Alison Gadsby, "Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive" (Guernica Editions, 2026) - New Books Network

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[00:01]
A
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[01:34]
B
Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I'm your host, Holly Gattery, and I am excited to be joined today by the excellent Allison Gadsby to talk about her collection of short fiction, Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive, which was just released with the excellent Also Guernica editions in 2026. Welcome to the show, Alison.
[01:57]
A
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk to you.
[02:00]
B
I am excited to talk to you, and I'm making a personal vow that I will not describe anything else as excellent for the rest of the show. Well, you've already said it twice. There's your quo vow. That's ridiculous. So many other words can be used to describe this collection of short stories. So for our audience, a woman learns to swim. A girl falls in Love with her teacher. A man hires a humanoid nanny. A woman is abducted by her trash collector. A dying mother recycles time. Connected stories that blur the lines between horror, speculative fiction and psychological realism, where characters struggle to stay afloat in the wake of childhoods they barely survive. Now, Allison Gadsby is a wonderful writer of so many different genres, but I am really excited that your first collection of short stories, because short stories are absolutely one of my favorite genres. Allison writes in Toronto, where she lives in a multi generational home that includes several dogs. Her writing has appeared in various literary journals including Blank Spaces, the Thames Review, the Ex Puritan, Blue Lake Review, and more. She is the founder and host of Junction Reads, a prose reading series. And you can learn more about her at Alison Gadsby Cat. Allison, let's dive right in and let's ask the question that anyone who reads this, store, this collection of stories, even one of these stories is probably going to be asking themselves, which is, where did this come from? Alice
[03:32]
A
I honestly, I would love to get a psychology degree just to understand that question. I don't know. I have always been weird. I have always had weird ideas swarm my mind. I didn't really appreciate how much of my own sort of traumatic childhood was in the collection until it was finished and an editor looked at it. But I am a swimmer. My kids are swimmers. Water has always been my kind of safe place, I guess. And so the collection itself has a lot of water, a lot of swimming, a lot of weirdness, a lot of darkness. And that I think, is just me. My, my psychology makeup is in this book.
[04:25]
B
When we were at the launch of this collection, you mentioned something you were working on now. And for our listeners, this is a really great example of the delightfully fractured nature of Allison's brain. I think you were talking about writing a story about a maid who kept keeps hurting herself to find like to uncover new ways to not have to do her job. And how that was inspired by you just saying, maybe I'll just like pull this cabinet over on myself so I don't have to fold laundry. And what I thought when you said that, other than like hilarity and what I felt, lon I was reading your book, this collection of short stories was that you are constantly saying the quiet parts loud and really loud. And a comment that you made during your book launch was that I'm paraphrasing, but you don't care if you make people uncomfortable. I want you to talk about that.
[05:26]
A
I mean, mainly I think I have a hard time with what the world, what society, polite society, defines as good and bad. What, you know, what is morality from a morality perspective, Good and bad. So I have a hard time with people being judged as one or the other. And the characters in this book sometimes do horrific things, but they're not bad people. And so I want to place the reader in an uncomfortable place where they have to consider themselves either as this. This, you know, traumatized or just horrific person, or they have to find another character with whom they can empathize, I guess. And it's uncomfortable to imagine yourself as either a bad person or a person potential. A person who has the potential to do horrific things.
[06:28]
B
And.
[06:29]
A
And that's it, really. I. I don't think that reading. I don't think that art. I don't think that anything that is worth anything should make people feel comfortable with the way their lives are being lived. And I just. This is my landline. I have a landline still. This is the landline answering a message that you can hear in the background. I just don't think that people should feel comfortable after they read something. I want. I want people to think more deeply after they finish.
[07:04]
B
