Megadeath, now, that was written on deadline, I pounded it out in six months. That required discipline that helped with the revisions of The Gods Awoke.

  Galactic Hellcats, the adult version started in 2012, taught me it was okay to have fun, to use the plot twists and tropes I like, that no one (important) was going to judge me for them. I do think that helped me in revising The Gods Awoke, finding places where I’d been tiptoeing around what I really wanted to say.

  The book centers on the journey of Hitra—a high priestess of Revestre. What are your favorite things about this character, and what were the biggest challenges in writing her?

  I wanted to write someone very unlike me. She’s a politician at heart, charismatic, and confident. I’m about the most insecure person you’ll ever meet! I based her on a friend of mine and imagined what he would do in her situations.

  I also wanted to be true to her spiritual side as a religious professional. I’d read a lot about higher church officials often not being believers, but early readers didn’t like that, so I had to make everyone a little more religious than I intended, and that was hard for me, because as an atheist I don’t really get it? But maybe I do? We all believe things without evidence. I believe that one day the Cleveland Browns will stop breaking my heart. (Not this year though. That ship has SAILED.) I have felt the wonder of nature and beauty and science and basked in that feeling of grand reality.

  I talked to a lot of religious friends, from different faiths and communities, and of course I had first readers from different faiths, too.

  What was the initial inspiration for the book, and how did the story develop?

  The very first time I wrote it, it was so I could have a pretty boy in peril in a matriarchy and rescue him. (This also seems to be a recurring theme in my work.)

  After losing the initial draft, and despairing that I would Never Write Anything As Good Again, I took a novel-writing class at Case Western Reserve University in early 2004. I pitched five different novels to the class, and The Gods Awoke was the one they were most interested in. (I don’t remember how I pitched it, something like “In a polytheistic matriarchy, miracles start occurring and people wonder if the gods are coming to life . . . and the gods turn out to not be gods.”)

  In this version, the central questions of religion and faith became more important than just rescuing the boy. Illoe’s peril still plays a strong role in the plot, but he’s more of a self-rescuing princess.

  What is important or special about this book for you? What would you like readers to know?

  I struggled to start the new draft of The Gods Awoke back in 2004 until I hit upon the idea of writing it all from the goddess’s perspective, in first person omniscient. The technical challenge kept the work fresh to me through all the subsequent drafting and redrafting.

  I’ve always enjoyed a true third person–omniscient narrative and will die on a hill of “Head-hopping is great!” This book let me write lots of scenes that explore multiple characters keeping secrets from each other and thinking of all the things they want to say but can’t.

  What else are you working on, what do you have coming up that you’d like readers to know about?

  I just finished a rough draft of Galactic Hellcats 2: Hellcats in Love! It picks up immediately after the events of Galactic Hellcats and introduces probably too many new characters, with large sections narrated by Andrei the sex robot, my new favorite narrator ever.

  I have ten stories on submission right now, and a half-dozen in the works. Two stories are coming out in Analog soon—“Bumblebot” and “An Echo of a Will.”

  And yet I feel like a total slacker? The kid is starting college! I’m hoping to dive into more projects as I empty-nest it up!

  About the Author

  Arley Sorg is co-Editor-in-Chief at Fantasy Magazine and a 2021 World Fantasy Award Finalist. He is also a finalist for two 2022 Ignyte Awards, for his work as a critic as well as for his creative nonfiction. Arley is senior editor at Locus Magazine, associate editor at both Lightspeed & Nightmare, and a columnist for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. He takes on multiple roles, including slush reader, movie reviewer, and book reviewer, and conducts interviews for multiple venues, including Clarkesworld Magazine and his own site: arleysorg.com. He has taught classes and run workshops for Clarion West, Augur Magazine, and more, and has been a guest speaker at a range of events. Arley grew up in England, Hawaii, and Colorado, and studied Asian Religions at Pitzer College. He lives in the SF Bay Area and writes in local coffee shops when he can. Arley is a 2014 Odyssey Writing Workshop graduate.

  Art and Kindness:

  A Conversation with Aleksandra (Ola) Hill, Kanika Agrawal, and Rowan Morrison

  Arley Sorg

  Aleksandra (Ola) Hill was born in Toronto, Canada, to Polish immigrants, then moved to Poland for a few years before returning to Toronto for high school. She went to New York City to earn her BA at Columbia University in biology and English and, “aside from a year back in Toronto that I spent in a truly nightmarish lab, I’ve been there ever since.”

  Before attending the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2020, Hill won the grand prize in the 2019 Writer’s Digest Popular Fiction Awards for her short story “A Life Measured in Moons.” Her story “The Bakery: Prelude to a Fairy Tale” appeared in the JordanCon 2019 anthology (both bylines as Alexandra Hill).

  More recently, “Words of Advice at the End of the World” appeared in the anthology Fission #2 Volume 1, edited by Eugen Bacon and Gene Rowe, published by the British Science Fiction Association with HWS Press. Hill also took classes at Gotham Writers Workshop and completed a certificate in fiction writing at UCLAx. “After I got my PhD, I sold my soul and went to work in consulting for three years. The hours were brutal (I’d be working from basically 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. every day, then write for an hour or two, then pass out and do it all over again), but the pay was good enough that I saved enough money to give me space to write for a few years and do an MFA.” Hill is currently in an MFA program for fiction and nonfiction at The New School, working on two theses, both focused on horror.

  A trained computational biologist, Hill ultimately switched from science to writing. “Part of it was because when I was a student, I knew my job prospects would be better with a science degree, so I dual-majored in bio/English and then went on to a STEM PhD; money was, and always has been, a concern, and it was drilled into me as a child that money and security come first, dreams second. But, I also grew up being told that SFFH is a waste of time and I’ll grow out of it, so even though my teachers told me I was a good writer when I was a kid, I stopped writing because what I wanted to write wasn’t a ‘good’ thing to be writing . . . I know we keep hearing about folks who’ve been writing since they were in diapers and published their first NYT bestseller at sixteen or whatever, but it’s also really okay to start late.”

  Kanika Agrawal was born in Bahrain and grew up in India, Switzerland, Tanzania, Kenya, and the US. She earned a BS in biology and a BS in writing from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She also earned an MFA in writing from Columbia University, and a PhD in English and literary arts from the University of Denver. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best American Experimental Writing 2020, Black Warrior Review, filling Station, Foglifter, FOLDER, Notre Dame Review, SAND, the Texas Review, and more.

  “What I studied as an undergraduate at MIT continues to be an essential part of my perspective and work as a writer. My manuscript Okazaki Fragments adapts concepts, images, and language from a series of sixteen scientific papers published between 1968 and 1977. The series, Mechanism of DNA Growth, presents research on discontinuous strand synthesis during DNA replication. This research was led by the Japanese molecular biologists Okazaki and Okazaki. Okazaki Fragments (re)constructs Okazaki and Okazaki’s experiences by reading their lives into (or out of) the scientific language and images of their papers. In a sense, I put the Okazakis under their own microscope: what might scientific texts on replication, (dis)continuity, complementarity, etc., reveal about the Okazakis’ lives—and our lives—if we expand the ways in which we read/encounter them?”

  Agrawal has attended various workshops and residencies, most recently author Fonda Lee’s workshop at Aspen Words. Agrawal has also received support from the Juniper Institute, Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and Writing By Writers, as well as fellowships from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, MacDowell, and Vermont Studio Center. An experienced teacher herself, she currently does a combination of teaching/tutoring (English/writing), editing/consulting, and writing. She moved to Denver to start her PhD program and has lived there since.

