Finnian Burnett

Five Questions With Christina Myers

Finnian Burnett

August 26, 2024

Welcome to the 5 Questions Series. Each week, I’ll ask five questions of some of my favorite authors, editors, publishers, and other industry professionals. This week, I’m talking with Christina Myers.

Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. First, I’ve been hearing so much about Halfway Home! Congratulations on your launch. Would you be willing to talk about that collection? What inspired it?

Thank you! The last few months have certainly been a whirlwind and I think (knock on wood) it’s been well received so far, but time will tell. So, the book is called Halfway Home: Thoughts from Midlife and it was published in May by House of Anansi. It’s a collection of essays that rove over a huge amount of territory – we summed it up at one point by describing it as “from first bras to first signs of menopause.” So it’s all of that and more – about puberty and gender expectations and bodies and diet culture and growing up as a child born in the 70s, through to witchcraft and the climate crisis, and conversations around identity and menopause and aging. Did I mention it covers a lot of territory? It’s really about being this age (almost 50) at this time in the world (housing crisis, climate change, cultural shifts) and looking back over what we’ve been taught to believe, and looking ahead to what may be coming, with a lot of uncertainty in there.

And that’s really what inspired it – literally just me being like “holy potatoes, where am I now? How did I get here? What’s around the corner” and realizing that I was having all of those conversations internally but so were most of my peers. And we all felt kind of weird and a bit isolated in that. Like everyone thinks you’re supposed to have things figured out by now and in some ways you do – you start to shift off other people’s expectations of you and your own becomes so much more primary – but in a lot of ways you’re always still learning how to be you, right now, in this time. Like I’m a parent of teens now and I’ve NEVER been a parent to teens before – I don’t know what I’m doing! Whatever stage you’re in, it’s always new to you and you’re always still figuring things out. And I write, to figure things out.

You edited a collection of non-fiction essays about life in plus-size bodies, Big. That collection resonated with me, and apparently, a lot of other people. Why do you think people were ready to read the truth about fat bodies and what would you do differently if you were putting that out today?

There was a lot of great work out there already that was speaking to this topic – certainly a ton of great individual memoirs from various writers, mostly in the US, and a lot of great academic work coming out of gender studies and women’s studies and related fields. A lot of it, particularly the academic work, was and is really revolutionary stuff, really picking apart roots of fat stigma and fat phobia and all the associated junk there (surprise surprise, lots of it is rooted in racism and homophobia and patriarchy.) So, for me the anthology was really just adding to a conversation that was already going on for a long time, but I think – I hope – it pulled in some readers who might not have been engaging with those conversations yet. When you’re inside a conversation already it’s hard to remember there are people who aren’t even aware the conversation is happening. So I wanted a book that included a lot of powerful voices, people who knew where they stood, people who were individuallly engaging with fat activism … but I also wanted people who were just like “I’m not sure, I feel really messy about my body and about the world it lives in sometimes, but I’m trying.”

I always say that we can know intellectually that beauty culture is garbage and designed to make us feel like crap and to buy more stuff and to just keep hating ourselves – we can KNOW that … but then every day we have to go back out into the stew and swim in it all day. It’s not simple and straightforward. It certainly isn’t for me. I have days where I’m terrible to myself, inside my own head, things I wouldn’t say to my worst enemy and then I think jeez what a fake you are, you put out this book and you still have weird self-image garbage going on inside? I don’t know that these things will ever be resolved for me entirely – I was born in the mid-70s, grew up in peak diet culture, my weight was a huge aspect of my childhood/teen years, and shedding all of that entirely is tough work. I think it’s important to acknowledge that none of this work is linear or perfect; we do what we can, we fall back and keep going.

What would I do differently? I think that book needed more queer voices, more people of colour; there was some but it needed more. That’s on me, I didn’t do a good enough job spreading the word and making sure as many people as possible heard about the call. And I would do it with a co-editor, someone to bounce ideas off, someone with a very different background than my own with their own perspective.

