Super exciting interview going up today, with Kemi Ashing-Giwa! Kemi’s debut novel came out last year (The Splinter in the Sky) and she has a novella coming out later this month (along with a preorder campaign for extra goodies!). In addition to our questions for Kemi, she had some for us too & we answered those at the end of the interview. Before we start, you can still preorder The World Is Not Yours here & don’t forget to enter the preorder campaign to receive a high resolution digital poster and three deleted scenes from the novella!
And you can also keep up with Kemi via her newsletter & Bluesky.
Have you always known you wanted to be a writer? How old were you when you wrote your first story?
I’ve loved writing for as long as I can remember, but thinking of writing as something I could do professionally is relatively new—or at least still feels that way! I don’t recall how old I was when I wrote my very first piece, but I transitioned from 1-page stories with barely any plot to speak of to co-writing tiny adventure novelettes sometime after I met my first best friend in kindergarten. We built out a pachyderm-centric paracosm together and wrote a new story set in that universe every time we hung out, for nearly a whole decade.
What pieces of media would you say were formative for you? Do you see any of their features in your own writing?
I grew up watching Star Trek: The Original Series with my mom. It was my introduction to optimistic science fiction with a sociopolitical focus—which is what I’m always aiming for, ultimately—and also partly inspired me to pursue a career in science. I read N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season during the middle of quarantine, and it’s one of the books that got me back into reading for pleasure in college. I don’t know if I would’ve tried to get published without it. To this day, it remains one of the best pieces of fiction I’ve ever read. I also don’t know if I could have ever gotten published without it; the success of authors like Jemisin—and the great Octavia Butler!—opened countless doors for Black speculative fiction authors.
When you close your eyes and imagine an apple, what do you see? An actual apple, a sketch of one, a blackness? Do you think that impacts your writing process?
I see a blurry image of a honeycrisp floating in darkness. I’m sure the way I imagine things affects my writing process, but I can’t say how (without just making something up). I generally only write when I really want to (and I try to wait out writer’s block when it hits), so by the time I sit down with a blank page in front of me, the words just rush out. My writing process is naturally quite unstructured; I only write outlines because my plots tend to spiral out of control otherwise.
If you wanted to learn about craft, which three authors would you suggest reading?
Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, N. K. Jemisin.
When you’re building your world, what do you focus on? How do you try to make it come to life?
I tend to focus on the social aspects of my stories. After fleshing out my characters, the next thing I do is develop the main systems of power within the world(s) I’ll be writing in. When it comes to making my settings feel real, I rely on visuals first—which is why I wish I had a better answer for the apple question! (I’m also quite self-indulgent with food descriptions, and if there’s a fun science tidbit I can slip in, I will.)
What projects are you currently working on? Can you share any details yet?
At the moment, I’m brainstorming a new science fantasy project and preparing to revise the first half of a new space opera. I think that’s all I can say for now!
Three pictures that capture the aesthetic of your book?
From left to right: a still from Scavengers Reign, a satellite image of freshwater from the Mezen River meeting the saltwater of the Arctic Ocean taken by the US Geological Survey/NASA, and a still from Annihilation.
Three songs you would put in your book’s soundtrack?
“Kill Bill” by SZA, “I Can’t Figure You Out” by Hugh, and “I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire” by The Ink Spots.
What would be your dream project?
Whatever I’m currently working on is my dream project. 🙂
Which of your characters would you most want to fight a zombie apocalypse with?
Of the three main characters in This World Is Not Yours, I’d say Vinh. Unless she was madly in love with you, Amara would leave you to die if watching your back became even mildly inconvenient. In a tight spot, Jesse would use you as bait… assuming he hadn’t already let a zombie bite him just to see what the transformation process felt like. But Vinh would risk life and limb to rescue a complete stranger.
You’re stuck on a desert island and you’re allowed only three (LGBT) books. What are you taking?
All Systems Red by Martha Wells (old favorite), The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (semi-recent favorite), and Don’t Go Without Me by Rosemary Valero-O’Connell (haven’t read yet but at the top of my TBR).
You can collaborate on anything with anyone in the LGBT community: who would it be and why?
The first person who comes to mind is Gisele Jobateh, the creator of my favorite webcomic of all time, Star Trip. I’d love to work on something with them!
KEMI’S QUESTIONS FOR US
What themes, tropes, and/or topics in science fiction and fantasy, or fiction in general, make a story irresistible to you?
