May 27th is the one year anniversary of It's a Lot! Thank you so much for our support throughout our first year. It means the world to us. Check out Emily's Instagram this week for celebrations, reflections, and a fun giveaway! You can always support the show by leaving a review on your favorite podcast app or sending a one-time or recurring tip.

Author Kristina Ten joins host Emily Hessney Lynch for a wide-ranging conversation about impostor syndrome, the lore of our youth, going back to school for an MFA, the marketing genius of Chuck Tingle, and why it's important to her to write flawed, unlikable characters--especially queer ones!

In the second half of the show, we explore Kristina's experiences with moving all over the U.S., how she gets to know new places, our anxieties about AI, and why you've just gotta wail sometimes.

Links:

• Buy Kristina's debut, Tell Me Yours I'll Tell You Mine (or borrow it from your local library!).
• Follow Kristina on Instagram or check out her website.
• Emily's business, Serve Me the Sky Digital.
• Also mentioned in this episode: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones and Fabulous Bodies by Chuck Tingle.

We're a proud member of the Lunchador Podcast Network. Our logo is by Tenderchomps Art.

Mentioned in this episode:

Joe Bean Roasters

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Mind of Magnus

The Mind is an An Amazing Space Dive into the Mind of Magnus Champlin. A creative brain cursed with endless curiosity. The show focuses on learning about everything and anything, from factoids to deep dives into theories. Magnus interviews guests sharing their stories and life adventures all with the goal of expanding our minds. We are always on the lookout for the next awesome thing to learn!

Dialed In: A Coffee Podcast

Dial In your coffee game! A podcast by two coffee lovers for coffee lovers. Wade Reed and Aaron Pascucci approach coffee and its culture from a different angle - grab a cup and join us! Dial In your coffee game! A podcast by two coffee lovers for coffee lovers. Wade Reed and Aaron Pascucci approach coffee and its culture from a different angle - grab a cup and join us! https://levelupwny.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast (levelupwny.substack.com)

Because I'm a Virgo, I didn't just send a mood board. I sent 10 to 12 pages of all of these various visual ideas, which I think Virgos think is helpful. More information is better, but actually, because I have worked with designers and illustrators and photographers, I know that's actually a nightmare.

Hello and welcome to It's A Lot, a podcast about things that are a lot. On this show we have honest conversations about the highs and lows of social media, parenthood, and much more.

When it comes to complex topics, online discourse can lack nuance and empathy. That's why we're leaning into deep conversations, making space for conflicting, messy feelings and keeping it real about how we feel. We could all use a little more of that sometimes. I'm your host, Emily Hessney Lynch, and today I'm excited to be chatting with Kristina Ten.

Kristina is the author of Tell Me Yours, I'll Tell You Mine, an excellent short story collection that I really found just delightfully unsettling. And all of the stories are very timely too. Her award winning stories appear in the Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy, We're Here, the Best Queer Speculative Fiction, the Best Weird Fiction of the Year, and elsewhere. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and today she writes, teaches and coaches in the company of two mischievous dogs and bookshelves full of fairy tales. I'm really looking forward to our conversation. Welcome to the show, Kristina.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

It should be fun. I'm curious when you first considered yourself a writer, like, do you have early memories of scribbling down little stories?

I've always wanted to be a writer, which is something that my parents find hilarious because we moved to the States when I was young and we were all learning English at the same time.

And they think it's funny that like someone who's the product of that and also someone who's the product of two people in science backgrounds went on to become a writer in the English language. But I assure them that this actually happens all the time. The first stories I ever wrote, I was probably like six or so.

And I just remember like crouching on all fours in our little kitchen in our rental in Tucson, Arizona.

And I just remember having these like sheets of paper over the tiles and I was like in this position that like definitely at my age now I could never maintain for hours the way I was doing then. But I was writing these adventure stories and the protagonist was always the same. Her name was Kika Love.

Kika was my family's nickname for me because I couldn't pronounce Christina. And, and she was so cool, you know, she was like a classic adventure heroine. She was me, but also not me at all.

I was a really shy, really self conscious, anxious kid and she was so brave. And they were little, you know, like four or five page stories, but they held these big worlds. So I always knew I wanted to be a writer.

I think, like, the question of like, when did I first consider myself a writer? Like, any writer will tell you that imposter syndrome is so real.

So there was a point when I thought, oh, you know, like when I write and finish my first story, I'll consider myself a writer. And then I hit that benchmark and then it just moved, right. Like the finish line keeps moving and moving.

And I said, oh, when I go into my MFA, I'll consider myself a writer. Or when I publish my first book, I'll consider myself a writer.

But it's something that I've realized for me cannot come from external validation and has to come from just the regular practice of sitting alone with the work and wrestling with the work. And now those are the moments when I really do feel like, rooted in that identity.

That's amazing. It takes a lot to get to that point. I feel like, yes, I've definitely, like, I've written and published short stories and I've published memoir and I always have that imposter syndrome too. And I'm not really actively writing or wrestling with this. I'm like, I don't know, I, I'm a fraud. You're the real writer. But it is, it does have to come from internal.

Yeah, exactly. And it's something that I have to be reminding myself all the time. And I, I mean, external validation is also like a, a really useful tool that I turn to all the time. If I'm feeling stuck, I'll look at like the current submission calls, right?

