Today, dear listener, we have loss and identity; clarity and hope; the core of writing, style, Angela Carter and some dark, magical stories. When we thought about interviewing author Gwendolyn Kiste, we realised we wanted to burrow behind her work a bit, so we went there. Though we centre on her debut collection, And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, we end up discussing, well, life, really. It’s an in-depth interview which we think you’ll enjoy.
As usual, most of what you need to know is in the interview. Gwendolyn Kiste’s first collection, And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe, came out from Journalstone this year, and is… extremely good. We don’t think it’s worth adding much to that. It’s extremely good (note to selves: must think in better sound-bites).
What might be considered brain-curdling for more, ahem, mature authors like old John Linwood G is that she hasn’t even been writing for publication for that long, yet she already has a range of quality short story credits in places like Lamplight, Interzone and Bracken Magazine. Shocking! Anyway, to the interview zone, Bat-Dog…
Gwendolyn Kiste
greydog: Hi, Gwendolyn, and welcome to greydogtales. We’re a signpost and feature site, rather than a straight review site, so we tend to look at roots and themes in weird fiction. Perhaps we could start by asking you about your own roots, without being too intrusive. Was there a psychogeography to your own background, a particular sense and mood of place to where you grew up? Or were you a cosmopolitan, media child?
gwendolyn: While I grew up longing for a more cosmopolitan existence, I was instead the proverbial weird kid in a small Midwestern town, which isn’t always the easiest combination. There weren’t many others my age who loved horror and Halloween and the many macabre subjects that fascinated me. It might have been complicated even more because I was a girl who was weird, but if so, that aspect of it never resonated with me when I was young. When you’re a child, if people don’t like you for who you are, the reason seems almost superfluous.
Ultimately, though, the experience taught me a lot about self-acceptance and embracing your weird self, no matter how much that inspired raised eyebrows or side-eyes from others. And of course, those early interactions with the world still worm their way into my work. Virtually every story I write involves outsiders fighting back against the darkness, so if I’d grown up anywhere else and had different experiences, it’s hard to know if my work would be remotely the same or if I would be a writer at all. That small Ohio town probably did more to shape my fiction career than I ever thought it could.
greydog: And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe is a very striking creature, and we’d like to touch on some of the themes which run through it. But we should probably ask about that title first. Was this inspired by something in particular, or did it just flow from the titular story?
gwendolyn: From the start, when I was putting together the collection, I wanted it to have a title that announced itself, that was in no way indecisive. I also have always loved titles that are complete sentences, ones that are an entire thought or idea on their own. But with this title, I did it a little backwards: I knew that particular story would be the title story when I was writing it, even though it didn’t have a formal name initially. Against all reason, I told myself that when it was done I would know instinctively what to call it, and fortunately, that’s exactly what happened.
Originally, I intended the title to be more pessimistic, something about the world or universe burning (my stories tend to have a lot of fire imagery in there), but when I was done with the story, I realized that while it was definitely horror-tinged, there’s a bond between the narrator and the murdered actress that became even stronger as the story developed. From there, I decided to focus on that relationship and create a title that plays on the darker side of passion, which matches the tone of that story and in some ways the collection on a whole.
greydog: We were taken by a phrase in one of the stories, where a family is described as “the broken pieces of something ugly”. Whilst individual relationships, particularly between women, are a core element of many stories, the wider family doesn’t come off so well. We get a sense of families, even whole societies, wanting their daughters especially to conform, to stifle difference and be ‘normal’. Are you observing here, or drawing on personal experiences?
gwendolyn: It’s a bit of both, actually. I was fortunate to grow up in a family where being different was something treasured. But again, small-town life—or life anywhere for that matter—can be difficult for those who don’t conform easily to expectations (life can also be difficult in different ways for those who do conform, especially when they realize that they’re conforming and don’t want to, but that’s another story entirely). That means there are certainly aspects of my own life in these stories.
