In this episode of Strange Horizons at 25, editor Kat Kourbeti talks to Nghi Vo about how Strange Horizons kickstarted her publishing journey, her weird and interesting life before writing took off, and the fearlessness it takes to make a writing career happen.

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Episode show notes:

• Read Nghi's work in our archives
• Follow Nghi on Bluesky or visit her website, nghivo.com
• Buy her newest book, Don't Sleep With the Dead
• Find more links to her work and other things as you read the transcript below.

Transcript:

Kat Kourbeti: Hello Strangers, and welcome to Strange Horizons at 25, a 25th anniversary celebration of Strange Horizons. I'm your host, Kat Kourbeti, and it is my privilege today to welcome you to another episode that looks back at the history and impact of Strange Horizons on the speculative genres.

Today's guest, Nghi Vo, was first published with Strange Horizons in 2007, and has since gone on to win multiple awards, published novels, award-winning novellas, all of the things. Personally I've been a fan for a very long time. It's so great to have you here, Nghi.

Nghi Vo: Thank you so much for having me. I got your message in the email and I was like, oh my God. Strange Horizons. I love you guys.

Kat Kourbeti: I couldn't believe you, like responded. I was like, oh, she's too busy for this.

Nghi Vo: As a matter of fact, I am very busy, but that's the best time to be doing a podcast with someone, right?

Kat Kourbeti: Well, something you're working on that you can promote?

Nghi Vo: Not yet, unfortunately. So...

Kat Kourbeti: Eventually.

Nghi Vo: Yeah, at the moment, mostly it's just this, this sad thing that happens to me at night when I'm trying to work. So it's not happening to anyone else yet.

Kat Kourbeti: So yeah, loads to talk about today. You've had a very interesting, prolific career, lots and lots of writing. I gotta pick your brain about how you get it all done, and perhaps part of it is by procrastinating, by being on podcasts.

So first of all, your oeuvre is very much like, playing with some stuff that exists already but twisting it around a little bit. And then also just some very cool—and I hate to say own voice, but kind of own voice—like, bringing in your background, your heritage, the stuff that you're interested in, and bringing it in and making it shine in a magical way.

What genres would you self-identify with?

Nghi Vo: Historically, when I first started writing, which was honestly not long before I actually got my first publication in Strange Horizons, I would've said that my genre is "whatever people will pay me to write". I started out as a copywriter, so it was everything like, how to get rid of roaches in your house, how to lance abscesses on your alpaca, which is disgusting. You know, just answering those pressing questions on the internet, like why you don't ride bears, that was a good one.

But honestly, these days what I like to write is what I like to read, which is speculative fiction. Didn't happen, couldn't happen, shouldn't happen, should have happened. That's where I like to be right this moment.

Kat Kourbeti: So speculative in the all encompassing sense.

Nghi Vo: Oh yeah. No. It's like, you want me to write about a spaceship? I'll write about a spaceship.

Kat Kourbeti: So let's dive into the short fiction side of things 'cause thats where you got your start.

I noticed on your website that you had a couple of flash pieces, or like short pieces, before Strange Horizons. What happened to those?

Nghi Vo: Oh, I don't know. They're like floating around somewhere, I think. One of them was a publication that a friend of mine was an editor for, and I think they needed some fill in between the columns. You remember the days back when you actually had to fill up the columns and you couldn't fiddle with them on the computer.

Mostly, when it comes to short fiction, I'm a huge fan. I started out as a short fiction writer. I probably still am, if you look at how short my novels are, like everything, all the novellas I've written, they just cruise in at 20,000 words, which I believe is the genre definition for novella. I might have actually shorted Tordotcom like, 200 words off one of the more recent Singing Hills Books. I think I fixed that finally, but, uh, that was fun.

No, I love short fiction, and one of the nice things I love about it is that you're done very quickly. You know, it's less of this "three to six months working on a novel" and it's more like, "okay, I can do this in three or four evenings, and then I can go have some pizza".

Kat Kourbeti: I admire you greatly for this because I start short stories and then—I've mentioned this on this podcast before—they run away and become novels in progress.

Nghi Vo: That's awesome, though. That sounds really cool. It means you've got a lot going on in there.

Kat Kourbeti: Uh, maybe, but then finishing them is a monumental task. And so I admire anybody who can keep things short and sweet. I also love reading a novella, frankly, like it's a great length as a reader. So yeah, this is interesting, we'll come back to the novellas.

