Episode Description:
Today's guest is the Taiwanese novelist Kevin Chen. We discussed the ways that people confuse biography and fiction, Chen's colorful work history, how literary lies can bring us closer to the truth, and more.
Bio: Kevin Chen (novelist; Taiwan) started his career as a stage and screen actor. He is also the author of ten novels and short story collections, which have garnered him several literary awards in Taiwan. GHOST TOWN, in Darryl Sterk’s translation, among Library Journal’s Best Books of World Literature 2022, was longlisted for PEN’s 2023 Translation Prize and will be translated into 11 languages. Chen lives in Berlin, where he long was foreign correspondent for Taiwanese TV. His participation was made possible by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.
Read Kevin Chen’s English writing sample: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/CHEN_sample%20ENG.pdf
Read Kevin Chen’s writing sample in the original language: https://iwp.uiowa.edu/sites/iwp/files/Chen_sample_original.pdf
Say the World: An International Writing Podcast is made by the International Writing Program. The hosts are IWP Director Christopher Merrill, most recently the author of ON THE ROAD TO LVIV (Arrowsmith Press, 2023) and IWP Communications Coordinator Mike Meginnis, most recently the author of DROWNING PRACTICE (Ecco, 2022). Additional research, transcription, and other support provided by Research Assistant Derick Edgren Otero.
IWP programming is primarily funded by the University of Iowa and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) at the U.S. Department of State, with additional funding provided by organizations like the Doris Duke Foundation, as well as donors like you. If you’d like to donate to IWP, go to bit.ly/iwp-support.
Learn more about IWP at iwp.uiowa.edu.
Episode Transcript:
[music: "Gymnopédie No. 1" by T. Bless & the Professionals]
Mike Meginnis:
Welcome to Say the World: an International Writing Podcast. I'm Mike Meginnis, the Communications Coordinator at the International Writing Program.
Christopher Merrill:
And I'm Christopher Merrill, the longtime director of the IWP, as we call it.
MM:
You're a longtime director this time. I think this is the first time you've officially declared yourself the longtime director on the podcast.
CM:
That's how you know when you're really getting old.
MM:
You start telling people, like, your eyes do not deceive you.
CM:
Yeah, I'm a little long in the tooth.
MM:
So this week's episode is going to mainly be an interview with Kevin Chen, who is a novelist from Taiwan. He's the author of Ghost Town, which has been translated and adapted in, I think, like every language on Earth, basically, at this point, it's been a huge hit. And we really enjoyed having Kevin with us. He's a really big character. And you get a little taste of that with this interview.
CM:
I think the word might be colorful.
MM:
Colorful is absolutely a good one. And he talks in this conversation about the idea of gathering colors is what he calls it when you are doing well, I think he would apply this to life experience in general, right. But he was especially talking about his his career, because he's had a lot of different jobs and a lot of different interests that do sort of naturally lend themselves to fiction. And as I was going back through and editing this, I was thinking about the jobs that I've had that have contributed to my fiction, and they're a little bit less glamorous than his. You know, he has starred in films and has an interest in theater and, and he mentioned that he wishes he were an opera singer. And the main job that comes up for me pretty constantly is, when I was in Iowa City, my first job actually here was developing materials for the ACT. I was a copy editor. And that didn't go great. And then I was working at a law firm for several years where I handled real estate transactions. And the thing that makes it into my stories over and over again is the experience of taking dictation, which—I don't know if this is how it's done these days. Generally, this was a very old school machine, but I honestly can't imagine a better way of doing it. My boss would record on a little tape cassette a set of instructions for how to prepare a will or, you know, deed or whatever I was working on. And then I would listen back to it. And of course, I'm a very fast typist. But it doesn't matter how fast you type, you have to go back over and over and over again, and slowly work your way through, especially with a legal document, where the particulars matter, right. So have you ever used one of these machines where you take dictation?
CM:
No, no.
