Literary Birthday – 21 September – Kelley Eskridge

Happy Birthday, Kelley Eskridge, born on 21 September 1960.

Kelley Eskridge Quotes

1. I’m usually classified as a science fiction writer, but I think speculative or slipstream fiction are better terms for what I do. My work tends toward a tight focus on people who happen live in worlds different from the one I generally accept as ‘real’, although sometimes the difference is only a degree or two – an element of horror, a fantasy background, or a piece of technology that doesn’t currently exist.
2. I’m not looking for the next fantasy world to build or the next Big Idea. I use the speculative elements to write stories about difference without having to justify those differences: in speculative fiction, they simply become part of the landscape.
3. I’m endlessly curious about the internal landscape and the limitless possibilities of human experience. We’ve all got dangerous space within us and between us. Exploring that space is a lot of what I’m about as a writer and a person.
4. Short fiction is ephemeral. There aren’t the same macro-level marketing and distribution systems to bring them to the general attention of readers. Oprah will probably never have a short-story club, you know? One reason I wanted a collection of my work was so people could read it, pure and simple.
5. I grew up reading everything from comic books to Shakespeare, but it was fantasy and science fiction that got me through adolescence: Tolkien and Herbert and Alexei Panshin and Tanith Lee and James Blish took me to places where it was possible even for the most awkward, passionate, confused, scared, yearning kid to make something of herself.
6. Some people are novelists, some people are poets. This doesn’t mean the writer can’t create work at other length, just that there’s a groove we all have that’s ours. My focal length started at around 7,000 words back in the day, and has grown to be, right now, pretty squarely in the novella space — 15,000 to 50,000 words.
7. I write because I’m selfish. Because it makes me feel good. Writing takes me faster and farther into my own deep places than almost anything — it’s right up there with music and the most intimate conversation and heart-stopping sex. Writing at its best is for me ecstatic and contemplative, satisfying and scary, expansive, and intimate, all at the same time.

Source for quotes 1-4: Aqueduct Press and 5-7 : The Seventh Week

Kelley Eskridge is an American fiction writer, screenwriter, essayist, editor, and corporate learning and development consultant. She has published short fiction and essays since 1990, and her work is generally associated with speculative fiction, particularly its more literary edge, as well as slipstream fiction. Her short story ‘And Salome Danced’ won the $11,000 Astraea Prize and was nominated for the James Tiptree Jr. Award in 1995. That same year, her story ‘Alien Jane’ was a finalist for the Nebula Award for Best Short Story. It was later adapted for the short-lived Sci-Fi Channel series Welcome to Paradox. Eskridge’s first novel, Solitaire, was published in 2002. The character-driven science-fiction novel is set in a near-future corporate state. Her first collection of short fiction, Dangerous Space, followed in 2007. Eskridge is married to novelist Nicola Griffith. Follow her on Instagram.

Source for photograph: Author’s Website (photo by Jennifer Durham)

by Amanda Patterson
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