Nghi Vo: Absolutely.

Kat Kourbeti: But yeah, it turns out Strange Horizons was kind of your first pro sale?

Nghi Vo: It absolutely was my very first pro sale. I believe it was also my first real short story, 'cause everything, as you know, before, was flash fiction, which is about maybe like 100 to 500 words, if that. So no, I was extremely spoiled at Strange Horizons because at the time, I was working as a phone tech support operator and, you know, there was a lot of time between calls so I was like, huh, what should I do? And it was kinda like this tossup between like, letting one of my cubicle mates teach me how to paint miniatures. And I'm like, I think I'm just gonna try writing stuff instead.

And then I wrote, I believe it was Gift of Flight, and it was the first speculative, real short story I'd ever written. I sent it off to Strange Horizons and then you guys accepted it, and you guys gave me an entirely skewed idea of how this whole process was gonna go.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh, define skewed.

Nghi Vo: You guys were the first place I ever sent it to. That was it. I wrote a story, I sent it off, you guys bought it. Suddenly there's money that I can use to pay for goods and services and pizza. And I was like, oh, well, surely it'll all be this easy. And that's not even a little true, but it was a really good first experience. It was a good time.

Kat Kourbeti: I reread it again earlier today and I was crying, high-key. It hit me right in the feelings, something about kids having to grow up before their time because bad things happen around them, and they have to sort of figure what's going on.

Can you tell me a little bit about what inspired Gift of Flight?

Nghi Vo: Gift of Flight. Just for anyone playing at home who hasn't read it, it's a story about a young girl growing up in the Midwest, and her mother is a swan maiden. And the role for a lot of transformative animal wife stories is, "if you hit her three times, she gets to leave you". And there's a mix of things going on. It's about skin, it's about the idea of leaving home, it's about what happens when home is not safe.

And what it came down to I think, the inspiration was, uh, there's a lot of roadkill in Illinois, which is where I was living when I wrote that story, and I didn't see a dead swan on the road, I saw a dead goose, which is this fascinating geometry of bone and feather. And when it's dead on the road, you know it's never gonna fly again. But you know very much in your heart that it used to, and maybe that's where that story came from, if that's any good to anyone else out there.

Kat Kourbeti: Fascinating. And the little moments that can give you like, a spark for something. It's not a very long story either, but—

Nghi Vo: Oh no.

Kat Kourbeti: —it packs a lot though. Like, I think you say so much—

Nghi Vo: Oh, thank you.

Kat Kourbeti: —with few words. Oh, I mean, you're welcome. Thank you.

Um, so yeah, what was it like, first of all writing it? As you said, you were writing in the gaps between calls and things like that. How long did it take you to assemble?

Nghi Vo: A couple days, I think. I mean, I'm gonna do my best because I just realized that's 18 years ago. That story's old enough to vote.

What I remember is... okay, I'm not gonna tell you where I worked. It was ridiculous, but the strong memory I have was while I was working on this story, we found out that our CEO was keeping like three to four terabytes of porn on the company servers. And for 2007, you have to understand that is so much porn. I mean, if you're asking where I was back in 2007, that's where I was. I'm like, oh, that's a lot of porn. Let's start there.

I was a cubicle rat, I was just corralled in there with a bunch of other people who, you know, we're not really social enough to work retail, but if you put us on a phone, it's fine. My manager, he was a kind of a big time hunter, which is not uncommon in Illinois. And I was trying to see if he would bring me back like a bunch of doves' heads when he next went, because I had this idea, I kind of wanted to make this mask that was covered in doves' heads. And he was not interested, which is a shame. Sorry you hate fun, Jeremy, I guess.

But that's kind of where I was. It was 2007, I was really young and I needed the money, which is why I was working tech support.

Kat Kourbeti: But I mean, it's great that some money came from writing. Did that change your atitude towards writing itself, do you think?

Nghi Vo: Um, not really, because it was pizza money. I never thought I was gonna be a novelist or a writer. I figured it'd be this thing I did while I was trying to sort of thread that needle, of living in the Midwest while working at a tech support job. I was like, I could work at tech support. I could probably go into like, insurance claims, that was the other big one in the area. I could grade tests, I could proctor exams. There was, you know, all the fun opportunities that happened when you have a liberal arts degree and graduate right into a recession.

It did kind of help me build up a little bit of confidence. I was already copywriting a little bit at that point. I picked up a job at an erotic illustrated fiction site, which was pretty good. 'Cause that was like 2,500 words for 50 bucks, and it paid out really regularly. And that was a pretty good time.

