Common House Magazine

Emily Austin is the author of We Could Be Rats, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, Interesting Facts About Space, and the poetry collection Gay Girl Prayers. She was born in Ontario, Canada, and received two writing grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts. She studied English Literature and Library Science at Western University. She currently lives in Ottawa, in the territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

An excerpt from Emily Austin's We Could Be Rats:

One night, Margit and I skated on that frozen stormwater pond in the center of our neighborhood. The sky was dark, but the snow reflected the moonlight, so I could see Margit’s face like it was midafternoon. Her cheeks were rosy, and she had snowflakes caught in her eyelashes.

Margit and I butted heads a lot growing up. When we were kids, I was hyper and loud. She was quieter and more reserved. We irritated each other. Most of my sisterly memories were tainted by fights we had. When I thought of our parents driving us anywhere, I saw Margit and I in the back seat, arms crossed, huffing. When I thought of our sleepovers at our aunt Jerry’s, I saw us kicking bruises into each other’s shins on her pull-out couch. I had scars on my hands where Marg bit me, and I remember ripping out fistfuls of her silky hair.

That night, we didn’t fight. We looked up at the flurries weaving down from the heavens and tried to catch snowflakes on our tongues. 

We held each other’s mittened hands and spun in circles until our lungs burned from the cold. I remember running home, pretending that the snow on the ground was icing. We played that we were two little candlesticks slipping on an icy cake. We shrieked “Happy birthday!” as we skidded down the road, imagining our winter hats were candlewicks on fire.

Maybe that’s a better memory than the other two. Did you prefer it? I felt a sort of run-of-the-mill kind of happiness that night, but maybe that’s the superior type. A lot of my memories of my sister—even my happy memories—are complicated, but there were also plenty of times, like that night, when things were simple.

Whenever I visualize snow, I always think of that metaphor about how no two snowflakes are the same. That was nailed really hard into me when I was a kid. When I examined snowflakes up close, I wondered whether I was unique too. I walked around all winter thinking I was one of a kind. I thought it that night when I saw the snow caught in Marg’s eyelashes.

I’m not sure why we tell kids everyone’s so unique. We aren’t really. I get wanting to make kids feel special, but most people are more of the same. It might be easier to grow up if kids weren’t sold this tall tale that we’re all exceptional. It might make it less jarring to become an adult if we knew the truth the whole time. We’re mostly ordinary.

Do you think of this kind of thing when you think of snow? Do stories containing snowflakes make you feel dull and average now too?

I’m trying to write positive memories to make you feel good, but I keep missing the mark. Something murky always snakes its way in. 

Nothing is ever purely good, in any case, is it? That’s just the truth of it. There is a rotten piece to everything. Whenever you pick up something comely in the wilderness, like a good-looking twig or a nice rock, worms are always exposed, wriggling in the dirt.

Interview

Kylie: Your debut novel, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, resonated widely, especially with young people, and on social media platforms like TikTok. What was it like watching your work find an audience in a way that was so publicly available to you? And, as both an author and a trained librarian, how do you feel about the role that social media plays in literature now?

Emily: Alright, yeah, that’s a good question. My first book came out—I think it was 2021, and the height of COVID, so its presence on social media was partly reflective of that time period. I’ve got lots of bad things to say about social media, but I do think there is an element of community connection there. At that time period, and on TikTok, especially, and maybe this was just my algorithm, but there was a subset of people, particularly queer women, who were very connected. Sometimes, I feel a little defensive of certain articles or think pieces about “BookTok,” where the person who wrote it clearly isn’t really on “BookTok” or TikTok. If you were to open the app and search books, you would see a certain window into BookTok, which would be reflective of something like that table in Indigo that leans to particular genres and particular interests, which I don’t necessarily have anything disparaging to say about, but I don’t think it’s reflective of what it’s really like to be engaged on there. Like, I’ve found books written by authors I wouldn’t have found otherwise.

