Interview: Theodora Goss

By Douglas Cohen

Theodora Goss was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States. Although she grew up on the classics of English literature, her writing has been influenced by an Eastern European literary tradition in which the boundaries between realism and the fantastic are often ambiguous. Her publications include the short story collection In the Forest of Forgetting (2006); Interfictions (2007), a short story anthology coedited with Delia Sherman; and Voices from Fairyland (2008), a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems. Her short stories and poems have won the World Fantasy and Rhysling Awards.

Visit her website at www.theodoragoss.com.

DC: Hi, Dora, and welcome to the Realms of Fantasy team. We’re thrilled to have you. A number of our readers are familiar with your work, but it’s mostly been your fiction they’ve read in our magazine. Obviously your latest association with us is a little different. So could you tell everyone what they might expect with you helming Folkroots?

TG: Thanks, Doug! I’m thrilled that you and the folks at Realms of Fantasy asked me to be the new Folkroots editor. I know I have some very big shoes to fill, at least metaphorically. (I’ve seen Terri Windling’s shoes, and they’re perfectly normal, in reality. But you know what I mean.) It’s truly an honor, and a little daunting, to take over a column that Terri edited so ably for many years. I always admired her wide and deep knowledge of the roots of fantasy, as well as her ability to translate her scholarship into language that could reach a popular audience. If I can be half as good as Terri, I should be fine! I hope to continue in her tradition, so Folkroots fans should not expect drastic changes. Like Terri, and Ari Berk and Kristen McDermott, who did such a great job after Terri, I’m interested in where the fantasy figures and tropes we all love come from. Mermaids, riddles, fairy rings, magic swords – isn’t it fascinating to find out where it all comes from, and how that history affects our popular culture today?

DC: I mentioned that it’s “mostly” your fiction our readers will be familiar with. But some years back you actually had an article appear in Folkroots. Could you tell us about how this came about?

TG: Terri asked me to write an article on Hungarian fairies for an issue of The Journal of Mythic Arts. I didn’t know much about Hungarian fairies, so I went to the library and had a lot of fun doing research. Did you know that to the Hungarians, Transylvania was not the land of vampires? It was fairyland! Seriously. And then Bram Stoker came along. Terri later asked me if she could include my essay in Realms of Fantasy, and of course I said yes. Several years later, I actually wrote a short story called “Fair Ladies” that was based on some of the research I had done. I’d like Folkroots to fulfill that function: in addition to helping readers understand their favorite fantasy stories, I hope it will inspire writers to create interesting and original fantasies of their own. In writing, and particularly in fantasy writing, we never make things up completely. We always create variations on what has come before, on the tradition that is already there. So it’s important to know that tradition.

DC: Besides the fact that your fiction often tackles mythology and fairy tales—two essential cornerstones of the Folkroots column—you also have certain academic pursuits that match up with this column. Would you mind telling us a little about this side of your life?

TG: I’m working on a doctoral dissertation on nineteenth century gothic fiction. You know, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Dorian Gray, Dracula, that sort of thing. It’s fascinating, although a lot of work. I’m also teaching a class called Fantasy at the Fin-de-Siècle in which we explore fantasy literature from the late nineteenth century. One of my favorite units in the class deals with female monsters. We look at paintings of sphinxes, mermaids, the Belle Dame Sans Merci. We also look at a fascinating sculpture that the actress Sarah Bernhardt made, of herself as a bat-winged sphinx. She was one of the most famous faces in the world, painted by the likes of Alphonse Mucha. Why would she depict herself as monstrous? That’s another use of fantasy, and a fascinating one. We’ve even studied the Cottingley Fairies hoax, which is about the desire for fantasy. I think my academic training helps me see connections and search for underlying meanings. That training is as useful for looking at fantasy as it is for looking at realistic texts. I’m also grateful that my academic training has taught me to do research!

DC: Your first pro fiction sale came to Realms of Fantasy, but its path to publication wasn’t exactly the usual method. Could you share how “The Rose in Twelve Petals” found its way into our pages?

TG: So there I was at the Clarion writing workshop, and Shawna McCarthy was the editor in residence. She was great! She talked to us about the reality of publishing in magazines, and told us why she would reject certain stories – they were too generic, or didn’t have strong endings, etc. When I went to see her for my individual conference, she told me she wanted to buy my story! I was completely blown away. Imagine selling your first story at Clarion. I left the workshop feeling as though I could do anything. I couldn’t, of course – I still had a lot to learn about writing. But it gave me tremendous confidence as a writer.

DC: Besides being an accomplished writer, you also have some editorial experience. Could you talk about this?

TG: I had the great pleasure of editing Interfictions, the interstitial fiction anthology, with Delia Sherman. Every writer should edit an anthology at some point! You don’t really understand what slush looks like until you have to read it yourself. I tried to be fair to every story, but after a while I made a rule for myself: if the writer couldn’t interest me in a certain number of pages, I’d stop reading. If I wasn’t interested in the story, chances are the reader wouldn’t be either. It was terrific collaborating with Delia, and also terrific producing such an unusual anthology. As an added bonus, I got to include some of my favorite writers, such as Catherynne Valente, Vandana Singh, and Chris Barzak.

DC: In addition to your academic and creative pursuits, you’re also a loving mother. Could you discuss how these parts of your life have intersected?

TG: Well, generally they interfere with one another! But my daughter, who is now six, has become a tremendous fantasy fan. She’s watched all the Narnia movies, the old BBC versions as well as the modern ones, and we’ve read several of the Narnia books together. Every once in a while she’ll go around with a plastic sword and shield, repeating lines. (With an English accent, believe it or not.) She also loves the Redwall series and all the Miyazaki movies, like Kiki’s Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro. She reminds me how important fantasy is, both for children and adults. It helps us expand our sense of our own possibilities.

DC: Which writers would you consider your greatest influences?

TG: That’s difficult, because everyone I read influences me. And my influences aren’t always fantasy influences either. I’ve always loved Jane Austen, Isaak Dinesen, C.S. Lewis, Agatha Christie, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf. I could go on, but you can see what an eclectic group this is. The reality is that I have too many influences to name.

DC: You’ve been selling at a pro level for close to ten years. In this time, how do you think you’ve changed as a writer?

TG: Well, hopefully I’ve gotten a little better. But every story I write is different, so it’s as though I have to learn to write the particular story I’m writing each time. Which is kind of a pain! I mean, why can’t I write a story, and then use what I learned to write a better story after that? That does happen when you’re starting out, I think. But by the time you’re selling stories regularly, you’ve developed the basic skills, and then it’s a matter of how you want to express what you want to express in that particular story. You always have to learn to write the story you’re working on at that particular moment. And the next story will be different.

DC: Now I’m going to hit you with a question you’ve been hearing for a few years: any novel plans in the works?

TG: Yes! But I’m not going to tell you about them. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. If you want a small hint as to what I’m planning on writing, take a look at a story of mine called “The Mad Scientist’s Daughter,” which was published on Strange Horizons. One of the nice things about my academic work on the late nineteenth century is that it does give me a lot of story ideas!

DC: Dora, thanks so much for your time. Again, welcome to Realms of Fantasy. We’re all looking forward to Folkroots flourishing under your guidance.

TG: Thanks, Doug! I’m so excited to be working with the Realms of Fantasy team, and I hope everyone likes my first Folkroots column.

Read: Theodora’s Folkroots column about Hungarian Faeries.