MM:
Yeah, so it's a foot pedal attached to a tape cassette. And so when I would hold the pedal down, it would slowly move forward. And I listened to the gentleman who usually was giving my dictation in sort of slow motion, and then you release your foot and it would automatically rewind. And then you put your foot down again, and it would start. And I spent hours and hours and hours taking dictation that way, typing these documents. And so, mysteriously in my fiction, I keep finding that I need people to take dictation and it needs to be a big part of the work. And it's like it's not amazing material, right? I wish it were something like starring in a movie or being a translator and interpreter. But instead, it's just this boring job I have, but I feel like the most boring jobs are often the thing that grounds a story so that you can get away with everything else. So I just keep using it.
CM:
Yeah, well, it has its own set of particulars that have a life of their own and suggest one wanting to live beyond that life. And for me, it's a little bit different because, well, I will write poetry, which is always a matter of inventiveness and music, but in my nonfiction, thinking about the various jobs I've had in my life as a soccer coach, working in a bookstore, working as a landscaper, as a caretaker, and when I wrote the book Self Portrait with Dogwood, which was a sort of disguised memoir in the—refracted through, let's say, the lens of the dogwood tree, I suddenly remembered: Oh, that's right, I worked all those years in that nursery outside of Seattle with the most colorful figure, who was a man who knew everything about about botany, but he was also something of a scoundrel. And there were all these terrific stories. I had the chance finally to tell, and I realized once again that no detail, no part of your experience is off limits when it comes time to write. And with respect to Kevin, it made me think, once again about the story that Jerzy Kaczynski used to go take other kinds of jobs in, in corporate America so that he could start taking notes for the next novel. It's what writers do. We're scavengers at heart, right?
MM:
Yeah, it's always exciting when you discover an opportunity to use and learn new terms of art, right? Like anytime that you get connected with a new field, and you get to see the particular ways of using language that are totally unique to that field. And don't make sense outside of that context. But because there's like, you know, decades, centuries of human history behind that particular usage, when you've learned it and internalized it and then you deploy it in your work. It's gonna sound natural, it's gonna lend it authority. It's such a precious resource when you get those opportunities.
CM:
Call me Ishmael, Melville says after a lifetime on the waters in the sea, and he accumulated that store of knowledge that he transformed into something amazing.
MM:
Well, with that, let's hear from Kevin.
CM:
Yeah.
[transition music: "Hazy Sky" by nuer self]
Kevin Chen:
[Kevin Chen reads from his novel Ghost Town in Taiwanese.]
CM:
Chapter One. The First Row of Townhouses.
KC:
[Kevin Chen reads from his novel Ghost Town in Taiwanese.]
CM:
Where are you from? That was the first question T asked him. T gave him a lot: German passport, a new home, an escape route. And a lot of questions. Right from the start T liked to ask questions. What's your hometown like? How many brothers and sisters do you have? How hot does it get on the island in the summertime? Are there cicadas? What about snakes? What do the trees look like? What are they called? Are there any rivers? What about canals? When is the rainy season? Are there ever any floods? Is the soil fertile? What all gets planted? Why can't I accompany you to your father's funeral? Why go home? Why not go home? The question marks caught on his hair and nicked his skin. These questions were hard to answer so he didn't. He dodged or lied until his made up biography was full of holes and contradictions like a badly written novel. And so he wrote one.
KC:
[Kevin Chen reads from his novel Ghost Town in Taiwanese.]
CM:
The first chapter opened with a table on which a few objects had been placed. One gun, two knives, and three diaries. The gun would have to be fired in a subsequent chapter. The knives should be used to dismember and play, and the diaries would solve the riddle at the heart of the story. But the novel of his life was a total mess. He wrote and wrote and forgot about the guns, the knives, and the diaries. Instead, he obsessed over an assortment of trash that was strewn on the table, and littered his narratives with irrelevant clues like a mural on a factory wall, a pair of bright red shorts, and a face with a plastic bag over it. When a person is rotten, his novel will be too. Full of holes.
KC:
Hello, I'm Kevin Chen, a Taiwanese novelist. I was born and raised in a very small hometown in central Taiwan, which is called Yong Qing. And this small town is actually my writing motif. It just happens all the time in many of my novels, because that's where I'm from. I have a crazy, crazy big family. I have seven sisters and one brother, I was the ninth, I was. Just think about that, you know, just look at the number you know that I actually—I was born in an amazing source of a story. That's why I became a writer. That's what I always tell myself. And I'm just happy to be part of the International Writing Program because that's where I am now. I'm in Iowa City with a bunch of lovely writers, and we spend days and nights together. We hate each other. We love each other. And it's just wonderful. So thank you for having me.
CM:
Kevin, in your reading here at Prairie Lights Bookstore, you talked about your frustration over people assuming the book you wrote, Ghost Town, from which you just read, was literally autobiographical. So I want to ask you about what the relationship is between autobiography and fiction and really what, what is the power, and what are the risks of winking at one's biography in a novel?
KC:
Oh my god. Okay, so actually this term autofiction is brand new for me. I never knew this term until I published a book, and then it was published in the US, that a professor at UCLA told me, Oh, your book is an autofiction. I was like, What? What's that? I've never heard of that. So, obviously, it's a piece of fiction that has autobiographical elements, you know, and my name is Kevin Chen. The protagonist in the book is Keith Chen. So you do see some similarities there. And he has five sisters, I have seven. And he's gay. I'm gay as well. He's the youngest. I'm the youngest as well. So you do see some autobiographical elements over there, which I will never deny, because I do believe that—I cannot speak for every writer—I do believe that every writer in this world, the very comfortable starting point for writing is actually from self. Because that's how we begin. Because in a lot of people who are not in this profession, they always imagine that Oh, it just, you know, you read a piece of news or something in the newspaper, or you just saw some reports on CNN, and that you can make up something, which is not true! You know, because if it's not connected to you at all, it's really difficult to conjure up a brand new world because for me, it's literally impossible.
CM:
A believable world.
KC:
Yes, yeah. A believable world. And for me, yeah, to be believable is that, it's totally the point because then I have to be truthful to myself. So it's a piece of fiction. But I will have to quote one of my favorite writers in the world, the Indian writer, and the Booker Prize winner, Arundhati Roy, who wrote The God of Small Things, you know, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, crazy, crazy fans, I went to a lot of her readings. And in one of her readings in Berlin, she said this, and that would, that's the thing I took away from her reading, she said, "Fiction is truth." And I was like, yes, that's exactly what I believe, what I'm writing as well. So yes, this book has a lot of truth in there. But I wanted, you know, to tell my truth in the form of a fiction. And I just didn't know that people would take, I mean, like, literally, that this is a confession of a murderer, you know that, because I never killed any people! You know, but, Keith Chen, obviously, in the opening chapter, he killed someone, because he spent time in a jail in Berlin, and he's doing homecoming journey, you know, because he has nowhere to go. And people actually believed that, including my cousin, you know, and it's crazy! But now, you know, over time, I kind of take it as a compliment. That means this reading has become some sort of immersive experience or something that they are so into it that they believe it's a confession, that it's a memoir, or autobiography. The thing is, you know, when I'm in a bookstore, like, I will say, we have this beautiful bookstore called Prairie Lights. When I'm there, usually, the memoir or biography or autobiography section is not the section that I usually go to. It's not really on my reading radar. Because, you know, I actually worked as a writer. I was on a team of ghost writers, we had to create a biography for a politician in Taiwan. And the material we gather and the things that, well, the mission that we had to—because it was for the campaign, of course, you know, politicians come when they're doing a campaign, they publish biographies so that they can push them to win. And that's what happened. So we got a commission, which is, you know, actually paid handsomely, actually, that's why I took a job. Our names will never be mentioned, no one will ever know that we were part of that ghost writing team. And then eventually, we had to create a biography that is just wrong. That is simply not true. Because he had to look good. It's a he, yeah, he had to look good. So basically, it's a photoshopping writing experience. So everything has to be beautiful and glorious, you know, and there were simply so many misinformations, we had to twist—we were late, I mean, demanded to twist the truth. And to make sure that everything is simply glorified and, and as sung out loud, and it was just a horrible, horrible experience. I mean, I walked away with some happy money, but then I realized, Oh, my God, I will never go back there. And some of that created some kind of dramatic experience that I will never, you know, go back to that reading experience. Because I was part of the writing experience to create something that is totally fake, and he won the whole thing, you