For all the bad things that there are to say about being “chronically online,” not connecting enough with people in person, or not “touching grass” enough, I think that there are these niche groups, particularly on places like TikTok, where you can connect with people with whom you wouldn’t be able to otherwise. And I do think that I was able to find some people that way through my books, and I was able to find other writers; for example, I recently met Tim Blackett, who’s a popular BookToker and writer, and—because we were friends on TikTok—I felt like I had already met him, even though I hadn’t. And that’s happened with a few people: I’ve been like, ‘Oh, I feel like I’ve had a video call with them,’ even though I never had.

K: Yeah, I feel like that’s the optimistic take on the social media thing: it can help you connect.

E: Yeah, there is definitely still a need for us to connect in real life.  I don’t think it replaces in-person human connection. Not to be super preachy or on a soapbox here, but I think a big part of what we need now in response to the horrors of today is community and actual human connection. Particularly in relation to the political challenges of today, when we rely so much on platforms like TikTok to connect with others, we put ourselves in a situation where TikTok could be taken away, and then we lose this important connection. So we have to do it in person too.

K: Yeah, I think it can act as a segue to the more important type of connection.

Much of your work seems to explore a common thread of discussing religion, specifically Catholicism, alongside discussions of queerness and queer women characters. Your debut centres Gilda, a morbidly anxious atheist lesbian who becomes a church receptionist. Then, in your poetry collection, Gay Girl Prayers, you rewrite Bible verses and reclaim a text that is often used to incite hatred; instead, you use it to recognize and empower the very people to whom much of that hatred is directed. What was the first seed of that project [Gay Girl Prayers]? Was it anger, faith, love? And how do you reconcile the two influences of Catholicism and queerness in your work?

E: Oh, these are very thoughtful questions. So, I was raised Catholic—I was an altar server, and went to Catholic school my whole life. I also grew up in this sort of conservative, smaller community, and I think those settings impacted me really heavily. The seed of Gay Girl Prayers was probably a mixture of disillusionment and some resentment towards Catholicism. On the whole, I would say that it had a negative impact on me and many people around me. I think it affected my perception of gender really toxically. This might be me being an optimist, but in some ways, I am grateful for certain insights that I gained from being raised that way. I remember being a teenager and holding certain beliefs that I no longer agree with. So I’ve had this experience that has made me very aware that I can be wrong about something, and I think that has helped me because now I feel very open to hearing when I’m wrong in a way that maybe I wouldn’t have been otherwise. And I’m sure I still have blinders, but I’m aware I have them. 

On the whole, there are several friends I’ve had, or people I know who were negatively affected by being taught certain things, particularly things about being gay that are obviously really toxic, but also about being a woman. There’s also a lot about sexual purity that I think really negatively affected me as a teenager. When I look at people I knew then, I can see how their lives went a certain way because they didn’t find the escape hatch. And I feel bad for them, and resentful on their behalf.

K: Yeah, I think along with being able to accept when you’re wrong about something, another takeaway is the aspect of being able to understand other people. Both can align with your optimist’s take, seeing some positives in the negatives. To follow up: when you’re writing queer characters and inserting them into Catholic spaces—either Biblical verses in Gay Girl Prayers, or the church itself in Everyone In This Room Will Someday Be Dead—how do you reconcile those things in a way that is maybe representative of your experience, or the resentment you were talking about? Or is the intention to reclaim it in a way? 

E: Yeah, with the poetry book [Gay Girl Prayers], I think I was sort of reclaiming it. One thing I was thinking a lot about with that was what it might be like to be the target audience of the Bible, which is obviously not me and not, you know, a trans woman, for example. While I was writing Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, I thought, ‘Oh, okay, this is set in a Catholic Church; I’ll flip through the Bible again.’ In doing that, I realized that while my experience of being raised Catholic was largely frightening or negative, to the Bible’s target audience, it’s actually really empowering and uplifting. I thought about how strange it would be to be a particular type of little boy raised in Catholicism and to be empowered by it, and to feel closer to God, and how that would potentially give you confidence. When I think of the things that I’m resentful of in relation to Catholicism, I would say it made me more anxious and insecure. It negatively affected my relationships with other people, particularly how I interacted with other women and how I perceived men. It affected my compulsory heterosexuality and prevented me from recognizing a lot of things about myself. I think that all of these things I’m resentful of have opposite effects on the target audience. There is a particular subset of men who read the Bible and think, ‘I am a powerful person. I am important. I should be confident. I’m close to God. My relationships with other people are sacred. My interest in women is a divine, godly thing.’ Revisiting the Bible in this way, and these realizations, prompted me to write Gay Girl Prayers. 