Using something like Submission Chill subs, one of those tools which markets are open looking for which themes and stories, and I'll use those as like external incentives to like sit down and write something new. So I think that those external forces can be useful too.

But to like rely on them for a sense of self worth and identity is a trap and a losing game every time I think.

And how old were you when you moved to the States?

I was three.

Okay. And did you ever write in your...in Russian?

No, No. I mean, I, I read in Russian very, very slowly, like at the level of There was a point when I was younger, when I was speaking Russian at home and learning English alongside my parents. But as soon as I started going to grade school, American culture and the English language, like, really took over more of that, like that pie.

And so if, if I would love to be able to write in Russian, I would love translated to Russian too. It would probably have to be for me, if I were writing. It would be again, probably those four page adventure books.

That would be cool.

Yeah.

I'm curious now, thinking about, like your Russian roots and moving when you were so young. What kind of influence has that had on your work?

When I was in my early 20s, I became really aware of how distant I was feeling from my family and from those roots. You know, my parents and I are the only ones who moved to the States. All of the rest of my family lives in Russia or otherwise abroad.

And I especially now. Logistically, it is very difficult to have honest, straightforward, complete conversations with my family there.

They've definitely returned to a really heavy veil of censorship. More and more apps are becoming unavailable. WhatsApp is now no longer available unless one is using a VPN.

And even on those apps that are available, one has to, like, watch what they say, right? And I feel this, this yearning to feel closer to my family. And starting in my early 20s, the way that I found to do that was to write into that.

And the way I found to write into that was to play with the fairy tales and folklore that I grew up with. And that served as like a common foundation between, like myself and my cousins who still live in Moscow. We grew up with those same stories.

Those were the first stories that we ever heard and read.

And so playing with those characters in my own writing, Babe, the famous witch in the chicken legged hut and Rusalki, the sharp teeth mermaids and Leshy, the forest creature.

Playing, playing with those figures within a contemporary American setting and playing with the culture clash that naturally arises in those spaces felt really productive and exciting and fulfilling to me.

That's cool. Has your family in Russia read any of those stories?

Actually, what's funny is, well, I just met up with my youngest cousin. She was in Toronto.

So I went to see her just a week or so ago and I brought her a copy of my book, which is, I think, otherwise nearly impossible to obtain in Russia. So she'll now bring it back with her. I learned broadly the answer, I thought was no.

However, I learned recently that my grandmother, who's my last living grandparent, my grandmother on my dad's side, who Lives in Rostov. When I met her in the country of Georgia, when I was traveling there with my dad last year, it was the first time I'd seen her in, I think, more than more than 15 years. I brought her a stack of magazines, print magazines that I'd been published in that I had extra copies of.

And she really doesn't have a lot of English, certainly doesn't read in English and not at that level.

And so I thought that they could just be like nice objects for her to have, you know, like her granddaughter's name on the COVID And so I just brought them to her more as like aesthetic objects. And then recently, just within the past few weeks, I learned that she hired a college student in her town to translate the stories for her.

And the college student is like, not in translation, not. Not working toward becoming a translator, but is studying English.

And so basically this student speaks Russian at a higher proficiency than me, speaks English at a higher proficiency than my grandmother, and is, I expect, more or less just translating the plot of the stories and maybe not so much like the nuances of language, but it's been really cool. At first I was shocked and horrified. I was like, oh, no, no, no. You were meant to enjoy those as like coffee table books. Yeah, you recognize my name?

You don't read what's in there. Come on. But so such is putting your work out into the world. It belongs to grandma now. Since then, we've had like a Skype call and she told me that she really liked the couple of stories that she's read so far.

Wow, that's so special. And that is so much love to go hire a translator to do that. That's really touching.

Yeah, it was a big moment.

Wow. As you started to pursue fiction more and when you decided to do your MFA, did you have any doubts about going down that path or did your parents have some skepticism?

Amazingly, my parents have witnessed and been reasonably supportive as I got not one, but two creative writing degrees, I was not skeptical. It was the easiest decision I ever made in my life. I studied creative writing in undergrad and then went straight into full time copywriting in a really fast paced startup environment in the Bay Area. And I was working on in house creative teams and it was my life. It took up like between commuting and working in the office.

I had very little time outside of that to write. I was kind of just like scribbling what I could down in my notes app on the train, you know, and was writing a lot of poetry and flash fiction and Very short lyric essays during that time, for that reason, because it was. I mean, I admire those forms, but also it's all I had time to do.

And so going back to the MFA program nine years later was my way of kind of like assessing where I was hitting the brakes and really trying to reclaim a little bit more of that time for my own writing and to have, like, a designated, like, high concentration of time to work on my own projects. So it was an easy decision, I will say I went to and always knew that I would go to a fully funded program with a teaching stipend.

It would definitely be a much harder and more complicated decision if I had to pay anything for that degree, which I would really never recommend that any writer do. Unless you find yourself in the privileged position to be able to do that.

Because, you know, something like business school degree folks shell out tons and tons of money for and take loans out to attend those programs. But there's a clear path to the job after that, the consultancy or whatever role that you're going to graduate into.