know, and that book became sort of a best-selling book in Taiwan. And our names were never mentioned, which is great because I don't want to have, you know, have anything to do with—actually nobody in Taiwan knows about this. I'm talking about this in Iowa. I never talked about this in in Taiwan, because I don't want people to know that I was connected to that project, you know, and, and yeah, so you know, that experience writing as a ghost writer, because I do believe that profession of a ghost writer is a very interesting profession. It's a very, very big thing here in America, like Prince Harry, you know, he hired this very expensive, very successful ghost writer, we all know his name. And he wrote this amazing memoir for him and became this big hit in the market. And I read a little bit and I was like, Oh, my God, this is just full of crap. Because I, I, I was part of the experience. I know, you know, it's all about manipulating the information you have. And it has very little to do with the truth. So Ghost Town is my way of telling my truth. It's fiction. But I'm not saying that because it's fictional, that means it's not. And then I always have new readers. And they always came to me and asked me, which part of the book is real? And I just want them to define for me, what is real? Please tell me what is real. And of course, nobody has the answer. But for sure, I know what's fake. Yeah. And I don't want to go there. So I'm just, you know, staying with my truth and telling my truth. And hopefully that people would be able or would be interested enough just to pick up a copy and go into my work.
MM:
Well, I'm glad that we got to the part early where you explained that you hadn't killed anyone. We actually ask every writer, have you committed murder, just to get them on the record that they haven't, and you've saved us a tremendous amount of time by jumping directly into the answer.
KC:
And Mike, you believe that we'll tell you the truth?
MM:
No, no, no. But this, you know, it covers us. I haven't either. But I, yeah, it seems like the example that you're giving there sort of illustrates the benefit of fiction over memoir in that, because all of it is disclaimable, because you—because you're not really responsible for any of it. Because you can always say that any of it is not true. You have that opportunity to put in as much true, embarrassing stuff as you want whereas the alternative is if you're doing a memoir, especially political memoir, yeah, the incentive is the opposite. Right?
KC:
Yeah.
MM:
But at the same time, this was, this was the thing that was interesting to me, because like, you know, knowing writers, you see the full spectrum of ways of negotiating this problem of using your own life and using your own material. And, you know, it could have been, the main character could have been named Steven. He could, he could have had a totally different surname. He could have had a totally different number of sisters. And you chose not to do those things to point back a little bit at the authenticity. So that's the, that's the thing that's interesting to me about that is the particular balance that you chose to strike in terms of, here are some clues, that there is some reality to that. I'm curious how you chose, like, the clues you were gonna give and how you—like your stance in relationship to that.
KC:
First of all, I just came back actually from Toronto because I was there for the Toronto International Festival of authors. And crazy enough, I said yes to to a job there. I was the mentor or whatever of a writing workshop. And it's not just regular people. These are high school teenagers from five different high schools in Toronto. And I was like, Okay, this is this is bound to be a failing experience, because high school kids, when I was a high school kid, I never listened to people. Yeah. You know, and they're the most difficult creatures in the world. And we all know that because we used to be one and, and, but when I was there, this just turned out to be an amazing experience, because they're really, really engaged. They want to be writers, you know. And so we were talking about this, because people did ask me, obviously, some kids actually read my book, and not before they came to the workshop, and they asked me about this choice of names and stuff. And so, you know, I got some name related questions. The first one was: Dear Mr. Chen, how do you name your characters? And I said, I don't know. Because naming your characters, as Mike, I'm sure, you know, is a very difficult thing. You have to give them names that would actually mean something, you know, and you don't want to be, you know, too spontaneous or too sloppy about it. And so I don't know. So when it comes to my way of naming them, when it comes to this fiction, I'm very lazy. So I choose names that are actually very close to me. And I wanted to confuse people. And then there came the second question. And then, you know, the second young writer asked me, Oh, would that bother you and your family? Because it has this autobiographical elements? And yeah, and I said, Yeah, I guess, no. Because first of all, okay, I think this, Ghost Town was my eighth book in Taiwan. And before that, my career was okayish, you know, it was not going anywhere. And I get awards, I get mentioned, but it never really took off. And the people who always supported me were my sisters. So they always bought, like, really stacks of my books, you know, but they will never read my books. As a matter of fact, they, they, the feedback that I got was, Oh my god, can you write something that's readable? Now so literary. Can you please write something that human beings are happy to read? Something that gives people joy? Not tears and pain.