That being said, there’s also plenty of observation in there as well; especially as I’ve gotten older, I’ve found that it becomes at least somewhat easier to be yourself in the world, so I fortunately have fewer experiences to draw from. For example, as an adult, you learn how to excise certain people from your life if they don’t accept you, which is harder to do when you’re young because you have so little autonomy in your day-to-day existence. Again, it becomes easier to be yourself, never easy. But now that I’m a bit older, I have the advantage of perspective, so when I’m writing, many of the experiences are less raw than they were when I was a teenager or even in my early twenties. That makes so much of what I write a blend of personal experience as well as just observations of what I see happening in the world.
greydog: When you started writing for publication, which was about five years ago, did you feel that you were building on a body of weird and horror literature from your own reading, or did you deliberately intend to cut loose?
gwendolyn: I love mid-twentieth century horror—Ray Bradbury, Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson—so in the earliest stages of my career and even now at times, I’ve seen myself as hopefully building upon that era of horror literature. Small-town life and the rot festering just beneath the surface recur repeatedly in that era’s horror fiction, and those themes have a definite place in my work too. However, as I’ve gone along and honed in on my own voice as a writer, it’s become more of the “cut loose” stage where I enjoy exploring whatever concepts are resonating with me at the moment, and when they’re done, I just send the stories out into the world on submission and hope they find their place in the current body of literature.
greydog: Our first read of the collection immediately brought up thoughts of Angela Carter. There is no doubt that there is a mythic quality to some of the stories – ‘Something Borrowed, Something Blue’ and ‘All the Red Apples’ spring to mind. They’re dark fables, with Carter-esque protagonists who seek not to be defined by others. Are you familiar with her work?
gwendolyn: I absolutely love Angela Carter, so thank you so much for that comparison! “All the Red Apples” in particular was inspired after one of my many re-readings of The Bloody Chamber. I discovered Carter’s work when I was an undergraduate, and I’ve often said that I’ve never been the same since. Her ability to invert fairy tales is something I’ve returned to repeatedly as both a writer and a reader. The first story of hers I read was “The Company of Wolves,” and it completely redefined what fables and folklore could mean to me.
When I’m toiling away in those sorts of fairy tale worlds, I love to think back to how she pushed at the edges of what those stories were and how she turned them inside out. That always forces me to go further in my own fiction and to try something new, something more subversive, something that pushes me out of my own comfort zone. The world lost Angela Carter when she was far too young, and it makes me so sad to think of all the work she could have continued writing, but even so, she still managed to leave behind quite a dazzling legacy. I imagine she’ll continue inspiring me for the rest of my writing days.
greydog: Disappearance and loss come up a lot. That sense that although people have gone, either through death or through mystery, they are somehow there, in the elsewhere, and never entirely lost. Although the disappearances are sometimes quite literal, as in ‘Ten Things to Know About the Ten Questions’, in other stories lovers, sisters, mothers pass in one way or another from immediate knowledge. What draws you to that concept?
gwendolyn: Loss is one of the things that terrifies me more than anything in life, mostly because it’s inescapable. Everyone has lost somebody they love, be it through death or heartbreak or simply drifting apart. The universality of it makes it very much part of being human but also part of a journey none of us wants to take. It’s terrible and painful and, in its own strange way, very beautiful, because we do all share it, even if loss can be such an isolating experience in and of itself.
Disappearances, for me, are a way of manifesting that loss in such an immediate and literal manner. Plus, when you start looking back over history, you find these weird instances of people and even places vanishing. Roanoke Colony horrified me as a child, especially with how blasé we treat it. I remember in history class, we were taught, yes, this was a real place, and yes, the people all disappeared, and no, we don’t know why. That sense of enduring mystery really lodged itself in my psyche and has never entirely left, so I keep returning to it and twisting it and re-examining it, trying to find a new angle or a way to fit the pieces into the puzzle, even though there is no real answer to it. That’s what makes loss and disappearances so fascinating to me: how you can keep delving deeper and never hit bottom.
greydog: This is a collection about people, but it’s also undeniably a collection about women. There are a few sympathetic male figures, but not many. Was this an intentional move, or a by-product of focusing on what you specifically wanted to say?
gwendolyn: It wasn’t intentional at all, though as I was compiling the table of contents, I did notice this pattern. It might harken back at least in part to my aforementioned love of Shirley Jackson. When I think of her body of work, the first story that comes to mind is We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which is absolutely about sisters Merricat and Constance (although Uncle Julian is awesome too). From there, you also have The Haunting of Hill House, which features some male characters, but again, concentrates most on the women, Theodora and Eleanor. Even among Jackson’s short stories, I’m most drawn to her more obscure works like “Louisa, Please Come Home”, which is all about the quirks and strange “adventure” of the eponymous character.