People have asked me if I’d change the title if I did it again, because the title got some heat which I heard about indirectly through the old grapevine (nothing is secret for long in this world lol). I know there were people who thought it was copping out to have a book about being fat that didn’t include the word in the title. I don’t know that I’d change it. It was a decision I thought about for a long time and was intentional – we had more than one conversation about it with the whole team at the publisher’s. I’m good with the word “fat” myself, I have wrestled with what that word used to mean, how it was intended to shame and I’ve shifted away from that. But it’s still a really loaded word for most people. I didn’t want the title to dissuade a reader. Like I said in an interview on this once, I don’t need to convince the choir that’s already singing inside the church to come listen to the sermon … I need the person walking by, who hasn’t learned anything at all about the sermon, to smell the coffee and hear the laughter and decide it’s worth coming in the door. I thought a lot about the reader – people like my mom and my aunts, who grew up in a time when to be fat was about the worst sin a woman could commit, and friends and peers who aren’t even aware there are conversations and activism going on in this realm – and I knew that a brightly coloured, cheerful cover (also very intentional) and the word “big” would invite in more of the people on that sidewalk. Like, really – fat stigma runs so deep that there are lots of people who would be embarrassed to bring the book to the cashier, because of the word on the front cover. Is that copping out for me to not use it then? To bow to that? To know it might freak people out? Maybe. But I hated the possibility of missing the reader who needed this book, so I didn’t use it that way. I know people disagreed with that, and as a people pleaser that is tough for me. But it was intentional and considered, and I heard from so many readers who basically said that approach worked: they’d say “gosh, the cover pulled me in and I’m so glad it did.” And many of them were encountering brand new ideas there. Maybe the sequel could be called Big 2: The F Word and the essays could include ruminations on the word itself? But someone else can do that book – I need a few more years to recover, it was a lot of emotions, to work on that book!

You have another collected work coming out this year? Can you talk about that?

Yes! My friend, Oga Nwobosi and myself are working on an anthology right now on the topic of post-partum depression as co-editors. Oga and I met in a PPD support group after the births of our first children. She and I both come from journalism backgrounds. Over the years I had thought about this project many times and finally one day I just sent her a note and said “hey, I have this idea and every time I think about the idea, the universe shouts at me to talk to you, are you interested” and the response was immediate. She’d been thinking about the same thing for years, wanting to create some kind of book around this topic and not really being sure where to start. So we sat down and brainstormed and wrote a proposal, and then reached out to the publisher that did Big with me and they were on board. We just closed the submission call and we’re going through the submissions now. We’re hoping to be out in 2025 but no set date yet. The working title is Beyond Blue but we’re not sure if that will be the final, in the end.

What advice would you give emerging authors on finding an agent or publisher in today’s literary market?

Just keep doing good work. Your work will speak for itself. And be brave. Be willing to get the “no.” Be comfortable with risking your pride and sounding silly and getting the rejection. Almost every single good thing that has happened for me in my writing career came after I wrote an email and closed my eyes and hit “send” … or I dialed a phone number and started talking before I could convince myself to hang up … or I held my breath and clicked “submit” on some contest or another. I know that’s not practical advice but I think it’s real: don’t be worried about being told no, be worried about getting to the end of things and you were so scared of the no that you didn’t try.

And be polite, for heaven’s sake. The publishing world is small. If you’re a jerk or hard to work with, it will get around fast.

What are you working on next?

I’m almost done (like, the finish line is in sight) the draft of my next novel, tentatively titled Borderlands, which is about a massive natural disaster and three characters here in BC who find each other in the fallout of that event. It’s been supported by grants from both the Canada Arts Council and the BC Arts Council, so I feel really, really grateful about that. It’s very different than my first novel and, of course, very different than my essays. I’m also working on a proposal for another non-fiction book about community and food and eating together. I have a hard time staying in my genre lane, and many of my ideas jump from genre to genre and from one area to another within a genre (I have some romance ideas outlined for down the road, too and I’m hoping to work on a co-written novel with my sister that has a sci-fi bent to it.) A writer friend once described me as having genre commitment issues, and it’s true. I just get excited about different things!