KC:
I've heard this speech.
KC:
Yes! Obviously. This book, they actually really read, all my sisters actually did because when this book started take off in Taiwan, for some crazy reason, people went to them. And like neighbors and relatives that, Oh my god, your brother wrote about you in this horrible way. And they were like, He did what? And then they went back to the book, and they read the text. And I was, Oh my God, this is going to be terrible. But like, for example, the feedback I got from my second sister, because there's a second sister in the book as well. She read the book, and she came back to me, I'm nothing like her! She's a terrible person. I'm not! I said, Yeah, sister, of course, you're right. You're not a terrible person. And then I got away with them. And another experience was that I was having lunch with my third sister. And I wrote, actually, about a few pages in the book was very much based on what actually happened to her. And she was just—okay, we were having lunch, and I was late. And I got in and she was reading that chapter, those pages. I was like, this lunch is not going to a good place, obviously. And she just was reading and I said, Oh, you know, Sister, we should start ordering now just, you know, make sure that she would stop reading. And she said, No, I'm gonna read read your book, and I'm gonna, you know, finish this chapter. I said, Oh, this is bad. And then she just finished that chapter. And she's put down the book and turned to me and said, Gosh, this sister is such a bitch. And I was like, whoa, okay, yeah, I value your opinions. But the thing is, that was very much based on her, and yeah, and she couldn't see that because she couldn't see herself. I realized that because it's like, you know, you don't see—I remember this thing. Well, back in high school, some kids were imitating me because we had a stupid party, like a pizza party, and we're doing this game, imitate someone in the room, and people were laughing like crazy when someone was doing me on the stage. I was the only one who didn't realize that whole thing was about me. So actually, yes, and no, you know, so that bothered—my book did, you know, cause some, I don't know, situations for them. But at the end of the day, they were still very proud of that. Because, you know, then they actually got interviewed and they were featured in the magazines and, and they just, yeah, they loved that very much. Because a traditional conservative Taiwanese family like mine, we don't talk about feelings. We don't say I love you. We don't say I'm proud of you. I don't know if you know this movie by Ang Lee. Like in the 90s. The Chinese director Ang Lee did a film called Eat Drink Man Woman. And if you don't know that, please go to see that. It was actually nominated for an Oscar actually. And that film is very much—it's so authentic, because it's about a Taiwanese family, which always has this Sunday ritual of gathering of food. And that's what happened to my family as well. The way we give emotions, the way we take emotions, the way we say I love you or I hate you or I want to poison you or I want to kill you is food. And we connect with each other by food. And that's what happened because I, like after this, this book, was honored with some prestigious spiritual awards in Taiwan, we sit down and have food. We never talked about the award or the book. But we ate, and I knew that was, I'm proud of you. Yeah. And that's great.
CM:
So you mentioned films, and I know you had a long career acting in films and dance and have worked as a foreign foreign correspondent. You've had a bunch of different lives, if you will. One of the films you acted in is titled Hostage. So I wonder if, if you could talk a little bit about the, the arc of your creative life, if you will, and if there are things you still hope to try. Different things, different forms.