So, I mean, eventually I did circle back to spec fic, but I had a lot of words to get through before that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. And I mean, I think your next Strange Horizons story was fairly close after that, I think. Yeah, 2012. You come to us in five year increments.

Nghi Vo: I just show up, I'm like, "do you guys want this? I made this thing. Do you want it?"

Kat Kourbeti: And we're like, "yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yes, please". And your next one also kind of has an animal theme to it as well.

Nghi Vo: Ah, yes, that would be Tiger Stripes. It's set, I believe, in the late 1700s in Vietnam, and it's what happens when a tiger kills an old woman's son and is forced to take his place because, well, it's not like the work stops needing to get done if someone dies. That one was fun.

I was actually thinking about that one the other day because I'm like, my God, do I like monsters that have to act like humans, and they're not happy with it, but they're doing their best. And it's almost cute. I actually looked up old photographs of tiger attacks for that one. I'm like, that's really unpleasant.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I bet. But again, the fascination with the symbolism that the animal world can lend to a human story.

Nghi Vo: Oh yeah, the transformation, the metaphor, the intersection of the wild and the human. One of my favorite questions: what makes a person? Like, not what makes a human, but what makes a person? That's always fun for me. I've made some real cash off that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. The length is also different. The first story's about 2000 words, second one is longer, third one—we go down to almost a thousand.

Nghi Vo: That's "Twelve Pictures (From a Second World War)", I'd almost forgotten about that one.

Kat Kourbeti: So that one's about World War II basically, but from different perspectives and different locations and so on. Just kind of vignettes, like images.

Nghi Vo: Yeah, that was one of the things that kind of started as a poem and I realized I'm not a poet. So, that was a fun format to work with, and it was a weirdly hard story to do. I think it took longer than either of the other two before it.

For those playing the home game, it's a story that describes twelve pictures taken in World War II that involve the local monsters at the various locations where some of the fighting took place, and what happens if you introduce, you know, home base monsters to invading forces, which was deeply pleasurable and a great deal of fun, and it took so much work. I hate doing work. It was hard. I'm happy I did it, but it was hard.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it tells such a story, but without dialogue and without the conventional trappings, if you will, of what you expect a short story to be. So you say you're not a poet, but you're playing with format anyway, and that's fine.

Nghi Vo: No, I'm really glad we're kind of entering this— I feel like we're very much in this era where it's, what do the children call it? " No plot, just vibes." I'm like, I was made for this. Please just allow me to vibe, children, please.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, the vibes era has been strong in the last few years, and certainly within the short fiction format. There's a lot you can do with just the vibes.

But for what it's worth, I don't think you're not not a poet. (Editor's note: Is that enough negatives? I meant I think she can be a poet!)

Nghi Vo: I think I'm just doing my best. I'll take it. I'll take it.

Kat Kourbeti: So at what point did you start thinking longer form?

Nghi Vo: You mean like, into the novels and the novellas?

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, yeah. Like at what point were you like, ooh, I wanna write this thing and I think it's longer, or it's coming out longer. How did that change transpire?

Nghi Vo: Well, it's a little embarrassing because this entire career, there's been no planning. It's been... okay, you have to imagine that the trajectory of my career is, if you take a hamster—something small, rodent like—and you put it in a box, and you attach a parachute to the box, and then you just heave it over a three story building, and you hope it's going to be okay. It's free fall with a parachute and a very small, scared mammal in the middle of it.

So the way it worked was the first time I decided to take a real stab at writing a novel, that turned out to be Siren Queen, and it was because this publisher called Angry Robot in the UK put out a call for unagented submissions. I had looked at the whole agent route and I'm like, that sounds kind of hard, so I'm just gonna do this instead. So I hammered out Siren Queen in I think about three months.

I made the deadline, I sent it off, and then they didn't want it. So no spoilers, they did not want it, but they sent me back this incredibly encouraging note that said, "usually we would include some critique, but this one got pretty far and you know what you're doing", which is a total lie. I had no idea, but I'm like, "thank you for believing in me". So I said, screw it, I guess I'm gonna do the agent thing.

So I created what my agent now tells me is a deeply mediocre cover letter, and I started sending it around and while I was sending it around, Tordotcom, where I'm publishing primarily at the moment, they released a call for submissions for novellas, also unagented, and I'm like, "I don't have an agent, I can probably write 20,000 words about something". And that's where The Empress of Salt and Fortune came from.

That was another one that I'm like, is it a poem? Is it an art project? It can be a novella, that's fine. So I wrote that one in, I think six weeks, and within the same week, Ruoxi Chen at Tordotcom said that she wanted to publish it. And Diana Fox at Fox Literary told me that she was interested in representing me. So that was a very busy week.

Kat Kourbeti: Wow.

Nghi Vo: It's a lot.

Kat Kourbeti: Ooh. But if anything, your story is about A, perseverance, and B, just gonna shoot my shot and see what happens.

Nghi Vo: Absolutely.

Kat Kourbeti: That's great.

Nghi Vo: The thing is you don't even have to be that good at it. Seriously, because I put my best into writing that cover letter. And my agent, Diana, she said, "oh, that was deeply mediocre". I'm like, oh my God. And she's like, "well, the thing was, it got me to read the first pages, and that's what matters". And I'm like, "okay, you know what? I'm gonna take that".

So that's what I've been telling people, and I don't know if I should be, but I'm like, no, no, apparently your cover letter can be, quote, "deeply mediocre". So that's only started to haunt me a little bit.

Kat Kourbeti: I can imagine why. It's not the best thing to be told, but something I've been saying for years is that, you see some deeply mediocre books that are published, and that just gives me personally a ton of inspiration, because "if they can do it, I can do it".

Nghi Vo: And there's also the fact that we're all trying to hit different marks and we're all here for different audiences. That's what I've been hanging on to as well. I mean, there's a huge variety of quality, but we just have to find our audience and we just have to figure out who that is and get it right in front of them.

Kat Kourbeti: Mm-hmm. And crucially, finish the thing, so you can send it somewhere.

Nghi Vo: That does help.

Kat Kourbeti: You know, she says to herself as a reminder.

Nghi Vo: Oh.

Kat Kourbeti: Someday, you know?

Nghi Vo: That's a rough one. That is a really rough one, though.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It can be 'cause different stories demand different things.

But what I'm fascinated with, in particular with the novellas, is how they're interconnected—kind of, but kind of not, you know? How do you tow the line between each installment being an entry point, but then maintaining that connection?

Nghi Vo: This is the Singing Hills Novellas, which are actually all standalone, although they're part of a loosely connected series that is sort of linked together by the presence of a storytelling little cleric named Chih and their companion Almost Brilliant, who is a talking hoopoe with an indelible memory.

And the way it comes down to it is the fact that I'm like, my life has no narrative structure. Like my own life has absolutely no narrative structure. It has like weird little bits like, "hey, I found a hundred year old mechanical pencil and I guess I get to fix it now". Or you know, "well, I guess I play guitar now because I found this guitar someplace". I mean, it's all connected, it's all me, but these are incidents that have nothing to do with each other, and I would like to lodge a complaint because there's no plot continuity in my life. Like, characters I really love show up once and then never again, and then I can't get rid of some of the other ones. And that's life.

And I figured that if people can come along with me on that—the only thing I've ever really hoped for for Singing Hills is like: okay, you read between 20,000 and 40,000 words—did I give you a good night? And as long as I can hit that mark, I'm doing okay, I think.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, like, win a Hugo in the process, like no big deal.

Nghi Vo: That was a weird year. It was a fun, weird year. It was awesome.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. What was that like, your first kind of bigger publication, and off you go, like...

Nghi Vo: Uh, weird. It was very weird because, um—so The Empress of Salt and Fortune, it came out in 2020, which is the year of our lady, The Pandemic. And it literally dropped the week that the lockdowns happened. We had no idea what it was going to do because suddenly, people can't go to the bookstores. We had no idea what that was going to do to the book sales, or what people would be interested in, or what they would be comforted by, or what they would want to read. It was this very scary moment for a lot of people in a lot of different ways. And just for me personally, I was like, "but, my book!" You know, couldn't really help it.

There was really not much promotion for it because a lot of things had shut down at that point, so... The book is out there. I'm like, "ah, it's my book. It's so pretty". And it still took me like a good four or five months before I could see it in the stores, and that whole year was very strange for everyone. It really was.

And when I found out that there was the Hugo nomination—okay, this is, it's a little embarrassing—I thought it was spam at first. I'm like, "what the... what the fuck is this?" And I think that was the one I showed to my agent. I'm like, "hey, Diana, what, what's this?" And she's like, "you got nominated for a Hugo. Congratulations." I'm like, "oh, yay, that's pretty cool".