  Rowan Morrison is a writer and editor, originally from New York, currently based in Cleveland, Ohio, “where he thinks about trauma, trans identities, political wonkery, and storytelling.” He has published at a range of venues such as Argot Magazine and Cleveland Magazine. “I’ve held a variety of jobs, but reading, writing, and editing (in that order) have always been constants in my life. Fortunately/unfortunately I am quite private . . . ”

  Volume 1, Issue 1 of khōréō, “a quarterly magazine of speculative fiction and migration,” was published February 15, 2021. The magazine has received praise from a number of respected reviewers and venues, had three stories on Locus Magazine’s 2021 Recommended Reading List, and was a winner of an Ignyte Award for Best Fiction Podcast along with being a finalist for the Ignyte Community Award.

  What, for each of you, is special about speculative fiction? Is it distinctive from “mainstream” or “literary” or “realist” fiction, and what does speculative fiction do that fiction which isn’t speculative doesn’t do?

  Rowan Morrison: What I really like about speculative fiction is that it’s a fairly broad and nebulous genre that can encompass any of the others you’ve listed, and I think that leeway often gives authors room to explore questions or themes that might not feel at home in “realist” genres, not least because of the perpetual question: who defines what’s “mainstream” or “literary” or “realist”? Speculative fiction is often less concerned with those constraints or norms and thus lends itself to category-resistant narratives—which I really enjoy.

  Aleksandra (Ola) Hill: I really love that answer, Rowan. My biggest victory recently was having my mom, who was always hoping I’d grow out of my love for speculative fiction, reading all the issues of khōréō and conceding that it is, in fact, “literary.” For me, its power and specialness (I’m going to pretend that’s a word) is how it lets you address really fundamental questions of humanity/existence by looking at them kind of out of the corner of your eye. It’s what’s always made the genre feel more “real” to me than “realist” fiction has.

  Kanika Agrawal: These labels/categories can be useful for thinking about the variety of reading experiences, expectations, and approaches readers bring to fictional work. But they can also be harmful in how they judge and circumscribe. Speculative fiction is by definition not “realist,” but much of it is, in my opinion, too bound to the “realistic,” especially in its use of language. And there is, of course, speculative mainstream fiction and speculative literary fiction and speculative genre fiction. I’m interested in the kind of speculative work that challenges the “reality” constructed by the majority and/or the privileged minority, that makes other realities/worlds possible.

  Why is the immigrant and diaspora focus important for you? Why is it important for genre?

  RM: For myself, that focus is important for personal reasons; my parents are immigrants, and their parents were immigrants too. I think our focus is important for genre for similar reasons: All of human history has been shaped by migration and movement, voluntary and forced. Some of the oldest stories in the world are about diaspora. I think it’s important to explicitly recognize and celebrate that.

  OH: One of the most important moments of my reading life was when I first encountered “The Paper Menagerie” by Ken Liu. The author and I come from different cultural backgrounds, but there’s a moment in the story where the main character’s mother speaks to them in Chinese and they, embarrassed, answer back in English. It was the exact same thing I’d done as a kid when my mom spoke to me in Polish. I’d never seen myself or my experience reflected on the page like that, never had to face the simultaneous ugliness and humanity of those moments before.

  I wanted to create a place for people like me—folks who have experience of that “here and elsewhere” existence—to find stories where they see themselves reflected. And migration in all its forms—immigration, forced migration through slavery and war, colonization, etc.—is such a huge part of human history that it’s touched almost everyone in some way, whether they realize it or not. At the same time, I think speculative fiction is such a perfect place to explore these themes of migration and identity because each reader is transported to a slightly different world every time; they immerse themselves in a new story, even if the change is a minor one.

  KA: Yes, and yes! Also, a lot of classic/canonic Western speculative writing, especially science fiction, celebrates the conqueror/colonizer, the adventurer, the hero and denigrates the supposedly static, uninspired/uninspiring and monstrous Other. It is important to continue imagining and writing against those visions.

  Are there particular challenges for editing a magazine with this focus, which may not come up as often for other magazines? And how do you meet those challenges?