K: That’s a really interesting way of looking at it. I think one of my favourite things I’ve ever heard about the Bible was from this atheist man, who called it the greatest storybook ever written. I guess if you look at it that way, it can take on a different significance.

E: Yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of really lovely storytelling and poetry in the Bible, but also some really scary stories. 

K: Similar to the two works we’ve just discussed, your third novel, We Could Be Rats, builds on many of the same themes, such as queerness, mental illness, and religion. What connects those topics for you?

E: Whenever I write a book, I do think about my own experiences to a certain extent. I’m trying to draw from my own toolbox. There are certain things that I have had experiences with that I could write about, and a major one is Catholicism, being queer, and mental illness. Those things are in my cupboard. Those are also topics that I have something to say about. I could potentially write something that doesn’t deal with any of those things, and, actually, when I was younger, because I was so affected by things like compulsory heterosexuality and the patriarchy, I remember writing stories that centred men. I would often write from a boy’s perspective, and it took me realizing things about myself to think, ‘Oh no, why do I have this impulse to write this way? Why am I viewing the world through this lens? Why is this what I want to write about?’ So, now, I intentionally try to write about things I have some experience with, and those are three areas where I have a lot of thoughts.

K: Those are great points. The “write what you know” advice definitely lends itself to a body of work that’s uniquely yours. Other recurring themes in your work, which seem to emerge in oddly tender ways, include animals, death, and the relationship between the two. Be it Gilda’s animal-loving ways or the affectionate representation of rodents in We Could Be Rats, what draws you to these motifs, and what do they let you explore?

E: I have three little nephews, and one of them really loves animals. When a dog goes by, he’ll reach over to look, and he’s always trying to crawl toward them. We’re similar in this way—both just interested in creatures. I think that’s part of it. In Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead, the main character has a memory of her rabbit dying. I also had a pet rabbit when I was younger that died, and for a long time, the image of my pet being dead was an intrusive thought of mine. I think pets are also often a child’s first experience with grief, and that’s part of why parents give their kid a pet. Sometimes it’s a way to teach them about certain things—not just how you take care of something, but also to practice experiencing grief on a smaller scale, even though it can still be really hard. That can help them develop the tools they need to handle grief when they’re older. So for that book, I was thinking of a pet dying—a rabbit in particular, an animal that can be so emblematic of anxiety, and that book has a lot to do with anxiety. To a certain extent, rabbits can also be a symbol of death because they’re so often prey.

Then, with We Could Be Rats, I was thinking a lot about Templeton, the rat from Charlotte’s Web, and the energy that he has, particularly when he goes on that veritable smorgasbord at a fair. I was contemplating the perception that people have of rats, which is often that they’re lowly, gross creatures. But they’re actually so smart and interesting, and when you really zero in on a little creature, you often realize they’re kind of a miraculous thing. One thing that a character says in Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is, if we found a creature like a rat on another planet, we would be like, ‘Oh my god, that is the most amazing, remarkable creature.’ And we have so much of that around us all the time, but because we don’t perceive it that way, we’re like, ‘Yuck, a rat.’ But really, it’s such a miraculous little thing.

K: That’s so sweet. Yeah, I guess I’ve never thought of it that way because I do like rats, so I’m partial to the rat mentions. I think that, similar to what you’ve just described, your work balances humour with melancholy in a way that feels both comforting and devastating. How do you negotiate that line when you’re drafting? Do the jokes come first or the sadness? And, when you’re writing, do you consciously aim for that balance, or does it come about naturally?