And you can kind of math out how long will it take me to pay off those loans. There is nothing like that in the creative writing mfa.

And increasingly, you know, in my program, one of the first things we were told is like, don't go to this MFA program in order to be qualified to teach. Those teaching jobs are not guaranteed to exist. There are far more people gunning for those teaching jobs than there are those teaching jobs.

So I went back to have that dedicated writing time and to work with Stephen Graham Jones and some other writers on faculty who I admired a lot. And for that, it was perfect. I loved my time there. I love school. I love learning. I. If I could, I would be in school for the rest of my life.

I'm glad you mentioned the fully funded aspect, because I'm sure some listeners were sitting here thinking, like, she's so privileged that she's just gonna go get an MFA and she can write, and how nice for her. But it's not really the reality. And with a fully funded program like that, how competitive is it to get in?

I don't know the statistics, but I'm sure they're published online somewhere. You know, I feel like everything I hear in the industry is like, 1% of folks get in right at every single stage.

Like, out of this pool of submissions to have a story published, 1% will have a story published. Out of this pool of people who apply to this residency, 1% of folks will actually be chosen for this residency.

But still, you know, we have to go for it. We can't self reject before we've even submitted.

But I applied to fully funded and partially funded programs just to see what would happen, what I could get into because it was my first application cycles cycle.

And in the end it came down to the choice between CU Boulder and some of the New York schools that are really prestigious, like Columbia, nyu and I was offered admission to all of them. But in the end it absolutely came down to the financial package and where could I afford to live. Like material reality matters.

And Boulder was like within the scope of the state's decently good place to live, if there is a good place to live at like the height of a pandemic because, because you could go outside and there's so much natural splendor and fresh air.

So moving from Chicago, which like shut down and shut down hard and all of the like theater and arts that Chicago is known for, like all the lights kind of went off on that. Boulder was a really like refreshing place to be. But the MFA program's a lot of work.

I mean you're working on your own thesis project or projects, you're attending classes, you're meeting with your thesis advisor and you're also teaching what felt at the time like a pretty substantial teaching load.

Were you scared at all when you jumped into that, like knowing you were taking on so much and any like imposter syndrome as well?

Teaching? Absolutely. I wasn't scared about going back to school again. Like I love school. It's my default mode.

You know, I dusted off the old composition notebooks and I was like, yes, this is home.

But teaching I had never really done like I had been working in copywriting and brand strategy and I had managed small teams and so I tried to find kind of what experiences and learnings could I take from that into teaching in the classroom. But it was really challenging. I mean we had classes of like 15 to 20 students. In the beginning it was entirely remote.

And a lot of my students were distributed, you know, they weren't only in Colorado.

A lot of them had gone home to their parents house or in some cases, like there is, there's wealth disparity for sure that becomes very visible when you're looking at a screen with like 20 boxes, you know, and some folks like have their backgrounds blurred and other folks are like clearly like in a pool in Hawaii. Or something, so that it was scary. I felt a huge sense of responsibility to do right by everyone, to do right by my students at a really tough time.

To try to broach the topic of, like, what value does writing have when the world feels like it's falling apart? I will say CU Boulder is pretty supportive.

Like, you hear about some MFA programs just, like, dropping the grad student instructors in without any orientation. We did have an orientation. We did have a lead MFA who, you know, was there to answer questions and support us as we started teaching. But I.

Any kind of stage, I have a lot of stage fright. And leading a classroom, it feels like being on a stage.

Totally. And it's so strange when you kind of get into teaching through the back door, so to speak. Like, you didn't go to school for teaching.

Like, I'm an adjunct professor now, and I don't know any teaching pedagogy. I'm just, like, up there winging it. And you're just dropped in there with these undergrads. Like, very weird and surreal. Yeah, I'm in charge now.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I think sometimes I think that in some programs, grad students function as, like, TAs, so they're there to support the instructor of record. We were all the instructors of record right away. There was no one else in the classroom.

I will always remember it as one of the most challenging things I've ever done and continue to do, and also one of the most rewarding.

I mean, if you're doing it right, if you have the ability to structure your own classes, you can structure your curriculum around what is interesting you at the time and the projects that you're working on at the time. Right.

Like, I remember Stephen, Stephen Graham Jones when he was working on a vampire novel, he would construct a class around, like, vampire literature, and then everybody would be learning together. And the ideas and the questions and lines of thought that students would bring to the classroom would be so enriching to him as well.

So I think a lot about, like, the circular economy of creative writing and literature, how we're all learning from and teaching each other across generations, and how I'm 100% certain that one of my students from back then, I'll probably be taking a class from them at some point in the near future.

That is really cool how that works. And you spoke on a panel for my students recently, and you and the other panelists all talked about the importance of reading a lot and reading widely, reading outside your genre, which I don't know if all of gen Z is doing that much of it, so definitely so worthwhile to do.

Yeah, I read a lot. You know, reading has always been. I was a voracious reader when I was a kid. It let me travel in a way that I couldn't in my, quote, real life.

It let me meet so many people in a way that I was nervous to in my real life. Like, having a lot of, like, social anxiety and shyness back then. And I think today, books are this, like, last bastion where nuance is welcomed.

