Alix E. Harrow
Who loved to stick out her tongue until she was thrown in a pond, is more obnoxious now but happier, one hell of a ping pong player and wouldn't be an author without Ursula K. Le Guin? Read on.
Her best friend, Charm, is intent on making Zinnia's last birthday special with a full sleeping beauty experience, complete with a tower and a spinning wheel. But when Zinnia pricks her finger, something strange and unexpected happens, and she finds herself falling through worlds, with another sleeping beauty, just as desperate to escape her fate."
My first book report in 7th grade English class was all about Grimm's fairy tales. Everyone else did their reports on much more modern, and much more "hip," contemporary books. I was not, at that time, much of a reader so I fell back on stories that I had grown up with. To my great surprise, everyone loved the report! I was thrilled.
My 12-year-old brain had stuck with stories that I loved: castles, princesses, ogres, and fairies. But I was so young and I didn't dig into their origins or history. I clearly see now how misogynistic and sexist they were. Alix Harrow not only shows this, but she shows it by turning the stories on their heads in the most entertaining way possible. I absolutely loved her newest book, A Spindle Splintered, published by Tordotcom!
A shape wings toward us across the moor, ragged and black. It lands on the standing stone in a rush of feathers, and for the first time in my life I fully appreciate the difference between a crow and a raven. This bird is huge and wild looking, clearly built for midnights dreary rather than McDonald's parking lots.
It dips forward and laps at (the blood) from Primrose's palm with a think tongue and this, I find, is a little much. "Okay, what the fuck!"
Tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.
We recently moved to Charlottesville, VA, a city we chose based on a complicated spreadsheet with columns for walkability, diversity, affordability, and four years of electoral data (no, seriously). We love it for all those reasons, but I particularly love our new house, which came with seven chickens (no, seriously).
Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?
In a termite-riddled farmhouse in western Kentucky, surrounded by a hundred and forty acres of heaven. My Dad says I’ve always tended toward nostalgia—he’s right—but I remember it more than fondly. It was perfect.
Is there a book that changed the way you look at life?
As an indiscriminate reader and a moral packrat, I think I can safely say that most books I’ve read have changed the way I look at life, at least for a while. But fewer have changed the actual direction of my life. I re-read A Wizard of Earthsea in grad school and it brought me back to fantasy as a reader and writer in ways I can’t fully express.
I wouldn’t be writing now if it weren’t for that book.
Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?
My favorite changes every couple of months, whenever my kids get a new obsession. Right now they love everything Joe Todd Stanton has written, especially Leo and the Gorgon’s Curse.
I never had a local bookstore growing up. I was a teenager before there even were big chain stores around. So indie bookstores have been something of a revelation to me—uniquely curated spaces run by passionate locals? Which also serve as event spaces and community centers? How divine, and how lucky I feel to be a part of that ecosystem.
What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?
One time my Dad told me he’d throw me in the pond if I stuck my tongue out one more time and obviously I stuck my tongue out one more time and he threw me in the pond.
How did you meet your beloved? How did your first date go?
We both answered the same craigslist ad and ended up harvesting and packing blueberries in rural Maine. I was 19, living in my van with my dog and my best friend. He was 22, living in a leaky tent with his guitar and his books. We haven’t parted since.
Is there a song, person or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?
When I’m sad I listen to even sadder music, in a cathartic race to the bottom. Phoebe Bridgers, Elliot Smith, Gregory Alan Isakov—you’re up.
How are you different now than you were in your twenties?
I’ve been out of my twenties for two years now, but they were pandemic years, which makes them subjectively closer to decades. I’m more anxious, less optimistic, a little smarter, a lot creakier, better at writing, worse at staying up late, less poor, more obnoxious, and a lot happier.
I know you love Robin McKinley's writings, have you had a chance to meet her?
I’ve never met her, and sort of hope I don’t. It’s one of those situations where her work was so formative to me, at such a young age, that it would be impossible for Ms. McKinley the actual person to bear the sheer force of my admiration.
Is there a teacher that really made an impact on you?
I wrote an absolutely atrocious, egregious novel in middle school. I would like to give a shout-out to Mrs. Parsons, my language arts teacher in seventh and eighth grades, for staying late and reading my book chapter by chapter, which is just above and beyond. Absolutely unnecessary. Twelve-year-old's are pretty brave, and they’re like, ‘I want to be a fantasy writer, so I’m going to write a fantasy book.’ I did, and it was fantastic. I mean, the book was terrible, but the experience was fantastic.
In A Spindle Splintered, I love how ferociously loyal Charm is to Zinnia. Did/do you have a friend like that?
I like to think everybody has a friend like Charm, or had one, or will have one someday. It was one of my favorite tricks, to substitute the romance of Sleeping Beauty with an equally important but radically different type of relationship.
Your main character, Zinnia, suffers from "Generalized Roseville Malady". I know it's a fictional disease, but is it based on anything similar?
Not really. I tried to make the symptoms medically plausible without mapping onto a real chronic or terminal illness. It was supposed to be light and escapist—I didn’t want to make any readers feel jarred back into harsh realities.
Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish they would? Something, perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about you?
Nobody ever asks me about ping pong. If they did, I would tell them I’m really good at ping pong. Which is true, but also a very a safe lie, because there’s rarely a ping pong table around to check.
Tell me about where you live and why you love it so much.
We recently moved to Charlottesville, VA, a city we chose based on a complicated spreadsheet with columns for walkability, diversity, affordability, and four years of electoral data (no, seriously). We love it for all those reasons, but I particularly love our new house, which came with seven chickens (no, seriously).
Where were you living when you were 7 years old? Are they fond memories?
In a termite-riddled farmhouse in western Kentucky, surrounded by a hundred and forty acres of heaven. My Dad says I’ve always tended toward nostalgia—he’s right—but I remember it more than fondly. It was perfect.
As an indiscriminate reader and a moral packrat, I think I can safely say that most books I’ve read have changed the way I look at life, at least for a while. But fewer have changed the actual direction of my life. I re-read A Wizard of Earthsea in grad school and it brought me back to fantasy as a reader and writer in ways I can’t fully express.
I wouldn’t be writing now if it weren’t for that book.
Do you have a favorite children’s book and what about it makes it so?
My favorite changes every couple of months, whenever my kids get a new obsession. Right now they love everything Joe Todd Stanton has written, especially Leo and the Gorgon’s Curse.
I never had a local bookstore growing up. I was a teenager before there even were big chain stores around. So indie bookstores have been something of a revelation to me—uniquely curated spaces run by passionate locals? Which also serve as event spaces and community centers? How divine, and how lucky I feel to be a part of that ecosystem.
What are the funniest or most embarrassing stories your family tells about you?
One time my Dad told me he’d throw me in the pond if I stuck my tongue out one more time and obviously I stuck my tongue out one more time and he threw me in the pond.
We both answered the same craigslist ad and ended up harvesting and packing blueberries in rural Maine. I was 19, living in my van with my dog and my best friend. He was 22, living in a leaky tent with his guitar and his books. We haven’t parted since.
Is there a song, person or group that you listen to when you are feeling a bit down?
When I’m sad I listen to even sadder music, in a cathartic race to the bottom. Phoebe Bridgers, Elliot Smith, Gregory Alan Isakov—you’re up.
How are you different now than you were in your twenties?
I’ve been out of my twenties for two years now, but they were pandemic years, which makes them subjectively closer to decades. I’m more anxious, less optimistic, a little smarter, a lot creakier, better at writing, worse at staying up late, less poor, more obnoxious, and a lot happier.
I know you love Robin McKinley's writings, have you had a chance to meet her?
I’ve never met her, and sort of hope I don’t. It’s one of those situations where her work was so formative to me, at such a young age, that it would be impossible for Ms. McKinley the actual person to bear the sheer force of my admiration.
Is there a teacher that really made an impact on you?
I wrote an absolutely atrocious, egregious novel in middle school. I would like to give a shout-out to Mrs. Parsons, my language arts teacher in seventh and eighth grades, for staying late and reading my book chapter by chapter, which is just above and beyond. Absolutely unnecessary. Twelve-year-old's are pretty brave, and they’re like, ‘I want to be a fantasy writer, so I’m going to write a fantasy book.’ I did, and it was fantastic. I mean, the book was terrible, but the experience was fantastic.
In A Spindle Splintered, I love how ferociously loyal Charm is to Zinnia. Did/do you have a friend like that?
I like to think everybody has a friend like Charm, or had one, or will have one someday. It was one of my favorite tricks, to substitute the romance of Sleeping Beauty with an equally important but radically different type of relationship.
Your main character, Zinnia, suffers from "Generalized Roseville Malady". I know it's a fictional disease, but is it based on anything similar?
Not really. I tried to make the symptoms medically plausible without mapping onto a real chronic or terminal illness. It was supposed to be light and escapist—I didn’t want to make any readers feel jarred back into harsh realities.
Is there a question no one has ever asked you that you wish they would? Something, perhaps, that people would be surprised to know about you?
Nobody ever asks me about ping pong. If they did, I would tell them I’m really good at ping pong. Which is true, but also a very a safe lie, because there’s rarely a ping pong table around to check.
And in a short essay…………………………
IF YOU COULD GO BACK IN TIME
to any period from before recorded history to yesterday,
be safe from harm, be rich, poor or in-between, if
appropriate to your choice,
actually experience what it was like to live in that
time, anywhere at all,
meet anyone, if you desire, speak with them, listen to
them, be with them.
The problem with having a couple of degrees in history is
that, little by little, your desire to actually visit any historical periods is
eroded by your familiarity with the facts of those historical periods. It’s not
just the dysentery or the bloodshed or the lack of indoor plumbing—it’s the chilling
cultural assumptions, the casual certainties about human worth, the intricate
sets of rules that determine who is a person and who isn’t, who has rights and
who doesn’t. Picture a boot stamping on a human face, forever. Orwell said that
about the future, but he was plagiarizing from the past.
Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I’m forgetting all the ordinary
people who were scraping by, doing their best to protect themselves and the
people they love in a chaotic and often cruel world. I think if I could visit
anywhere, I’d go back to western Kentucky in the early 1990s, and visit that
hundred and forty acres of heaven for a while.
Thank you, Alix, I loved your answers to my questions. Let's shoot a game of ping pong next time you're in Asheville. After I beat you we can critique my Fairy Tale collection!
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