So, luckily my spam filter did not catch it, and I did not just delete it because I thought it was spam. But look, I'm telling you, the metaphor of the hamster thrown over the building, there's a reason that metaphor exists.

Kat Kourbeti: Hmm, well, the parachute worked, least that one time. We shall continue until such time as it doesn't, but—

Nghi Vo: That's publishing.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. Yeah. Quite. I think the story was really comforting, not necessarily in a "here's what I need right now" type way for me at the time, but it was deeply and truly escapist, in the best possible way. I got into this other world for 20,000 words, and that was awesome, you know?

Nghi Vo: It sounds like it gave you a good time. I'm glad it did that.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I think 2020 was the year of the novella for me, 'cause I hadn't been reading novellas before, I don't think. Kind of 'cause I didn't know where to find them, if that makes sense? Like, it was a moment where my reading really shifted.

Nghi Vo: Yeah, no. One of the best things I've ever heard in doing this job is when people come up to me and they said, reading your novellas helped me start to read again. Because look around, our attention span is shot to hell, and sometimes you really wanna read that big door stopper, and it's not even that you're scared, it's you're tired.

And the nice thing about a novella is, you're in and out in a few hours. And if you're mad at me, you're only mad at me for a few hours, I promise. If I've ever done anything good, that's probably one of the best ones. "You help me read again." I'm like, good. I'm so glad.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I think I definitely lost my personal connection to novels or door stoppers around that year. In fact—

Nghi Vo: It was a hard year.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, and it kind of took me a long time to get back to reading longer things, and I was just really grateful for short fiction keeping me in there, but I just didn't have it in me.

So did that then lead to a long contract for similar stories or did you just keep coming up with them anyway?

Nghi Vo: I keep telling you, my whole career is kind of an accident. What happened was I wrote The Empress of Salt and Fortune and I'm like, "oh, hey, maybe there'll be some money along. Well, I guess I'm gonna go back to my copywriting gig". And Ruoxi Chen, my first editor at Tordotcom, just fucking brilliant at her job, she's like, "so neat". And I'm like, yep. And she said, "could this be a series?" And because I like money, I said, "mm-hmm, absolutely."

See I'm a freelancer, right? And the rule of thumb when you're a freelancer is you don't agree when you know 100% you can do a job. You agree at 70%, maybe you agree at 80%, but there are people agreeing at 50. So I was at least 70% sure I could turn Singing Hills into a series.

And she's like, "so what would that look like?" And I'm like, "well, I think we'll be following the adventures of Chih and Almost Brilliant, and I think they're all going to be standalone because I kind of like the idea of people just being able to dip in and out, and they're all going to be different, and they're all more or less gonna be commentary on the stories we tell each other and the stories that we tell ourselves, and the ones we allow to be told to us."

And she's like, "oh, that sounds so good". And I'm like, "doesn't it? I feel very proud of myself".

Kat Kourbeti: "I am so smart."

Nghi Vo: "I'm so smart." If you ever see me running around at award shows, that's more or less my whole vibe. But yeah, that's how it began. That's the genesis.

I mean, I will take credit for the fact that I said, "and they're all going to be standalone so people can just pick up one", because I was so tired on series. I was burned out on them and I'm like, "wouldn't it be nice if they could just—hey, they like the cover and—you know, I love my cover artist. That's Alyssa Winans, who's just so cool.

I'm like, which Alyssa cover do you like? Just grab that one and go. You want the tigers, you want the pig, you like the kitty cat? You can have it.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes. Thank you.

What I find really interesting is that Siren Queen happened anyway. So, tell me about how that little accident happened, 'cause I'm happy we got it.

Nghi Vo: Siren Queen started because I always had an interest in Golden Age Hollywood, early Hollywood, the talkies. I watched a lot of Animaniacs; if you remember the character, Slappy Squirrel, who's the retired actress squirrel living in Burbank. Very fond of Slappy Squirrel.

And then one night I was talking with my friend Grace online, and I said, "hey, Grace, haven't you ever thought it's kind of weird that the early studios just renamed you, kind of like fairies taking your name, and they put you in long unforgiving contracts with really ridiculous rules that you have to follow and they can cheat them whenever they want, and oh my God, they really did just take over the lives of children". And you know, I go on like that for two hours and Grace is just like, mm-hmm. Trying to make me decide on where I wanted to go to eat, which was, I think what we were actually talking about at the time.