You were talking about nuance in the introduction, and that really sparked something in me, I think, like, you know, this was my first book, and putting it out, I was very quickly immersed in the blurbification of everything. You know, like, you've written your book, you're so you've sold your book to a publisher. Now you have to, like, sell your book to the world.

And this requires a lot of, like, selling and thoughtful packaging of you, yourself as the author of your work, which I think is understandably challenging to a lot of authors, because it's like, how do you condense a whole person into catchy sentences? How do you condense this work, which took 1 year, 2 year, 3 year, 10 years to write? How do you condense that into a catchy little paragraph? And I think a lot of writers become really frustrated with that.

I found myself growing frustrated with it at times, even though I have a marketing background and I understand the function of these different materials. You know, the book itself, you know, there's like, 300 pages where, as a writer, when you're writing it, you can really give yourself the time and space and privacy that you need for messy, contradicting thoughts to unravel for yourself to, like, interrogate the way you see, see in the world, the way you move through the world to ask those big questions and wrestle with them. And same thing goes for the reader when it's time for them to read it. And so I really. I love books for that reason.

And they're also, like, our last ad-free space.

I get so frustrated sometimes reading other Goodreads reviews or comment sections where people just want something explained to them or they can't sit with the nuance or the contradiction. Like, I don't know if you ever watched the show Crazy Ex Girlfriend. there was. Rachel Bloom was sharing clips from it recently, and it was a song that was satirical because it's a satirical show. And someone was like, is this making fun of trauma? And is this saying that we shouldn't hold people accountable? And there was this whole argument.

And people were explaining the song to them and being like, you shouldn't trust these characters. They're not reliable narrators. They're not mentally healthy people. What they're saying isn't advice. And the person was pushing back and arguing.

And it's like it's a piece of art. It's meant to be funny. It's meant to make you think people can take different things away from it.

But like, it's not just one plain black and white answer. And it's not meant as like mental health advice. Like, what are we doing here?

I'm so grateful that there are spaces where other readers are supporting each other right. In those discoveries. I mean, it's kind of like the classroom of the Internet, right? Having those discussions.

And that's really a space for, for readers. That's not a space for authors to go into. I always have to remind myself when I'm tempted to look at reviews.

But yes, I mean, we have to fight to retain our critical thinking. We have to fight to retain our ability to synthesize information, to look at the evidence and decide what we believe in.

We, I think, are constantly having to like claw ourselves back from the brink of that being taken from us.

Did you get a say in like the blurb that went on the COVID of your book? I know you have Stephen Graham Jones's line on there.

I think I did suggest that for the COVID I think it was also probably a no brainer because Steven is putting out so much tremendous work now. I mean, he's been writing for a really long time. I think he has probably more than 35 full length books out now.

And he's definitely, he's a huge role model of mine.

And ever since, I think the Only Good Indians has seen a lot of commercial success and then with the Indian Lake trilogy, so it was kind of a no brainer.

But actually Stillhouse Press, the press that put out tell me yours, I'll tell you mine, was so wonderful to work with and they actually let me play a role in the COVID design in general. Or rather they asked me for a mood board, which I then, because I'm a Virgo, I didn't just send a mood board.

I sent like 10 to 12 pages of all of these various visual ideas, which I think Virgos think is helpful. More information is better. But actually because in my work as a copywriter, I have worked with designers and illustrators and photographers.

I know that that's actually a nightmare. It's like so much more information to process and then try to transl into something that works in this context.

So the artists also did a great job taking my overwhelming hurricane of information and pictures and sources of inspiration and translating them into something that really pops on the shelves.

I love the COVID how it turned out. Like, the colors are fabulous. The golden yellow, the pink text is so vibrant. And then the creepy, creepy bunnies. They're great.

In the final round of edits on the COVID it looked more or less like this, but it wasn't feel, like, quite creepy enough to the team. And so I was suggesting doing something with the Bunnies to kind of, like, allude to the fact that.

Look up to the camera here to allude to the fact that there are, like, really surreal and unsettling and unnerving moments within the collection, which even. Even the stories that are not horror, they lean dark, for sure.

And I wanted to set that expectation with the COVID and I offered all these, like, so super prescriptive solutions, you know, and the artists, being the geniuses they are, came up with the most sophisticated solution of all, which was that they simply cut out the bunny's eyes. And I just thought it was, like, so elegant. And I am in awe of them and of artists and designers in general.

It's perfect nightmare fuel.

Yes, it is.

I just got a new pair of shoes for my son at Aldi, and it has a little dinosaur on the Velcro. And the dinosaur doesn't. The eye is cut out. And I was like, okay, I don't know why you did that. That was not the right choice for a cute toddler shoe.

Yeah, yeah.

Let's talk about the book a little bit more. We haven't gotten into it yet, so what should people know if they've not heard anything about it? What's your elevator pitch? Sure.

So tell me yours. I'll Tell youl. Mine is a collection of 12 dark, strange stories.

They are all linked through the presence of games and child lore, which is the folklore of our youth, the shared folklore of our youth. So I'm thinking about Cootie Catchers and the cool S that we all used to draw in our notebooks and computer CD ROM games.

All of that is in the collection. And on a thematic level, you know, a lot of the characters are women and immigrants and queer people trying to navigate societies and environments that are hostile to them and often misstepping and often failing and sometimes finding community in the process.

Yeah, it was such a great read, and I never knew where the next story was gonna take me. It was a Lot of fun. One of my favorites was the final story in the book with Zasha. So I'm curious how you write queer characters and what you do to make them feel real and bring them to life.

Zasha is the protagonist of a story called Another Round Again, and it's one of the book's three or four novelettes, so it's one of the longest works in the collection. It's also the one that I wrote chronologically last, so it made sense for it to close out the collection.

And it is set during a first date at Trivia Night at a pub in Chicago. And, Sasha, you know, I wrote this story after, see, after attending AWP in Seattle a couple of years ago.

And I'll never forget, I attended a panel on queer horror, and Carmen Ray Machado was on the panel. And something that she said really stuck with me. And it had to do with queer representation in horror and in fiction more broadly.

And this kind of, like, frustration with putting queer characters on a pedestal where they can do no wrong, right?

Where they are very morally grounded, where they're the heroes of the story, and how flattening this is to the characters and to representation in general.

Because, you know, ideally, we represent all kinds of people being all kinds of human, which means that, like, queer characters are also allowed to speak suck and be bad people. They don't need.

Like, in having queer characters only be capital G good in fiction, there's something to it that smacks of, like, having to justify their presence, like, having to show, like, look, we are good. Like, let us prove ourselves to society.

And Carmen was talking about just, like, letting them be human like any other character and not having to justify their existence, that they have value and are worthy simply because they exist. And so I wanted to set out to write a really unlikable queer character.

I think most of my characters are probably pretty unlikable because they're very flawed, which is okay. And so Sasha is someone who really exists in the quote, in between. You know, she is bisexual. She's also biracial.

She has European and Korean ancestry, like I do.

And again, talking about, like, fiction being a place that welcomes nuance and welcomes that in betweenness and the complication that arises when you have, like, when you're at the intersection of multiple identities that sometimes feel like they're, like, warring against each other. That's what Zasha is. I should say, by the way, that, like, I use the word in betweenness because that's how I felt in my life. But this is like, entirely a construct. Right. That there's, like, one pole that's, like, one way to be and another pole opposite that's another way to be.

And if you find yourself in between those poles that you are, like, not finding a right way to be, that's a social construct. Right. Like, of course, like, anywhere, any way that you are in between. And encompassing all of these poles is a valid way to be.

So Zasha has a dark past that even she has repressed. And the trivia night resurfaces it.

It's a difficult story to describe without giving everything away. So maybe I shouldn't have even asked you about it. But it is really, really fun to read.

Yeah. Yeah. And it's my love letter to, like, the really Bro Y bars of Logan's Square in Chicago.

I've never been to a bro-y bar in Logan Square, but it felt very vividly real to me.

Yeah, you gotta try it.

Yeah. I appreciate what you're saying about queer characters, too. And Carmen Maria Machado is such an amazing writer.

I'm reading a book by Chuck Tingle right now. Completely different. An arc of his new and fabulous bodies. And the protagonist is queer, the villain is queer.

I think it's lacking some nuance, but they are both very flawed and unlikable. And, you know, you kind of have to root for the hero because they're the hero. But you're also, like. You're kind of a shitty person.

But I also appreciate that it's not like this shining, perfect queer woman who's, like, fighting the good fight, you know, it feels a little more honest.

I think what Carmen was calling for specifically was more queer villains. We were, like, chanting it by the end of this panel. Yeah. And I love Chuck Tingle. I mean, I was reading Chuck Tingle back when. Well, I mean, he still puts out a lot of, like, pounded in the butt by the XYZ.

marketing genius, that man.

Yes. Yeah. And at one point, I had a whole, like, small bookshelf of those of those works.

And I was living in the Bay Area, and I was going to Burning man at the time. And Burning man operates on, like, a gift economy, Right.

And one year, one of the gifts that I brought to share with the community were all these books. And I said, we set up, like, this quiet, tented reading corner, very vibey, like, cushions and string lights and incense.

And people would come in and their selection of books would be all of these, like, Chuck Tingle pounded books.

That's amazing. I bet people loved it.

They loved it.

Well, I want to switch gears shortly. But one more writing question. I know you have a novel you turned into your agent recently.

Can you tell us a little bit about that and what people can expect when it is in the world someday?

I think I shouldn't say a whole lot, but it is a supernatural horror novel set in a near future authoritarian state.

So if you read Tell Me Yours, I'll Tell youl Mine, and you enjoy stories like my dystopian story Approved Methods of Love Divination, this novel will probably hit the spot. Or if you enjoy queer or othered horror like Bunny Ears, it definitely plays in that space too.

It's the first novel I've ever written and it was the challenge of my life. It is so hard. Again, like all the flowers to novelists, it's a completely. It requires.

I mean, having a writing career in general requires a huge amount of stamina, right?

Like, what I always tell students and what I've heard a lot myself, is that in the end, the successful writers, whatever success means, are not necessarily those who are the most talented or those who are the best connected, but are those who stick it out the longest are the ones who just like keep doing the work after everyone else has given up that perseverance, that discipline, that dedication, that stick with itness. And so, you know, all writing requires that.