I was having a conversation with someone recently about the. The. The breadth of my reading. What I mean is that I very publicly and gleefully read things like smut, but then I'll also read a lot of experimental poetry or academic nonfiction. I read everything. And I was saying that I love smut. I love dark romances. I love. I love the reads that make me feel like I'm sitting down with a pack of Bubblicious, right? And I'm one of those people that just probably my addictive nature will eat a whole pack of gum in, like, 10 minutes. Because as soon as it starts to even, like, show that is losing a little bit of that sugary goodness, I'll just shove another piece there. But after a while of reading that, I need to go back and read something else. Something that doesn't give me that serotonin hit. It's like, okay, I need something else now. And when I'm done reading those books, I don't necessarily feel like I've gleaned anything that makes me think about the world differently or that makes me a different person and hopefully even a better person, or at least a more awake person. That's. And again, that's fine. Like, some books are great for that now. When I was reading your book, I feel like my mind had split into about a dozen pieces and that I left your book feeling like a Different person. And one of the ways in which you did that. We start with that first story is through the use of these humanoids and my reactions to inhumane things happening to seemingly human but not human creations and then how that affected my response to what was the horrific things that were actually happening to humans. So let's start with the first story. The deal with Roger and this is an abusive humanoid partner and his, his wife told from the perspective of his wife. And quite frankly, not to beat this metaphor over the head, but you threw us into the deep end with that one. Let's talk about starting with that. And I adore for you to tell the audience a little bit about that story.
[09:28]
A
So the world in which fantastic forms, which is this corporation that makes these humanoid people in various categories from 1 to 5, with skills ranging from level 1 to level 10, level 1 being, you know, kind of a child form and level 10 being soldier, police officer form. So the world in which these fantastic forms exist is also a world where humans are extremely lonely and they purchase humanoids for various reasons, but because they're human, they grow tired of these humanoids. And so what doesn't exist in any of the stories, and I think there's a, there's four or five of them within the world of, of fantastic forms. What we don't learn explicitly is that when people grow tired of these humanoids, they just throw them into the welland canal, a body of water somewhere. And they do that when they're alive, when they're still kind of processing, I guess, as, as humanoids. And I wanted to imagine a reader being horrified at this kind of sociopathic behavior, if you can describe it that way. Again, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not a psychologist, but maybe I one day could be the idea that humans treat these humanoids terribly, that was kind of running through my head. And then I thought, okay, well what if, you know, somebody, either by accident or on purpose, gets a humanoid that treats them poorly? And that's where Mirabel came to be. She's a 6 foot 5, 250 pound woman who, you know, was always a big girl and her dad had very little confidence that she was going to lead a happy life, nevermind find a partner. And he finds this humanoid at a police auction. And I won't spoil too much of it because I'm hoping to read a little bit from there. But essentially this humanoid becomes tired of Mirabel and tired of this life that he's kind of been given. And really and truly with all of the stories in the collection, I want the reader to be sat in a very uncomfortable place thinking about how these characters choices are affecting themselves and affecting the people around them. And again, who is good and who is bad. In the context of what happens in the deal with Roger and the other stories where Humanoids exist.
[12:20]
B
Your writing style has a quicksilver quality. Everything is beautifully, immaculately, painfully described. It's like sitting under an interrogation lamp. Nothing is, nothing is too painful to be illuminated. But there is not a ton of sentimentality and not a ton of moralizing about what's going on. So I wanted you to talk about that, talk about your very singular style, because I've never read anything like it as much as you say George Saunders. George Saunders. No, George. George could not do what Alison Gadsby's doing. It is fascinating.
[13:07]
A
So I think I've always been struck as a reader and I, I have always been a reader. I, I don't, outside of, you know, the, the time when I was lost to either postpartum depression or other mental health crises, I've never not been reading something. And I am not an overly sentimental person in that I do not like writing that is overly metaphorical, that has this tendency toward describing everything as a, as a vision or as, as a kind of sensual experience. Because I don't think that any of us look at the sunset and get the same feeling. I don't think that any of us look at a body of water and get the same feeling. Again, the idea that water exists in this book, it's terrifying to so many people. I, I, it's probably more than half the population who would imagine me jumping into the middle of a lake and diving down as deep as I possibly can and coming up breathless. That's a horrifying image to some people. And so I want the experiences, the sensuality, the feelings to exist in a place that can belong to the reader as much as it belongs to the characters. And again, to kind of put the reader in a place of discomfort so that they kind of have to think about it. They have to think, why do I feel this way about this character? Why do I feel this way about that character? And I was on a walk yesterday with my sister, and she works at a large healthcare facility in the United States. And she said to me that she wants to tag the book alongside the American Psychology association because she felt, reading it, that it really is a psychological study of what I had said before, that these characters who are not one thing or another, and yet each of them in some way will make a reader feel one way or the other, and that no reader is going to feel the exact same way about Mirabel and Teresa the recreation manager and what they end up doing to Roger. Not everyone's going to feel the same way about Roger as I feel about Roger. And throughout the book, you know, the mother who recycles time, that's going to. That's gonna feel awful for a lot of people. You know, how could this mother kind of recycle a year in the life of her child just because she's afraid to die or afraid of the sadness her kid's gonna feel? And yet there will be a reader who says, yes, please, like, I, I would do that.