KC:
Oh, yeah. Well, first of all, I would love to be an opera singer for sure. You know, it's something that will never come true. But I just always imagined—even when I was kid, I wanted to be a tenor in the opera house, you know, in Vienna, in Berlin, in New York, just to sing some Puccini. I still do that even in Iowa, you know, by the river, you know, and annoy some people. You know, some some joggers were like, oh my god, what is this crazy Asian guy singing? Yeah, but back to my career. I was really acting, um, because I worked years in Taiwan as a theater actor and then moves to Germany in Berlin at year 2004, and strange enough, A Ghost, that film was really interesting. I was actually hosting. I was a moderator for a film event in Berlin Film Festival. So like every country is promoting their own films, their cinemas, right. I mean, America doesn't have to do that because we have Hollywood, but you know, Hollywood's a very, very special system, but we don't have that at all in Taiwan, so we have to promote our cinema. And so to promote that in a film festival, we have to have a party, and I just happened to be there. And they gave me the job because I'm, you know, you know, I'm a talkative, crazy person. So I was doing that. And after that a director, a German director came to me and said, Do you act? And I said, Honey, I studied theater and acting, I went to drama school, I do! And then she gave me a part. That's how I started this whole thing. And this film was eventually nominated to be in the film festival as well. So I did a whole red carpet and Q&A and interview and stuff, you know, and it's really a crazy experience. And that sort of was, you know, that just happened. I don't know, I still don't know why that happened. And I started, and I started to audition. And I started to do like, you know, TV sitcoms, I did some prank shows, and I did some commercials, and I was in, in other different films. And it was just a very colorful experience. Because when you work as an actor on set, you have been pampered, they take care of you, they don't want you to get sick. They don't, you know, when you're having lunch, they make sure they have [] on you, so you don't soil your costume. You have a trailer where you can nap. And really, makeup people, you know, a costume people, everybody is taking care of you. And you feel like oh my god. So this is, you know, this is what being Beyoncé is like, you know, and this is really silly. And then, you know, when you're writing, it's a totally different experience. Because when you're writing, you know, you're by yourself, no one's pampering you. As a matter of fact, you know, even if you have the biggest agent in the world, and you have the, you know, the biggest, I don't know, advance check in the world, you're still on your own, you know, when you're writing, you know. And, and that's a totally different feeling. But when I was acting, that was really teamwork. You have to work with everybody. And I learned so much from it, you know, that you have to talk to people, you have to make sure that your work is going to be presented out there. So you want to make sure that you are a good guy, but you gotta voice your opinions as well, because you want to make sure that you are not just a puppet, and also was—as Chris just said I was working as a foreign correspondent. And that was amazing. First of all, to have a press badge, press ID, it's just, you know, you can go to any places in the world, like I don't know about America, but with a an official EU-issued press ID, I can get into every museum for free. This job brought me to so many places because I got to interview interesting politicians, interesting people, interesting artists, and all these things. And, and it really, really, I mean, really, that was an eye-opening experience. And so now, I think that—and those two jobs, they really helped me so much. And I just want to mention another the job that I have been doing, am still doing, I'm actually working as an interpreter. I don't do so much translation. You know, I do a lot of oral translation. I have a lot of interesting experiences. And I have translated for a lot of like big politicians and been translating for a lot of stars in the film festival as well. And so these experiences really brought me to places and they really gave me colors. And I could always use them in my book when I'm writing because you know, we need colors. And so I think I to this day, I'm still coloring, meaning writing, because I gather a lot from it. I don't have a press ID anymore because I quit that job. I stopped auditioning, because auditioning, I mean seriously, I mean, acting is—if you think writing is a horrible, horrible career choice, acting is even worse. Yeah. Because you will have to go to all these auditions, and they judge you just, you know, in thirty seconds. They want to take shots of you like front, sides, sometimes from the top. And sometimes they have to lay down so they take shots of you and then they ask you to do things and they give you thirty seconds or maybe five minutes and they will determine your fate. Just like that. They don't want to get to know you. And I was, you know, I remember this thing, I was—My task. I had to prepare a monologue from Macbeth and not speaking as Macbeth but Lady Macbeth, when you know