And what happened then was, I heard Angry Robot's call for submissions and I'm like, "oh, well, I'll just write that". And like I said, I brought it in right at the deadline with a minimum number of words, and it was a really fun thing to write. Then Fox Literary acquired it, and (Diana Fox) she's like, "you know this is like three novellas in a trench coat, right?" And I'm like, "I didn't think anyone had noticed, but okay, I guess we gotta fix that." So working with her turned it into a novel, which was very nice.

Kat Kourbeti: Oh, well that's good. And maybe that's the happy accident of getting rejected at Angry Robot, led you to actually fixing what maybe didn't work.

Nghi Vo: Hey, I'm perfect. I don't have to fix anything, which I'm gonna say to you because I can't say it to my editors.

Kat Kourbeti: Yes, everything is perfect. Nothing is wrong.

Nghi Vo: I am a princess.

Kat Kourbeti: First drafts only.

Nghi Vo: Absolutely.

The weird part was—see, once again, I'm very spoiled because that was Empress. Empress just went right to copy edits. I'm like, what? Okay.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Nghi Vo: I don't know how any of this works.

Kat Kourbeti: So what was your background, if you will—like you just started writing, picked up a pen and like off you went?

Nghi Vo: You mean as a kid? Okay. I have this very strong memory of, I think I'm probably in kindergarten or first grade, and the teacher picks up this enormous book—you know, it's just huge. And she said, "this is a dictionary. All of the words that we use to write anything in English is in this book."

And my little brain just clicked on it because I was like, "wait, they're all in there? I just have to put them in the right order. That's all I have to do?" And I sort of ran off with that and I'm like, "yeah, actually that is all I have to do". And worst comes to worst, I usually think of the job as, you know, all the words are in the book, all the words are there, I just have to put them in the right order. That's all.

Kat Kourbeti: That's actually deeply profound for a kindergartner.

Nghi Vo: I was so excited. I was like, this is it. This is all I have to do. I'm gonna be a writer! And you know, yeah, somehow it worked out.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. That's amazing.

And then I have to ask about my personal favorite of yours, which is The Chosen and the Beautiful.

Nghi Vo: Aw.

Kat Kourbeti: Which is the Gatsby retelling. How did that happen? Where did the idea come from, and what was that journey?

Nghi Vo: Okay. I keep thinking I'm just disappointing everyone, because everyone has like these amazing stories of deep personal connections, and my deep personal connection to the Great Gatsby was... I was almost hit by a car the first day we started reading it in high school, which is just 'cause I'm clumsy and wasn't watching where I was going. It's not personal.

The reason why it's a novel was because I was writing this other novel about a girl who was being raised by ghosts, which sounds really cool, and I have got about a third of it done. And I'm on the phone with Diana and she says, "what are you working on?" I go into like exhaustive detail about the girl being raised by ghosts and she's like, "hmm, have you got anything else?"

I'm like, "okay, sure. What do you think about the idea of, I don't know, (The Great Gatsby) but it's told from the point of view of Jordan Baker, who's a Vietnamese American adoptee magician, and Nick Carraway is made of paper, Gatsby has made deals with the Devil, and there's a lot more murder and a lot more queer sex".

And she gets really quiet, you know? And for a second I'm like, "cool, I finally said something so fucking dumb, my agent's gonna fire me". So that was nice. And she's like, "okay, I need you to stop writing what you're writing right now, and I need you to go write that instead". And I'm like, buh? And she's like, "were you not aware that The Great Gatsby is coming out of copyright in about 18 months?" I'm like, shit, okay!

So I ran off and I wrote that. I think the way it worked was I spent a month doing the research that I needed to do. I needed to reread the book, I needed to write down every reference I was not absolutely sure I understood. Gave me a lot of respect for Fitzgerald as just a incredibly competent and masterful writer. It was a fantastic exercise for me as a writer. I'm really glad I did that.

And then I was off to the races. My sister was getting married, I was writing in Las Vegas diners, which was pretty fun for me. I'm like, "oh my God, look at what a romantic writer I am. Oh wow. I can gamble while I wait for my burger to show up". It was great. So yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: That's amazing. It's even greater actually, cause I would've thought you had realized that Gatsby was coming out of copyright. You just genuinely, organically had that idea.

