A Quiet Activist, Becoming Less Quiet | The Writer Behind My Book Coaching
Dear Vi,
You know me as a book coach, but I want to introduce myself to you as a writer, too. And since this little newsletter is growing, now seems a good time!
I mostly focus on socially engaged speculative and science fiction about kinship—the shift society needs to make from I to we, and what that might look like on the other side.
Fact is, the world is a shit show right now (I don’t think I need to convince you of that), and words are the only real thing most of us have at our disposal with which to influence change. I believe stories that explore the kinship we have with each other and with our planet can help us find a way through. I want to believe it isn’t too late.
What I am saying is I am a quiet activist who wants to become less quiet.
As a reader, I’m drawn to the same themes: socially engaged stories that take our present crisis seriously and imagine a way through it. (This is called thrutopian fiction, and I’m a little obsessed with it at the moment—I’ll be talking about it in future newsletters.)
Mary Oliver in her poem titled “Sometimes” gave us instructions for living a life:
Pay attention, Be astonished, Tell about it.
…Which is basically my writing philosophy in seven words.
I live north of the 60th parallel in Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada. Up here, climate change is visible in the landscape and the boreal forest is literally part of the city—it’s right outside my living room window—so this isn’t an abstract place to think about what the future might look like, at all. It’s very “real” up here and I love it like crazy.
Some of the speculative and science fiction writers who inspire me the most are Emily St. John Mandel, Samantha Harvey, Becky Chambers, Kazuo Ishiguro, Lily Brooks-Dalton, Charlotte McConaghy, Elif Shafak, and Richard Powers. These are big names, I know, but I’m also reading as many lesser-known and new-to-the-market authors as I can, and you can be sure I’ll be talking about them. Be on the lookout for book reviews to come!
Do you have any authors or novels to recommend in this genre?
Right now I’m querying my debut novel, The Face of Amore. It’s an upmarket science fiction story that asks: what would you do if the only way to save your community was to betray the very values it was built upon?
It’s a question about what we’re willing to sacrifice to protect what we’ve built. About whether the ends ever justify the means. It also touches on the immigrant experience, and the feeling of hiraeth—grief for the things we are losing, or have already lost. I couldn’t answer any of it easily, which feels about right for the times we’re living in.
Cross your fingers there will be an agent out there in the universe who will agree and want to help me find a home for it!
If you’re new here and any of this resonates with you, I’d love to connect. Subscribe to the newsletter (if you haven’t already!)
I’ll put the kettle on!
All my love,
Nita