the part when she's washing her hands, we all know. And I prepared, you know, I prepared the— I had memorized everything. I prepared the English one, the German one. When I was there, they didn't—they just ditched that. They wanted me to do a backflip instead. And that was like—excuse me! What, I can do a Shakespeare monologue, but what, backflip? And you know what this casting director said to me, Oh, you cannot do a backflip? Strange, but you are Asian. Yeah, that happened to me! And I have had so many disastrous audition experiences. And because now, see, we're here in the States. We're always talking about you know, representation. Asian representation in Germany simply is not there. You know, it doesn't exist, you know, so we get all these stupid stupid parts. And there comes a point that, well, I just, I just had to stop, I have to stop because this is too bad, you know and, and interesting enough, the moment that I told my agent that, okay, I'm going to terminate this contract, I'm not going to do that. I just want to give myself a break, because I really am sick of these auditioning experiences. And I just want to focus on writing. And I got this really crazy contract with my publisher in Taiwan. And so I wanted to focus on my writing, and then I finished Ghost Town. And here I am, in Iowa, for this book. So, you know, so maybe sometimes, making sure that you cut off something and just can move on to the next thing was a good decision. I was brave enough to cut off that thing. And I'm still very happy that I made that choice.
MM:
What I'm taking from this is that in order to be more successful, as an author, I need to briefly become somewhat successful as an actor. Give that up, and then I'll be a big deal.
KC:
No, Mike. What I can tell you is that sometimes we have to throw ourselves out there to do something different. I don't know, it could be bungee jumping, you know, skydiving, or something. Because we all are in our comfort zones. And we know that, we are very comfortable, in our couch, in our beds, or in this recording studio, or whatever, you know, and then, if we have a chance to really throw ourselves out there, you know, it could be just a, you know, a public speaking opportunity, or I don't know, I'm just, you know, saying something crap. It could be, it could be just a drag, you know, race experience or something, you know, because it's about crossing different boundaries. Because that's what happened to me working as a journalist, as a foreign correspondent, or as an actor. It really brought me to so many interesting, dramatic boundaries. And they really helped me a lot as a writer.
CM:
You talk about gathering colors for your writing and your different experiences. Could you talk about what colors maybe you're gathering from your time in Iowa City?
KC:
Oh my gosh, there's so many colors. I agreed to come here, I knew nothing about this town. Okay, because IWP is honestly very, very wildly popular in Taiwan. A lot of writers want to be here. And, as a matter of fact, a lot of prestigious writers that we look up to—they, they have been here and years later, even two decades later they're still talking about their experiences here in Iowa. So it's like a thing that you should do if you are a writer that you want to be part of this program. So I was, Okay, so it's my turn. It's great. But I should, you know, look up this place. So I use Google Maps, you know, I use different sources and stuff, you know, and the thing is, you know, that's—that kind of virtual Google experience it, they never justify, really. So the colors I gather here was, first of all, it's like this, this eternal summer. Because people promised us autumn and even winterly weather because the, you know, people told us that it's going to get cold. Make sure you bring some sweater, and make sure you bring a proper jacket or something. But we got here—when we got here, I remember like, there was a few days it was 108 Fahrenheit. And I was like, Excuse me, and, and that experience, that color I took away was, first of all, was pain. (Laughs) It was purely pain. It was painful. It was simply too hot. And the heat. I was like, this is not making any sense because I was like, okay, when I looked at the Iowa City in the map, on the map, right, it's pretty much in the north. I was like, why is it so scorching? You know, so yeah, I got a lot of burning colors so far. And I was away for a few days for Toronto, and I just came back and yesterday was a hot day as well. So far, the very strongest color I took away was that heat, and strange enough, because I've been told by other writers who have been here in Iowa, they always told me about this beautiful autumn leaf color, which I'm looking forward to because I love, I love cold weather. I cannot stand hear. And so, Chris, I will have to come back to you about the colors I've gathered in Iowa so far in three months, because I think memories are so important for me. Because you know, when I, when you're in the thick of it, you don't really see clearly, so I have to get out. And looking back, and I will shoot you an email. It could be an angry email telling you that, Why did you prepare that weather for us? Or it just, you know, a lovely happy email full of fun and laughter and memories and joy and delight. Yeah, so let's see in three months.