And knowing that the novel still blew me away with how much stamina it required just going back to that well over and over with all these rounds of edits and revisions. But I really believe in it. I think it. I set out to write it with a lot of questions that I had of myself and of the world.

And it was a space where I could work through some of those things. It has to do with like, guilt and shame and personal versus collective guilt and shame. And I think it's really ambitious and I'm proud of it.

It sounds so interesting. Like, those themes will really hit for me, I'm sure. What do you love the most about it?

Um, what do I love the most about it? One of the settings, you know, what I love most about it is one of the questions that it deals with has to do with the question of like, art versus craft that we see get brought up again. Like we look at one work of art in a museum and we call that fine art.

And then we look at another work of art in a museum, and we call that a work of craft. And I'm interested in the, like, gendered connotations of that, like, what makes something fine art versus, like, quote, like, lower craft?

And a lot of the book is set in a dry cleaning and alterations shop, and so naturally, it's dealing with, like, the labor of sewing and mending.

Fascinating. Well, I can't wait to read that someday. Thank you. Well, let's take a very quick break, and then we'll keep going right after that.

Cool.

So, Kristina, I know you've lived all over the place in your life, and you're on the cusp of another big move. So how did moving around a lot affect, like, the person you've grown to become?

So I was born in Moscow, then moved to Tucson, Arizona with my parents, and then since then have lived in central New York, New Jersey, Boston, different areas in the Bay Area, Chicago, Colorado, western New York, and then moving back to the Bay. So for a period, I felt like I was moving every two or three years, and it kind of became part of my identity.

Like, people would ask me if I was stressed about, and I would say, no. I've got, like, spreadsheets. You know, I've got a process. I've got it down to a T. Like, I'm a professional super chill Virgo spreadsheet.

I'm a professional mover, essentially. But then, you know, the older I get, the more I'm like, no, this is for the dogs. Like, I have, like, one more big move in me.

This is also a time suck.

You know, I think it takes at least a month of any free time you have just to work out the logistics of moving in terms of, you know, how it's influenced me. I think I grew up and grew older without a real sense of geographical home. Like, home never had geographical coordinates for me.

And I think that this has really influenced me as a speculative fiction writer, because a lot of the settings that I'm writing into are speculative settings.

And in some ways, they are my attempts to, like, imagine what a place I grew up in was like, because I don't remember it completely, because memory is so fallible or imagining what it's like today or trying to make it better or trying to make it less hostile or trying to articulate how hostile it really felt to someone who might not have, you know, had that experience. And sometimes when I walk through the world, like, I'll walk by a park and I'll be flashed back to this park.

That I walked past in a completely different spot state, like, 12 years ago. And so I feel I have this sense of landscape that is less spread out over, like, a map and a little bit more layered on top of each other.

And I think that ends up coming through in my writing as well.

I was going to say I was trying to think of the right word for your collection, because I was thinking rootless, but that's not quite right. It's like roots that are kind of just spreading out in all directions in a kind of, like, untethered, reaching way, if that makes any kind of sense.

Yeah, yeah. And there are also, I think, a couple of stories that don't have articulated settings, or I should say that, like, environmental details are there.

But it's never stated that we're in, like, Chicago proper or we are in this country proper. And I think, you know, that influence comes from the fairy tale. Fairy tales being set in this, like, never where never when space and time.

That could be today, that could be 300 years ago.

And I think, like, through that really invites readers to place the story wherever makes sense to them and to really, like, involve themselves with and be active participants in the story. And it makes those stories also, like, really rich for allegorical use.

Yeah, that's really cool. How do you start to establish yourself when you land in a new city?

The first thing I do, again, I am a Virgo, and I unpack everything. Actually, when I moved to Rochester a few years ago, I unpacked and set up the entire apartment in, I think, like, six days.

And this was while working and while doing other life stuff. And I just remember that I actually, like, hurt the bones of my feet because I was walking so much on, like, the hardwood.

So don't be like me, you know? But I. I just really can't rest until my environment is somewhat established.

And then you made a spreadsheet.

Yeah, and then I made another spreadsheet. I was like, here's how I did that, so you can do it again in the future.

I'm all about documentation, but in reality, I also really try to get to know the literary spaces, so get to know the bookstores, of which there are so many amazing ones in Rochester. Right.

Like, I feel like y' all must have talked about this lots of times on this podcast, but, like, Rochester punches so far above its weight in terms of incredible independent bookstores.

So getting to know those bookstores, those booksellers, getting to know where the open mics are happening, where the reading series are happening, meeting folks I Think that has always been way that I've loved to get to know the texture of a new place.

I love that you mentioned in an interview I read with Kristen Felicetti, our mutual writer friend, that you had been drawn to Rochester because of queer community here. So I'm curious, like, how you found the queer community here in your time and then, like, going back to the Bay Area. I'm sure it's like a whole different vibe and scene, but if you could talk a little bit about that.

Yeah, yeah. So my partner and I moved back to New York State to be closer to family. Our families or portions of our families live in central New York.

But we knew that, you know, now that we're not kids anymore and we get to decide where we live, it was really important for both of us to live in a city that has a really, like, rich, active, queer culture, arts culture, DIY culture, like punk culture. And Rochester is that to a T. I. When I was younger and living in Central New York, I went to Rochester, I think, to, like, go to the mall.