Moving away from Shirley Jackson, even in the works of male writers, I remember the female characters most: the ghostly Tally in Bradbury’s “The Lake,” and the supremely wicked mother in Matheson’s “Graveyard Shift.” Outside of genre fiction altogether, the Lisbon sisters from The Virgin Suicides have haunted me since I was literally the same age as the girls in the novel. So I suppose the emphasis in my own work on female characters comes both from what I want to say as a writer and also what I’m drawn to most as a reader.
greydog: Having made the above comment, the other thing we should say is that the stories are highly accessible, whatever the reader’s gender or self-identification. They are suffused with humanity, and populated by protagonists to whom a reader can relate, in one way or another. You seem to have retained depth without unnecessary complexity, over-dense imagery or stylistic obfuscation. Is such clarity important to you as a writer?
gwendolyn: Clarity might be the most important thing to me as a writer. While I love—and often write—lyrical prose, I have always loathed reading stories that sacrifice substance or pacing in favour of pretty language. Above all, I never want to waste a reader’s time, so as a writer, I do enjoy playing with language, but I always aim to “get to the point” as quickly as possible. Being an author is such a profound honour from the outset; we get to tell stories for a living, and how cool is that? Consequently, I consider it a betrayal to readers when a writer overly complicates stories just for the sake of a great image or some stylistic acrobatics. My favourite authors manage to blend thematic depth and stylistic prose while still maintaining clarity and pacing, so those are always my goals too when crafting a story.
greydog: And you achieve them, most impressively. How do you categorise your work, if you do at all? We can see magical realism, what some call the ‘new weird’, modern fable, horror, and even touches of speculative fiction in there. Are there other contemporary authors with whom you feel you have a common bond?
gwendolyn: Primarily, I tend to call myself a horror writer who also delves and dabbles in the worlds of dark fantasy, magic realism, and the weird. For a while, I used the broader term of “speculative fiction” whenever I described my work to someone, but as my writing has developed over the last couple years, the horror and weird elements have decidedly moved to the forefront, and since that’s the place where my heart has always been anyhow, it only seems appropriate to use those monikers if forced to choose.
As for contemporary authors, there are too many to name, though a few who immediately jump to mind include Damien Angelica Walters, Eden Royce, Emily Cataneo, Lori Titus, and Brooke Warra. There is such a strong group of authors in horror and weird fiction today, and it’s such a thrilling time to be writing in these genres.
INEVITABLE TRIVIA: For the next part of the interview, it is vital that you know what an ‘ambry’ is. Or maybe it isn’t. But we like odd words, so you may know it better as an armoire. And once it meant most kinds of cupboards, but it also became associated with religious houses, usually as a cupboard for books and sacred items. So you ended up with this:
The ambry mentioned below is not like this, but we thought you’d like to know, in case you started communicating with something unknown in a nearby monastery. Oh, and there are no monasteries in Gwendolyn’s story, so be careful not to get confused. Move along, now…
greydog: We have to admit that, despite other tales being more powerful, unusual or thought-provoking, our simplest pleasure in the collection is ‘The Man in the Ambry’, which is rather delightful in a very odd way. The almost-surrealism of ‘The Tower Princesses’ follows close behind. Which story there pleases you the most, on reflection?
gwendolyn: First off, I’m so glad to hear that you enjoyed those two stories in particular from the collection! “The Man in the Ambry” is a favourite among my family and close friends; it is one of the oldest stories in the book, and I remember that really being a turning point for me in understanding what kind of writer I wanted to become. Also, “The Tower Princesses” was such a polarizing story among some readers when it was first released last year in Interzone—those same surreal elements you mention were off-putting to some initial reviewers—so it’s always particularly nice to hear that someone enjoyed that story.
