Nancy Kress Interview
Nancy Kress has been nominated for the Nebula Award 11 times in various categories and won 4 times. She is the 2007 winner for her novella, Fountain of Age, published in Asimov's Magazine, July 2007. In 2007, Ms Kress was the only writer to receive nominations in two separate categories.
Tell us a little bit about Fountain of Age.
Fountain of Age is about human connection. Max Feder, in his late eighties and living in a nursing home in a future Brooklyn, decides that his last act will be to see once again the woman he has loved obsessively and unhappily for his entire life. She, Daria Cleary, has had as unexpected a life as he has. Max was a major cyber-criminal; Daria's brain grew a mutant tumor that medical science has developed into an "immortality drug." She is still 18. The story is Max's convoluted, quixotic, insane quest to see her one more time.
What was the original spark or idea for this story?
I always find this a hard question to answer. I wrote the first scene two years before I wrote the story; after that first scene, I ran out of invention. But Max stayed in my mind. Then, later, I had a lot of unused research on the Romani people that I'd intended to use in a novel that never got off the ground. So that research became the second spark.
Was there an underlying message or point you were trying to get across in the story?
I don't write stories to make a "point," but I guess you could say that this one centers on what matters in life: not so much getting something as wanting something. Without desire or hope, you're already dead.
Are there certain themes that tend to crop up in your writing? Or is every story completely different?
There probably are themes, yes, but they're very broad: the search for something to give meaning to life. The frustrations and rewards of love. How far people do, or do not, extend themselves for others.
Many of your stories have an element of genetic engineering. What draws you to this particular branch of science?
This IS the future, and not the distant future, either. When we think of "genetic engineering," we tend to think of "designer babies," and that's probably not going to happen in my lifetime. But gene therapy and crop engineering both have tremendous potential to change the human world for the better, and I believe they will.
Are there other types of stories that you are also drawn to?
I like any story, in any genre, that makes me think and feel, that offers interesting characters faced with human wants, especially if written in graceful prose. But I'll forego the prose if I can have the characters.
How much research do you usually have to do for a story?
It varies widely. If it's a hard science story, then quite a lot, because I have no real science background. If a story will contain some other element with which I'm also unfamiliar -- say, the Rom -- I also read books and/or download Internet articles. But for a story like Safeguard, in which the science is in the background and is mentioned only in very general terms, no research is necessary.
You began writing fantasy and then switched to science fiction. What inspired the change?
I don't know. I just felt I had written all the fantasy I wanted to, and that SF was next.
How does your writing process work?
I'm a morning person, and so a morning writer. When I'm working on something, I write from about 8:30 to noon or 1:00 every morning. Afternoons are for student manuscripts (I teach a lot), research, reading, and business stuff.
Who were the biggest influences for you in developing your craft?
Probably the stories of Ursula LeGuin. I read them over and over, trying to see how she DID that. I would still like to know.
You mention in your biography that you started writing while you were pregnant with your second son. What turned you on to writing? Did your children influence your desire to write?
My children are the reason I started to write. I was pregnant with Brian, Kevin was a toddler, I lived way out in the country and had no car -- I was going crazy. I wrote when Kevin napped just to have something creative to do. I never envisioned writing as a career. It's odd the places that life can take you.
Before you became a full-time writer, how were you able to balance your writing career, working a “day job” and raising a family?
I was fortunate in that my "day jobs" were never of the eight-hours-at-the-office variety. I taught college, which involves a varied schedule, and then I wrote PR for an ad agency, working half-time and often from home. That gave me flexibility to put the writing first, the bill-paying tasks second.
What were your first thoughts when you found out two of your stories were nominated for Nebulas?
I was surprised. This was especially true since I had four different stories selected for Best-of-the-Year anthologies last year -- and none of them was either Fountain of Age or my other nominee, Safeguard.
Did you have any idea which of the two stories might win?
No. I never can call what will win awards, mine or anyone else's.
What were the most memorable moments for you during the Nebula Award weekend?
On Friday night, I was in a dinner group that included Connie Willis, Joe and Gay Haldeman, Jack Skillingstead, Mike and Margie Flynn, Cynthia Felice, Sheila Williams, and Russell Davis. We were in a restaurant in the Omni hotel, which was built around a fifteen-story-high atrium with room blocks on three sides and a wall of glass on the fourth. During dinner, Austin had a huge storm: lightning, crashing thunder, rain beating against all that towering glass. It was impressive and exciting. And then silhouettes of cars on the street became reflected, ghostly, in the wet glass, gliding silently past four stories above the ground. That and winning, of course.
This is your fourth Nebula Award, and you’ve been nominated several times. Does the experience change after winning or being nominated so many times?
Yes, I have to say it does. Although of course I'm glad to win, each award means a little less than the ones before. I think this is partly a matter of age. As one gets older, the outside accolades matter less and the internal quality of the stories themselves matters more.
What kind of mark do you hope to leave on the genre?
That's not for me to decide. And any guess I made would probably be wrong, anyway. In my experience, writers are seldom accurate judges of their own work.
If you could give new writers one piece of advice, what would it be?
Write. A lot. And then write some more. So often I see talented students who simply do not put in enough time at the keyboard to turn that talent into stories.
What do you have in the hopper for your next project?
I'm currently writing another novella. Novellas are my favorite form. But this one is as yet only five or six thousand words along, so I don't know yet how it will turn out. Or if it will. Since I don't plot stories ahead of time, their progress is a matter of great suspense -- especially to me. I write to find out what I'm going to say.
For more than three decades, NANCY KRESS has entertained readers with science fiction/fantasy stories that balance vivid characters, complex relationships and imaginative worlds with cutting edge science and technology. She is the author of two books on writing, was the "Fiction" columnist for Writer’s Digest for 16 years and teaches at writing workshops and conferences. Kress's short story collection, Nano Comes to Clifford Falls and Other Stories (Golden Gryphon Press) released in May. Her bio-thriller novel, Dog (Tachyon) is due to hit bookstores in July followed by her SF novel Steal Across the Sky in December.
She is the 2007 winner of the Nebula for Best Novella, with her story Fountain of Age. (Asimov’s, July 2007).
For more information, see her website or read her blog.
By day, JEN WEST runs the corporate rat race working in women’s wear design and merchandising for an upscale clothing manufacturer. By night she's a mild-mannered freelance writer in constant search for the next interesting character or story.
Her interviews have appeared in such venues as Shimmer and Fairwood Press's interview collection, Human Visions. She has degrees in Journalism and French from the University of Oregon, and remembers fondly the pressure of meeting deadlines at the Oregon Daily Emerald as a staff writer. She currently resides with her writer husband, Ken Scholes, two pudgy cats and a box garden in St. Helens, OR. Drop her a note at .
2 comments so far.
Wonderful interview. Thank you, Jen, for helping us learn more about Nancy and her stories.
1. David de Beer on 01st July 2008 at 4:58 am
I claim the first Nebsite comment ever.