Toronto author Jessica Westhead, talks to Lucy Black about ther latest story collection.
LB: Congratulations on the publication of Avalanche! The collection seems to me to highlight the difference between intentionality and impact when it comes to human behaviour. I wonder if you could speak to this in terms of the driving force behind your stories?
JW: Thank you! Yes, that distinction is at the heart of this collection. I’ve always been fascinated by people who lack self-awareness, and I often take that to an extreme in my short stories to create tension and humour. So that felt like a natural way to get into the heads of characters who either consciously or unconsciously refuse to acknowledge the impact of their harmful behaviour and who focus on the goodness of their intentions instead. The intention versus impact of this collection too has been very much on my mind. My goal has always been to make fun without making light. I wanted to use humour to make it easier for white readers to laugh at aspects of their own behaviour they might recognize here, to defuse some of the shame associated with that recognition and to encourage compassionate reflection. I definitely don’t want to position myself as any sort of authority on how to be a Good White Person. And it’s been vital to me that these stories never trivialize the reality of racism and systemic white supremacy.
LB: There is an underlying current of dread and unease in all of the stories. Please share with us the balance you negotiated between the narrative arc of your work and the compelling threads of the key messaging that you wished to convey.
JW: I’ve always been drawn to write about scary and unsettling things. Maybe this is my attempt to contain those parts of life for myself, and make some sense of them. In Avalanche, I explored anxiety about climate change, COVID-19, cancer, and the judgement of others. There is also the very real and ever-looming threat of male violence against women and girls. I also wanted to examine how certain fears have been manipulated by systems of white supremacy to further divide us and oppress racialized people; for instance, how white women have been conditioned to be fearful of Black men, and how that fear continues to be weaponized as a justification for violence against Black men. I’ve never written anything that’s only frightening or sad or funny because navigating the balance among them is what lights up my brain. Years ago, I watched Ivan Coyote perform a reading from Rebent Sinner, and I was in awe of how they moved us from laughter to tears to contemplative silence to gasps of pain or outrage and back again. Like they were conducting a symphony. I would love it if this book could elicit even a tiny fraction of that range of emotion.
LB: You have drawn many of your main characters in sympathetic but very revealing ways. We see their clay feet, so to speak, without actively despising them for their weaknesses. Please share with us any of the tools or skills you used to work out this balance.
JW: I’m glad you felt this way, thank you. Because as much as I’m ridiculing the harmful behaviour of the white protagonists in Avalanche, I feel tenderly toward all my characters and invested in portraying them as fully dimensional human beings who are uniquely themselves. For the protagonists, I’ve given readers access to their internal monologues and pivotal flashbacks. I also played with dramatic irony, having these characters unknowingly reveal to the reader private aspects of themselves, including their racism, when their actions contradict their stated beliefs. For the racialized characters, I wanted to avoid perpetuating stereotypes and to focus on their individuality and agency, but initially I wasn’t sure if I was succeeding. I was fortunate to have the insight of Tamanna Bhasin, an editor working with my literary agent Sam Hiyate, who we hired to do a sensitivity reading of earlier drafts of four stories I was especially concerned about. I was then able to incorporate her essential feedback into my other revisions. One of Tamanna’s suggestions was to describe small but telling details of body language and other external clues to convey the racialized characters’ feelings and states of mind (much of which is either misinterpreted or ignored by the white protagonists). This has always been a technique I’ve used to bring characters to life, but until Avalanche, I’ve almost exclusively written about white people. Tamanna’s advice helped me realize I’d been hesitant to bring the same level of close attention to the Black and Brown characters I was creating, which meant I was inadvertently using those personality-flattening and humanity-erasing tropes and clichés I’d been so intent on avoiding.
LB: Tell us about your decision to write this book. What inspired and/or motivated your interest in the subject matter?
JW: In November 2016, I joined a small, ad hoc group of volunteers organizing a Toronto event in solidarity with the Women’s March on Washington. We were united in our horror over the U.S. election results and our desire for positive social change. This was my first experience of activism, and I’m thankful to Toronto author Amy Stuart for putting out the volunteer call that I responded to. With limited time and resources but lots of dedication, our group organized women’s marches in January 2017, 2018, and 2019, focused on rejecting colonialism, racism, anti-LGBTQ2S+ hate, sexism, and ableism, with wonderful lineups of speakers focused on intersectionality. It was during this time that I began to actively think about my own whiteness and related unconscious biases, and to witness the power of grassroots organizing. It’s important to note that after the first Toronto march (with an estimated turnout of 60,000), our committee and many Canadian sister marches declared our official separation from Women’s March Canada and united under the banner of March On Canada, to stay true to the values of inclusive, intersectional grassroots activism that brought us together. I learned so much from Women March On: Toronto and I’m so grateful to them, especially the three members who took on the vast majority of the organizing work: Bianca Spence (who I also knew through the Toronto literary community), Kavita Dogra, and Deb Parent. Then in May 2020, after a white police officer murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis, and widespread protests in support of Black Lives Matter followed, bringing renewed attention to anti-Black and anti-Indigenous police brutality within Canada, I started looking inward like many other white people did, and reading and thinking about my own racism and my role in upholding patriarchal and white supremacist systems. And because writing stories has always been my way of figuring out the world around and inside of me, this thinking ultimately made its way into my fiction writing, and led to the beginnings of Avalanche.