E: Normally, when I write a book, what I’m trying to do is write something funny, but it doesn’t work out like that. It almost always happens that the characters become depressed, or something sad creeps its way in. The sense of humour that I have is probably partly related to being a lesbian who was raised in the Catholic Church and has mental health problems. When I think of my group of friends who were also heavily closeted gay people, the jokes that we made with each other, and the things that we talked about were often in contrast to really depressing or sad things, and the humour was sort of a coping mechanism to deal with being bullied or, you know, hating yourself *laughs*.

So, because of that, I think that even if I intend to write a funny book, it’s hard to do without also talking about darker topics. I also think that the books and shows I find funny often have that contrast because for something to really be funny or sad, it has to surprise you. For that to happen, at least for me, you kind of have to be put off guard. So if I read something really funny, I’m not prepared to be hit with something sad, and way more likely to really be hit in the gut when something sad does follow. And the reverse is true too. I think if you’re not prepared for something to be funny—like if you’re at a funeral, for example—and something a little bit funny happens, it becomes way funnier. So I think that’s what happens; I’m trying to be funny, which requires me to be a bit sad *laughs*. 

K: That makes sense. It’s like the—what do they call it?—the sad clown paradox.

E: Exactly. Yeah. 

K:  The title of your upcoming novel, Is This A Cry For Help?, sits on that same border of sad and funny. You’ve described it as following a lesbian librarian who’s returned to work after having a mental breakdown and is dealing with things like book banning. You have also been outspoken about book bans and AI-generated art. As a writer and librarian, and in light of the recent book bans in Canada, how do you see these things impacting creative work and intellectual freedom? Do you have any particular worries about your creative career, or do you envision human art conquering?

E: Wow, that is such a good question. I do feel concerned about both of those things. In terms of book banning, I strongly believe that on all sides of the political spectrum, people don’t support it. I think that there is a small subset of people and political agents pushing this, and overcoming it requires people to care about it. But ultimately, I think we can overcome it, because we have before. There’s a resource called Unite Against Book Bans that has great resources about how to respond to book bans. Overcoming book bans requires people paying attention, but they are, you know? Like with what was happening in Alberta, there was a public outcry, and I really do think that we will respond to that. Even in the States, where it is very concerning, I think we’ll ultimately win. But we have to try.

With AI, I have similar thoughts. I think when it comes down to, for example, novels, I have no interest in reading one written by AI. That is so dull. So much of reading is thinking: ‘What did the writer mean?’ And having critical thoughts, like ‘Oh, maybe I would have done this,’ or ‘That was so creative.’ And that’s why things like Goodreads and StoryGraph exist, because people want to engage with things. And all of that is taken away if it’s written by AI. It just becomes slop. I think on the whole, there’s no way that that’s gonna take over human art. I really can’t imagine reading that. 

I do think that AI could potentially take over advertising and writing in relation to things like that, and I can see that there are attempts for it to do so. Like they made that AI actress, but even with that, I think people are interested in talking about who an actress is dating or why an actor did something. So much of what makes art and even entertainment interesting is the human element. It’s so boring for it to be AI, and because of that, I don’t think it’ll prevail either. It could take over certain things. I think it could take over, like scriptwriting for TV advertisements, which I don’t think it should. I don’t support that, but I could see that being a high risk. I don’t think we’ll be watching shows written, acted and created by AI. It’s slop. It’s so boring.

I logged into Facebook not long ago, and so much of it was just these weird AI stories. And you can even tell the comments under it are AI bots, and it’s like the dead internet thing, where it becomes so uninteresting. Something that I think about in relation to this is that it’s made me want to go buy a VHS player because I don’t want to engage with this anymore. I just want to consume what I actually like. I don’t think this will necessarily happen, but I do think it’s possible that if AI infiltrates all of our social media and internet, and everything we’re trying to consume digitally, the result could be that we become more interested in physical media because it’s not interesting to engage with AI.