Nghi Vo: Well, I mean, I've had the idea for a while. I was a queer girl growing up in the Midwest. I had a huge crush on Jordan Baker, which in the nineties, that was the closest thing we got to like a gay girl in terms of literature, right? And I've always (been) like, "huh, whatever happened to Nick Caraway?" because the book I have coming out, oh, like in a week, Don't Sleep With the Dead, which is actually from the point of view of the Nick Caraway from The Chosen and the Beautiful— that one's actually dedicated to unreliable narrators in the stories we tell. Nick Caraway was more or less my first unreliable narrator, and you don't really forget your first, right?

So what it comes down to is, if the American Canon wanted to make a presence for me of that book, you know, that's what I get to do with it now.

Kat Kourbeti: Excellent. I mean, that's kind of the best you can hope for. I love that, and also yeah, I think this episode will be coming out just after the book comes out. So anybody listening, go get that right now. It's out and available.

The journey has been perhaps filled with accidents. I say perhaps, but—it's one of those things where you kept going though. You kept writing and you kept coming up with things. So like, accident or not, it kicked into gear at some point and now you're on the wheel, little hamster.

Nghi Vo: Hopefully novels come out rather than just, you know, really sad moans and whines. I mean those will too, but you know.

Kat Kourbeti: It's part of the exercise, but yes.

So to kind of go back to your Strange Horizons experience, because you came to us in five year increments, you would've had the full (gamut)—like, different editors, different kind of editing styles, perhaps... What was your experience of submitting and getting published with Strange Horizons?

Nghi Vo: Oh, it was honestly fantastic. I don't remember a lot of substantive edits for any of the pieces that I've done. The vibe I always got was the Strange Horizons staff really wanted the specific stories their writers could tell. They did not want like generic good stories, because generic good stories do exist. They wanted specifically, "who is this writer and what are they trying to say?" And I've always really appreciated that.

I think it also helps that usually I'm pretty laid back about editing. Like, I believe I worked with Jed Hartman at one point, he was my editor for one of them, and I remember how very kind and polite he was with me about—I can't remember what it even was, but he's like, " well, are you feeling comfortable with this?" And I'm like, "do you not understand that I write 6,000 words a day for people who want me to talk about how to make their cats not throw up? I'm fine man. Go for it. Do what you need to do."

So I've always been pretty laid back about that, but it was really nice to have Strange Horizons very much match that particular vibe, and it was always a place I felt very comfortable. Like, there's a reason I submitted to you guys three times.

Kat Kourbeti: Would you say that that was the same sort of vibe, for lack of a better word, with the editors in subsequent years?

Nghi Vo: Yeah, I would say that it felt very much like a prevailing Strange Horizons philosophy, in some ways. It's, "we want the story that you have written". And as I've done this and as I've done my freelance career as well, that isn't always the case. Sometimes they want a very specific story. I'm like, "what the hell am I even doing here?" And I've never gotten that feeling with Strange Horizons. It's very much, you're working with me and I'm like, well, that's very sweet that you wanna work with me. That's awesome. So, it's a good time. It's a very good time.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. I'm happy to hear it. I just interviewed Charlie Jane Anders for the episode before yours, and she recalls being grilled a little bit—

Nghi Vo: Oh wow.

Kat Kourbeti: —by the editors in the early days, yeah. So that's why I ask this question to everybody 'cause i t's a different answer.

Nghi Vo: Yeah.

Kat Kourbeti: From everybody I talk to. It's fascinating though, how through the years that has kind of been like, we want the best version of what you wanna tell, and sometimes that comes as it is, and so it doesn't really need very much polishing. So that's very cool.

You haven't stopped writing short stories since, not by a long shot. So do you find the short story useful in procrastinating now? Like what's your, (laughs) what's your system?

Nghi Vo: The short story is something that I've had a lot less time for, unfortunately, since I've started the novel gig. Which is a little bit sad, but it's led me to this other interesting animal, which is the solicited manuscript. So I actually have gotten, a few times now, solicited to write short stories for various publications, and first that's deeply flattering, and the second part, it's sort of like being revealed I'm under my rock. I'm like, how did you even find me? No idea. Like, my story, the one about the seamstress, "silk and wool, and silk and linen", I believe.

Kat Kourbeti: Silk and Cotton and Linen and Blood.

