Being an independent book store, we love to deal with independent and small press publishers. And with that in mind, I am very excited this month that I got to have a one on one email interview with one of my favourites, and someone more readers should know about: Anna Burke.
~Alex
Anna Burke is the author of an impressive seven books since her debut, Compass Rose in 2018, her most recent being the brand new release, In the Roses of Pieria. Raised in Upstate New York, Anna received her MFA from Emerson College in 2021. She was the inaugural recipient of the Sandra Moran Scholarship for the Golden Crown Literary Society’s Writing Academy and currently lives in
Massachusetts with her wife and teaches Creative Writing at Emerson College.
If you’ve talked to me for any length of time in the past two years, or asked for my recommendations for what to read, I have most likely brought up the book Nottingham, or its author Anna Burke. I discovered her work quite by accident when a customer ordered the title in early September of 2021 and, being intrigued at the premise, I ordered my own copy. I went on to devour it, reading it in a day…I cannot stress enough how much I enjoyed this book. I proceeded to order in and read every other title Anna had published up to that point.
If you’re amongst the few who haven’t heard my sales pitch, Nottingham is a gender swapped retelling of the Robin (or Robyn, as it’s spelled in this story) Hood myth. In this version, Robyn is a peasant girl forced into life as an outlaw following the execution of her idolized older brother and an illegal hunting accident. We also deal with the perspective of Marian, daughter of the Sheriff of Nottingham struggling against the expectations put upon her as the only child of a small-time wannabe noble, and her confusion about the feelings she feels after meeting a certain young outlaw. From there, we get into the classic story, yet it all comes across as new, and fresh, and intersectionally feminist, managing to be both modern and true to 10th century England all at the same time. The novel reads at a fast clip, is thoroughly researched, and just an enjoyable read!
I have since put this book in the hands of most of my co-workers at the store, and many, many customers as well. As of this writing, we’ve sold 82 copies in the past 2 years, along with many copies of Anna’s other books. The interesting thing about this is that we learned a month or two from our sales rep that deals with Anna’s publisher — Bywater Books, a great small press out of Michigan that focuses on sapphic fiction — that Words Worth Books is responsible for half the sales of Nottingham in Canada. This knocked my socks off and made me just want to introduce it to more people to this amazing author.
Well, as stated above, Anna has a brand new release, In the Roses of Pieria. This much anticipated release is the dark academic story of Clara Eden. Clara is barely making ends meet as an adjunct professor of classical antiquity specializing in the little-known, short-lived citystate of Nektropolis when she is out of the blue offered the job of her dreams: to catalogue and translate the private collection of eccentric estate owner, and Nektropolitan collector, Agatha Montague. Clara finds herself lost in an ancient world, and an ancient correspondence as antagonistic as it is romantic. Even as Clara starts to grow closer with Agatha’s assistant Fiadh, she begins to realize that she’s found herself in a darker world than she imagined, full of supernatural beings her academic mind can scarcely wrap around.
In anticipation of Roses release, David encouraged me to reach out to Anna to see if she would answer a few questions about her work and process, and while balancing her duties as an author and college professor, she very generously agreed.
Words Worth: We're a book store so obviously the first question must be: What're you reading right now and/or what are some of your favourite books of all time? I know personally I hate the term 'favourite', it often comes down to so many qualifiers, so use whatever metrics you choose.
Anna Burke: A brutal opening question. Well, currently I am listening to Nettle and Bone by T Kingfisher, and I am in the middle of reading quite a few books, including The Faithless by C. L. Clark, Ink, Blood, Sister, Scribe by Emma Törzen, and a stack of nonfiction history and nature books. My go to favorite authors (see how I avoided the book question, there?) are Robyn McKinley, Tamsyn Muir, and N. K. Jemisin, and I am also absolutely obsessed with This Is How You Lose the Time War. I suppose that would be my favorite book, if I had to choose.
WW: So far in your writing, you've tackled historical fiction/fantasy with Nottingham, dark fairytale retellings with Thorn, contemporary romance with the Seal Cove series, climate dystopian sci-fi with the Compass Rose series and now dark academic horror with In the Roses of Pieria. Are there any genres you long to write and book/books in, or conversely any genres you love but wouldn't want to write a story in?
AB: Genre-hopping might be the result of ADHD, haha, but I also believe writers can learn so much by writing in genres outside of their comfort zone. I don't think there is a genre that I am averse to exploring, though I do not think I am clever enough to write mystery!
WW: One thing I tend to do when selling readers on your books are just how wonderfully, intersectionally feminist they are. Be it casting (literarily speaking) Little John as a trans man in Nottingham or the various race, class and ideological differences/privileges that make up the core drama in the relationship between Lillian and Ivy in Night Tide, you always try to offer inclusion in your stories. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors that are passionate about writing inclusive stories?
AB: I try to write stories that represent the people I know and the world I live in, but I also make mistakes. The best advice I can give writers interested in writing inclusive stories is to do your research and be prepared to own your mistakes. There are many resources now for writing across identity, and the discussions surrounding #OwnVoices are a good place to start!
WW: With In the Roses of Pieria, you now have 3 on-going multi-book projects, including the next book in the Compass Rose series and Seal Cove romance series. As someone with seemingly a million WIPs myself, and enough neurodivergence to make me jump from project to project, I have to ask: how do you settle on what novel you want to work on at a given time with so many ideas rattling in your head? Any tips you can offer?
AB: Ahhhh isn't that the question. I typically work on several projects at once, which is why the releases don't always make sense. For example, I am currently working on the next Seal Cove, the last Compass Rose, and the sequel to In the Roses of Pieria, along with a few other projects. Eventually one of the projects takes the reins and I commit, leaving the others in various stages of drafting. Then the process repeats, spitting out a sequel every third book or so, it seems. It is not, perhaps, the most efficient system or a system that makes my readers particularly happy, but I am at the mercy of my neurodivergent brain, and this is just the way it works. Sometimes the best thing we can do for ourselves is accept that the way we write/work might not be efficient or chronological or tidy, and that's okay, even if it takes longer. If it works, it works. If that system isn't working, however, and no projects are getting finished, then the multi-tasking might not be the issue. Sometimes we're waiting for the right project to come along and grab us in its teeth. Other times it is a matter of discipline, and that, luckily, can be learned. And of course neurodivergency creates its own unique set of writing issues.
WW: Roses follows Clara Eden, a scholar and adjunct professor of classical language and antiquity with a focus on the ancient city-state of Nektropolis and its mysterious founder, former general of Alexander the Great, Nektaria. Both the city-state and its founder are fictional creations, but you infuse them with such verisimilitude that I don't imagine I'll be the only reader who ends up googling both to try and learn more. Obviously, the further removed we are from classical antiquity the less we know for certain, but can you talk a little bit about what went into creating characters and a society that blend so plausibly with established historical knowledge?
AB: I'm glad it blended plausibly! I am a huge nerd, and I love research. It is one of my favorite parts of writing—there is always something new to learn and explore. Developing Nektopolis allowed me to take what I've learned about the Mediterranean region in Antiquity and create a city-state that hopefully speaks to the time and place. I like to think of research as an iceberg (an analogy coined by wiser minds than mine); what ends up in the final drafts represents only a fraction of the research, but you have to do the iceberg's worth in order to figure out what details do matter.
WW: In the acknowledgements you said you were (not) sorry about this book starting out as part of a novella project with two friends, implying this decision led to the creation of three incredible novels as opposed to shorter (albeit no less incredible, I'm sure) novellas. Can you expand on both that fun little note from your acknowledgements, what's the story behind that?
AB: I mentioned on social media that I'd written a vampire novella for Patreon, and Jenn Alexander saw the post and approached me about a possible novella collaboration, as she was also working on a vampire novella. I'd started writing mine as "brain candy" during the semester (I teach at Emerson College), because I needed a stress-free place to escape. I then dragged Samara Breger into the equation, and she agreed to write a novella as well. Fast forward a few months and a lot of agonizing, and I realized that my attempts to shorten the story during revision just were not working. I considered writing another novella from scratch, but didn't know if I would finish in time! Neither Jenn nor Samara was particularly pleased with me, I imagine, when I derailed the project, but they rose to the challenge.