K: Yeah, I mean, I’d be okay with that happening—the shift back to physical media. And I never thought about that side of it—how we want to know about the actors’ or the writers’ personal lives. Like, we wouldn’t be doing this right now if you were ChatGPT.

E: Yeah, and you wouldn’t want to—it’s just boring.

K: Yeah, it’s not ideal. Okay, more on your upcoming novel: on your social media, you’ve described how songs like “Your Ex Lover is Dead” by Stars and “Motion Sickness” by Phoebe Bridgers have helped shape your upcoming book. How does music inform your writing process or the emotional world of your characters, and where does it find itself manifested in your work?

E: That’s a fun question. I think I am someone who hyperfixates on a song. For example, if I listen to a song that I like, I’m going to listen to it over and over and over and over and over to the point that it’ll be weeks of listening to only that song. And even though those are both really lovely musical songs, I lean more towards being interested in the lyrics and imagining the intent behind them, so I listen to them like they’re poems, which in a way they are. Often, if I listen to a song a lot, I start to imagine a story to explain why something is happening. And then I start to think, ‘Okay, well, that lyric happened because in my little make-believe story in my head, these people had a baby, and then they broke up, and then this guy married her friend.’ I imagine this whole thing. And I think that helps me write stories because I’m listening to a song, and then I’m like, ‘Oh, okay, that’s going to help me write a story,’ or ‘That will inform this.’ And I imagine that song sort of playing in my book, which I did with those songs.

Like, in Is This A Cry For Help?, the main character is reflecting on this relationship she had when she was younger, with a man, before she realized that she was a lesbian. And some of the sentiments in “Your Ex Lover is Dead” are that they lived in a house “down the road from real love”—that sort of thing. And I think I do that in general: I would have a solid 10 songs that I would hyperfixate on in the course of writing a book, and then I would imagine how those could fit into my book. And sometimes when you’re editing, an editor will be like, ‘We should change this and this.’ And I tend to listen to the editor, but then in my head, I’m like, ‘Oh no, that ruins the connection to that song a little bit,’ which doesn’t matter. But in my own personal little bubble, I’m like, ‘Oh man, that was there to explain why that lyric said that.’

K: That’s so cool. I think that’s a really interesting way to connect those two mediums. I also love Phoebe Bridgers, so when I saw you’d mentioned her, I was like, ‘Oh, I gotta ask about this.’

E: I hope she comes out with something soon. I think we’re due for something new.

K:  Yeah, it’s been a while. Another song you talked about inspiring your new novel is  “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman, which you described as being about choosing a particular kind of life, and Is This A Cry For Help?’s protagonist as someone who chooses differently. Can you expand on that idea?

E: Yeah, “Fast Car” is definitely a song that I have done that hyperfixation thing with a series of times throughout my life. I remember when I was in high school, I worked as a janitor at a grocery store, and “Fast Car” often played there. And I remember being like, ‘That is the best grocery store song.’ And I remember playing it over and over and over. And then, as I got older, that happened again, and it happened again. I think that it is such a lyrically beautiful song with such good storytelling. With that one, I was less thinking of it as being a song that narrates the story I’m writing, and more that the song is about someone who dreams of having a nice life with this partner, but then ends up still living in poverty and still having this bad life. And the dream that they had with this person sort of dies through the course of the song, and then they want them to leave, right? They say, “take your fast car and keep on driving.”

So this main character in my new book is dealing with compulsory heterosexuality, and she’s reflecting on this experience she had when she was younger.  It wasn’t exactly like the life described in “Fast Car,” but it was her living with this man despite her being a lesbian. It was her, planning to get married and have a baby and be with him, and plot out her life in the way that is socially scripted for girls. And—rather than do what the narrator in “Fast Car” does, which is be hopeful for her life with that person—she realizes that she needs to break from it. So she does. But there’s still this sadness associated with it. She feels some sympathy for this guy. That’s a big part of the story: her looking back on that relationship. That is part of an experience that a lot of lesbian women have where they look back on relationships with men and think, ‘Oh, I sort of led him on.’ And, in this relationship in particular, she was with him for a long time, and she felt like she kind of fucked up or ruined his life. But part of the story is her deconstructing that and realizing that he wasn’t a perfect victim, which is a complicated situation.

