Links Mentioned in This Episode:

We Have Never Lived on Earth (Story Collection)

Women Among Monuments: Solitude, Permission, and the Pursuit of Female Genius (Memoir) 

Kasia Van Schaik’s Social

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The Resilient Writers Radio Show: Interview with Kasia Van Schaik – Full Episode Transcript

Intro:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome to The Resilient Writers Radio Show. I'm your host, Rhonda Douglas. And this is the podcast for writers who want to create and sustain a writing life they love. 

Because let's face it, the writing life has its ups and downs, and we want to not just write, but also to be able to enjoy the process so that we'll spend more time with our butt-in-chair getting those words on the page. 

This podcast is for writers who love books and everything that goes into the making of them. For writers who want to learn and grow in their craft and improve their writing skills. Writers who want to finish their books and get them out into the world so their ideal readers can enjoy them. Writers who want to spend more time in that flow state. 

Writers who want to connect with other writers to celebrate and be in community, in this crazy roller coaster ride, we call the writing life. We are resilient writers. We're writing for the rest of our lives and we're having a good time doing it. So welcome, Writer. I'm so glad you're here. Let's jump right into today's show.

Rhonda:

Well, hey there, Writer. Welcome back to another episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. Today I'm talking with Kasia Van Schaik. She is the author of the linked story collection We Have Never Lived on Earth, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her writing has appeared in Electric Literature, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Best Canadian Poetry, and on the CBC.

She holds a PhD in English Literature from McGill University. She lives in Montreal. And uh we are talking today about her memoir. It is kind of a memoir, right? It's sort of that like creative nonfiction memoir, Women Among Monuments: Solitude, Permission, and the Pursuit of Female Genius. Welcome.

Kasia:

Thank you so much. It's lovely to be here. And I agree with you. Yes, it is a it's a kind of mix of a lot of things. But yeah, hybrid memoir and book of cultural criticism. Yes.

Rhonda:

Okay, love that. what, what's the origin story for the book? Like, what made you decide, okay, this is definitely the book I'm writing?

Kasia:

Well, there's a few, I feel like there's a few different origin stories. One would be just, you know, ever since girlhood, found myself asking these questions, where are the women among monuments?” Why aren't there more of them um being very interested in the kind of histories of female artists and writers, female genius, Brontë sisters, Mary Shelley, everything like that. That's kind of, and Virginia Woolf, you know, the questions from A Room of One’s Own, obviously percolating for a long time.

But then um there were in more recent years, uh two specific moments. And one was in, I think it was 20...2018, I published an essay with Electric Literature about basically about female solitude and reading and proposing this idea that uh that reading for many women is a kind of radical act because it's a sort of retreat from um social obligations and um care work and all these things and it's taking that time.

And so it can be seen as this kind of m radical act. And so that essay got a lot of buzz. It kind of had a little viral moment, I guess. And had a lot of people write to me from all over the world to see how much it had touched them. So I thought, you know, have to, when I have some time, I need to kind of continue pursuing this thread.

And...I was working on my PhD at the time, so I did not have a lot of time and working on writing fiction as well. But then in 2022, wrapped up my PhD. And the second kind of origin story or the second moment of sort of that enlightenment, I guess, is when I read an article in 2022 about the first woman in the world to earn a PhD, who's Elena Cornaro Piscopia. She earned that in 1678 in Padua, Italy. Oh yeah, Padua. Yes, Padua. The only place in the world. So um there was this debate, contemporary debate happening in Padua. Two city councilors had proposed to put a statue of Elena Cornaro Piscopia in the town square, which is this enormous square that's filled with statues of male geniuses like Galileo and Petrarch, but only male statues.

They proposed to put a statue of Piscopia in the square and they were hit with a huge backlash, Everybody refusing this. Yes, in 2022. So I thought, you know, why? Why is this such a resistance to recognizing women's achievements, um and still now.

And so that's kind of what, the name of the book, Women Among Monuments, actually comes from a quote from one of the um city councilors saying, we've raised the debate about women among monuments, and it's very clear we need a very good statue of a woman in a very good place, I think the quote goes.

And so I took that and allowed that to be my entrance into talking about um not just, um you know, uh female genius um as it's been recognized or not recognized in past centuries, but um to think about what it means to sustain a creative life and to actually make space for um that kind of genius to come in, right, or to create anything, right?

Which obviously women have had um there's been a great double standard and women have had a harder time making that space. So then the book becomes, and I love that your audience are writers and largely women trying to live that creative life because this book is very much for those artists.

Rhonda:

Yeah. So, um you know, it's really interesting because I work with writers trying to finish a first book. And sometimes I do get this idea that it is selfish to focus on my own creative dreams instead of focusing on what my family needs.

I had a woman say to me once, I was going to write last week, but my husband had a really busy week at work. And I was like, I don't see how those two things relate to each other. So help me understand what's going on. What are the barriers that most women face when it comes to trying to achieve their creative dreams?

Kasia:

So that's a great question. And I think that little anecdote that you gave us there is just such a common one. It's one I've heard so many times and have experienced myself. In the book, actually, I talk about, um you know, I was living in Berlin in my 20s, and I was hired as a kind of childminder for a woman who was trying to write and she had such guilt about it.

Yeah, such guilt about it. And so she had me look after her kids and she would lock her door to try and write. um And obviously these were expensive hours because she was paying me, right? And so something had to be produced in those hours. And I think that pressure was a lot for her.

And when she finally would come out of the room um and her children would be climbing up her. And she would tell me like, oh, she didn't really get much done and she was very guilty. I think she was very aware that, you know, the pressure of right now because um someone else is taking care of your kids.

So that seems to be something that weighs very heavily on um women or the people in a relationship who have, um well, historically um had more of the responsibilities for care work, um for emotional labor, et cetera.

And so a lot of the writers I look at in the book actually too, like the Indigenous writer Leslie Marmon Silko also talks about this, like how difficult it was to kind of put aside the cares of the housework and motherhood, et cetera, in order to make space, like not just the physical space, but the mental space and give yourself permission to say, for the next five hours, I'm just gonna be an art monster, which is the term meaning like those who put their art above everything else. And I think that's just so complicated and difficult to do uh when you've been socialized to be the caretaker.

Rhonda:

Yes, yes. You know, um it reminds me of a novel by, have you read the novel by Nancy Huston, Slow Emergencies?

Kasia:

I haven’t.

Rhonda:

It's basically about how a woman who's given herself over to her dream of dancing ruins her children.

Kasia:

Oh, wow. Okay, yeah.

Rhonda:

Okay, it's not just literature. Great. We can't escape this no matter where we go.

Kasia:

I'll look that up. I loved playing songs. So I'll look that up. Yeah. Yeah.

Rhonda:

So um tell me a little about the artists that you and the female geniuses that you um discuss or, you know, explore in the book. Did you have a favorite?

Kasia:

Ooh, favorite. um They're all so different and different. And I think about there's sort of different angles em and different paths towards genius. And so for example, there's Gertrude Stein, I look at em in an early chapter of the book.

And Gertrude Stein is a really interesting person because she claimed the mantle of genius. She said, in her writing, she said, me and Pablo Picasso and we're the same, we're geniuses.

Rhonda:

I love that for her.

Kasia:

I know I love that for her as well and I was reading at the first time like oh my god she calls herself a genius right there on the page and then I thought like well more, you know, she's just sort of taking she's just sort of claiming that um that title and also everything that goes along with it. Actually really respect her for that.

Like that's especially doing that in the early 20th century. I go go uh go for it. um And so I quite, I mean, she's a very complicated character, but I did enjoy researching and reading Gertrude Stein. I talk a little bit about um Toni Morrison, who was a mother and editor working full-time, waking up really, really early in the morning. She talks about her ritual of waking up before the sun comes up and sitting in a room.

And it was very important for her to be to be in that space just before the sun rises and be able to kind of make contact with a larger creative self in that moment. And again, amazing discipline.

But probably one of my favorite um authors that I spent time with was Bernadette Mayer, who is, yeah, who's a New Narrative, uh sort of more experimental poet, who was really invested in the everyday and the experience of... uh women's experience of the everyday and of motherhood.

And she almost turned that into a kind of form for herself or a constraint where she would have these poems that try to collect all these, the minutiae of the everyday in them. And that became almost a kind of performance art.

And so I really enjoyed spending time with her partly because she, I feel like she gave me a sense of um permission to not um completely separate the creative life from what I call the uncreative life or the everyday life. the normal everyday ordinary life. And see that there's a lot of inspiration in that everyday and domestic, although it can also be such a constraint as well. So I think that was another one of my favorites.

Rhonda:

Okay, I love that. um So I'd love to talk about this word genius. Because I uh was connecting last week with a friend of mine who's a visual artist and she teaches other visual artists and she was showing me some paintings that her students had done and this one student had done this I think it was acrylic of robin, you know, the robin redbreast with like the fat little belly, you know, and it was gorgeous and I really like it just it just caught an ephemeral kind of moment of beauty, you know.

But like genius, feel like genius is so loaded and I don't know that anyone listening necessarily is like, oh yes, I must do my writing because I am such a genius, you know? I don't know that we come at it that way.

So it feels like a really loaded word. I definitely have known male writers who've taken on the mantle of genius, like watch me be in the canon and let me, you know, piss on every woman I think is a threat to me, know, definitely have seen that. But I don't see many women saying, oh, I must write because I am genius. Don't see it at all. Yeah. What do you think about this, this very loaded word?

Kasia:

It's a loaded term and it's, it has a very long and interesting history as well. So I have, uh it's interesting because I have, have a chapter in the book called Almost Genius. And this title for the chapter actually comes from, uh quote, there's the American author Kate Chopin and one of her reviewers, the author of The Awakening, was for many years on, and probably still is on everybody's syllabi in American literature classes. A reviewer said of her work, it amounts to something almost like genius, think, or it amounts to almost genius. It was interesting.

Rhonda:

Was it a male critic?

Kasia:

It was a male critic. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And couldn't just couldn't just name it. And so and then I it's interesting. There's a lot of other writers who've had a really even like someone like Simone de Beauvoir, who, you know, second wave mother of second wave feminism.

She couldn't name em women geniuses. She had a very hard time. She didn't really believe that there was female geniuses. She could name men.

Rhonda:

Patronize patriarchy much, right?

Kasia:

Exactly. And also, I think she also just found the term, she and others have found the term just kind of embarrassing, a little bit what you're saying, like that loaded.

Rhonda:

A little cringe.

Kasia:

Just a bit cringe. Exactly. It's a little cringe. But interestingly, the in the history, when you actually look at the history of the term, it wasn't always this kind of individuated term for, you know, we see it arising as a way to describe um almost like talent, like someone has a genius for taking care of plants, or you have a genius for weaving.

And then in the Romantic era, we see it become more about an individual person, wear this sort of romantic cloak sorry, Romantic poets claiming genius. And I argue in the book that we see this anxiety partly because we see in the, you know, 17, 1800s women's prowess. We see women writers coming into the scene. And I think that threatened a lot of male writers.

In fact, did threaten some of them. We actually have evidence of that. And so there was this sort of, okay, now I have to claim my claim genius for myself and kind of push women out of that.

Rhonda:

And elevate it to something that is really hard to achieve.

Kasia:

Yes. And there's also this biological kind of history of this idea of genius where in the Renaissance period, for example, they didn't believe that women could hold genius in their bodies because their bodies were too damp and wet and cold.

Rhonda:

Right.

Kasia:

And so in order to house genius, you needed to be like have this dry male body that would be able to like house the fire of genius and women's bodies would just put it out because we're too damp and moist.

Yeah, so it's amazing what you know what stories have come up with to kind of put women down. And so I agree that there is something a little cringe about you know, calling just one person, naming one person genius, a genius.

And so maybe, maybe, maybe the solution is to kind of go back to that earlier formulation where it's like you have a genius for something, right? And you can contain multitudes and you're not just, just this one. Yeah, one thing.

Rhonda:

I'd love to talk in that context. I'd love to talk a little bit about like awards culture.

Kasia:

Oh, yeah. Right.

Rhonda:

Because um I think awards are always great when you're getting nominated for them. Aren't they great? Like they're completely subjective until you're nominated. And then suddenly they're objective. You know, it's they have determined that, yes, I am making art. And I feel like there's something about and in particular, like genre work. So many of the genres have, you know, their own awards, the Edgar Awards, um Hugo Awards and so on.

But um I often feel like folks who write in genre. So romance, you know, I'll have women who love to read romance, write romance, tell me and write, you know, good romance. Tell me how embarrassed they are to be writing romance, because it's not real. And by real, they mean literature.

And I hear that sometimes from folks who write in different genres, that you have the genre work that is more about entertainment. And then you have literature, which is the genius. And you can only be genius if you're writing literature can't be genius if you're writing genre. I think maybe that's broken down a little bit for certainly for readers who, you know, read all kinds of things.

But, um but I don't know that it's broken down in terms of the canon, you know, like Sherlock Holmes is in the canon, Agatha Christie is in the canon, right, but um we don't tend to think of contemporary genre writers as, as holding this idea of genius.

Did you see when you are when you were investigating, you know, because you looked at like Georgia O’Keeffe, you looked at visual artists, you looked at writers. Did you see this kind of divide of am I creating something worthy come up?

Kasia:

Hmm. It's interesting you say that because I actually do have a little it's not a long passage, but there's a passage on Agatha Christie, which yeah. She, it's interesting because of course those divisions are also commercial, like monetary.

So the genre authors made money uh at least in the past. I think maybe it's uneven now and nobody's making money from literature , but definitely in the past. And then those who write fiction, um literary fiction um did not and still definitely do not make any money. So maybe there's those distinctions as well.

Rhonda:

Like a commercial and in the literary. The commercial isn’t really seen as the, you know, the purview of genius. Like it's celebrated in popular culture, right? A book will come out. Let's just take, what's the one right now? Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir. Okay.

Kasia:

Oh yeah.

Rhonda:

But like, you know, if that wasn't a movie, it doesn't get the same kind of play.

Kasia:

Yeah, I think it's at this exact moment in time, I actually think genre's having uh a big moment and literary fiction is going the way of poetry in the case that’s…

Rhonda:

Oh don’t say that. I'm a poet and it's such an obscure little well you are too right?

Kasia:

Yeah.

Rhonda:

It's I feel like I started in poetry and so I kind of am very inured to like, well, if no one, you know, if only five people ever read this thing, it's fine. Because that's what happens in poetry. But yeah, don't say that.

Kasia:

I think I we had this conversation with a few friends who are poets and fiction writers. And I mean, these things change all the time, right? So it's just these kind of moments where I teach as well. I'm a professor and a lot of the students are wanting to write genre as well, which I'm fine with as long as they're as long as they're that, attention to character and to interiority and like bringing in um the aspects of, guess, literary fiction into their work.

But um yeah, think, I do think we're in a moment where readers, again, this is maybe a little depressing, but readerships are declining with the rise of self and they have data on that as well. And so I kind of almost like a poet think like, well, if the book gets to 10 or 12 people, then it's found its readers.

Yeah, and another thing I'll say as well, just to kind of loop back to the awards. um I mean, I just wish there were more kind of ways to celebrate work so that it wasn't the sort of economy of scarcity. So that, um you know, because even if there's not even that much money attached to it, some kind of recognition does give you permission to write the next book often, right?

Or it will give you that sense of like, yes, I belong here. And someone like myself who, you know, I'm sure many of the listeners too, would have experienced imposter syndrome for many years and just didn't really feel comfortable in the art spaces and didn't feel like I was taken seriously.

When I got a little bit of recognition, it suddenly made me feel like, oh yeah. I deserve to give myself a bit more time to write or like, yeah, no, is important. And so I just wish there was a way to give more people that sense of permission. And em I agree with you that the awards culture, it's just so subjective. so, yeah, it's pretty faulty system.

Rhonda:

Yeah, it's well, the system we have, guess, but it's, em you know, I'm always aware when in Canada, sort of a, it's a fall thing, right? It's like October, November. And I'm always aware, like when I had a friend who has a book out and then the lists come out and they're not on the list, like you just kind of, it hurts a little bit.

Because you know, all, you have like a small number of books of the like 400 or a thousand books published. Here are these 12 that are getting all the attention. And there were so many others. So let me put you on the spot and ask you like for, you know, for women listening who maybe do struggle to give themselves um permission. We're giving them permission right now. You and I, we're like, you have permission. If you need permission, you have it. But what are the... What are the things I, you know, women need to put in place in their lives in order to be able to do the creative work that we're here to do?

Kasia:

Yeah, so this is uh a great question and it I feel like I feel like it's it's quite personal um in many ways because everyone has such different ways of um accessing that creative force like Toni Morrison waking up before dawn. I wish I could do that. I am not a morning person.

Rhonda:

I mean, I am a morning person, but not before dawn.