  RM: I guess you could call this a “challenge”—I’ve gotten to work with a lot of writers from different backgrounds who are all, of course, far more informed than I am when it comes to the (often very personal) stories they’re telling. As a result, obviously, it’s very much my job to put in the extra legwork to meet them where they are. That’s more of an opportunity than a challenge, though, in my view, and I’m extremely grateful to the authors I’ve gotten to work with for being so generous with their time, knowledge, and trust.

  OH: This might be a bit tangential to the question you’re asking, but: because our remit is so broad, it can sometimes be a bit difficult to assess whether an author is the right fit for us without feeling like we’re identity policing. We don’t require an author to make a statement of their identity, for example, but we want to make sure that we’re also being true to our mission. I’ve heard from a number of folks who run magazines targeted at specific identities that writers who are not of that identity submit pieces, either by conveniently “not seeing” the specificity of the call or simply “not agreeing” that the call should be limited. We’ve had the same issue.

  When the magazine was first starting up, a professor of mine said “in a way, we’re all immigrants”, which . . . is patently untrue; we aren’t made for twelfth-generation English immigrants whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower, nor for folks who write “on behalf of” their immigrant/diasporic spouse. At the same time, we have so many folks sending us queries asking if they belong on our pages because they don’t want to impose, and, without exception, those folks have absolutely been welcome!

  KA: I very much agree with all of the above. I’m always asking myself and rethinking what it means to be “generous” with and “responsible” to our community of writers, readers, and khōréō staff members. What can I do, without exhausting/destroying myself in the process, to best serve the creative work entrusted to us and support the people and practices that make that work possible? Often, the more marginalized and overlooked the work and the people, the greater the challenge; there are so many forces acting against them/us, including our own ignorance and bias. I have to accept that I will make mistakes, some of which will haunt me for a long time, which may be a kind of blessing for a writer and editor of speculative work.

  How did khōréō get started, how did each of you get involved, and what were the major obstacles along the way?

  OH: khōréō was inspired by the Ken Liu story I mentioned earlier, and got an accelerated start due to discussions and issues in the genre that rose to particular prominence in 2020. Spite is a great motivator for getting things done. In terms of challenges: we’re volunteer-run at this time, which means that everyone who does it, does it out of love—and when Real Life comes knocking, that has to come first. We have a truly wonderful team (made mostly of people who were complete strangers before starting here!) that has been great at load balancing, but I would love to get us to a point where we can pay our volunteers for their time and talent. It’s the same problem you see with speculative fiction as a whole: unless you’re incredibly privileged, survival has to come before art.

  RM: I saw a listing on Paper Cat Press (RIP) and the rest is history!

  KA: I was following khōréō from its first call for submissions. The more I read, the more I felt that I wanted to be involved. So, when a fiction editor position opened up earlier this year, I managed to put together an application. My major obstacle was applying and getting through the interview! Ola and Rowan were absolutely lovely, but I’m always coming up with reasons I’m not sufficiently qualified. I’m so glad I didn’t talk myself out of it.

  OH: We are, too! You’re a wonderful addition to our team!

  Are there one or two stories that stand out as particularly important or special? Or which exemplify what a khōréō story is?

  OH: It’s really hard to find a story (or even two) that encompasses what we’re about because there are so many facets of the immigrant/diaspora experience. There are stories that explore the loss of identity over the course of generations, like “All Worlds Left Behind” by Iona Datt Sharma; about the future of cultural and religious traditions, like “For Future Generations” by Rachel Gutin; about transracial adoption, like “Golden Girl” by A. M. Guay; about the legacy of slavery, like “Our Bones Were the Mortar” by Anjali Patel; about retold legends, like “Nine-Tailed Heart” by Jessica Cho; about climate change and choosing to stay, like “Love at the End” by Deborah Germaine Augustin. All of them come at the question of migration and identity from a different perspective, and even though they’re so different, they all feel like they belong perfectly with the magazine’s mission.

 

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