K: That makes sense, yeah. I feel like, whenever I listen to “Fast Car,” there’s this sense of loss, but in a very specific way. Not exactly a grief kind of loss, but mourning what could’ve been.

E: The dream loss, sort of.

K: Yeah, exactly.

E: Also with that song, I feel like the primary person sounds like someone who has so much potential, and who is hopeful for having a happy life, or overcoming poverty and her alcoholic father, for example. She’s hopeful, and you get the sense that she could escape it, and then she doesn’t. She’s still with this guy, and her life is still trapped in this way. It might be because Tracy Chapman is queer that I also imagine that the primary person is sort of trapped in this heterosexual relationship, which may be me imposing on the song. But I imagine that the central figure of the song is trapped in this heterosexual relationship. They’re married to this man because, when they were young and hopeful, they were promised this story about how women marry men and have a happy life with a picket fence. And then she did everything she was told to do to meet that dream, and then realized, ‘Oh, this is not good. This is not what I wanted. If I had actually chosen my own life, I would have had the potential to be happy.’

K: Outside of these songs that we’ve just talked about, how does art—like music, movies, visual art—play a role in your writing process? Are there any writers, musicians, or directors that you find particularly inspiring, and is there anything shaping what you want to write next?

E: That’s a good question. I think in terms of writing process, if I’m having a hard time, or if I have writer’s block or whatever, I tell myself, ‘Oh, I should read now.’ So any time I’m like, ‘Oh no, I’ve been working on this for a while, I haven’t really made progress,’ I decide it’s not the time to write. And if I’m struggling to read, then I watch a show or a movie. Similar to listening to music, there’s something inspiring about watching a show. And when I’m watching, I think: ‘What if at that point in the story, they did something different? What would have happened?’ And then I start to imagine my own story. 

One writer that I really like is Jen Beagin. She wrote Big Swiss. Have you read that? That’s a good one. 

K: I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard of it. 

E: She writes weird kinds of stuff. Like, Big Swiss is about a transcriber who’s transcribing a sex therapist’s sessions with this large Swiss woman, and she, the main character, also lives in this dilapidated house full of bees. It’s really good.

K: It’s like a Weird Woman Renaissance happening right now.

E: Yeah. I love that. She’s really good for that. It’s really compelling and interesting at the same time. She’s a big one that I really like. A Canadian writer I’m a big fan of is Zoe Whittal. She wrote The Fake, which was relatively recent, and The Spectacular. I think reading books definitely helps me with writing. This may be boring advice, but sometimes people will ask for writing advice, and it’s definitely to read. I won’t give examples of this, but reading books that aren’t good is also helpful, because sometimes if I’m having a hard time writing, I start thinking, ‘I suck at this, I don’t know why I’m even doing this, I’m not good at this.’ But then if I read a really bad book, suddenly I’m like, ‘Yeah, I can do it’ *laughs*.

K: Sometimes you need a little confidence boost. 

E: Exactly, exactly. 

K: Do you have any songs, shows, movies, whatever, that are your new fixations and might be an inspiration later on?

E: There’s a song called “Jimme’s Song” by Emmanuel and the Fear. It’s about this person who wanted to be in a band, but has to work instead. It’s depressing, but it has this cool musical element to it that shows that he is angry. It’s sort of like an anti-capitalist song, I would say. I’ve been listening to it over and over. I imagine it playing in the background as someone is going into work, clocking into a factory, or going into a customer service job. Yeah, that’s a good one.

K: I’ll have to check it out. That’s all from me. Thank you so much!

E: Yeah! Nice meeting you.