Bonus question: Have you ever taken a picture of a weird bird?

As luck would have it, I took this picture today – not weird, but beautiful (though you don’t want to get close in nesting season, then they’re not beautiful but terrifying dinosaur-like monsters!)

For upcoming events, book news, social media or to subscribe to Christina’s newsletter:
https://linktr.ee/christinamyers

Five Questions with Kelly Mary McAllister

Finnian Burnett

no comments

August 12, 2024

Thank you for agreeing to talk with me. You first came to my attention when I saw your spoken word poetry for Toronto Poetry Slam. “I hate that my self-loathing is always lurking just below the surface.” I listened to that about ten times and then stalked your entire page.

How has slam poetry informed your creative process, or your relationship with writing in general?

Like many people, I did so much writing during the pandemic that I was awash in words and bursting to share them. Of course we were all in isolation; like many, I turned to the internet. Took my first foray into the online poetry world and found some truly inspiring communities of writers. From a weekly workshop that I attend to this day based out of El Paso (shout out Tumblewords), to various open mics, to remarkable peers and mentors; it was a creative treasure chest. I quickly noticed that many of my favs were doing Slams.

Of course I wanted to try it, all the cool kids were doing it. But I wasn’t sure if it would be for me. I was uncertain about the competition aspect, about how it would feel putting something so vulnerable on a stage and than asking strangers to judge it! Turns out I LOVED it. The competition aspect is there, but the Slam community in and around the Greater Toronto Area is just so supportive. The people are welcoming, and kind. Competitors cheer for each other. The audiences are so earnestly invested in the poems. It makes reading one of my pieces into an act of catharsis. I can almost feel the emotions I’ve poured into it dissipating in the stage lights.

I’m so grateful to be a part of that community. It has pushed me to sharpen my skills, as both a writer and a performer, and to recognize which works jump of the page, demanding to be performed, and which nestle in, preferring the intimacy of being read. I’ve learned that, for me at least, winning isn’t the point. Putting a piece I am proud of into the world, performed to the best of my abilities, is my only goal. If I can achieve that? I’m good.

You have a book of poetry out. Can you talk about the process to write and publish that?

I fear it’s not much of a tale… or perhaps too much of one… To start, I didn’t set out to write a book. I didn’t event set out to write a chapbook. I was going through some complicated life events and wrote to make sense of the world and my place in it. I lost a close friend to suicide and then an estranged uncle died after a complicated life. I was losing my mobility to arthritis and dealing with a medical system that is hostile to fat people. I was mentally ill and totally alone during a worldwide pandemic. In short, I was messy.
So, I cleaned and decluttered the only way I knew how: by writing. Ending up with so many pieces on some consistent themes, that I started to put together a few chapbooks to send out. In doing so, I found even more unifying threads in my three favourites. And lo, Dead Weight was born.
A hybrid press that a few of my peers have published through, Read or Green Books, reached out and inquired if I’d be interested in joining their group of poets releasing debut collections. As I wasn’t able to invest in self-publishing and didn’t feel married to the idea of traditional publishing, it was a great model to get my words into the world. It’s been a really wonderful experience so far, and the support has been overwhelming and humbling in the best possible ways.

Would you be willing to talk about the reality of existing as a fat person on the internet, especially in the creative arts?

Firstly, I love that you used the word fat. I’m a big proponent that it’s just a world that describes me accurately. It’s not inherently negative. Do people use it as a weapon? Absolutely. Often and frequently, with little to no provocation. Particularly online. It’s the one size fits all cudgel that anyone can use to hit me where it hurts.

Well, they say write what you know, and I know fatness intimately. Accordingly, many of my poems deal with my size. More specifically, the shame I had spent most my life marinating in. I was convinced if I never pointed it out, if I could just hide inside voluminous clothes and behind my large personality, no one would even notice that I was actually fat. Because I knew how poorly they viewed fat people.

But my size is often the first thing people notice about me. It informs how they interact with me, how they treat me. It’s the cause of most of the casual cruelty to which I am subjected. Shame was eating me up from the inside and the world was hammering away from the outside and no one was coming to save me.

So, I choose to save myself. To actively let go of the shame where I could. To stop hating myself. I started to share my poems. To get in front of a crowd, as a fat person, onstage, with a microphone, loudly proclaiming her own fatness. That yes, I am fat, but I still deserved dignity, and love, and respect. That I am a person first and I am as worthy as any other. It was a selfish act, a braggadocious middle finger to those that liked it when I swallowed their cruelty and judgement and patronizing concern. It was a reclamation of my own pride in a public arena.

But I was surprised by how many people it meant something to. The people who would openly cry in the audience. Who would find me after my set and call me brave. The ones who tell me they saw themselves in my words. It made me feel less alone. It gave me a sense of community, and camaraderie. By owning my size and sharing my shame, I felt lighter. In every sense of the word. Writing the poems was catharsis but sharing them was healing.

What are you working on now?

Loaded question! Nothing concrete at the moment. Still writing poetry regularly. Tinkering with a YA manuscript I wrote on a lark. Writing is my passion, but not my day job, so I’m careful to not get ahead of myself and burn out.

Do you have any advice for emerging poets on how to find their space in the creative world.

I never feel qualified to give actual advice, but for what it is worth, I’d say to follow the voices that resonate in your soul. Follow the writers that you admire online, subscribe to the journals whose style you like, sign up for random workshops or open mics until you find communities where you feel like you fit. Experiment with different styles, voices, themes. Even if they feel awkward on your pen. Especially then! Try to surprise yourself. Ask for feedback often and authentically. Consider any feedback you are given from as humble a place as you can muster. But ultimately, your voice is your own. Your only real goal should be to craft it, hone it, sharpen it, so you can wield it in the way you want to. So you can tell the stories you feel compelled to tell. So you can share the truths you want known.

Bonus question: Have you ever taken a picture of a weird bird?

One better! There’s Canada Goose that constantly hangs out behind my apartment. This is him watching me, watching him.

Love this goose!

Kelly Mary McAllister’s book and more information can be found here.

Five(ish) Questions with Andrew Buckley

Finnian Burnett

no comments

July 29, 2024

Andrew can be found online here and Havelock can be found here.

As promised in the video, a picture of one of Andrew’s chickens. Thelma (the other is, of course, Louise)

Five Questions with Maria McLeod

Finnian Burnett

no comments

July 15, 2024

First, your work recently appeared in volume 2 of Anodyne Magazine and they named you their featured writer for the issue. Can you tell me a little bit about those pieces and the inspiration for them?

Between 2018 and 2024, I had three surgeries. They included two surgeries six years apart for breast cancer, diagnosed in one breast and then in the other, and a third surgery for suspected ovarian cancer and severe endometriosis, which resulted in a complete hysterectomy. I did not have ovarian cancer, but the endometriosis — which had been undiagnosed for many years despite obvious symptoms — had created a pre-cancerous state that very well may have turned into cancer down the road. So, those were the topics that were occupying my mind, which is how they ended up subjects for my poetry.

I wrote “Pink Roses” first, which is related to my first biopsy for breast cancer in 2018. I often find the cliché feminine artwork featured in medical settings focused on women’s health (i.e. mammography and gynecology) absurdly consolatory. So, I think the poem started there, the image of pink roses as wall art. Of course, the poem is less a critique of the art choices and more about a moment, the hinge between the pre-diagnosis and post-diagnosis, between benign and malignant. It’s a feeling of dividing in half, oneself with plans for a happy and healthy future, and the other self suddenly redefined as ill, facing one’s mortality — a reckoning scene.

