Today the Speculative Fiction Showcase is delighted to interview Kathe Koja, whose upcoming new collection of short fiction, Velocities, we are featuring on April 21.
Velocities,
your new collection of short fiction, debuts on April 21st, 2020 from Meerkat
Press, who describe it as “thirteen stories…all flying at the speed of
strange.” What can your readers expect from this collection?
Every reader brings their own sensibility to
every story, which is really the thrill and the purpose of reading, and writing:
fiction is always a conversation. And the conversations in Velocities invite an adventurous spirit and a taste for what’s
unexpected. And expect it to get dark.
You have published many award-winning novels
and short stories, including The Cipher, Under the Poppy, Buddha Boy and more.
Though some are listed as Horror and Dark Fantasy, would you say they escape
the boundaries of genre?
When I write, I don’t think about genre; I don’t
read for genre, either. What draws me as a reader is voice: whether it’s
stylistically overt or subtle, doesn’t matter, if the voice is compelling I’ll
follow it anywhere. As a writer, whether it’s horror, historical fiction, YA,
weird fiction, or a performance piece, my own voice is consistent. And I’m
always thrilled when readers follow me from, say, Cipher to Christopher Wild
to Velocities, continuing that
conversation.
As well as writing, you have produced
dramatized immersive versions of your work and solo performances in places like
NYC, Detroit and Chicago. And at Stokercon! What is involved and can you tell
us more?
A lot
is involved. Creating immersive events—which I direct as well as produce
through my company, Loudermilk Productions—means taking a story—one of my own,
or an adaptation (like Dracula, Alice in Wonderland, Faustus, Wuthering
Heights)—and bringing all the sensory elements into play that make that story happen
in real time for the audience: everything from choosing the site (like a
Victorian mansion for Under the Poppy, or
a backroom bar for Christopher Wild)
all the way to the take-away souvenirs (a silver fork for Dracula). It’s a huge amount of work and a huge amount of fun, it
can be exhausting and crazy, and every time it’s different, which I love.
Writing is a (fairly) solitary activity,
whereas performing and producing are social and public. What tension is there if
any between these activities?
I’ve found that they really complement each
other: at bedrock both are about telling a story, sometimes in one voice,
sometimes in many. And collaboration gives me, as a creator, a bigger
toolbox—music, movement art, video, installation art, puppetry, even fire!—I’ve
worked with so many different, outrageously talented artists, and I learn
something every time. I’ve also found that collaboration tends to include more
snacks and horseplay. :)
Are there different challenges in writing
short fiction and writing novels?
A story always has its own inherent form, if
it’s short fiction, a novel, a performance piece or script. I’ve learned not to
try to impose my own ideas, but to follow whatever that the particular story
wants and needs to be. For one example, I had no idea Under the Poppy was going to turn into a trilogy! And Dark Factory, which I’m working on now,
has been all about making its own form.
The playwright Christopher Marlowe is the
subject of one novel and several other works. Why does he fascinate you and
what does he offer a contemporary audience?
Marlowe is incredibly contemporary: he lived
and wrote in a time of enormous change and enormous fear, with a critical eye
toward uncritical belief in government and religion. When I read Anthony Burgess’
riveting and gorgeous A Dead Man in
Deptford, I knew I had to write about Marlowe. Christopher Wild is a triptych biography that imagines him in
Elizabethan England, a McCarthy-esque America, and a future European state, and
my productions of his works—Glitter King,
his Edward II set in a Berlin punk
club, and Night School, his Doctor Faustus reimagined as a strange,
junk food-fueled school for living—were undertaken as a signal boost and love
letter to this absolutely seminal playwright and poet.
What are you working on at the moment?
Dark
Factory: the story of a state-of-the-art entertainment
club that offers customizable reality, just a scroll away down the night’s
menu. Ari Regon is the club’s floor manager and genius loci, a wild card who
calls the shots and makes things happen. Max Caspar is a stubborn and talented
DIY artist who scorns all manufactured flash. And both of them are chasing the
same thing: an ultimate experience, a vision of true reality, the real thing.
And Dark
Factory is my first 100% immersive fiction project. It’s a novel with all
kinds of moving parts—images, sounds, video in the works, a live event
including a VR/AR component—and it’s redefined for me what a story, a
narrative, can really be. I have a Dark Factory Patreon https://www.patreon.com/kathekoja
and have already worked with some incredible collaborators, with more in the
wings.
Velocities
debuts in April and The Cipher in
September. Can you tell us more about The
Cipher, which won both the Locus and Bram Stoker Awards? On your blog you
say “the funhole is back!”
The Funhole is indeed back, in all its absolute
null-and-void tilt-a-whirl existential hunger, attended by slacker Nicholas and
avid Nakota, neither of whom know when to say when. The Cipher was the inaugural title for the mythic Dell Abyss line,
which really sought to give horror fiction a new and wider arena, a new way to
express the darkness. I’ve been asked a jillion times when Cipher would be back in print, and I’m delighted that Meerkat Press
is reopening the door to that grungy storage room later this year.
Under
the Poppy has been described as “a gothic, glam-rock take on love and sex
and death that reads a little like what would happen if Sarah Waters and Angela
Carter played a drunken game of Exquisite Corpse in a brothel . . .” Is that a
fair summation?
Absolutely. The Poppy trilogy—Under the Poppy, The Mercury Waltz, and The Bastards’ Paradise—starts in a
brothel, plays on various wild stages, and follows the road of adventure,
danger, and loss as far as it will go, and all in the company of Rupert and
Istvan, the two gentlemen of the road whose love story is at the heart of these
books. And there’s a lot of puppetry, booze, and highly inappropriate onstage behaviour,
too.
What do you like to read and what do you
watch?
The book I just read and loved was Iliana
Regan’s Burn the Place, and the show
I can’t wait to resume is Dark. To
say that one is a chef’s memoir and one is a series about time travel gives a launchpad
definition, but you need to experience both for yourself.
Though you are a writer of dark fiction,
your web-site gives a sense of playfulness, glee and joie de vivre – is that a
paradox?
I believe in fun—having it, making it, making
sure others have it too. Fun’s the gateway drug for joy, and we must have joy,
no matter how dark it gets.
About Kathe Koja:
 |
| Kathe Koje photo courtesy of Rick Lieder |
Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and creates and produces immersive fiction performances, both solo and with a rotating ensemble of artists. Her work crosses and combines genres, and her books have won awards, been multiply translated, and optioned for film and performance. She is based in Detroit and thinks globally. She can be found at kathekoja.com.
That was fun!
ReplyDelete