My, like, friend's parents who drove us here, you know, they weren't taking us to the queer open mics, but they should have been. So I think Rochester is incredible in that regard. I mean, I think that there are so many great lit events and arts events.

There's like a new queer art fair art show. Like, every time I open Instagram, I see another one. There are amazing queer open mics at Equal Grounds and at Unreliable Narrator.

I think the programming at Unreliable Narrator is incredible across the board. Same with Siren and the Sea, a new bookstore that opened recently. So I think that the community is amazing here. There's also, I never got a chance to do this, but I heard about a queer or, like, genderfull square dancing class session that meets, I think, every week, which I think is incredible because I grew up square dancing in Arizona. It was, like, mandatory in gym class.

In terms of the Bay Area, I mean, of course, the Bay Area is bigger than Rochester, has, like, a much larger population than Rochester, and also has known to be like a mecca of like, queer arts and queer community for a really long time. And so I think I've always. I'm drawn to both of those cities for that reason.

Well, I'm excited for you with your move. We'll miss you here in Rochester, but it's been nice having you for 2ish years.

Thank you. Yeah, I'll miss Rochester a lot. I mean, I'll be back, you know, because we have family in the area.

It is especially hard to be moving in the springtime, which is like, is there any place more beautiful than Rochester in spring? Like, I was just walking past all the magnolias on the boulevard near Park Ave. And all the cherry blossoms are coming up and the lilacs are soon to.

And Highland park is just, like, awash in color, and so it's hard to leave.

It was actually one of the first things I noticed when I moved to the area was the flora, I think, which is also what makes Rochester, like, one of the most, like, allergy prone. It's like, we get the most snow of anywhere in America. And also the allergies are the worst of anywhere in America. But the flowers make it worth it, I think.

Think. I think the allergy stuff also comes from fewer allergists, so more pollen and fewer allergists to treat all the people.

Come on, allergists.

Get over to Rochester. We need this. My son has discovered dandelions this year and was, like, picking them for, like, 20 minutes the other night. Like, just so fun.

Are we still making dandelion crowns?

We haven't made one yet with him, but we can.

Yeah. Speaking of, like, the folklore of our youth, that was a big nostalgic tradition. Yes.

Switching gears a little bit to your other types of work. I know you do so many different things, like essay coaching, a little bit of copywriting.

Still, how do you balance all of those things on top of your own fiction writing? Like, what is a day like, getting all of that done?

Every day is different. I think one thing that I took for granted when I was, like, working full time in house, like, commuting every day to the office, I felt like that my time was not my own and I had, like, no control over where my time was going, and it was impossible to, like, reclaim any of it. And that was all true. And I am glad to have found a different way of assembling the workday for myself.

However, like, one benefit of that is that I was less stressed because I had less to manage. You know, like, it was a salaried job and a lot of that was taken care of, like, at the HR level.

And I didn't have to think very hard about where I had to be at any given time of day. It was usually just like, butts and seats at the office. Now I am my own timesheet manager. I'm like, my own financial manager.

So it is definitely like, there are parts of my brain that are lighting up that didn't have to to before. So every week I have to sit down and kind of block off my schedule every day by the hour and be.

And then every night, I look ahead at the next day's schedule to prepare myself for what the flow of the day will look like.

Because often, like you're saying, there are a lot of really dramatic pivots where I'm going from a zoom meeting with a student immediately into editing a story that I'm on deadline for immediately into working on a copywriting assignment that's due in a couple of days. So it's a lot of, like, quick turns. But as long as I prepare myself the day before, I am able to be more adaptive.

That makes sense. It can be so hard to switch gears in our brains with those different crafts.

I'm curious with, like, the essay coaching you do and your copywriting, do you ever use your, like, speculative horror writing skills in any way?

I think my brain always goes there, right? Like, if I sometimes if I'm writing some product copy, my brain kind of naturally goes to, like, how could this maim and kill a person?

Because, like, 10 minutes ago I was working on a horror novel. However, I do not put that in because I don't think the client would appreciate that. I think what I make more use of is just ability to.

To understand voice the same way that every character has their distinct voice and every, like, narrative perspective has their distinct voice. Every brand has and product line, they have their distinct voices as well.

So being able to catch on to that quickly and write into that consistently and really bring that unique spark to product copy, for example, I think is definitely a value that fiction writers bring to something like copywriting.

Product copy is, like, so much harder than people think, too, because it's like, this has all been done before. How do I say anything unique about this product?

Yeah. And also, you know, like, it depends what kind of product it is at a time.

For a time in the Bay Area, I was working at an ecommerce company called massdrop that later became dropped. And it had a number of verticals, specifically, like, enthusiast type of products.

So, you know, like, folks who, like, will really nerd out over, like, audio products or really nerd out over, like, keyboards or fountain pens. And so that's what that company sold.

And so as a copywriter, I really had to become as close to an expert as possible on those product types because that audience knew their stuff.

You know, they weren't operating on a layman level, and they cared deeply about the specs and really didn't have a lot of tolerance for Like a copywriter feeling themselves, you know, writing some, like, really juicy, catchy copy. They were like, don't bore us. Get to the chorus. We want to know what's the hertz, what's the noise canceling? You know, how does it work with a DAC? That kind of stuff.

