Interview with Katharine Duckett

Interview with Katharine Duckett

As part of the ongoing, but soon to be over, Book of Apex Vol. 4 Blog Tour, we’re very happy to present a short interview with Katharine Duckett. If any readers haven’t yet read Ms. Duckett’s guest post from earlier in the month, please check it out here. More details, posts, interviews, giveaways and whatnot can be found at the above link. Now, on to the interview.

Please introduce yourself to your fans. What should we know about you, your writing, your favorite soccer team, etc.? Where can we find your work?

Hi, fans! (By which I pretty much just mean my fiancée.) I’m the publicity coordinator for Tor.com by day, and a writer, performer, and Central Asian food enthusiast by night. I grew up in Tennessee, spent part of high school in Izmir, Turkey, went to Hampshire College in Massachusetts, and spent a couple of years in Kazakhstan before winding up in New York City. You can find my work next in the May issue of Interzone: they’ll be publishing my novelette, “The Mortuaries,” which, I’m betting you can tell from the title, is just about as cheery as “Sexagesimal.” I’ll write something that doesn’t revolve around dead people and the futility of existence someday, I promise! Maybe. Possibly.

How has working at Tor.com changed the way you approach writing and the genre as a whole? Does being an insider alter your relationship with SFF or give you any special insights about success?

Well, I started out working at Small Beer Press as an intern in college, which gave me some insight into the world of publishing and the diversity of the SF/F genre. At Tor.com, my position involves keeping an eye on what’s new and interesting in the field, and keeps me tuned into what writers across science fiction, fantasy, and speculative fiction are producing. So I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily altered my relationship with writing or the genre, but it’s expanded my knowledge of what’s out there and what’s possible as a writer just breaking into the field.

You wrote about the sense of dislocation you felt after two years abroad with the Peace Corps. How else has this experience informed your writing? In what ways, if any, does the exposure to new lifestyles and world views influence your creative process?

I find that spending time in totally different contexts always helps me gain perspective on whatever I’m writing, and I’ve definitely always been prone to wanderlust. Writing’s a lot like travel, in the sense that you need to suspend your own judgments and turn off your own filter in order to engage with someone else’s mindset and experiences. I’ve benefitted immensely from traveling and living abroad, and it’s been central to my development as a writer. It’s helped me learn to experiment and branch out in my work, to take a step back and consider how a story looks in the light of all different sorts of perspectives, to stretch my skills and take on new challenges without remaining locked into my comfort zone.

*****

Thanks, Katharine, for taking time out of your busy schedule eating Central Asian food, publicizing Tor.com, and writing depressing stories about dead people, to talk with Two Dudes. I got a sneak peak at “The Mortuaries” and can assure everyone that it is every bit as mind-bending as “Sexagesimal.” Definitely worth picking up Interzone in May.

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