A.A. Balaskovits is a graduate of the MFA program at Bowling Green State University and a current PhD candidate at The University of Missouri. She lives with two fancy rats, Turing and Fermi. Her work can be found or is upcoming in Gargoyle Magazine, The Mad Hatters Review, The Allegheny Review, and in the Rapunzel’s Daughters anthology from Pink Narcissus Press. She can be mailed at alison.balaskovits@gmail.com. Her story “Food My Father Feeds Me, Love My Husband Shows Me” appears in Shimmer #14.
Do you have favorite characters? Any characters, yours or others, are applicable.
I really love bland characters – red riding hood, bluebeard, the devil, superman, Britney Spears, etc. – because they don’t have an apparent personality or identity. It’s always a joy to be able to retell or rework stories with widely known blank-slate characters, because I feel like I’m filling in part of their collective identity. And I hope that readers and writers and general stand-arounders will also add new layers to them.
Do you work with a critique or writers group?
My current academic program requires that I send in work to be looked over by a group of my peers which is absolutely fantastic, but I also have a small writing group over e-mail with a few ladies that I trust with my writing and, to be sentimental, my heart. They understand my intentions without me having to voice them. My fiancé also reads my work, usually in their terrible early stages. I occasionally throw sentences at him that, without context, he attempts to extrapolate their meanings. He’s a saint.
Favorite book you’ve read recently?
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn and Saints and Strangers by Angela Carter. What absolutely fabulous ladies! I’m currently reading The Great Frustration by Seth Fried (love it!), as well as a collection of Russian fairy tales (delightful!).
How do you explain what writing is like? Is it something that you think about? Do you ever find yourself debating it with strangers?
I wish I knew who said this originally, but I read somewhere that writing is like a deformed, demented, bleeding, vomiting child that follows you wherever you go, sobbing its poor little malformed face off. You can’t ignore it, and it has the worst habit of showing up at fancy dinner parties or during movies you’d really like to watch. Writing, to me, is that poor baby – a part of you that is always aware, always asking for attention, never satiated, never fulfilled, never healed. I haven’t found myself debating writing with strangers, but possibly I haven’t met the right unknown person yet?
If you could choose any five literary people — real or imagined, living or not, friends or otherwise — for a tea party… who would they be? A night on the town, karaoke, whatever suits.
I want to go drinking with Kurt Vonnegut, rest his crazy old man head. To fulfill a childhood fantasy I’d love to go to tea with Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, and probably get into bed (a 1950’s bed, so two beds across the room from one another) with Angela Carter and whichever half of the Grimm’s brother’s was more attractive.
What was the absolute worst piece of advice someone gave you about writing?
That old standard, write what you know. I don’t know very much, and what I do know I don’t feel like sharing, nor is it particularly interesting. Writers generally know one thing, writing and other writers, and how often can you read a story about a writer without wanting to gag uncontrollably? I think we should write what we don’t know. The pursuit of discovering the intricacies of our ignorance is probably going to be a lot more satisfying on the page.
After all, if I was only writing what I knew, I’d have a lot of stories about a girl playing video games and eating guacamole.
Have you ever wanted to let your character[s] run your interview?
Dear lords, no. They’re generally unpleasant.
Is there something you do that no one ever asks you about? This can be anything — something unusual you eat, playing poker as a day job, a hobby, whatever you like.
I am a huge snuggie enthusiast.