“Grateful,” is more of a rant poem that felt cathartic to write because, of course, I’m angry that so many of us go through these forms of cancer. So often the characterization of the cancer patient, the media framing, is of a person who is grateful, but that ignores the reality of becoming a medical subject. You enter a medical machine that has its own norms and protocols to which the subject, the patient, is expected to adhere. Because most of the experience is physically and emotionally difficult, “grateful” becomes a reductive characterization and misnomer as a summary of subject’s overall experience. The third poem, “For the Taking,” falls under the category of rant poem as well, but that poem moves away from the personal and addresses the universality, “the us,” of the breast cancer patient experience, especially aspects which feel dehumanizing and/or demoralizing.

I read a flash fiction piece of yours, Poly Di, in Cease Cows Magazine and I can’t stop thinking about it. Can you tell me about the writing and publishing process for that story?

Firstly, thank you for looking up that weird little prose poem, which I’m so happy Cease Cows published. That piece resulted from my work on contract to produce a book detailing the history of the Washington State Department of Ecology. It was a year-long project, during which time I conducted several interviews with environmental experts, creating an oral history of the agency’s first 35 years. Not being a scientist, I was overwhelmed, frankly, by what I was learning, especially about everyday chemicals — EPA-permitted chemicals — that were wreaking havoc with the environment and our health. The chapter I produced that most concerned me was on persistent bioaccumulative toxins, such as flame retardants that were used in all sorts of domestic products (till 2013), but which humans absorbed through breathing household dust, or consumed as residue in foods, or encountered through another household product. Most disturbing was the fact that flame retardants were present in human breast milk, which infants then consumed. So, “Poly Di,” short for Polybrominated Diphenyl Ethers, was the name I chose for the baby that is the subject of the poem. In a weirdly fantastical way, she personifies the toxic flame retardant and references or enacts the potential biological ill effects of PBDEs upon the body.

So, that poem, “Poly Di,” although somewhat tongue-in-cheek, was a way of voicing concern, my alarm bell. It wasn’t until later when I was diagnosed with cancer and endometriosis that I, too, began to understand my illnesses were likely caused by endocrine disruption I’d experienced during puberty from exposure to toxic chemicals.

I’m fascinated with your work, particularly as it pertains to health and the female body. Can you tell me about the one-woman show you wrote in grad school and what that has led to in your current work in progress?

Great question! I grew up as the eldest of four with three younger brothers. No sisters. This was long before there was much, if any, awareness that gender was a construct and that the polarized characterization of man/woman didn’t reflect the reality of the gender spectrum. Something I clearly remember happening during my adolescence was that suddenly it wasn’t acceptable for me to engage in activities more traditionally assigned to boys. This was made obvious because of the difference between behavioral expectations for me versus my three brothers, to which I objected.

This gender division was further emphasized when I began seeing gynecologists for routine exams. I encountered a series of questions typically asked of me (and other women): date of first menstruation, number of sexual partners, number of live births, number of abortions and/or miscarriages, diagnosed sexually transmitted diseases, type of birth control, etc. Socially, this suggests that the onus of having a sexual body, which can result in sexual diseases, pregnancies, etc., is unfairly placed upon women as they must confront these issues when they interact with medical professionals. Boys and men were not questioned in this fashion. I knew this because I questioned my brothers. They had never been asked what form of birth control they were using, or questions related to their sexual behavior, or questions that suggested they had any responsibility related to reproduction, which I experienced as entirely sexist. Also, I found the questionnaires were biased, favoring heterosexual women. Furthermore, many of those questions were more complicated to answer than the space provided. So, I would say that my one-woman show, titled “Sexual History Questionnaire,” addressed that. Also, I should add that I filled the theatre with sexual history questionnaires — one on every seat — and I peeked from backstage to see people baffled and offended to be asked those questions, which was exactly my goal, to create the context for my performance where they felt the intrusiveness of having to account for their sexual behavior and experiences. All these years, post MFA, I’m still interested in and writing about topics related to sexuality and equity.