MM:
Yeah, the weather is, we're waiting for autumn too. We're also actually a little surprised, I think, by the way things have gone this year. But can you tell us about what you're working on here?
KC:
Oh my god. Oh, I actually, in spring I just finished a brand new novel, which will be published in December in Taiwan. So I'm actually going back to Taiwan in December to publish this new book. Um, so I think, you know, we've been editing this novel, but like the first few weeks when I was, when I just got here, I was actually reading this novel that I finished in spring. And it's really interesting experience because I, as I was reading that, with a distance, because I finished it in spring, and now I'm here, so it's like six months apart. And then reading it, it somewhat gave me some kind of validation that okay, this is not crap. Okay, we can publish it. Yeah. So this is great. So that was great. And then I'm moving on to the next one. I've been playing with the idea of writing affection about three sisters, because I love the dynamics of three sisters. My favorite play of Chekhov, the Russian playwright, was Three Sisters, of course. And I just, as a matter of fact, when I was an actor, my biggest dream was to, I wanted to play one of the sisters onstage as a drag actor. You know, it never came true. When I gave the, when I was pitching the idea to a director, he just looked at me like with disgust, like, why would that enter your crazy head? Yeah, so I'm actually starting to work on a brand new piece of fiction about three sisters. And I've been taking notes, I've been doing some people, a lot of people watching actually on the street. And, you know, we talked about what we, I'm gathering colors, my ways of keeping these terms for my writing is I jot things down, I record things, I get the stupid things, but they always become very, very convenient and helpful when I'm writing.
CM:
Is there a period of note taking before you actually sit down to write? Is this the period of notetaking?
KC:
Yes, this is a very important period. And I would start like, you know, a few paragraphs, but I need to, I need to get into it, I need to get to know the characters that—for example, these three sisters, so I'm trying to get to know them. So I need to find their voices. So, by the way, this is something I actually took away from filming as an actor, because to create a character, so let's say in forty years, they're making a biopic about you, you know, your life in Iowa. And they cast an actor to play you. And they have to get into all the details, the fabric of your shorts, the color of your hair, your glasses, the shoes, and the way you talk, your voice, or the recording, all these things, you know, and these are just, you know, external facts. I have to go deep as well, and the accents and the origins and backgrounds, and that's what I do with all the three sisters. That's how my note taking stage goes, that I want to get to know them by gathering all these notes. And when...
CM:
Do they have names yet?
KC:
No! No, no, no, I'm the worst. I hate that.
MM:
They'll all be named Keith.
KC:
Oh yeah, just yeah. So yeah, so the names are actually the most difficult part, you know, so I don't know, as a matter of fact, so interesting enough, the book I just finished in spring, the one that I finished reading again here in Iowa. It's two protagonists. And it's eventually, I was so lazy, I was so bad, so it's, it just became He and She. And that says, yeah, and strange enough, I revealed their names in a strange way in the very final chapter. Their names only came about in the very last chapter in a different form. Yeah, so I cannot tell you that because it's like when the one of the revelations I will have to do for the end of the book, but yeah, so eventually I went for He and She, that's how bad I was. And yeah, but turned out it was a good choice for me as well. So no, they don't have names.
[music: "Gymnopédie No. 1 - DoGBeaT Remix" by DoGBeaT]
MM:
Say the World: an International Writing Podcast is a production of the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa. IWP programming is primarily funded by the University of Iowa and the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs at the US Department of State, with additional funding provided by organizations like the Doris Duke Foundation, as well as donors like you if you'd like to donate to the IWP go to bit.li/iwp-support. Links to further information and additional credits for this episode are in the show notes.
