New interview up at Strange Horizons

Pat CadiganNicola Griffith

Over at Strange Horizons there’s a new interview up with me and Pat Cadigan. Pat was born and grew up in the US and now lives in the UK. I was born and grew up in the UK and now live in the US. Pat and I published our first short fiction at about the same age—but on different sides of the Atlantic. That plus the fact that Pat’s a handful of years older than me but that the UK was always a few years behind on gender issues means that we have oddly parallel but rarely crossing experiences of being women in SF.

I’ve met Pat only twice in person and wish it could be more—I would love to have done this interview in person, with some cross-talk between us. In actuality, Kerry Ryan interviewed up separately but then spliced the answers together, and the result is an intriguing look at adjacent universes.

To whet your appetite, here’s a snippet from the beginning:

Kerry Ryan: Where did you find the confidence to write SFF at a time when the cultural climate wasn’t just discouraging but actively hostile?

Nicola Griffith: Psychotic self-belief! I knew from—I don’t even know how old I was—maybe as soon as I could spell my own name, that I was a dyke, and that meant I was never, ever going to be liked in that “ideal” way. Not as a nice Catholic girl. Not by my family, my church, my school, or the world in general at that time. There was no point trying to please people, because I never would, just because of who I am and the way I move through the world. It was impossible. So why bother trying? Why not aim for what I wanted? 

Pat Cadigan: I grew up below the poverty line in what people called a “bad neighbourhood.” People would take one look at me and assume I’d get pregnant at fifteen, drop out, and end up in beauty school. That was the trajectory they imagined for girls like me. 

My mother used to say, “People will see you as the child of a broken home. And if you get into trouble, they’ll blame me. So don’t screw up or I’ll kill you.” She was only half joking. But I had her as a model because we didn’t get abandoned by my father, we left him. 

So that was my example: If things aren’t going the way you want them to, that’s just how it is—and so you fight. Either you get what you want, or you discover something else that’s worth wanting. What I saw growing up was women doing whatever needed to be done and not because they had money, or men, or family support, but because that was the only option. You want something? You make it happen.

And so we both did, in our different ways.