A Conversation With PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 Author Tamiko Beyer

“The themes of social justice, the magic of water, and the power of queer love to create a different world—these are themes that I return to again and again in my writing and my life.”

PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2019 is the third edition of an anthology celebrating outstanding new fiction writers published by literary magazines around the world. In the upcoming weeks, we’ll feature Q&As with the contributors, whose stories were selected for PEN’s Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and for the anthology by judges Danielle Evans, Alice Sola Kim, and Carmen Maria Machado. Submissions for the 2020 awards are open now.

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Tamiko Beyer is the author of Last Days, forthcoming in 2021; We Come Elemental; and two chapbooks of poems. Her work has been published in Black Warrior Review, Denver Quarterly, The Georgia Review, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Hyphen, Dusie, and elsewhere. She has received grants, fellowships, and residencies from Kundiman, Hedgebrook, and the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund, among others. A social justice communications writer and strategist, she spends her days writing truth to power. She lives in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and online at tamikobeyer.com.

“Last Days 1” was originally published in Black Warrior Review.

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“Safe is an interpretation”

—Kate Greenstreet, Young Tambling

We didn’t expect the eagerness that filled us on the last days of empire. For what, we couldn’t exactly say.

Metal glistened on the streets in the hot September days. The sun no longer a dandelion; the sun most definitely a muzzle. When it set, the Corporation—keen to kill the dark—flipped the switch.

Then, the marble facades of buildings were suddenly up-lit, streetlights swirled incandescent, and thousands of people hurtled through the furnace of synthesized laughter, pop songs, and an unlimited desire for all.

Some of us were on the edges, blocking out the canned sounds and lights as best we could. Building something new, something old. We could feel the northern half of our planet begin to tilt away from the sun.

I am on the cusp of change, and the curve is shifting fast.

It was an experience and then it was a memory. And then a system of belief, a way to navigate the dissolving world.

I wanted to become more salt-wind, less reflection. To become quiet enough to hear the ancestors.

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Where did you find the idea for this story?

Well, really, this story found me. I spent the first week of 2014 on a snow-covered island off the coast of Maine, reading, going for walks in the frozen landscape, cooking, looking out at the stars, and writing whatever I felt like writing—which turned into the first draft of this sequence (the piece that is published in the anthology is the first of four parts.)

But the themes of social justice, the magic of water, and the power of queer love to create a different world—these are themes that I return to again and again in my writing and my life.

Also, I worked at that time for Corporate Accountability, a powerful organization that stops transnational corporations from devastating democracy, trampling human rights, and destroying our planet. In that job, I learned just how much power corporations have over our lives. And I discovered that there are people and organizations around the world effectively challenging corporate power. All this very much influenced the premise of the piece.

How long did it take you to write this story?

I wrote the first draft quickly, during that retreat. And then I revised it, re-wrote it, and tinkered with it for four years. I have a dream of turning this into a novel (I’ve written an incomplete first draft), so I believe I will be continuing to write this story for many more years to come.

You intersperse lines from Sun Tzu to Homi Bhabha throughout the story. Can you speak about their significance to you and the narrator? Are these the words of the “ancestors” that the narrator listens for in the story’s vision of the future, woven in as “fragile strands of a new language” or seeds that will “[turn] blossom, [turn] fruit”?

The books I was reading when I wrote this piece definitely influenced the language—some of their lines even found their way directly into it, including Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Kate Greenstreet’s Young Tambling, and Aracelis Girmay’s Kingdom Anamalia. As I revised, I wove in lines from other writers and works as I encountered or re-encountered them. I came across the Homi Bhabha’s line in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen.

I like to think of these phrases as messages from the ancestors across time and space, available for the narrator if she listens closely enough.

The narrator’s love interest is named “Wave,” a word that resonates with light and water, both of which are ubiquitous in the story. Why did you choose this name?

I wanted this character to evoke the power of the ocean and the force of the tides, the ocean’s ability to destroy and to nourish. I love to swim in the ocean—and I have a healthy fear/respect for it. When I’m out in the waves, I know I need to trust myself and my instincts.

The narrator is completely smitten with Wave and also very much looks up to her as a leader. Through the course of the whole piece, the narrator learns to trust herself as much as she trusts Wave.

The editors, Chase Burke and Cat Ingrid Leeches, write that your piece is “a new way of storytelling that blurs all lines between poem and prose and essay.” How did you settle on this form, and what meaning does it hold for you? For writing today in general?

I’m so grateful for Chase and Cat for nominating this piece and for their kind words. While I submitted this piece as a poem, they suggested it be published as fiction. I have never felt tied to genre, so I was happy with the suggestion.

I’m very much interested in mixing genres, mixing art forms, bringing art into the political and the political into art. I’m interested in how all of us can experience the full diversity and complexity of life. I find the narrow confines of genres antithetical to this.

I’ve always been drawn to the prose poem and how it suggests storytelling in its very form. I also love to work with the sentence as a unit of meaning and music. It’s a joyful challenge to stitch sentences into a larger, beautiful whole while honoring the integrity of each sentence.

I’m also very interested in bringing poetry to people who may not otherwise read it or think they like it, because I think poetry requires a different way of understanding meaning and language. Poetry asks us to be less tied to linear thinking, to see the whole picture at once, and be more willing to make mental and emotional leaps. I think the world right now could use a lot more of this kind of thinking and feeling. So, in this piece, as well as in many of the essays I’m writing now, I’m interested in how I can engage readers through storytelling while at the same time ask them to make leaps and associations they might not otherwise make.

How has the Robert J. Dau Prize affected you?

Honestly, I was shocked when I got the news. It’s such an honor to be recognized by PEN America. It’s an affirmation that there is an audience for the kind of writing I care most about: writing that looks honestly into the face of the world, records its brokenness and its beauty, and demands something more than passive acceptance from the reader.

It is also encouraging me to return to the novel version of this story, which has been on hold for a while!

What are you working on now?

My second collection of poetry is coming out from Alice James Books in 2021. So I’m working on revising it and making plans on how to get it into non-poetry readers’ hands. It’s also titled Last Days, and all four sections of this piece are included.

Additionally, I am working on a series of essays that examines how to be awake in this world, how to resist and dismantle systemic oppression while creating new worlds. I think about it as kind of like those old magazine or newspaper serials: I publish and send out an essay about once a month to the dedicated readers of Starlight and Strategy.

Finally, where do you discover new writing?

Mostly through word of mouth/online/social media. I’m part of Kundiman, an organization that nurtures writers and readers of Asian American literature—and, happily, there’s always a new book to read from this community. And I’m always keeping an eye out for new works by other writers of color.

I’ve found the books episodes of the podcast Call Your Girlfriend to be a great source for discovering new writing, and co-host Ann Friedman’s weekly newsletter is definitely a go-to when I want to read well-written, thought-provoking articles online.