Tiny Interview #5 - Vi Khi Nao
Here we ask authors we admire to share their musings on art and writing, spill their current reading obsessions, and give us a tiny wedge into their creative life. In this Tiny Interview, meet Vi Khi Nao, whose latest novella Funeral (written in collaboration with Daisuke Shen) was recently included in Independent Book Review's 30 Indie Books to Look Out For in 2023.
(Interviewed by Cameron Finch)
Image Credit: 'Stadtkrone' Cultural & Sports Center 1928 - 21
Q: What book(s) are you reading right now?
A: I am reading Jared Daniel Fagen’s The Animal of Existence and Eugenia Leigh’s Bianca. And, whenever my heart gets dissected, I read Julia Kristeva. Especially her book, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection.
Q: What are your current writing projects?
A: I just had open heart surgery — so recovering is my current writing project. I don’t know what I will do once I am less in pain and am more at home in my body. Currently, my body is an object out in space.
Q: Do any other art forms influence your writing? If so, how?
A: Sports influence my writing a lot. Especially football. I draw inspiration outside of the literary and artistic forms. I think it’s important to seek the peripheral contours of indirect impulses. It makes the inspiration/the form less incestuous and less insular. Also, it provokes distance of imagination.
Q: Where is your favorite place to write, and do you have any writing rituals?
A: I like to write everywhere. Outside. In the park. At home, in bed. Standing in my kitchen. Currently I don’t have any. When the muse calls, I may or may not be submissive to that invasion. Lately, I do nothing. To cope. I am in pain often. I am in a great deal of discomfort. Rituals get in the way, sometimes, of me convalescing fully and properly.
Q: Who is a writer you wish more people were reading?
A: Ali Raz, Daisuke Shen, Dao Strom, Lily Hoang, Najlaa Eltom.
