The music so loud you can’t hear the words the velvet cake I spent three hours making from scratch smeared like feces on his palms and fingers as he shoves handfuls of it into his mouth teeth sore and clanging against the bottom of an empty glass sex slow and deliberate, and especially best in the morning, best when you wake and don’t know who you are yet. But Cass has always liked it best this way, rushing toward it. Maybe I believe that by putting together the pieces of Cass I can show him that entropy is failure: death is inevitable but a failure.
But at the same time other people have to clean up Cass’s messes and sentences and, for a long time, that person was me. There is an honesty to this impulse, which is what made me fall in love with Cass at the start, makes him one of the best writers I know.
I don’t like loveable people in fiction I think it is more interesting to write about broken people.įiled Under: July 2012, Shorthand Tagged With: author of the month, Ibi Kaslik, Shorthand Bear I like setting challenges for myself by creating characters who are complex and not necessarily morally sound. I am also interested in what makes people self-destruct and make bad choices. The themes I explore are always the same: family, abandonment, betrayal, loss. My writing has always been muscular, fierce and non-linear but, as I’ve grown older I have, hopefully, been able to control it more. How have you changed as a writer over the years? You just need the time to think and dream and ponder that too, is part of the writing process which daily life doesn’t often afford. Once you get over the fear of the page, which happens every day, it is okay. I’m going to group these questions together as my biggest challenge with teaching is finding the time to write. How and when do you find time to write? / What has been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced as a writer? I admire Canadian writer Barbara Gowdy and American writers like Amy Hempel Marilynne Robinson Mona Simpson Donna Tartt Joy Williams and many of my colleagues at U of T, namely Alexandra Leggat and poet Catherine Graham. The photo I have enclosed reflects my “Heroes” Bowie phase. I was also very heavily influenced by music, namely David Bowie who created characters like Ziggy Stardust and structured albums around character-driven narratives. Probably, as a younger poet and writer, clichéd as it sounds, Sylvia Plath. What pieces of writing/authors have had the greatest impact on you? Books are power, knowledge and escape books were everything to me as a child: if I had a book, I was fine. My father is a writer so we grew up eating books for breakfast. When did you realize you had a passion for writing?
I am a creative writing instructor at U of T’s School of Continuing Studies.
I am the author of Skinny and The Angel Riots. My name is Ibi Kaslik and I am a novelist and freelance writer.
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