Anna: I haven’t been reading a lot of SFF lately, so let’s talk about fiction in general. I’m a sucker for found family, first of all, but even more importantly: when a community comes together to help someone. Especially a person who isn’t used to being taken care of or doesn’t expect help & support at that moment. I will cry every time; it doesn’t even matter how big of a gesture we’re talking about.
Charlotte: On the whole, I’ve started to find that just knowing a theme or trope is present in a book isn’t enough for me to want to pick up the book, but there are still some that will pique my interest. Like, reluctant allies, especially where they’re forced into a situation where they have to trust each other and start to care for one another (see: Cheris and Jedao from Yoon Ha Lee’s Machineries of Empire). Sentient spaceships are also pretty cool, and in general, any SFF that deals on any level with language is like catnip to me.
What ruins a book for you?
Anna: I need two things to be able to enjoy a book: either interesting characters (notice how I didn’t say likeable) or good writing. I can overlook the lack of one of those elements, if the other one is truly great, but I absolutely need at least on them. In terms of the writing style, I don’t have a favourite type and often read wildly different things, but a must is that it’s memorable. (I’m also definitely not a fan of purple prose.)
Charlotte: An author’s writing is make or break for me. It’s harsh, but if I don’t like the writing style, then it doesn’t matter how much the rest of the book might be right up my alley, that’s it. I can’t get past it, so if you catch me rating books one or two stars, that’s the primary reason 90% of the time. Part of it is this kind of “invisible” writing style, where you’re not supposed to notice the author’s voice, and that feels quite prevalent at the minute, but it reads so bland to me. Raymond Chandler is obviously very dated at this point, but, as an example, you pick up a Chandler book and you know from the very first line who you’re reading. Or Francis Spufford’s Golden Hill, which feels like a book that’s been crafted word-by-word rather than simply written. I do still enjoy books by some authors using this invisible style, but, like I said, it’s the first impression I get of a book and usually the lasting one.
How have your tastes changed over time, and do you think your work as a reviewer has had an impact on that?
Anna: A few years back I was mostly reading young adult books, and these days I’m a litfic enjoyer through and through, so that’s a start. I do think being a reviewer taught me to look at books beyond the “did I have fun?” part, and so to become more picky and more sure about what I like and dislike in literature. But I’m also sure this drift towards litfic lately is partly (mainly?) because I’m simply growing older. I enjoy when a book makes me think, when I actually have something to say about it in a review.
Charlotte: Much like Anna, I’ve been moving away from YA in the past few years, and heading into litfic, classics and nonfiction. In fact, I think nearly half the books I read in August were nonfiction. SFF has, at the minute at least, suffered from that move too (although that could be to do with a bunch of other factors, most obviously mood). I don’t know if it’s anything to do with reviewing but I have got to be an increasingly picky reader in the last year or two. It’s possible that reviewing means I think more about why I don’t like books, but it’s hard to say. I’ve been reviewing for too long, I don’t remember the before!
What are your top three favorite books of all time?
Anna: Ah, the dreaded question of every reader! Let’s go with LGBT books only, though, given the kind of blog we’re running here. (Otherwise I would just let out my pretentious side and start listing classics…) Devotion by Hannah Kent, The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar, and either Bramy raju by Jerzy Andrzejewski or These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever.
Charlotte: This is an impossible question but, as it’s basically one we ask every author too, I guess turnabout’s fair play! There’s a fair bit of recency bias on my part so really I’ve probably picked three of many favourites of all time (and kept to three, unlike Anna). Exordia by Seth Dickinson, The Skin and Its Girl by Sarah Cypher, and A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine.
If you could manifest any book into being, what would the one-sentence description of it be?
Anna: A lesbian historical fiction, heavy on the romance and heavier still on social commentary, following the path of Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South.
Charlotte: Any retellings of classics (or, even more specifically, Shakespeare plays) set in space. Think like The Stars Undying.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kemi Ashing-Giwa is the USA Today bestselling, Compton Crook Award-winning author of The Splinter in the Sky, the forthcoming novella This World Is Not Yours, and the forthcoming novel The King Must Die. Her short fiction, which has been nominated for an Ignyte Award and featured on the Locus Recommended Reading List, has been reprinted in The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction Volume 3, Some of the Best from Tor.com: 15th Anniversary Edition, and The Year’s Top Tales of Space and Time 3. She studied organismic & evolutionary biology and astrophysics at Harvard, and is now pursuing a PhD in the Earth & Planetary Sciences department at Stanford.
She is represented by Tricia Skinner of Fuse Literary.
Follow on Goodreads | Preorder This World Is Not Yours | Enter the preorder campaign
One Comment
Pingback: