday writing life, the bias I experience most often is the disdain which many self-described literary writers and readers have for genre fiction. I find these people and their prejudice deeply silly, but there’s no denying the impact it has on those of us who want to wander around the playground rather than stay in our own little sandbox. I also see a lot of sexism in the movie industry on both the business and content level — women have a harder time breaking in, and women characters “should” be certain ways in movie stories in order to be likeable. There are some seriously retrograde gender assumptions underneath many film folks’ Hollywood hipness. I’m fortunate that my executive producers and director are smart, adventurous people who don’t subscribe to those notions.

Do you think that there are some common barriers that all writers who are women face?

Theoretically, maybe…but I’m not big on theory as a way to categorize experience: I find universality reductive, and I resist being reduced. We all face individual barriers to our own learning, growth, opportunity, goals, dreams, success, and those barriers are built both from the culture around us, and from a lifetime’s personal experience of family dynamics, class, race, gender expression, education, the list goes on. We have to work on these things together, but we experience them alone.

Are there any common strengths that women bring to the craft of fiction?

Not in my opinion. Some of the best writers I know are women, and so are some of the worst.

Historically, women have been driven by circumstance or necessity or training to focus their art on a particular set of concerns, and some people see the ability to produce art under those limitations as a strength of “women artists.” But again, art is something we do alone, and all the other things we are as people influence that art, if we understand that this is possible and allow it in ourselves. That’s as much true for straight white Christian Republican boys as it is for me, although the art itself is usually pretty different.

The public distribution of that art is another story. I’d love to poke everyone in the eye who’s ever said Well, then, where were all the great women writers in history? They were all making art that no one would publish, doofus, that’s where they were. Or they were giving up making art because no one would publish it.

Over all, do you think that the writing and publishing communities are healthier, worse, or about the same for women writers?

Healthier than 400 years ago, for sure.

But if by ‘communities’ you mean commercial publishing, then we’re back in the tension of public distribution of art, the tension between the cultural change that we can all certainly see and the personal experience that we ought not deny. Women writers are published every day. Women don’t only have to write about “women’s concerns” in order to find an outlet. But that doesn’t mean every woman writer now has access. There are still systems of exclusion that present difficult barriers to individual women writers — Nicola did an analysis of her own experience with this in a post called “Girl Cooties” ( http://lbc.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/girl-cooties.html) for the LitBlog Coop. And there are still systems of benefit that a lot of men writers really don’t want to acknowledge.

But publishing is changing radically. What does it mean to publish commercially when anyone with internet access can put a PDF and a PayPal link online? When independent presses with humanist sensibilities like Aqueduct and Small Beer are changing the publishing landscape? When trade imprints like HarperStudio are exploring new paradigms for the business? When writers are building their own virtual communities with each other and with readers, and bypassing traditional notions of publicity and publisher control?

What are your longterm career goals?

To write fiction and screenplays and essays that make me and you feel bigger inside, that make us dream and burn and bring us closer to ourselves. The rest — the big money, the glam, the pretty prizes — either comes or it doesn’t. I can’t control who buys my books or my scripts, but I am totally in charge of what I write and how I feel about myself as a writer. That’s the career I want.

What are you working on now?

A film based on my novel Solitaire is in development, and I’m rewriting the screenplay. It’s terrifying and exhilarating and hugely fun, and I have a truckload of ideas for more films — I have a couple of those in planning now.

I’ve also been approached to write a young adult novel, so I’m in the thinking stage of that. And I have another adult novel in mind, but I suspect that’s pretty far down the road right now. We’ll see.

Where can we go to learn more about you?

I have a website ( http://www.kelleyeskridge.com) that includes a blog, free stories and essays, audio and print interviews, and information and reviews about my work.

Where can we read your work?

You can read the first chapter of Solitaire ( http://www.kelleyeskridge.com/solitaire/solitaire-chapter-one/) or the Tiptree Honor short story “And Salome Danced” ( http://www.kelleyeskridge.com/dangerous-space/and-salome-danced/) from Dangerous Space.

Solitaire is out of print, but there are used copies floating around everywhere, and it’s in most library systems in the US. Dangerous Space is available at online bookstores, through your local bookstore, or directly from Aqueduct Press.

You can also read essays and articles ( http://www.kelleyeskridge.com/essays/

).

The floor’s all yours: is there anything else that you’d like to say?

Story connects us to ourselves. So don’t ever let anyone tell you what kind of stories you should read or write, what you should like or dislike. Don’t let anyone tell you what “should” move you to the deepest places of yourself. The cool thing is, whatever moves you is out there somewhere. Someone’s writing it. The great adventure is to go out and find it.

And that’s the other pleasure and power of story: it connects us to each other. Story brings us into common space — the human space, where difference becomes territory to explore with curiosity or hope or even joy… I think it’s one of the ways we stay human, by listening to each other’s stories.