Interview with 2020 contest judge Casey Plett
Casey Plett is the author of the novel Little Fish (Arsenal Pulp Press) and the short story collection A Safe Girl to Love (Topside Press), and co-editor of the anthology Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Transgender Writers (Topside Press). She wrote a column on transitioning for McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and her essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, Maclean’s, The Walrus, Plenitude, the Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications. She is the winner of a Lambda Literary Award for Best Transgender Fiction and received an Honour of Distinction from The Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers. She lives in Windsor, Ontario.
Finding time to write amid the demands of daily life can be challenging for writers. How do you make time in your day for your own writing projects?
I make peace with letting some things go. I’m remarkably privileged, especially these days, in my ability to do that, but if I think back to earlier times in my life, I just had to be like “Look, the laundry isn’t getting done today” or “Dinner is a sad sack of saltiness because I feel like I can write now and I’ve got half an hour so it’s either dinner or writing.” Being at ease with that mentality helped.
Can you give us an idea of some of the elements that really make you go “WOW” as you read through a story?
An urgency of language. I keep coming back to that myself for myself.
Do you thrive in the solitude of the writer’s life or do you find you flourish when you’re with other writers as part of a writing group, for example?
Solitude all the way. The last thing I want to talk about when I’m not writing is writing.
Can you give us a glimpse into any projects you’re working on currently?
I’m working on a short fiction collection, but I think I’m a really slow writer! Chipping away at it …
What advice do you have for future contest entrants?
Do it. If you’re not sure that you should do it, just do it. Contests actually seem like excellent first steps that way to me! The stranger does not know you and if they feel negatively about your writing, the worst thing that happens is that you don’t win a contest. Which is what would happen anyway if you didn’t submit! Do it.