Nghi Vo: Yeah, I have no chance of ever remembering that one. But the reason why that story even exists is because I was in an online green room, I was doing a online con appearance, and I'm in this room and legendary editor and author, Nisi Shawl is in there, and I'm keeping my mouth shut because I'm like, "oh my God, that's Nisi Shawl right there". You know, not in person, we're in a green room. And I'm like, "I'm just gonna keep my idiot mouth shut and not make a bad impression".

And suddenly she just messages me and she's like, "I guess you just like ignoring me". And it turns out that she had solicited me for the New Suns 2 anthology, and it went right into my spam filter. I missed it entirely. And she's like, "so you didn't even get back to people?" I'm like, "oh my God, no, I missed that!" And I think in this frenzy, I promised her a story in like two weeks or some damn thing like that. I'm like, "no, no, yes, I want that. Yes, I'll give you whatever you want".

I might have said that, which is not flattering, but I'm so grateful she did that because I loved being in the New Suns anthology. That story did pretty well. It won a thing, I believe.

Kat Kourbeti: ...The World Fantasy Award for short story?

Nghi Vo: Yeah, that's it. That's what it won.

Kat Kourbeti: A thing?

Nghi Vo: Uh, well, it won something! It's been a—Kat, it's been a very weird career, okay? It's been a real, real strange career.

So apparently solicitations can happen when you least expect it from sci-fi legends, and that's fine. That's just a thing that can happen to you.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. It can happen to you too, dear listener.

Nghi Vo: It could happen to anyone. Yes. Just.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, I mean, Jordan Kurella had a similar story.

Nghi Vo: Yeah?

Kat Kourbeti: Well, his edits from the Strange Horizons editors got eaten by his email client.

Nghi Vo: Oh no.

Kat Kourbeti: And so he gets a frantic email two days before publication, like, "um, hello?" And he's like, oh no.

Nghi Vo: Oh my God.

Kat Kourbeti: But it worked out, they got all the stuff done in the end, but it was very much like, the email servers working against you.

Nghi Vo: Writers are messy. We are a messy, messy people.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah. And I mean, the digital shredder that exists online... Like, it's just scary stuff. Check your junk mail, folks.

Nghi Vo: Check your junk mail, for the love of God.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, that's the secret. But it's great to hear that the novel has opened up loads of doors for you for more novels. So I know that you're working on something now that you're procrastinating.

Nghi Vo: Absolutely. This minute, this very minute.

Kat Kourbeti: And I won't ask what it is. I'm sure we'll find out about it eventually. But how do you find the novel life as opposed to writing short fiction, now? Is it different? Is it better? Is it not better?

Nghi Vo: It pays.

Kat Kourbeti: Hmm.

Nghi Vo: You can make a living writing novels, especially if you live in a Midwest city and you live in a one bedroom apartment and your only dependent is a little gray cat. It's a good living, and you can't do that off short stories. If I had all the money in the world, I mean, I'd be having a lot of fun with it, but I'm doing pretty well with the cash that I have coming in right now for the moment.

I wrote The City in Glass, which is one of my favorite novels. It's a story about the end of the world, it really is. And it feels like for a long time now, we've been living at the end of the world, and we have been. We always have been. So I don't know what comes next, but I will say that writing the novels has given me a slightly greater sense of futurity than I've ever had in my life.

Like, ages back, I was planning with my agent and my editor. They're like, "okay, well this will be 2025, and this will be 2026". And I said, "guys, I don't think I believe in 2025". And I think Ruoxi tried to be comforting and Diana just said, "you have to pretend that you do". I'm like, okay. All right.

And here we are, 2025. Somehow it exists.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah, it can be difficult to look ahead, especially given, *gestures at the world*. But I'm glad that you've got people in your team pushing you forward, because that's important.

Nghi Vo: I really do. Yes.

Kat Kourbeti: I haven't read The City in Glass yet, but just off the blurb, it's so my thing that I am very on board. And I'm very looking forward to The Chosen and the Beautiful sequel as well, out next week as of recording.

So is there anything outside of your upcoming book that you would like to promote?

Nghi Vo: Um, let's see. How about the fact that we should all be working for a better world and every little bit counts? How about that?

Kat Kourbeti: Hmm. Get involved in your communities, folks.

Nghi Vo: Worst comes to worst, there's always someone to feed.

Kat Kourbeti: Yeah.

Well, thank you so very much for taking the time to chat to us. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Nghi Vo: Thank you so much for having me. This has been great.

Kat Kourbeti: And we'll look forward to all of your upcoming things.

Nghi Vo: I hope you like 'em. I hope they give you a good time.