{"id":3068,"date":"2017-08-25T17:09:09","date_gmt":"2017-08-25T17:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/?p=3068"},"modified":"2018-04-13T01:08:01","modified_gmt":"2018-04-13T01:08:01","slug":"never-and-always-interview-with-desirina-boskovich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/never-and-always-interview-with-desirina-boskovich\/","title":{"rendered":"Never and Always: Interview with Desirina Boskovich"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome back! Today, I’m thrilled to spotlight author Desirina Boskovich. Desirina’s work has appeared in numerous outlets including Clarkesworld, Nightmare, and Lightspeed, among others. Earlier this summer, her new novella, Never Now Always<\/em>, debuted from Broken Eye Books.<\/p>\n

Recently, Desirina and I discussed her evolution as an author as well as her inspiration for Never Now Always<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A couple icebreakers to start: when did you first decide to become a writer, and who are some of your favorite authors?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I first decided to become a writer at age 5. I think I had just discovered chapter books. I don\u2019t quite remember how I learned the term \u201cwriter\u201d \u2013 maybe I asked my mom where books came from \u2013 but somehow I found out about the job title and instantly decided I would become that.<\/p>\n

Favorite authors\u2026 there are the classics such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Ursula LeGuin, Shirley Jackson, William Gibson, Jeanette Winterson, David Mitchell. In the past few months I\u2019ve been reading the crap out of some page-turners, which seem to be just what I need in these trying times. I am loving Megan Abbott, Gillian Flynn, Ruth Ware, Ruth Rendell and others in the thriller\/mystery genre.<\/p>\n

What draws you to speculative fiction? Do you remember the first speculative story you ever read?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first speculative story I read was definitely The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe<\/em>, followed by the rest of the Narnia books. My parents read a few of these to me and my sister before I was old enough to read them myself and I read the rest as soon as I could (probably just after I decided to become a writer). I did not have a good childhood and these books were my comfort and escape. I\u2019ve written elsewhere about my love for those books and the influence they\u2019ve had on me. They definitely imparted a love for the weird, fantastical and uncanny.<\/p>\n

I always gravitated toward science fiction and fantasy as a young reader. One book that I still remember is This Star Shall Abide<\/em> by Sylvia Engdahl. That story blew my mind.<\/p>\n

I think now I\u2019m drawn to speculative fiction for the same reasons I\u2019ve always been \u2013 my underlying conviction that the world we see is a very small sliver of what is, that we\u2019re sleepwalking, mostly, and the universe is vast and terrifying and beautiful and much stranger than we could possibly imagine. I want a piece of that, as much as I can find it. And often it feels to me that the language of magic, of fantasy, of horror, of the weird, is truer and more familiar to me as a depiction of my life than anything that pretends to be \u201crealistic.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Never<\/a>What was the inspiration behind Never Now Always<\/em>? As you were writing the early drafts, did that initial vision evolve, or did the finished story match how you first imagined the novella?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I started with this idea that I wanted to write about something I personally find unsettling, even horrifying. What I thought about then was the horror of trying to hold onto an important part of my mental landscape, a memory or a story or a knowledge about myself, and not being able to. Knowing I would lose it, or knowing I\u2019ve lost it, and the powerlessness of that, the invasion, the loss. So I ran through a few scenarios and ended up with this one. I had the basic outline of the novella before I started drafting. I think the finished story turned out pretty close to that, except it took me a long time to find a language that felt natural to my characters and their world.<\/p>\n

You’ve written both short and long fiction. What factors help you to determine what length a project should be?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think when I write short fiction I\u2019m writing toward a single powerful image or emotion or scene \u2013 sometimes the ending, not always. The rest of the story is designed to support that, to bring it about. I want it to be short because I don\u2019t want to waste any words getting to that moment of power.<\/p>\n

With a novel, I start with a set-up that intrigues me and I see where it goes. I usually don\u2019t know what the end will be. So I have to write a while to find my way there.<\/p>\n

In your work, you’ve explored themes that focus on identity, loss, and childhood. What draws you to these ideas in particular, and are these the themes that you see guiding your work in the future?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I grew up in an abusive home and my childhood was traumatic. I think from my earliest I\u2019ve been trying to navigate this great loss at the center of it all \u2013 a life lived without the anchor of safety in childhood, of parental love. It is a great loss because it\u2019s something that I think every human demands instinctually, from the moment we\u2019re born or perhaps before, we want our parents to love us and make us safe. You can grow up without it but you know always that you missed out on something irreplaceable. And that, I guess, feeds into identity. I am who I am because of that past, in ways good and bad. I try to lean into the good and I do my best to leave behind the bad.<\/p>\n

I think my work will always center on these themes, but hopefully I\u2019ll find new ways to explore them. Lately I\u2019ve become obsessed with psychological thrillers about women, that explore family dysfunction and buried traumas through the framework of suspense, danger and bloodshed. I really want to write one soon and I think that\u2019s a very interesting way to delve into the same ideas.<\/p>\n

Out of your published work, do you have a personal favorite?<\/strong><\/p>\n

One is \u201cThe Island,\u201d published in Nightmare Magazine, which explores the themes mentioned above. Another is the more recent \u201cThe Voice in the Cornfield, the Word Made Flesh\u201d from F&SF, which is something I really pushed and stretched myself to write.<\/p>\n

What projects are you currently working on?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am halfway through the second draft of a novel, which I hope will be finished soon. It\u2019s weird science fiction that\u2019s a little bit cyberpunk and a little bit eco-apocalypse.<\/p>\n

I am also collaborating with Jason Heller on a nonfiction book titled Starships & Sorcerers: The Secret History of Science Fiction<\/em>, which will be published by Abrams Books. The book will be illustrated and contain tons of gorgeous imagery, and contributions from a bunch of very smart people, too.<\/p>\n

Tremendous thanks to Desirina Boskovich for being part of this week’s author interview series. Find her online at her author site<\/a> as well as on Twitter<\/a> and Facebook<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Happy reading!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome back! Today, I’m thrilled to spotlight author Desirina Boskovich. Desirina’s work has appeared in numerous outlets including Clarkesworld, Nightmare, and Lightspeed, among others. Earlier this summer, her new novella, Never Now Always, debuted from Broken Eye Books. Recently, Desirina and I discussed her evolution as an author as well as her inspiration for Never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-interviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3068"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3560,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3068\/revisions\/3560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gwendolynkiste.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}