LB: Share with us a little about your go-to support group. Do you have trusted supporters that you bounce ideas and early drafts with? Are they also writers?
JW: I’m fortunate to have a number of trusted first readers and close writerly friends with whom I can exchange works-in-progress. In particular, Teri Vlassopoulos, Kelli Deeth, and Grace O’Connell have been my go-to first readers for many years, and they all gave me super-helpful commentary on early drafts of stories in this collection. The marvellous folks who read the entire manuscript of Avalanche in various stages and shared their indispensable feedback were Jami Heydari, Caroline Habib, Greg Kearney, Kate Barton, Amy Miranda, and Carrianne Leung. I’m thankful for invaluable sensitivity readings of stories from Tamanna Bhasin and Alicia Elliott. And the wondrous Brittany Chung Campbell read the entire Avalanche manuscript as a sensitivity reader. I’ll be forever grateful for Brittany’s openness and generosity of spirit, and her illuminating suggestions for how I could improve the stories.
LB: Tell us about a book that you have returned to over the years and read more than once?
JW: Honoured Guest by Joy Williams is a hysterically funny and creepily off-kilter story collection that greatly inspired my first story collection And Also Sharks. And I had the wonderful opportunity to meet and drink gin with Joy at the 2011 Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop, where she gave me encouraging and essential feedback on my story “He Will Speak to Us,” which was part of my second collection, Things Not to Do.
LB: What types of writing achievements do you celebrate and how do you celebrate them?
JW: My husband threw me a surprise party with a few close friends to celebrate the publication of Pulpy & Midge, my first novel. Coach House Books gave him a print of the book cover that he framed for me, and he got a cake made with the title iced onto it. I celebrated the publication of And Also Sharks with my husband and my parents and our extended family, and for that party, my mom got a cake with my book cover printed on the icing through the marvel of some special edible-printing technology. She did the same thing for Things Not to Do—and by then, my daughter was there to eat that cake with us. So cake is my primary way of celebrating! I also have my Happy Times Writing Journal, where I’ve made notes for myself of moments throughout my writing career that have made me smile. If I’m feeling discouraged, I can flip through this book to remind myself of those little victories and the bigger ones too, and the encouraging exchanges with fellow writers that have buoyed me up. The connections I’ve made with other writers and other people in the literary community over the years are my favourite part of this writerly life.
LB: Please tell us a little about the writing spaces or environments that work best for you. Are there particular items that you like to have in place?
JW: Before the pandemic, I loved writing in cafés and pubs. Being alone among strangers, listening to conversations unspool around me while nursing a cup of tea or a pint, was creatively energizing and just made me feel content. I’ve been thinking that I’m going to start easing back into that again. I’ve really been missing humanity.
LB: How was the title chosen for this book? Who had input and what were the deciding factors? JW: My brilliant editor at Invisible Publishing, Bryan Ibeas, chose the title Avalanche. Previously, the title for the collection when I submitted it to him was A Warm and Lighthearted Feeling, and before that, it was Intense Good Times with Other Professionals. “Avalanche” is the title of one of the stories in the collection, and during the editing process, Bryan identified that story as being emblematic of the collection as a whole. When he suggested we use that title for the book, I agreed right away. It just felt right, and now I can’t imagine this book having any other title. I can’t say enough about how much I love working with Bryan—he absolutely gets the essence of my writing and helps to bring out the best in whatever I’m working on.
LB: Do you have a writing routine or regimen? What does that include at the different stages in the writing process?
JW: I don’t have a regular writing routine. If I’m working on a story, I’ll usually wake up early-ish while my family is still sleeping and get as much writing done then as possible because this is the time of day when I can tune into whatever I’m working on with minimal effort and resistance, I think because I’ve gotten used to this schedule and my brain just revs up and goes. And then I’ll keep working once my daughter is at school, finding time for that creative work in and around whatever other commitments I have. If I don’t have a writing project on the go, I still like to wake up early, but I’ll instead use that time to focus on my teaching work, or I’ll read. I’ve realized there’s an ebb and flow to my writing practice, so I don’t worry anymore if I’m not writing. I’m always thinking about writing in one way or another, and I know that eventually I’ll get excited to write something new.
LB: If you were to give a young writer a piece of crucial writing advice, what would that be?
JW: In order for anything else to happen in the writing process, you first need to get something down. It’s too easy to get in our own way and spend too much time thinking about what we should write, and this impulse to fuss and fiddle can lead us to rewrite and revise before we’ve completed a fully formed first draft. It’s often only when we’ve put together that rough draft that our synapses start firing and making those exciting connections and revealing what the story is truly about. Remember that your own unique way of perceiving the world counts. You don’t need to write like anyone else, you just need to write like you. (Though reading other writers’ work widely and often certainly helps to hone your skills.) Tune into your own thoughts, your own observations, your own memories, your own emotions. What makes you scared, embarrassed, hopeful, elated? Dig into that, and open your notebook and go.
Jessica Westhead is the author of the novels Pulpy & Midge (Coach House Books) and Worry (HarperCollins Canada), and the critically acclaimed short story collections And Also Sharks and Things Not to Do (Cormorant Books). Her newest short story collection, Avalanche, is forthcoming from Invisible Publishing in fall 2023. Jessica teaches creative writing at the School of Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto. She lives in Toronto with her family. Follow Jessica on Instagram at @westheadjessica or visit her website: http://www.jessicawesthead.com