Interview with Gianni Washington

Sep 14, 2024

I first met Gianni Washington through West Trade Review: I was their reviews editor, and Gianni, one of their fiction editors at the time, submitted such smart book reviews. I loved working with her, not just because of her intellect, but she’s incredibly warm and kind. (Also, I’ve got to mention: her emoji game is on point. I love getting emails from her because they’re bursting with all the best emojis, perfectly timed.) We’ve kept in touch all these years later, occasionally meeting via Zoom to chat about life and writing. But we’ve never swapped drafts, so my first time reading her non-book review work was when I got my advanced copy of her debut short story collection, Flowers From the Void.

There’s pressure when you read the book of someone you already love as a person. (Will I like their art too? What if I don’t?!?) But I had nothing to worry about because Gianni is as brilliant as she is kind. I had so much fun reading this collection, I finished and started the whole thing over again. I got to talk to her about the book for Electric Lit, which you can read here. With some writer friends one interview doesn’t feel like enough, so I asked if she’d consider doing a second.

I’m so happy Gianni agreed to this interview!

Your book's publication path was unique as it sold in the UK first. Did you ever doubt it would be published here in the States?

I did worry that the book wouldn’t be published here, which would have felt to me like a huge failure. The UK is where I got my (creative writing) phd and met my agent, so selling there first definitely made sense to me. But I was born and raised in the US, where many of the cultural references in my stories are rooted, and where half of those stories were written. I wanted the book to have the chance to find readers here who might relate to it in ways that readers elsewhere in the world wouldn’t, so I’m incredibly happy (and relieved) that the collection found a home with CLASH Books.

One of the things I admired about the stories in this collection is how you handle expectations—setting them, subverting them, playing with them—which makes for such a great reading experience. Do you have any tips or tricks for handling expectations on the page?

This is kind of a “duh” answer, but being aware of what is considered a “normal” sequence of events as well as how that sequence is typically handled in media—in other words, what do the majority of your readers expect to happen in the scenario you’re writing about?—is step one. Step two is deciding what you want to subvert, as in: do you want the ultimate outcome to be the curveball or do you want to surprise readers with how we get there? Or both! I think the best tip I can give is to make sure you’re clear on what you want to achieve. Once you know that, you can have fun choosing how to make it happen, including how long you want to wait before pulling the rug out.

Can you share some reading recommendations?

For sure! The very latest thing I’ve read and loved was the comic book series The Department of Truth by James Tynion IV with artwork mostly by the insanely talented Martin Simmonds (but also guest work by a bunch of other crazy-talented artists). An oldie but goodie is Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont, who eventually adapted a few of these stories into episodes of The Twilight Zone for Rod Serling. Cult Classic by Sloane Crosley is a good example of a book that subverts expectations. In this case, what at first reads like a fairly normal, literary romcom veers into the realms of manifestation and cults. It made me laugh a lot, which I love in a book. I also highly recommend The Employees by Olga Ravn. It’s written in the style of transcribed interviews with a spaceship crew. Half the crew are human and the other half are humanoid artificial intelligence. It uses the premise of searching for another habitable planet for Earthlings to explore what it does and can mean to be human.

Is there a song (or songs) that ties into your book in some way?

I actually created an entire playlist for my UK book release with songs for each story!

Here it is: