Karen Joy Fowler Interview
When did you know you wanted to become a writer?
This is an ambition I’ve had on and off since I was about four. But mostly off, until my 30th birthday when I made the decision for real. But even after that decision, I probably didn’t understand how much I wanted it until I went to a writer’s conference in Napa, California, maybe a year or two later. I went hoping to learn whether I had talent or potential. I came home having learned mainly that I really wanted to be part of that world.
At what point did you consider yourself an actual writer? What were some of the difficulties you ran into before you considered yourself one?
I’m not sure I’m an actual writer even now. I think I share with many other writers the sense that I’m getting away with something and will be unmasked at any moment. Perhaps even as we speak.
What’s your writing process like?
Slow. I have really great ideas in the shower and then by the time I’ve toweled off, they no longer seem like great ideas. I start spare and spend most of my writing life filling in. Everything I like in my work is something I added in a later draft.
What’s the appeal of science fiction/fantasy for you?
Any world in which Arnold Schwarzenegger can be elected governor of California is not a world to which the tools of realism can be usefully applied. Realism is not sufficiently realistic. I want a literature big enough to deal with sheep cloning, pet psychics, Sarah Palin.
Which do you prefer more, writing short stories or novels? Does your writing process alter when doing one or the other?
I’d rather be writing short stories. They’re so manageable. So short!
Who are some of the authors or what are some of the books that you think have influenced your writing?
My first answer is going to be T.H. White’s The Once and Future King
I love Austen for her wit and her minute examinations of people and power, of how people see themselves as opposed to how other people see them. I love seeing the world the way she saw it.
Do you consider yourself a genre writer?
I don’t worry much about it. There are plenty of other people willing to worry about it for me. I love genre so I’m pleased to be thought a genre writer. But I love mainstream, too, so I’m really okay either way.
What’s it like having both a science fiction/fantasy audience and a mainstream audience? Do your fans read both?
I think most of my science fiction fans read both. I’m not so sure about my mainstream fans. I think The Jane Austen Book Club
Did you run into any difficulties penetrating either the science fiction/fantasy markets or the mainstream markets?
You bet! It’s hard to sell books. Ask anyone (except maybe Dan Brown.)
What made you and Pat Murphy decide to start the James Tiptree, Jr. Award?
We were annoyed. There were many sources for this annoyance, but one was that Carol Emshwiller‘s Carmen Dog wasn’t winning any awards. We wanted to create an award to give Carmen Dog 
What were some of the challenges in starting up and running the awards?
It was pretty effortless. Pat announced the creation of the award at Wiscon, the feminist science fiction convention, and before we knew it, other people were doing all the work of making the award an actuality. Mostly it’s turned out to be quite fun.
What’s the process like editing the The James Tiptree Award Anthologies
Again, I’m not really the one who’s done the heavy lifting. Debbie Notkin, Jeff Smith, Pat, and I confer and I enjoy being involved, but Debbie and Jeff are the real editors. It’s not clear we’ll be doing another, though. We’re exploring some online alternatives.
Can you tell us more about your latest novel, Wit’s End?
I did a lot of historical research on religious cults and I used some of it in the novel and some of it in my story “Always.”
I was trying to write a mystery novel. It turned out to be more of a novel about mystery novels than the real thing. It’s also a bit of a ghost story, bit of a gothic. Politics and the internet. And it’s meant to be funny.
You’re part of a book club. Has the book club helped in your writing?
Reading has helped in my writing. I just like everything to do with books.
In the decades that you’ve been writing, what in your opinion is the biggest change that’s occurred in the industry?
I think I was very lucky to come in when I did. My impression is that a lot of doors have closed for new writers. But maybe I’m being unduly pessimistic—the publishing industry has had a really bad couple of weeks. Maybe it will bounce right back!
All I really need is for the books I’m going to want to read to still be published. Just promise me that.
About Karen Joy Fowler
I was born in Bloomington, Indiana. I was due on Valentine’s Day but arrived a week early; my mother blamed this on a really exciting IU basketball game. My father was a psychologist at the University, but not that kind of psychologist. He studied animal behavior, and especially learning. He ran rats through mazes. My mother was a polio survivor, a schoolteacher, and a pioneer in the co-operative nursery school movement. Along with basketball, my family loved books. The day I got my first library card there was a special dinner to celebrate. And before I could read myself, I remember my father reading The Iliad to me, although really he was reading it to my older brother, I just got to be there. A shocking book! And I remember Mary Poppins and Winnie the Pooh in my father’s voice and a bunch of other things that weren’t movies yet. My parents strongly disapproved of the Disney version of things. Pooh believed in a spoonful of honey, but Mary Poppins did not.
I have great memories of Bloomington. Our block was packed with kids and we played enormous games that covered whole blocks of territory, with ten kids to a side. One of my childhood friends was Theodore Deppe, who’s now an outstanding poet. I planned to grow up to be a dog trainer myself.
Both my parents were raised in southern California and so regarded our time in Indiana as an exile. When I was 11 years old my father was offered a job with Encyclopedia Britannica that necessitated our moving to Palo Alto, California. My parents were thrilled to be coming back. My older brother, for reasons that escape me, was equally pleased. I was devastated.
Palo Alto was much more sophisticated than Bloomington. At recess in Bloomington we played baseball, skipped rope, played jacks or marbles depending on the season. In Palo Alto girls my age were already setting their hair, listening to the radio, talking about boys. I considered it a sad trade. The best thing about the sixth-grade was that my teacher, Miss Sarzin, read The Hobbit to us.
After reading many more books, I graduated from Palo Alto High in 1968 and went to Berkeley. I was a political science major and an antiwar activist. I was in Berkeley during People’s Park, when the city was occupied and there were tanks on the street corners, and I was there during the Jackson State/Kent State killings. I met my husband there. He’d been part of the free speech movement; that was my idea of glamor. We got married the year I graduated and we came to graduate school at UC Davis together.
As an undergraduate I had a special interest in India and Gandhi, and a general interest in imperialism. I find the intersection of cultures fascinating, the misunderstandings that occur, the mistakes that are innocently made. I’m not so fascinated by the mistakes that aren’t innocent, although there are a good many more of the latter kind. As a graduate student I focused on China and Japan. It’s not clear to me what my career goals were — whatever, I had my first child during spring break of the last year of my masters. Six days less than two years later I had a second child. My husband and I still live in Davis, although the kids have left for college and beyond.
I decided to try to be a writer on my 30th birthday.
Charles A. Tan is the co-editor of the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler and his fiction has appeared in publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories and Philippine Speculative Fiction. He has conducted interviews for The Nebula Awards and The Shirley Jackson Awards, as well as for online magazines such as SF Crowsnest and SFScope. He is a regular contributor to sites like SFF Audio and Comics Village. You can visit his blog, Bibliophile Stalker, where he posts book reviews, interviews, and essays.
