Genevieve Hudson is a second year MFA student at Portland State University. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Word Riot, Portland Review, NANO Fiction, and Tin House online. She is at work on her first novel.
Her story "Empire" appears in Issue Thirty-Four of The Collagist.
Here, Genevieve Hudson speaks to interviewer Melissa Goodrich about sonics, "the catching," and the bottom of her reading list.
1. Does a piece like “Empire” originate in concern (the prospect of water wars) or marveling (we are creatures made almost entirely of bone!) or frailty (“We cannot move from our recliners. We can only love it with our eyes”) or something else entirely?
“Empire” began with a concern, but not in an overtly political way. I wasn’t trying to advocate an environmental cause, but I was—still am—interested in the way humans interact with nature and with the wild. Representations of a world without mankind fascinate me. There’s this D.H. Lawrence quote—“Man was a mistake, he must go.” Images of “humans going” started this story. I had a thought of reclining creatures being tended to in a room, and it went from there. Their whole world is filtered through “mothers,” but their reality is nothing like ours, neither is their concept of family. Nature has adapted to fit us; I’m curious in how we will have to modify to fit it in future societies.
I also allow the sonics and sounds of sentences to guide me toward new images and ideas. I’ve been reading writers recently who have a dedication to the art of a sentence. In my opinion, words, images, and the beat of a sentence are just as important as plot or narrative trajectories.
2. Funny how lines like “no sun time” or “she is the only one among us with eyebrows and we all, in secret spots, envy the soft biomaterial” or “pre-Nuclear food” make your readers aware of their brows and sun and snacks, appreciatively. If such an empire were to exist, what would you miss most?
Wow. Great question. Physical touch maybe? The creatures in “Empire” are taken to petting zoos, but it’s a monitored and—I’d imagine—an odd experience. There’s such serious concern in “Empire” about “the catching.” In a society of rampant paranoia, even holding hands gets pathologized. Mobility is another thing I’d miss. I’m such an active person, the idea of lying in a bed all day is horrifying to imagine.
3. What’s the best and worst part of an MFA, for you?
The MFA has been a time of intense reading and writing, and I wouldn’t be the same thinker or the same writer without the experience. I’ve had the pleasure to work with brilliant, imaginative teachers, and the city (Portland) is a resource in itself. The best parts far outweigh the negatives for me. It’s rare today to find spaces where people come together and exchange ideas, where inquiry is valued for its own sake. Being a part of a community of writers who read my work well is a fantastic thing. It’s also great to have been exposed to such diverse styles of writing. Through my MFA, I’ve become not only a more intentional writer, but also a more nuanced reader. The worst part is thinking that my next life step might not be as conducive to the writer’s lifestyle (let’s hope it is!). It’s scary to have that looming over your head.
4. Tell us more about this novel you’re hard at work on. Or what you do when you’re avoiding it.
My novel, although much different than “Empire,” has a similar futuristic, environmental concern: mass animal deaths, natural disasters, non-drinkable water. Swallow straddles two settings: Portland, OR, and Charleston, SC. Remy and Claire are ex-lovers and dual narrators. Remy, a printmaker and kleptomaniac, tells her story from present-day Charleston, where she steals panties from her professor’s office (with plans of blackmail) and gets taken in by a radical environmental protest group, HOLD. Claire narrates her portion from the past tense. She chronicles her relationship with Remy in Portland, their entanglement with a gender queer drug dealer, and a haunting she experiences when characters in her paintings come to life.
When I’m avoiding it I go for a run or do something entirely unrelated to books and words. I find doing physical exercise is a nice balance to the strenuous, interiority of writing. I also have a side project of short stories I’m working on. The stories are contemporary adaptations of fairy tales and folklore. I’m fascinated by magic realism.
5. What’s at the top of your summer reading list? The bottom?
I’m gearing up for a bike trip from Portland to San Francisco in June, and I’m taking two books with me: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me, an anthology of modern fairy tales edited by Kate Bernheimer, and Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link. As I mentioned earlier, I’m drawn to books that blur genres and dabble in magic. I’m also really excited to read Dora: A Headcase, Lidia Yuknavitch’s new novel. It’s out in late summer with Hawthorne Books.
At the bottom is probably The Hunger Games. Don’t get me wrong, I love a great dystopian read, but I know I’ll never get around to this one. I’m sure it’s no loss to Suzanne Collins. She has plenty of readers already.