Interesting. We both, I think, have a lot of concerns about AI. Do you think that kind of copy could be done by AI or is that the kind of stuff that, like, you really need the writer to dig deep and understand the audience and all of that?

I'm sure it could be done on some level by AI. I myself don't engage with AI at all. I fear that I also have. I have no real curiosity about it either, if I'm being honest.

I'm coming from the perspective of a fiction writer. And generative AI as we know it today was built on the backs of, like, theft from writers whose novels and whose creative works were fed into AI to train it without those writers knowing it, without them being acknowledged, without them being compensated in any way.

There's a search tool published by the Atlantic where writers can just go type in their name or their works and find out if AI was trained unbeknownst to them on their work.

So on principle, because of creative theft, because of environmental impact, because of my, like, deep concern about what it will do to us on a cognitive level, I don't engage with it.

I think that realistically, it is probably better at something like product copy that's very similar, specification heavy, and probably less adept at something like developing brand identity, unique brand identity.

You mentioned the cognitive impact, and that's something that's been totally freaking me out lately, because this semester I've had a lot of issues with my students not reading instructions and then not doing a good job on their projects. And I asked one of our nannies, who is a college student, do you read the instructions? Because she seems very reliable and conscientious.

And she was like, oh, well, if the professor didn't make it a bulleted list, I give it to ChatGPT and ask them to turn the instructions into a bulleted list. It's like, really? You can't just read, like, three paragraphs and understand what it says? That's crazy to me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm worried about that.

I mean, I think you and I talked about this earlier, but I think we come from the generation where, like, pre AI, when teachers would hand out sheets of paper, like, instructions for an exam, and then at the bottom there would be some line that's like, okay, now ignore everything that you've read before and turn this over and write a star on the back and you'll get an A. And if you don't do that, you'll fail. And it was just a way of making sure that students read the whole of the instructions. I come from that.

So what you're describing to me now is horrifying.

I'm most disheartened when I get the pop ups on my laptop that are like, do you want, want our AI assistant to synthesize this correspondence from your colleague or friend for you? Do you want us to generate a reply on your behalf? I don't want to outsource my communication to other people. We could also talk for ages about AIs, like, psychological effects on folks who are using it, like, outside of a work capacity and all of the hallucinations and the psychosis that are stemming from that.

Yeah, it's scary. And you mentioned the correspondence. A friend sent me a screenshot of her text because the iOS started summarizing her texts for her and it was like, emily's toddler slept badly last night. Her husband is struggling with his mental health. And I'm like, what if that is so invasive?

Like, why are you, why are you doing that?

I also, like, I want to hear from my friends. I want to read in my friend's words what's going on with them. And I want to respond in my words, what's going on with me?

Ick. Ick.

Yeah.

Well, for something less icky, what brings you joy when the world is a lot these days?

Oh, my God, it's a lot. It's a lot. It continues to be a lot.

You know, something that really brings me joy is seeing the way that other people are responding to living in the world the way it is today. People who lean into community, who lean out toward others and show up in that way.

I think that sometimes it is my instinct to, like, crawl inside myself and to isolate myself. And that's like, how we lose, right? That's what they want. We are easiest to control, to manipulate when we isolate ourselves.

We are easiest to trick into believing that we are completely alone when we curl up inside ourselves. So I'm really inspired seeing other folks in the community, like, reach out and extend an arm. I find, like, organizers really inspiring.

Whether folks are organizing protests or organizing lit readings or art shows, other folks who are, like, serving as, like, community builders and bridges, I find really inspiring.

So easy, especially in a Rochester winter, to want to be insular and just hermit at home. But this is the time of year when I think we'll all blossom and get back out and reconnect.

Yeah, exactly. And it's so easy, I think, like, if one is isolating themselves to, you know, believe, and it's understandable to believe, that the pain that they feel is completely unique and that they're completely alone in feeling it.

And I think what we know, once we extend ourselves out into the world, is that actually, like, so many people feel this way, and it is so much more overcomeable or sustainable when we do it together. Like, something I talk about all the time is that there is a mourning practice in a number of cultures. Mourning--M O U R N I N G--mourning practice.

In a number of cultures that we, for the most part, don't have in the States, which is like a grieving practice where a bunch of folks are all in a room together, and the person who is feeling the grief cries or weeps or sobs, either naturally or if it's, like, not coming on demand, will, like, simply make that sound, like, perform it. And then everyone else in the room does it too. Like, does that same vocalization.

So then the sobbing or the crying, it's not just coming from one person, it's coming from, like, surround sound. And I think that, like, this would heal me, you know, to, like, feel my own pain reflected in such, like, a tangible, audible way.

And it takes love and care to come together and do that, too.

Yeah.

What a lovely image to end on.

Yes. Everybody wailing together.

Let's get out there and wail. Yes.

Yeah.

Thanks so much for coming on the show, Kristina. This was great.

Thank you so much for having me. I've had a great time.

This has been a presentation of the Lunchador Podcast Network.

You know what's better than a tidy spreadsheet? Taking data and making it useful for yourself or others? Nothing!