Jen Currin‘s new collection of stories is Disembark, published by House of Anansi. Their collection Hider/Seeker: Stories won a Canadian Independent Book Award, was a finalist for a ReLit Award, and was named a 2018 Globe and Mail Best Book. They have also published five collections of poetry, most recently Trinity Street (Anansi, 2023); The Inquisition Yours (Coach House, 2010), which won the 2011 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry and was a finalist for a LAMBDA, the Dorothy Livesay Prize, and a ReLit Award; and School (Coach House, 2014), which was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award, the Dorothy Livesay Prize, and a ReLit Award. A white settler of mixed, mostly western European ancestry, Currin lives on the unceded ancestral territories of the Halkomelem-speaking peoples, including the Qayqayt, Musqueam, Kwikwetlem, and Kwantlen Nations, in New Westminster, BC and teaches creative writing and English at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.
Check our Jen’s workshop “Making Poems” offered during the festival launch weekend!
Interviewed by Cathalynn Labonté-Smith
Cathalynn Labonté-Smith (CLS): How would you describe Disembark to a potential reader?
Jen Currin (JC): Disembark is a collection of short stories that focus on relationships—friendships, loverships, and familial relationships—as they go through change. The stories center queer lives, bringing to life scenarios readers might not have encountered before, using the modes of realism and magic realism.
CLS: Is there a creative link between Trinity Street and Disembark? How did you select which stories to include in the collection?
JC: The biggest link is that I wrote both of them, although there are some thematic links as well. Both books concern themselves with friendship, and climate change is a theme in both as well. The ineffable, or the “spiritual,” is an interest of mine and shows up in several poems and stories. Death! Another theme I just can’t seem to get away from…. I try to bring a poet’s attention to every word and every sentence, so I hope that shows up in both the poetry and the prose—precision, lyricism, and a focus on imagery.
CLS: Who do you imagine/know your readers are?
JC: Many of my friends and family read my work, and also folks in queer community…fellow writers…and of course, random strangers who happen upon the work at a bookstore or event! It’s always an honour to have someone take the time to read one of my books.
CLS: What is your writing process?
JC: My writing process for stories is very long and laborious. For a long time, I simply gather material—I jot down notes about settings, characters, possible plot points, etc. These notes are written on loose leaf paper or torn from my writing notebook and kept in a file folder with the working title of the story on it. This part of the process takes months or years. At some point, I’ll get the impulse or the energy to start trying to pull some of the material together into a first draft. At this stage, I’ll start writing in a Word document. But I hardly ever (I can think of maybe one or two times?) have a complete draft at my first attempt. It usually takes weeks or months to get a completed first draft, and after that, I edit it more, getting feedback from readers and tinkering away at it for several more weeks or months. For poems, it’s a bit easier—but maybe that’s because I’ve written poetry for a lot longer. With poems, I work as a collagist, always gathering images, phrases, and ideas in my writing notebook, and then when I go to work on a poem, I pull from the notebook and whatever else might be in my environment at the time.
CLS: What and who inspires you?
JC: There are many sources of inspiration in my life. My friends and family are big inspirations. “Nature”—trees, parks, the ocean, my community garden plot, the Stó:lō River, which I live right next to. I read a lot and reading has always been a huge inspiration for me. Music, art of all kinds. And also just everyday life—things I hear or see on transit or in a restaurant or on the street. I’m always noticing and gathering material for stories and poems.
CLS: How did you select which stories to include in the collection?
JC: I had a number of completed stories and most of them made it into Disembark, although I cut at least one and added one, “Banshee,” after my publisher had already accepted the manuscript. The stories that made it in were the stories that were the most polished and were ready to be published in a book; some had already been published in journals and magazines. I had a couple of other stories I’d finished after the manuscript had been accepted, but I decided to hold off and put them in the next collection. “Banshee” was the one added because it deals with climate change and I felt the sooner it was published in a collection, the better. (It was also published in the online magazine Plenitude.)
CLS: Why is “The Golden Triangle” set in the US? What’s the connection to you and the location?
JC: Many of the stories in Disembark take place in the U.S. I lived there until I was 30, and still have a lot of friends and family there and go back often. Settings live on in my body and some of them ask to be brought to life in fiction. I still have many more stories to tell that take place in the U.S.
CLS: What inspired you to write about co-habitating with a banshee in “Banshee”?
JC: The haunting spectre of climate change, how it is worsening each year and how it will affect all of us, was the inspiration for this story.
CLS: “The Charismacist.” Creepy—based on a true story, are any based on a true story?
JC: This story is not autofiction but the sleezy professor is an amalgamation of several different teachers I have known or read about.
CLS: What advice would you give to novice writers?
JC: Read a lot, exercise every day if you can, write at least a couple of times a week, find some good writing pals and nurture that community. Try not to spend too much time online or on social media. Get feedback on your writing from good writers/editors and try to fall in love with revision as a practice.
CLS: What are you working on now? Do you see expanding your writing into a novel, perhaps based on one of your stories, perhaps?
JC: I’m working on several short stories and tinkering away at a few poems. I pray to god I am never called to write a novel!
Cathalynn Cindy Labonté-Smith is a freelancer who loves to interview authors and review books. She’s the author of the BC best-selling nonfiction book, Rescue Me: Behind the Scenes of Search and Rescue. She’s the founder of the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society and their Book Awards for the BC Writers Contest. She also spear-headed the taletrail.ca literary map. She assisted with coordinating the North Shore Writers Association writing contest 2023.