[15:59]
B
And I think this is why this particular collection would be an ideal book club read. Because one of the things I love about book clubs is seeing everybody react differently to exactly the same book and even discussing this book with people after you're reading. My 14 year old came home and read the story that you read from about the person kidnapped because it, she thought it was hilarious and dark and we had really different reactions to the story. She didn't like. She found your reading funny, but the story as a whole she found horrifying. Whereas I thought it was hilarious. I just thought the whole thing. I said to her, I think you have to live to like middle age to find it as funny.
[16:45]
A
I, I also think that you and I share the, the not, not welcoming of intrusive thoughts, but the understanding of intrusive thoughts. Right. We are, we are who we are as a result of the lives we've lived. But I think you and I both know that intrusive thoughts exist and they don't mean anything. They don't come into your head as reality. It's not realism for this, this woman to be in the trunk of a car and to not give a shit that she's going to die. But the intrusive thought is real, right? The I, the idea that I, Alison Gadsby AUTHOR, have. I've had that thought. I've had the thought of, you know, you. Yeah. Abduct me. Go ahead. I don't give a shit. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm not afraid of this life ending. Pass on, pass me a little bit of that serenity that I know I'm gonna get after death. And that's, that's just her. That's Claire, the character.
[17:43]
B
Well, one thing that's really great, I mean, a lot of things are great about Claire, but about the whole book, but really exemplified in this story is the way that women being. I was about to say messed up. It's not messed up. It's the way we are. But when women refuse to sanitize themselves to make themselves easier to look at, to digest, to hold, to smell, to love under a patriarchal view, it takes a moment that could be potentially humiliating and terrifying. Like Claire being abducted in her pants coming down as she's being pulled out of the trunk, and then making a comment about whether she waxes or not. And all like these things that could be humiliating. It. It makes. It's making the men uncomfortable. And I live for that. I live for that. Like, complete reversal of power. And a lot of that happens in the book. And I just really think that it's such a beautiful theme. We can see it in even one of the youngest characters in the book, the daughter whose father brings this nanny, teacher, nanny into their home. And the way that she takes back her power quite beautifully and unapologetically. And I'm not gonna spoil that, but I'd really like for you to talk about the reversal of power in this book. And again, for readers of the book, it's not going to be comfortable, but I think you're really gonna love it.
[19:11]
A
I hope so. I think the female characters, I tried to give this kind of I don't give a fuck mentality that they exist in this place that is. And I will say that they're messed up because especially Claire, she hasn't gone to therapy at this point. And Claire exists in a couple of other stories with her brother Cameron. Claire, in this story, hasn't spoken to her brother Cameron in a couple of years because he went to therapy. He got clean and sober and decided to no longer live immersed in the trauma that they were both drowning in. And so she. She, at this point, hasn't talked to her brother in a couple of years. She's messed up. She refuses to see that she's messed up. And she's also. I don't give a fuck. Like, I don't care if I die. I don't care that you see me naked. I don't care that my body's gonna be maybe cut up into tiny pieces and thrown into this field up north somewhere. And so that's what I wanted all of the characters to feel. There's a story at the end where a young girl does something horrific because she's in this place where she's like, I'm suffering. I'm in so much pain. I. There's no reason that anyone else should be having a happy life right now. It's not fair and I don't care. At the end of the day, you know, the repercussions of, of my actions. And maybe that's kind of a, a, a speaking point to the patriarchy. But also I don't want my characters to exist in response to anything, anything like that. I want them to exist kind of free of repercussions, free of the implications of their words and the fallout of their actions. I want them to just kind of be like, well, what am I supposed to do? That kind of thing. I hope that makes sense. Does it make sense?
[21:17]
B
And I felt that, I think that's why I felt that after reading this book that the world was full of possibilities again. Which sounds like a strange thing to say. I could just go out there and do messed up stuff. No, There is a point to which the external pressure is something I am manifesting for myself. Not completely, obviously there's tons of external pressure, but I can choose what it does to me for sure.
[21:48]
A
And I do that too. That's why, that's why I love characters who, who aren't like me. Like, I want characters who are like, yeah, so what are you going to do about it? Because that's not how I live. Right. I live in this place where it's like, oh no, what are you going to do about that? And I just want, I want my, my characters to be the opposite.
[22:12]
B
Well, it was a therapeutic read to me and you know, if somebody from a psychological association hears me say that, they might have some feedback they like pass on to me about what I should do or who I should talk to. Well, we're, let's give people, while we're on this topic, let's give people a taste of your book. Would you read to us from your collection?
[22:33]
A
Yeah. So I'm going to start. The deal with Roger is the first in the collection and I'm not going to read like I'm gonna drop a few bits of it at the beginning and I, I won't, I will or I won't indicate what I'm leaving out. So this is from the beginning. Mirabel wants to learn to swim, but she's been told her whole life she's just sank to the bottom and that swimming is not only a risk to her, but to the lifeguards who might have to retrieve her extra large body from the deep end of a pool. At 6ft 8 inches and 250 pounds, Mirabel has always been self conscious. But as the newest Partner at the country's largest forensic firm. She learned success comes with hard work and determination. She's tired of being told she can't do something. When Mirabel was 13 years old, her father bought Roger. She was already over 6ft tall. And after her only friend Shannon was shipped off to a boarding school for at risk youth, Mirabel had nobody. Roger was supposed to be the high school boyfriend, the high school prom date, the boy back home when she was in college, and the husband she introduced to people at work. If she ever found an employer who'd hire her instead of purchasing him new, her father went to police auctions until he found Roger, a 6 foot 7 humanoid who was erased and reprogrammed for reuse. It was clear what her father loved about him. He looked like Dolph Lundgren from the old Rocky movies. And because he was built without a penis, her father didn't have to imagine Mirabel using him as a glorified sex toy. The most Mirabel has ever done is have him lick her nipples while she masturbated. Even that was short lived because Roger was sure he could masturbate her better and refused to keep his hands to himself. At 32 years of age, Mirabel has never had sex. The toys in the bathroom might have removed the anatomical evidence of her virginity, but she can't believe a real person could love the sight and smell of her as much as the abstraction. She fucks in the tube. Roger can never learn to swim. Where are you going? Roger asks. Maribel is afraid to say because he'll want to come and watch her at the pool. She always worries his rage is escalating. She also worries his rage is escalating. He swears all the time, and when they were watching Housewives, he told Maribel he'd like to take a cold AR15 and kill them all. When he went into fantastic forums for the age upgrade, she mentioned it and the broken dishes. She also told the technician that he'd started to call her names, which she didn't at all enjoy, even if he was joking. I am here for you, he says. I know that. I'll be back before Survivor comes on. She says. I am here for you, he says. As in I have nobody else with which to distract myself. Do you want me to press pause? No, I don't want you to press pause. How many times have I told you? You lay one salami finger on me. Well, you do not want to know. I promise I won't be long. I spent all day cooking this fucking carbonara. For you. Roger lifts the lid on the pot and digs his right hand into the hot linguine. He shakes a fistful of it in her face and she watches bits of bacon fly around the kitchen. Mirabel steps back as he moves toward her. Roger, stop. This is not appropriate. He raises an eyebrow and slowly places the remaining noodles back into the pot and stirs it with a wooden spoon. Roger used to apologize when he crossed the line. He used to let her pause this program pauses program when she went to work. But he convinced her a decade ago that he could use the time during the day to make her life better. And isn't that what he was for? I'll be back before Survivor. Fine. Maribel slips her feet into a pair of flip flops and before she walks out the front door she feels something hit the back of her head. It's linguine, an egg. She leaves without turning around and picks all the bits out of her hair on the way to the pool. Her hips have been bothering her and her doctor warned her she needs to lose weight or hip replacement surgery will happen sooner than later. And then I'm just gonna skip ahead to the foot. The recreation manager informs her that she's been kind of jumped ahead a level and she's gonna need to swim a couple of times a week and she just knows it's not gonna work out at the pool. Mirabel explains to the recreation manager that she can't do the next level. Her husband is busy with work and she can't be out more than one night a week. Is everything okay? The recreation manager asks. Her name is Teresa. She isn't as tall as Mirabel, but she's tall enough that when she stands, her fingertips don't touch the desk. She wears a bathing suit under a tank top and blue jeans. Mirabel enjoys it when Teresa sometimes gets in the water after the adult lessons. Her face is the sort she'd describe as kind, bright smiling brown eyes that widen instinctively when she greets Mirabel or anyone at the front desk. The marionette lines around her mouth don't make her look sad, and she wears her long salty brown hair and two braids behind her ears. She has a dozen beaded bracelets on her left wrist, wrists that present various ocean species she wants to protect from the plastic that's killing them. It's fine, you know. It's just difficult. It only takes one person to ask Mirabelle if she is okay for her to start crying. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. It's just I've noticed how much you love the water. Your face lights up in the pool. I can't. I can't do this, maribel manages to say. I'm sure if your husband saw you here he'd figure out a way to make it work at home. Perhaps a babysitter. We don't have kids. Maribel takes the tissue the women offers and wipes the tears from under her eyes. You don't have kids. Then why, if you don't mind me asking, why can't you be out two nights a week? Roger doesn't like to be alone. Maribel sees the surprise, the shock maybe. Why doesn't he come with you then? He can't swim. You could swim last spring and look at you now. He can't swim because Mirabel almost says it, but she signs her name on the attendance sheet and turns to leave. Her father said only the most desperate people purchase a humanoid for companionship, and only an idiot would tell anyone they have one. I'll leave it there. She and Teresa don't end up doing good things.
[28:40]
B
No. Yeah, but that's why I like them. That's why I like them. It's so eerie. I love it. I love the threads of the eeriness. I love the detail. The. The things. The details like in this story, Teresa being tall enough that her fingers don't touch fingertips don't touch the desk. The detail in another one of your stories about one of the characters peeing in Tupperware, which apparently you know just from my research is a lot more common than I thought for women that are women who have peed in Tupperware. That's what I said. You're saying the quiet part. Loud constantly these intrusive, dark brilliant thoughts. And when I mean brilliant, I mean the gem like quality of brilliant. I don't always I don't mean that they're necessarily the smartest thing on on the level of like logic, but they feel like they're intrinsically brilliant insofar as they mirror I think what a lot of people feel, probably especially a lot of of women feel. My question for you next is about which one of these stories would you say was the most, let's say difficult for you to write?
[29:58]
A
I think emotionally difficult are probably the Claire and Cameron stories because they are not autobiographical but they live a life that is running parallel to my own and my brother's life. Physically difficult, like from a writerly perspective is once there was a world which is Clive is a writer living right now but in the Grief of losing his sister when she was, when they were younger and physically losing her. He was responsible for her and she disappeared while he was supposed to be watching her. And so he's now kind of, you know, trying to, he loses his keys all the time. He's, he's, he's just lost. And it all happens around the time that they, they find his sister and he just can't believe that it's her. That was a. Probably a seven year long process. I submitted it to. And I'll try and be as accurate as possible without exaggerating. I'm at 30 literary magazines at various stages of its, of its light, of its, of its vision, I guess. And it has been revised probably 50 times. I'm not kidding. And to the point where I almost didn't put it in the collection because I, I still think maybe that it's not exactly what I want to say about this feeling of walking around detached from the world when, when you lose someone. And I started writing it after my dad died and I couldn't, couldn't feel the grief that I felt. You know, the moment, the moment after he died, right? The, the, the hours and the days that I spent crying kind of came and went. And then I had this feeling of being completely detached from myself and unable to think about him, unable to think about my life, unable to think about anything, whether it was positive or negative. And that's kind of the feeling I wanted to, to express in that book or in that story. And I'm, I'm not entirely sure even now if, if I got that. If there's a reader out there who read that story and what I'm saying about that makes you feel like, yes, yes, you did do that, then I would love to hear it because that, that's where I felt like I, I faltered a bit.
[32:51]
B
Well, this reader thinks you, you've achieved that. And remember, say on the show all the time, everyone, my opinion is the only one that matters about book. Like anyone believes that. But no, I think, I think you achieve that. But I, I do understand as a writer what you mean, and especially when you're talking about how many revision processes it went through. I mean, I've been there and I think there's a certain point where we can't see the forest for the trees anymore. Like it's almost impossible for us to objectively look at the finished product that the story is now, which I think captures exactly what you hoped it would. But you're living every previous incarnation that perhaps didn't While you're looking at it like you're feeling and seeing things that me as a reader who'd never read this story before, that just encountered this, this draft that we're just draft this, this version. It's on draft that we have in the book. I see that very clearly. But I do understand carrying previous versions of stories or poems or whatever with us into what we're seeing now. I've absolutely done that. And I think a lot of the best poem or poem stories can be like that. I have a poem that was rejected for 10 years and then it won the New Quarterly's occasional verse award. Like after and after being rejected, like, I can't look at it without seeing every failed attempt to get out there. So I still went at one. I was like, why?
[34:16]
A
Yeah, yeah. Well, I have another story that's going to be in the next collection. And I submitted it, I think. I think only to three places. But I had already convinced myself that this particular story was going to be the once there was a world story, that it was never going to be accepted from anywhere because it wasn't ever going to quite do what I wanted it to do. But it just got accepted last week and, and got. Or a couple weeks ago and got published. So I'm like, oh, okay. Now I don't have to worry about Janie. I don't have to worry about that character anymore. She's got a home.
[34:53]
B
Speaking of homes and speaking about once and future characters, I know you have a novel coming out and I am in a privileged position because I actually know a little bit about it. But I'd like for you to tell our audience about what is coming out. So there's that what's coming out next year was one of the best projects presses in the world with exceptional taste, penult sets and you know, obviously best taste ever. But also what you're working on now, which I understand, you know, when we have a book published, we do still have to do some work with that or when we have a book accepted for publication. But if there's anything you're more actively working on in the beginning stages now that you'd like to share about.
[35:35]
A
So I'll. If I have time, I'll share the things. So the, the first is the collection that I. I alluded to at the launch, which is a collection of stories funny. I hope all of them are funny in some way because I am. Despite what you might believe, reading Breathing is how some people stay alive. I think I'm pretty funny. But the collection is essentially good people doing bad things. And the housekeeper doing, you know, little workplace injuries to get out of folding the laundry is one of the characters. There's a woman who's swallowed up by grief, but she goes to Aquafit every day and steals something from the pool. So they're just lit characters who are doing tiny little bad things. I am working. I finished a first draft and am working on a second draft of a book about a massage therapist single mom who lives with her mom and she. Semi autobiographical. No, it's not autobiographical. It's a speculative novel again, exploring good and evil in the world. And the novel coming out with palimpsest, either late 2027 or early 2028, is dreams of the Weary, which is a book about a mother and daughter. The daughter has a facial difference, as does my son. It takes place in the 50s and 60s and inspired just by my son asking if there was anyone famous with Sturge Weber syndrome. And I kind of just started writing this story, and it explores the idea of autonomy or not. The idea explores autonomy and agency for characters, for people with differences, facial differences and body differences. And how when the sideshows were shut down by, you know, wealthy disability activists and members of polite society, there was no consideration for the performers at a time when, for example, if you had a facial difference, like my son, for example, in, I think up to 1973, the. The law was on the books. If you were deemed ugly, you legally could not walk out of your house in public. And so the novel kind of explores the mom's. The mother's fear, not letting her daughter out of the house, hiding her away from the world, not letting her go to school. And the daughter, who is super intelligent and an extremely talented piano player is like, no, I don't. This is not the light. I don't want to be a seamstress in the attic of. Of this house. I want to live. And so it's the two kind of dual timelines exploring that time in history.
[38:35]
B
I cannot wait to read that book. And I can't wait to have you back to talk about that and whatever miraculous book you publish after that. I'm such a fan, you know that. And I encourage everyone. One. Yeah, of course. I encourage everyone to pick up Allison Gadsby's Wonderful. Now I'm saying wonderful too much. What I can never. Amazing, amazing, fantastic, Phenomenal. All of these things apply. And wonderful works because there is something wondrous about it. It feels like the most accurate thing when we think about that. The essence of wonder or awe. I feel that when I read your book, so I'm using it because it's accurate. Okay? I promise. Everyone Breathing's How Some People Stay Alive, which is published with Garnet Auditions, another wonderful publisher in Canada with excellent taste and I encourage everyone to get it. You can grab it anywhere books are bought or borrowed and for any input or insights into either Allison's or my my own mental states, maybe just eat a burrito, meditate on friendship and keep it to yourself. Allison, thank you so much for joining me today.
[39:47]
A
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Summary7 min read

Episode Overview

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Holly Gattery
Guest: Alison Gadsby
Episode: Alison Gadsby, "Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive" (Guernica Editions, 2026)
Date: March 30, 2026

This episode features an in-depth conversation between host Holly Gattery and author Alison Gadsby about Alison’s debut short fiction collection, Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive. The discussion explores the collection’s boundary-blurring narratives, which thread together horror, speculative fiction, psychological realism, and a relentless examination of trauma, discomfort, and the gray spaces of morality. Gadsby shares her inspirations, writing process, and the uncomfortable places she wants her readers to inhabit, with segments touching on the craft of short story writing, the complexities of unsanitized female characters, and hints at her forthcoming works.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Origins and Thematic Foundations

Water, Trauma, and Weirdness
- (03:31) Alison traces the collection’s focus on water and swimming to her own life and psychology:
  
  “I am a swimmer. My kids are swimmers. Water has always been my kind of safe place... The collection itself has a lot of water, a lot of swimming, a lot of weirdness, a lot of darkness. And that I think, is just me. My psychology makeup is in this book.”
Uncomfortable Art
- (05:26, 06:28) Gadsby is explicit about embracing discomfort for herself and her readers:
  
  “I don't think that art... should make people feel comfortable with the way their lives are being lived. I want people to think more deeply after they finish.”

Quiet Parts, Loud—and the Ethics of Unsettling Fiction

(04:24) The host highlights Gadsby’s willingness to vocalize “intrusive, dark, brilliant thoughts,” and Alison embraces “saying the quiet parts loud,” remarking that her characters often do horrific things, yet they themselves are not merely “bad people”—the stories force readers to explore their own empathy and sense of morality.
(05:26)

“...the characters in this book sometimes do horrific things, but they're not bad people. And so I want to place the reader in an uncomfortable place where they have to consider themselves either as... this traumatized or just horrific person, or they have to find another character with whom they can empathize, I guess.”

On Discomfort, Empathy, and Genre Play

Reader Transformation
- (07:03) Holly describes the transformative, unsettling effect Gadsby’s writing had on her:
  
  “I left your book feeling like a different person.”
Experimentation With Humanoids and Humanity
- (09:28–12:19) Discussion of the first story, “The Deal with Roger,” introduces a speculative world of humanoids—artificial people acquired for companionship and discarded when no longer wanted. Gadsby uses this as a lens to explore human loneliness, cruelty, and moral ambiguity.
  
