Past UVic Work Study student Saverio Colasanto talks with the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction winner about her story "Little Paradiso."
SC: What inspired you to write "Little Paradiso"?
GP: My first idea was writing a story set in an orphanage in Kenya. There have always been whispers about what goes on behind them. So like many stories I write, I had a setting in mind before I had the story. Often this is how I map my story, either by being obsessed with a specific setting or a specific character.
SC: Are there any themes in "Little Paradiso" that you were particularly eager to explore?
GP: Yes. I was exploring the concept of beginnings as uncomfortable, as destabilizing and as acts of closing one’s eyes, taking a leap and plunging into the dark. That blind kind of courage that is necessary. In Kenya, we describe this as "kama mbaya mbaya."
Read the rest of Gladwell Pamba's interview.
Ambrose Albert,
#232 poetry contributor
Jade Wallace talks with their fellow fall issue #232 contributor about his poems, "choosing the bear" and "top surgery and it's completely different but also still top surgery."
JW: How do you choose lines for epigraphs? In “top surgery and it’s completely different but also still top surgery” you use a Lucy Dacus lyric as the epigraph, for example; why did that feel like a good fit?
AA:
A large part of my writing process involves listening to music, so lyric epigraphs are not unusual for me. I like how they serve as a playlist for the reader. A bread crumb for them to follow. And, of course, a nod to a song or artist who influenced the poem.
The lyrics I’d chosen from Lucy Dacus’ song “Please Stay” really resonated with me while I was early in my transition. I was only just coming out publicly, and I couldn’t help returning to that section of the song over and over again.
The name of the poem is a music nod too. It references Charlie XCX’s album Brat and It's Completely Different but Also Still Brat, a compilation of remixes. I wanted the poem to imagine a more intimate, less sterile version of gender-affirming care. To “remix” the medical, often cold care trans folks receive (if we can access gender-affirming care at all).
I know a few poets that have created playlists to accompany their poetry like jaye simpson had done for it was never going to be okay. I love having the opportunity to explore what music or other artform inspired a poet, and there are certainly ekphrastic qualities to this poem and many of my others.
Read the rest of Ambrose Albert's interview.