Why do you think it’s important for you to write about bodies and health?

See responses to questions one, two, and three. (Ha!) I’m only half kidding. Here’s where I must express how thankful I am to Anodyne Magazine for creating a space for these narratives. I feel as though I’ve waited my entire life for a publication like this to arrive. In general, here are my top three reasons for writing about health and the body (as a feminist):

One: Because the male, cisgender body is still considered normative in the medical realm, especially in terms of research.

Two: Because health issues — the protocols and norms of health care and access to medical treatment — is indicative of the social biases, inequities experienced by marginalized populations, and the disparities between rich and the poor.

Three: Because counter narratives from the *FLINTA community — whether it be visual art, prose, poetry, scholarly research or hybrid works — are necessary for a more inclusive understanding of critical health issues. [*Female, Lesbian, Intersex, Trans, and Agender]

Is it challenging to switch between academic writing and creative writing?

Yes, I would describe the switching as a slow process rather than an off/on. Also, I literally cannot do both at the same time, at least not the generative aspects. I can edit creative work when engaged in academic or scholarly work, but I need to be in a different headspace and immerse myself in creative writing of others, swim in their work and words, before I can generate my own. The one through line is that my academic work of late is related to the use of personal narratives/testimonials to promote cancer care centers. I’m interested in the media framing, and the editorial choices made, in the representation of the cancer experience. The process of production, however, feels very different and distinct from the creative process. In general, I write creatively in the summer and work on academic or scholarly writing during the school year.

Bonus question: Have you ever taken a picture of a weird bird?

Yes. I’m somewhat obsessed with the Evening Grosbeak, which is a bird that is native to the Pacific Northwestern United States. They’re beautiful, chirpy birds with parrot-like beaks. They appear to be highly sociable and arrive late spring, en masse. This one held very still for the photo as he was a little stunned from smacking into my window. Eventually, he flew off to meet up with his friends.

Maria can be found on Instagram and X/Twitter

Five Questions with Kevin Craig

Finnian Burnett

no comments

July 1, 2024

I’ve read several works of yours now (Pride Must be a Place, The Camino Club, This is Me in Grade Nine) and your voice when writing young queer people is so beautifully done. Do you generally gravitate toward writing young characters and why? (Ed. Note. I just finished Pride Must Be a Place and it’s living in my head right now. So gorgeously done, so relatable, and so very good.)

Thanks so much, Finnian! Yes, I definitely do focus on writing young characters. It was such a momentous time in my own life. Who we are—in our absolute core being—this is formed in those tumultuous years when we’re not yet fully formed and don’t have any of the coping mechanisms in place that would help us get through the joys, sorrows, and traumas we experience in that time. It’s possibly the most unfair thing about being human. We become while struggling to realize that we’re even alive. Childhood and young adulthood are so filled with lessons and failings and strife and beauty. It’s a well of literary fodder I don’t see myself ever leaving. I experienced so much trauma in that theatre, and I draw from it every time I sit down to write. Also, as an elder queer, I see an importance to put in place the literature that was non-existent when I was navigating my own idiotic deer-in-the-headlights childhood. I was a mad daisy, crashing through that time like someone who had exactly twenty years to live and I was desperate to live all twenty of them in a ball of flames. I was so intent on burning bright before I faded away, to paraphrase Jeff Blackburn via Neil Young. I was certain my trauma would kill me, so I dove into the chaos. And this is why I always return to that time and write young characters, even when I’m not writing young adult novels (Sebastian’s Poet and The Reasons are both adult theme novels with child narrators).

How has LGBTQ literature change since you were a kid?

