Illustration by Nadia Bormotova
Get to know writer Senaa Ahmad, whose story “The Women, Before and After” closes our FIGURES issue. Ahmad activates familiar technology to weave generations of women’s voices—distinct, urgent, desirous, and alive—into the narrative. Be sure to pick up a copy of FIGURES to read this haunting piece of writing, and consider subscribing to PRISM so you’ll never miss an issue!
Why do you live where you live?
I’ve lived in the same little apartment in Toronto for almost eight years. I lucked into it and rental costs in the city are a nightmare, so I guess I’ll live here forever.
What are you excited about or looking forward to right now?
Every year at the start of fall, my writing group rents out a cottage in central Ontario, locks itself inside, and writes like it’s the end of the world. It’s both extremely intimidating, because I write at the pace of a very tired snail, and also a little comforting, because it gives community to the actual physical process of writing rather than the many end goals or the final product or even talking about process abstractly.
Do you have any “vices”? What’s the relationship between your vices and your writing?
If we’re talking about vices as guilty pleasures, I’m trying to chuck out the idea of vices and guilty pleasures as a whole. Nothing like living in catastrophic times to remind you that a little pleasure can be wildly revitalizing!
If I’m getting a kick out of something, I’m immediately curious about which particular aspect it is that I’m enjoying and how or if the function of that enjoyment can someday be repurposed into the fiction I’m working on. That sounds a lot more analytical than it is. It’s honestly more vague and maybe somewhat intuitive.
What’s the last thing you read that surprised you?
Oh, that has to be Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden. It’s just a stunning, perfect book that feels relentless in scope, detail, humour, and horror.
Is there a public space you’re fond of? Describe it.
I’m lucky enough to live in a part of Toronto with ravines and parks and trails. I’m the farthest thing from an outdoorsy person, but I do love being in close proximity to overgrown wild places. There’s a lovely century-old wooden bridge over the Cedarvale ravine, and walking it in the fall when all of the colours are changing is sublime.
Did you write when you were younger? How does your earlier work relate to your current work?
As a kid, I catapulted from one style and genre and form to another, and there’s a playfulness and an unwillingness to stay in one spot for too long that I think is probably important to hold onto. I did write a truly shocking amount of mystery from age eight to twelve-ish, shocking because I feel like I’ve truly never gotten the hang of it.
Is there any advice you like ignoring? Writing or otherwise?
“Write every day,” the absolute worst. Plenty of writers I know take days, weeks, months off. That advice feels so impractical for the various and complex realities that many people face, especially in 2019.
What’s one risk you’re glad you took?
This sounds like a very lukewarm risk, because it is, but I’ve deliberately cut myself off from having a social media presence. I know it makes me seem like a bit of a hermit, and I know I’m missing out on some aspects of a writing career, but it helps me keep my time, sanity, and focus under control.
My one concession is a very straightforward mailing list, where people get an email every time a new story comes out. That’s it.
Tell us about something that brought you joy or made you laugh recently.
I have such a juvenile sense of humour, and one subgenre that brings me too much joy is people going all-in on their pets as tiny weird humans. Patricia Lockwood’s interview with The Cut is so good. The British orphan voice she uses for her cat makes me cry laughing.
Is there a question you wish you were asked more? What is it, and what would your answer be?
I always want to talk about the books I’m so excited about that I want to physically fling them at other people. This year, that list includes Tommy Orange’s exceptional novel There There, a double dose of memoirs with The Other Side by Lacy M. Johnson and Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden, the short story collections Home Remedies by Xuan Juliana Wang and If You See Me, Don’t Say Hi by Neel Patel. I loved the poetry collection There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé by Morgan Parker, her next book is sitting on my shelf at home, and I also loved Look by Solmaz Sharif, which feels like both a blunt instrument and a surgical weapon. The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley is brutal, non-stop, time-travelling science-fiction, and I’ve been mowing through Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series while trying not to read them all in one go. Thank goodness for libraries.
Senaa Ahmad lives in Toronto, where she fails to improve her Arabic and tries not to kill all the house plants. Her short fiction appears in such publications as Lightspeed Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, Augur Magazine, and Strange Horizons. A Clarion 2018 alum, she has received the generous support of the Octavia Butler Scholarship, the inaugural A. C. Bose Grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Ontario Arts Council. Most recently, she’s been nominated for the Sunburst Award and is working concurrently on her first two short story collections. You can find her at senaa-ahmad.com, head over to Uncanny to read “Nothing to Fear, Nothing to Fear,” or check out “The Skin of a Teenage Boy Is Not Alive” in Nightmare Magazine.