Interview by Jessica Johns
Hello friends! Meet Casey Plett, author of Little Fish and A Safe Girl to Love and co-editor of the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers. She is the winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Transgender Fiction and received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers.
During my volunteer role at Room Magazine’s 2018 Growing Room Literary Festival, I had the great pleasure of hearing Casey read from Little Fish and getting to know her in-between events. In addition to admiring her work and discussion during the panels, Casey’s behind-the-scenes demeanor was something that has stayed with me. She offered a kind of warmth, humorous levity, and generosity to the volunteers and audience members that I think goes above and beyond the expectations of writers at events, especially during a time where authors and volunteers alike are stressed, exhausted, and usually running on fumes. It is something that usually flies under the radar to the comparatively large-scale attention given to readings and panels, but one I think is important. Yesterday, I started reading Little Fish. And already the humour, care, and depth that I saw during that weekend, I’m finding everywhere in her storytelling. If you get the opportunity, get this book and go hear her read. It’s so damn worth it.
Casey’s debut novel Little Fish is out now with Arsenal Pulp Press and you can find her on Twitter at @caseyplett and at her website, https://caseyplett.wordpress.com/.
Casey will be reading at the Vancouver Public Library for Incite: Celebrating Arsenal Pulp Press Amber Dawn, Casey Plett, and Joshua Whitehead on May 23 at 7:30 pm. Do not miss it!
1.What’s happening around you—either right around you or outside of where you are?
I’m helping my best friend and life partner Sybil Lamb work through a grant application. The Windsor Hum is humming a low-level hum.
2. Why do you live where you live?
We had to move. We wanted to leave Toronto and my partner didn’t want to leave Ontario. We visited every small city in South Ontario from Ottawa to Windsor. We loved hanging out in Windsor and it was cheap. So we came here.
3. What are you looking forward to this week?
Coming out to Vancouver for inCite, obvs! I’m so freaking lucky to be doing so many events with Amber Dawn and Joshua, it’s a fucking dream.
4. What advice would you give a young writer?
Oh, so much… it’s endless and pointless, maybe. The firehose of advice available and freely dispensed by jerks like me.
Here are a few things that maybe are helpful: One, find other artists who are kin. Jessica Bebenek touched on this in her “Get to Know.” Find community, and not just people who are trying to “network”. This doesn’t even have to mean writers! One of the most meaningful artistic friendships I’ve had in my life was with a painter, Carly Bodnar, who I went to high school with, became close to when we went to university in the same city, and then lived with in New York for a short while. She’s a painter and I’m a writer—technically our art worlds had no crossover, but being weird creatives coming from similar-ish worlds, we bonded a lot and, at least from my view, artistically nourished each other and helped keep each other going in some small way. She actually ended up doing the cover for my first book, A Safe Girl to Love. Carly’s still in New York and I’m in Windsor. Look at her stuff.
Two, make sure you keep fuel in your life that reminds you why you’re doing what you’re doing. What that looks like for me is reading something that I don’t have to just because I love reading it. I re-read my favourite books a lot.
5. Is there any advice you like ignoring?
“Write every day” for all the reasons Mike Barnes outlines here (the whole thing is worth reading).
6. What’s your morning routine?
I wake up a few hours before I have to leave the house, lie in bed for half an hour like a moaning un-person, get up, slug coffee from a big pot I programmed the night before, scroll through news and social media like a moaning un-person for another half hour, then work for an hour or so. Then I go to my office job. This process used to be inverted, but that’s less and less these days.
7. What’s the first story or poem you remember writing, and how does it relate to your current work?
The answer I want to give you is “Portland, Oregon,” a story that actually ended up in my first book, about a young girl who’s poor and living with a talking cat. I started it when I was nineteen and poked at it for about seven years before I put it in that book. It’s funny how long that story stayed with me through my early and mid-20s. I sent it to various friends in all sorts of iterations, and it seemed like a thing just for me and some friends I sent it to. At some point it seemed like, of course it would never be published or public, it was just a thing I wrote that helped me figure out how to write. It was a warm feeling then, like something private. Glenn the prissy talking cat and her fucked-up young human Adrienne. It’d been the first thing I wrote after I left home.
Then, after it got published, when I was twenty-seven, it was mostly received positively, and that was such a warm thing to witness. Like getting to introduce an old friend to the world and it turns out the world likes them. Which relates nicely to my current work, maybe! Because for me personally, writing’s often about unearthing the fucked-up, weird, unreal parts of life I don’t have words for, about building something intimate that I’d scarcely let myself think about, and then eventually placing that story into public view and hoping some people connect with it.
That’s the answer I want to give you. Technically, though, the true answer is that I wrote fanfiction based on Trent Reznor and Papa Roach in my early teens, but fanfiction.net took down the stories based on real people years ago, so I don’t remember which one was the first. I have no idea how this relates to my current work.
8. What are you most proud of?
The work that Cat and I did on Meanwhile, Elsewhere. It was such a privilege and honour and marathon to edit and drag it into the world, and I’m so grateful to the authors who gave us work for it. It’s deeply pleasing and humbling to hold that gorgeous telephone-book of stories in my hands. I think I’m more proud of that than any other literary thing I’ve been part of in my life.
9. What’s one risk you’re glad you took?
Here’s a relevant one: when I finished my undergrad, I was about to apply to get a teaching certificate. I’d gotten an English degree, I hadn’t written that much, I hadn’t been published anywhere or read in public, except for once, and that once had been an embarrassing shitshow. No one was pushing me to do anything, least of all write. I still had dreams of being a writer, and I thought maybe I’d do “the responsible thing” and teach and then write “on the side” or at night or something. It was a few weeks until the deadline to apply for the teaching program, and then I realized: “If I do that, I’m going to end up a person who once dreamed of being a writer.” This isn’t to say that that would’ve happened to everyone! But I know it would’ve happened to me.
I went on to do an MFA, which was a whole different can of worms with lots of benefits along with some drawbacks, but I don’t really view that as the important decision—the important decision was realizing that some people might be able to do X and be a writer, but if I do X that’s not going to happen. I’ve never looked back.
10. Is there a public space you’re fond of? Describe it.
The Dominion House in Windsor. It’s a huge old pub from the 1870s and I always have a space to sit.
11. Do you have any “vices”? What’s the relationship between your vices and your writing?
I plead the Fifth.
12. Do you have any upcoming projects planned or things you’re working on?
Little Fish took so much energy and rage and sadness and heartbreak that I have no idea what to do next besides this one short story I’d like to finish sometime. I also work an office job so my time to write is very curtailed. I don’t really mind that too much, though; I’ve published three books with my name on them in four years, so I don’t mind the idea of cheerleading other people’s books for a while. I have dreams about writing a screenplay where things aren’t sad. I’ve always wanted to write a YA thing too. Maybe that’ll happen.