Kasia:

Okay. Okay. In my case, like, how did I, for me, how did I write my first book? um I just, had many late nights just kind of saying, okay, I'm gonna be groggy old at work tomorrow, but I've got the flair of something here. I've got the scent of something and I'm just gonna stay up till 2 a.m. writing.

Which was, yeah, which is easier, I think, if you're um yeah, if you don't have those other responsibilities, if you're not having to put kids to bed or maybe you even easier if you're single, you you don't have a spending time with a partner.

But I do still allow myself if I do feel, you know, the drive for something, I'll stay up even if it is not a responsible thing to do. I'll stay up and allow myself to follow that. I've also Yeah, I've also heard some authors have kind of rituals that allow them to clear the space, maybe give themselves that permission. like lighting a candle and making that space. And then I've, in more recent years, gone to uh one or two now um writing retreats, um Yaddo and...

I like I didn't get a huge amount of writing done there, but it was wonderful to meet other writers. that, mean, honestly, that gave me a sense of like, oh, yeah, I'm part of this community.

Rhonda:

It's a sense of identity, right? It's about doing the things that are in line with our identity.

Kasia:

And something I really still struggle with, but I think is so important is the paying yourself first, which I'm sure everybody's familiar with. And it's so hard to do. It's so hard not for me to immediately answer students' emails in the morning or do some kind of committee thing or I don't know, like work.

If it's a day that I have more like a flex day where I could decide when to do the, which hours to use. And they say, you have to use the brightest, the best hours on your own creative pursuit. And then I should be answering emails when my brain is like. Right.

Rhonda:

Right, right, right. I often thought you know, when I, when I would work in my day job, I was always getting pats on the head, right? Like I would do something and someone would go, that was good work. Good work. Good work.

But like in the writing life, it's filled with doubt. Am I doing the right thing? Am I getting this scene down correctly? Is this book ever going to be published? And then when you go and try to publish, whether you're trying to sell a short story to a lit mag or trying to get a book published, it's the world is just rejection, rejection, rejection. Yeah, you know, so it is hard to maintain that spark of persistence.

Kasia:

Yeah, persistence, absolutely. And that I've heard from so many authors, prolific authors, that it's above all else is that persistence. um I should say working as a as I'm an editor. I've been an editor at different literary magazines. Right now I'm a fiction editor for The Fiddlehead.

And when you see, when you're on that other side, you just realize that it is, rejection is like so not personal, right? It's the most, there's like 800 submissions and you can choose three. When you see those numbers, you think, okay. So it's nothing to do with your story. Yeah, that was.

That was really important for me because I would also get rejected from a lit mag and then just sort of the story is terrible. know, it away. might as well get that off. Yeah, exactly. And so realizing that it's just, not at all personal.

I even had a student a few weeks ago come in and said, I wrote this, I wrote my nonfiction essay and I hated it. I deleted it. I know it's due today, but I couldn't even stand it that I actually deleted it. I was like, no, no, don't do that. You always have some kind of draft. A draft can always be improved.

So she ended up rewriting it, and it was a great essay. So I'm glad she had enough of it in her memory. But that was kind of an extreme version of that sort of internalized doubt. Yeah. Criticism to the point that you would delete a draft like that, the only draft.

And so I think another thing that I think is really important too is like forming, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners do this already, but forming little groups, um writing groups or share groups where you can just share some pages of what you've written with other people without, it doesn't need to be criticism or anything. It's just like, look, I did this. I made this thing. And I think that's really important as well.

But I totally agree with you being in an MFA program or being in a kind of work environment that you get little pats on the, you there's a deadline, you make the deadline, you get a little pat on the back, you know, without that structure, it's hugely, yeah, hugely challenging.

Rhonda:

Totally, yeah. Okay, so everyone, the book is Women Among Monuments: Solitude, Permission, and the Pursuit of Female Genius. I love that the word solitude is in that title. I just believe that solitude is so, so important.

Kasia:

Agreed.

Rhonda:

Thanks so much for being here, Kasia. I really enjoyed talking to you. Thanks so much.

Kasia:

This has been lovely. Thank you.

Outro:

Thanks so much for hanging out with me today and for listening all the way to the end. I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show. While you're here, I would really appreciate it if you'd consider leaving a rating and review of the show. You can do that in whatever app you're using to listen to the show right now, and it just takes a few minutes. 

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