Interview by Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li
This year’s 2021 Jacob Zilber Prize winners‘ stories, chosen by contest judge Téa Mutonji, explore themes of sexuality, identity, branding, desire, and connection. Their words are luminous—reflecting and challenging society’s profit off time, space, and skin. PRISM’s Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li sits down to speak with the winners about their pieces; these three spirited and resilient works can be found in our 59.4 issue.
Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li: How did you find the story behind your pieces?
Jessica Bloom: Oh, it’s just a timeless story about the endless struggle of being alive in the world.
Amorina Kingdon: Last year during lockdown, I retrieved some teenage journals from my parents’ house and read an entry I’d made at sixteen after hanging out with a friend and realizing I was attracted to them. It was terrifying, but euphoric. I’d scrawled a free-flowing torrent in blue Bic ballpoint, the lines progressively sloppier, culminating in all caps: I want to know what this love is like. But there was no further mention in the journal. Sixteen years later, I realized how oblivious I’d been to what the rightness of the feeling was telling me. Fear seems like the obvious reason, but it hadn’t felt like fear at the time.
I decided to write about the subtle cues and dangers-that-aren’t-dangers that might nudge a young person away from their queerness. It was bittersweet. And when I learned that the story would see the light of day I realized I had to honour this younger self, and finally come out as bisexual.
Zilla Jones: This piece is fiction, but there are many elements of creative nonfiction—it is based on a pastiche of people I knew and experiences I had in high school (no, I did not have that particular sexual experience—but I heard about it from other girls who experienced something similar). I wanted to write my story as a retrospective, with the narrator reflecting back on those experiences a couple of decades later, and I intended for that quality of remembering to be prominent throughout the story. Since I almost always begin my stories at the end, I knew that this one would finish with the narrator missing her high school friend who she had not seen in all that time. I also wanted the story to highlight the class divide and the politics of respectability within the Black community through two Black girls, one from each side of that divide. Then I blended my own real upbringing and experiences with some fictional liberties to create “Lady.” My grandmother really did say to me, “Always be a lady,” and both she and my mother would be horrified to read the unladylike language Rochelle uses!
Li: What was your editing process like for the narrative?
Kingdon: When I was Cathleen’s age, I wrote choppier and less grammatically—I thought it made me sound like Thomas Pynchon and James Joyce. Now I write clearer, but whatever voice I have has roots in that earlier tone. This story wasn’t singing until finally, right before submitting, I slashed nearly half the words. Now it hews more honestly to the story, my voice, and Cathleen’s age: ragged, half-complete, declarative.
Bloom: I made it thicker or thinner in certain areas, but it didn’t change too much from the first draft.
Jones: “Lady” was one of those stories that just flows out—I did the thinking in my head before writing and then it just came to me. I’m weird, I write backwards, so I wrote the ending first and then the scenes moving back from that with the opening last—though I had an idea what it would be. Then I usually edit forwards—so I adjust the beginning once I know what the end is, and move through the piece in chronological order, cutting, adding, or moving sections if I need to. But with this story, I don’t remember doing that much; I was really just cleaning up the little things and, as above, saying to myself, I really hope my mother never sees this story, because I’m writing so many curse words here. I remember forcing myself to write outside my comfort zone and to be more bold and more outrageous, and not shy away from the edge.
Li: Do you have a favourite go-to drink or snack for writing? A preferred location or space?
Kingdon: Grilled flatbread and Island Dreams tea at Iluka Espresso in Victoria.
Jones: Writing is intense for me. I get emotional and I cry lots. If I stare at the screen too long, I end up with migraines. So I try to remember to drink a lot of water. Or peppermint herbal tea is nice and calming. I don’t really eat while I’m writing—fruit sometimes. In terms of a location, space has been pretty limited at my house during the pandemic with everyone learning and working from home and several areas being under renovation, so I pretty much write wherever there’s a space for me, and I’m grateful for the time to do that. I am not one of those lucky writers who has a dedicated writing studio (some day!) or a set writing time or anything like that. My life is crazy with work, kids, and everything else. I write a lot, I write most days, but it’s when I can snatch the time.
Bloom: It has to be very late at night, but that’s all.
Li: Tell us about something that brought you joy or made you laugh recently.
Bloom: I’m laughing constantly, everything is just so funny.
Kingdon: My one-year-old niece threw a toy truck at me.
Jones: That’s easy. I know it sounds cliche, but I get so much joy from my kids. Just recently I was watching my youngest son’s soccer game and when he ran out on the field with a big smile spread across his face, witnessing his joy made me so happy it almost hurt—wanting to savour the feeling forever but knowing that it will not last. The last year and a half have not been that conducive to joy, but being outside with my family, spending time at the beautiful Manitoba lakes and beaches as well as the soccer field, were so good for my soul. And of course, writing always brings me joy, or I would not do it.
Vivian (Xiao Wen) Li is a writer, musician, and editor who enjoys exploring obscure and intriguing concepts. Her creative works are forthcoming or published in Uncanny Magazine, ellipsis… literature & art, and Plenitude Magazine, among others. Most recently, she was Longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize 2020, and received Honorable Mentions from Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize 2019. A MFA candidate at UBC, she is currently Prose Editor for PRISM international, and can be reached @eliktherain.
Zilla Jones is an African-Canadian lawyer, anti-racist educator, mother, singer and writer from Treaty 1 territory (Winnipeg.) She has been longlisted for the CBC short fiction competition, shortlisted for the Writers Union of Canada short prose competition and the Fiddlehead magazine short story competition, and won Honourable Mention in the Room magazine short fiction contest and first place in the GritLit festival short story contest. Her fiction has appeared in Prairie Fire magazine and is forthcoming in the Malahat Review, as the winner of the Open Season fiction contest. She is currently polishing her first novel.
Amorina Kingdon is a writer living in Victoria, British Columbia. She is the staff writer for Hakai Magazine, where she was awarded Best New Magazine Writer in 2017 by the National Magazine Awards. Her science writing has appeared in Best Canadian Essays 2020 (Biblioasis) and she has fiction forthcoming in Speculative North. When she’s not writing she can be found hiking around the hills of Vancouver Island, trying to learn ancient Sumerian, or figure skating, all of which she’s written stories about.
Jessica Bloom’s fiction has been published in Pithead Chapel (USA) and Sand Journal (Germany), both excerpts from a novel-in-progress. Other writing has appeared in New York Magazine, Elle, McSweeney’s, Vice, Playboy and The Phnom Penh Post. She has a BFA in creative writing (University of Victoria), M.A. in media studies (Ryerson University) and M.A. in counselling psychology (Yorkville University). She lives in Toronto.