(Interviewer’s note: The resulting novels by Samara and Canadian author Jenn Alexander are A Long Time Dead, which launched earlier this year, and Bloodline, which publishes next April, respectively, both from Bywater Books)
WW: Also in your acknowledgement you mention that Roses started life after you suffered a concussion and had to be looking down more, which made you take notice of all the mushrooms that grew around you, then photograph them and learn about them. From that sprang out a novel of dark academia, vampires, plant-based body horror and fungal fae. Help us connect those two things...what was the creation process like?
AB: Messy. Very messy. The short answer, however, is that as a result of my mushroom preoccupation, I learned about lichen. Lichen are very cool. Are they plants? Fungus? Both, actually! I love a good composite organism (Portuguese man o' war jellyfish are another example of composite organisms) Then one day I was walking in the woods, as I do, and I started wondering what a fungi/mammal composite organism might look like. There's an argument to be made that we already are composite organisms, as we are full of fungi and in fact depend upon it. We have at least 80 species on our skin alone. That isn't as exciting as real lichenization, however, so I just had to create my own. Since we already have an established connection between fey mythology and mushroom, the rest fell into place with a series of bad puns. Hyphae, anyone?
WW: Obviously there's prep and planning with any writing, and doubly so when it involves bringing in established history and/or lore creation, which Roses does both of. But as noted above, your originally planned novella expanded to a full novel which couldn't have been part of the initial intention. So I'm curious, where do you fall on the planner < — > pantser writers spectrum?
AB: These days I am somewhere in the middle. I started out a pantser, and I usually let myself pants for a bit when I'm exploring a new idea. After I've played around with that enough to feel like I know the characters, however, I come up with either an outline or at least a synopsis to help shape the story in my mind. Sometimes the outlines are detailed, but usually they remain pretty loose, leaving me room to mess around. I have yet to make an outline I actually followed all the way to completion, but that's the way it is with most plans.
WW: Roses involves all manner of supernatural beings and creatures taken from myth and legend, both ones on the page as well as more that are mentioned (and may appear in the sequel, for all I know). Some of those creatures are relatively unknown and others, like vampires, have been featured hundreds if not thousands of ways throughout the centuries. Without getting into spoiler territory, how do you approach writing such beings in an original way while still maintaining their mystery, or maybe majesty is the word I want to use?
AB: I am so glad you think I managed to maintain some mystery! Honestly, that's a great question, and I don't have a concrete answer except, perhaps, that I grew up reading Robin McKinley and Patricia McKilllip, both of whom write exquisite retellings that strike that balance between curiosity and mystery. I love a detailed magic system where I feel like I understand everything, but I also love magic that feels like magic: inexplicable and haunting.
WW: This question comes from my coworker Rosemary: She really loves how you write masc lesbian characters. Robyn in Nottingham, the Huntress in Thorn, Captain Miranda and Orca in Compass Rose, they make her feel very seen. A lot of sapphic media out there, be it film, television or literature, tends to focus more on more femme characters in general, whether that character ends up with someone or not. Obviously the whole masc-femme thing is often a spectrum open to interpretation, but was that an interpretation you intended with those characters, and do you have any advice on writing masc characters in a sea of femmes?
AB: I love writing masc lesbian characters. I also enjoy writing femme characters, don't get me wrong, but you are absolutely right: femmes far outweigh the rest of the spectrum in media, for obvious reasons (cough: sexism, homophobia, etc). I didn't intentionally sit down to write more masc characters; I sat down and wrote about the queer community I know and love, which is incredibly diverse across all spectrums. On a personal level, I've always fluctuated between those two poles. Miranda, Orca, Isolde, Robyn, Morgan—a masc interpretation is very much intentional. I could go on at length about the intricacies of navigating masculinity (or perceived masculinity) in a culture as steeped in toxic masculinity as my own, but I won't go full Gender Studies on you.
For writers who also want to explore writing characters who break the femme-femme model the best advice I have is very Nike: just do it. Write the characters that you want to read about. You'll be spending a lot of time with them over the course of writing a novel, and writing a character you feel like you should write over the character you want to write deprives you of some of the joys of the process.
~~~
I’m just going to wrap up this piece with a very heartfelt thank you to Anna for taking the time with my questions. As a writer, her work grabs you from page one, and as a person, she’s warm, intelligent and engaging. And I hope this piece inspires you, beloved readers, to pick up one of her books soon. Spooky season is just around the corner, and In the Roses of Pieria would be a perfect darkly supernatural addition to your library in time for Halloween.