I want to insert a sardonic shrill of laughter here. I could say that LGBTQ literature was completely non-existent back when I was a kid, but of course I would be wrong. It was not, however, mainstream. I personally did not find it back then. It was underground, bought in back alley places by adults and served in brown paper bags. Hell, being LGBTQ was underground. I was a kid in the ’70s, back when Ernie and Bert were roommate bachelors. I remember the first time I read A Separate Peace somewhere around 1977. I was highly skilled at manipulating that book into a gay unrequited love story. That’s what I did, I bent story to create something resembling what I wanted to see. Also Johnny and Ponyboy…I jerry-rigged that story too. My version was flimsy and ethereal and if I squinted it disappeared into the mist of reality. Oh my god, I loved Johnny Cade! Don’t even get me started on how perfectly he was cast later when the movie came out. I also loved Ralph Macchio. There was always a part of me that knew the truth, though…that a lot of what I read into a story wasn’t there on the page. LGBTQ literature is HERE now. That’s how much it changed. It exists. I thank the universe every day that today’s kids have access to literature wherein they can see themselves. Not having that was one of the biggest traumas of queer childhood back then. Literature has always been a place of refuge for children, straight or queer. The queer ones went inside for that refuge and didn’t really find it.

What book or story of yours are you most proud of?

That’s a real hard one. All my babies are close to my heart for different reasons. I love Sebastian’s Poet and The Reasons because they were my first. AND I wrote them at the Muskoka Novel Marathon. I wrote Sebastian’s Poet in 48hrs and The Reasons in 72hrs. First word to the last. They underwent editing, but the entire stories were written in those time frames and I’m most proud of the way they came together all at once like that. But The Camino Club is the one that means the most to me. I carried that entire story across Spain while I walked my own pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago. I had this vision that The Breakfast Club could be done so much more inclusively. Yeah, they had different high school cliques represented…for sure they did. But it was entirely straight white washed. I wanted to f*ck that up a bit. The world isn’t solely white and straight, as much as the 80s and earlier would have liked us to believe. The characters in that book absolutely haunted my Camino in 2014…I walked with each of them in my head. I saw it coming together as I walked through the towns along the way to Santiago de Compostela. I love that book so much! Those characters are real and I’m proud of each and every one of them.

If you could give one piece of advice to emerging writers, what would it be?

Write what you want to see in the world and don’t compromise that vision to fit into a marketplace you see accepting the work. Create the marketplace. Write true and write real…not to chase what you see out there, but to follow your own authenticity.

What are you working on now? (Ed. Note. Only another writer can ask this question of a writer. And we all go through these periods of ripening when the seeds go in the ground. They’ll sprout again, I promise.)

Sigh. I had a feeling you would ask this one, Finnian. I’ve been a disaster since the beginning of the pandemic. I can’t say I haven’t written anything. I even had two novels released in the midst of the pandemic. But I sometimes feel I have truly lost my mojo. I even crashed and burned on a contracted novel and had to give back my advance. I loved that book, too, but see my above answer…I compromised myself and agreed to make changes that I ultimately could not make. What they wanted me to change was the literal heart of the story. This has honestly crushed my soul, as I was writing the childhood sexual abuse novel I’ve been struggling to write my entire life. I don’t know if it’s the pandemic that killed my creativity or this handing over of my autonomy for the sake of an advance and a contract. Either way, I’m still trying to put the pieces back together. I am currently working on three books. One is a mid-grade about a boy who writes a play for his school’s play festival. One is a young adult about a nonbinary teen who goes to Paris with their father to bring their mother’s ashes back to her family. The teen has a meetcute and navigates family issues while falling in love in the city of light. The third book is a queer retelling of The Great Gatsby set in Toronto between downtown, the island, and the Village.

Bonus question: Have you ever taken a picture of a weird bird?

Oddly enough, I have. Probably more than one, actually. How do you know so well that people have such memorable relationships with birds? I once took a shot of a p*ssed off bird in Cozumel that haunts me to this day. Never, and I repeat…NEVER take a chaise lounge away from a bird in repose. They have as much right to be on that lounge as you have. In fact, if they were there first it would be pretty presumptuous of you to think they were only keeping it warm for you.

Kevin can be found on the web here and on their Instagram and LinkTree