For me, it’s hard to choose a favourite—I’m of course a proud parent to all of them—so I’ll go on the personal side of things and say “Through Earth and Sky.” That one was written for my husband about his grandmother, who passed away a couple years before he and I met, so I never got to meet her. Fortunately, through the anecdotes he’s told me, I feel like I do know her, and I wanted to dedicate something to her, albeit in a fictionalized, magical version. It can be strange enough as a writer to document aspects of your own life in a story, but it’s even more unusual and at times uncomfortable to write about the life of someone you’ve never met. However, there are beautiful and meaningful stories in the world that can become lost if we don’t tell them, and this was a story that I believed needed to be captured, so I feel honoured to be the one to tell it. After reading “Through Earth and Sky” for the first time, my husband immediately called it the greatest gift he’s ever received, so that one will definitely always hold a very special place for me.
greydog: It is a powerful story – not only magical, but a dark and poignant reflection on real life for some. Despite the darkness, your stories are, on the whole, quite hopeful. There is more to come – freedom, reunion, true love, new vistas. Is that you, at heart?
gwendolyn: Yes, that’s absolutely me, almost to a fault. As the darker elements of my stories suggest, I’m not blindly optimistic—I believe that things will only work out in life through time and immense sacrifice, and sometimes, sadly, not even then—but I do look into the future, even during the darkest times, and see tremendous potential for good and for hope and for happiness. There’s so much transcendent in the human spirit; we can be profoundly wicked too, and it can be easy to focus on that, especially if you’re already drawn to horror and the more pessimistic underpinnings of life. But I try to force myself to see past the worst of humanity and see what we can become.
There are times when the world is so dark and despairing, but then out of nowhere, I’ll witness someone do something kind and decent and selfless. It might be a small act, and the person might not even realize how meaningful it really is, which makes it all the more meaningful. Those little moments of shared humanity are what keep me going and keep me writing—the idea that our best selves are waiting just around the corner or over the next hilltop, that it isn’t too late to make something wonderful and decent out of this world. Not too late yet anyhow.
greydog: Finally, given that you’ve produced such a stand-out collection, it seems mean to ask ‘What next?’, but we’ll do it. So are you staying in the zone of short fiction, or planning longer works? Do tell.
gwendolyn: I currently have a number of projects on the docket—so many that it feels like I’m constantly juggling knives! On the short fiction front, I have a story in the May/June issue of Black Static. “Songs to Help You Cope When Your Mom Won’t Stop Haunting You and Your Friends” is a nostalgic ode to complicated parent-child relationships, the Rust Belt in Ohio where I grew up, and all the music I loved when I was a teenager, including David Bowie, whose loss still hurts every time I think about it. Besides that one, there should be several more of my stories unleashed upon the world before the end of the year, ranging from Lovecraftian cosmic horror to more light-hearted fantasy that still has a certain darkness brimming around the edges.
As for longer projects, some of the details are still in flux, so I don’t want to announce anything too formal yet, but a couple big projects are taking definite form right now. If all goes well, I should be able to announce those projects officially in the next couple months, which is so tremendously thrilling. As for projects I can discuss, I’m currently drafting a novelette with author Emily Cataneo; this is my first ever collaboration, and the story touches on elements that are common to both mine and Emily’s works, including strong female protagonists and dark retellings of fairy tales.
I’m also shopping a completed novel at the moment, so there’s certainly no shortage of work that will hopefully be forthcoming in the foreseeable future. So for anyone who enjoyed my collection, that should be good news; as for anyone who’s tired of me already, consider yourself warned!
greydog: We find it hard to imagine getting tired of your work. Thank you very much, Gwendolyn Kiste, for sparing the time to talk to us. It’s no secret that we look forward to seeing what is to come.
You can click a link to Gwendolyn Kiste’s terrific collection And Her Smile Will Untether the Universe on the right-hand sidebar. As that might be the UK link, here’s the US one as well: