Gania Barlow won the Runner
up Award Winner in the Escape chapter for
IN WHICH GOD’S SENSE
OF HUMOR IS DISPLAYED
Biography
Gania Barlow teaches English in Michigan. Her work has been
published in venues like AGNI, Fourteen Hills, Smokelong Quarterly, and Saints
& Sinners and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, awarded Runner-Up
for the Calvino Prize, and adapted for the stage.
BAM: Where are you, Gania?
Gania: Ferndale, Michigan.
BAM: Hope your summers aren’t too hot. Where is your
writing space?
Gania: Couch with a paper notebook for getting
started, then desk or couch & computer later.
BAM: Good to move around. First some icebreaker questions.
What are some movies you like?
Gania: The 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice FOREVER
BAM: Pride and Prejudice is a classic. What are some
places that have impacted your writing?
Gania: Twin Lakes, Mammoth, in California, which is
not the lake pictured in my picture.
BAM: Noted. I took the liberty of
doing a web search of Twin Lakes. Beautiful view. Definitely somewhere I’ll
visit if time ever allows. Let’s talk about books. What are some book titles
you’ve read recently?
Gania: Severance by Ling Ma, The City We Became by
N.K. Jemisin, Memorial by Alice Oswald.
BAM: The City We Became was developed from Jemisin’s
short story, The City Born Great. I love how she built basically a story
outline for a novel from her short story. The benefit of short stories, even forty-two
word ones is that you can write them fast between distractions. Speaking of
which, what are some of your distractors?
Gania: My son, my job, TV.
BAM: So, life. Huh? Tell me then, what inspires you
so that you’re able to finally sit and write on your couch?
Gania: I’m
inspired by existing stories and myths—my primary writing mode is creative
retelling. This probably goes back to the childhood “novels” I wrote (or
rather, started), which were mainly thinly veiled rip-offs of The Lion the
Witch and the Wardrobe, but now I’ve made a virtue of it (I hope?). I
especially like to return to Greek myths and the medieval stories I studied in
my PhD, but I also have a story that retells a Bob Dylan song.
BAM: Definitely interested in reading
that Bob Dylan-inspired story. On the note of your stories, why don’t you tell
me about story outline process?
Gania: I don’t typically outline until later drafts.
I usually start just basically free writing on a moment or character that is
calling to me, and write around things in that way, waiting to see what falls
out of my pen that I wasn’t expecting and that can show me where the story
needs to go, or what it’s really about. Then once I’ve got a blob of that rough
material, I’ll try to find a structure for it through a combo of plot and
rhythm.
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