  “When people grow tired of these humanoids, they just throw them into the Welland Canal... when they're alive, when they're still kind of processing, I guess. And I wanted to imagine a reader being horrified at this kind of sociopathic behavior...”

Writing Style and Artistic Intent

Direct, Unsparing, Non-Sentimental Prose
- (12:19–13:06) Holly compares Gadsby’s style to an unflinching “interrogation lamp.” Gadsby responds:
  
  “I am not an overly sentimental person... I don't think that any of us look at the sunset and get the same feeling. I want the experiences, the sensuality, the feelings to exist in a place that can belong to the reader as much as it belongs to the characters... to put the reader in a place of discomfort so that they kind of have to think about it.”
Psychological Study in Fiction
- (13:06) A personal anecdote compares her collection to a “psychological study”:
  
  “No reader is going to feel the exact same way about Mirabel and Teresa the recreation manager and what they end up doing to Roger...”

Unsanitized Female Experience & Power Reversals

The Power of Messy Women
- (17:43) Holly praises the book’s women who refuse to make themselves more palatable for the patriarchal gaze:
  
  “When women refuse to sanitize themselves to make themselves easier to look at... it makes the men uncomfortable. And I live for that, I live for that... complete reversal of power.”
Characters Beyond Repercussions
- (19:11–21:16) Gadsby wants her characters to exist outside conventional judgment or social reprisal.
  
  “I want them to exist free of repercussions, free of the implications of their words and the fallout of their actions.”

Sample Reading from “The Deal With Roger”

(22:33–28:40) Alison reads a vivid, immersive excerpt from “The Deal With Roger.” We meet Mirabel, a physically imposing, self-conscious woman whose father purchases an abusive humanoid, Roger, to fulfill archaic expectations for his daughter’s domestic happiness.
- Notable, striking lines from this segment:
  
  “Roger was sure he could masturbate her better and refused to keep his hands to himself... At 32 years of age, Mirabel has never had sex. The toys in the bathroom might have removed the anatomical evidence of her virginity, but she can't believe a real person could love the sight and smell of her as much as the abstraction. She fucks in the tube.” (24:24–24:50)
  “He shakes a fistful of [linguine] in her face and she watches bits of bacon fly around the kitchen. Mirabel steps back as he moves toward her.” (25:55)

The Most Difficult Story to Write

(29:58) Gadsby explains which stories challenged her most:
- Emotionally: The Claire and Cameron stories, running parallel to her own and her brother’s lives.
- Writerly: “Once There Was A World,” about Clive, a man living with the grief of losing his sister in childhood. This piece underwent dozens of revisions and rejections before Gadsby finally included it.
  
  “Physically difficult, like from a writerly perspective is Once There Was a World... It has been revised probably 50 times... and I still think maybe that it's not exactly what I want to say about this feeling of walking around detached from the world when you lose someone.”

Upcoming Projects and New Work

(34:52–38:35) Gadsby discusses future writing:
- A forthcoming novel, Dreams of the Weary (Palimpsest, late 2027 or early 2028), about a mother and daughter navigating facial difference and agency in the 1950s–60s.
  
  “...inspired just by my son asking if there was anyone famous with Sturge Weber syndrome... explores autonomy and agency for people with differences...”
- Another story collection-in-progress:
  
  “Good people doing bad things.”
  - Story examples include a housekeeper faking injuries and a woman stealing from her Aquafit pool out of grief.
- Currently drafting a speculative novel about a massage therapist single mom balancing work, family, and morality.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Uncomfortable Art:

“I don’t think that any of us look at a body of water and get the same feeling... I want the experiences... to exist in a place that can belong to the reader as much as it belongs to the characters.” – Alison Gadsby (13:06)
On Female Power:

“When women refuse to sanitize themselves... it makes the men uncomfortable. And I live for that, I live for that... complete reversal of power.” – Holly Gattery (17:43)
On Writing Trauma & Discomfort:

“I have always had weird ideas swarm my mind... I didn’t really appreciate how much of my own sort of traumatic childhood was in the collection until it was finished and an editor looked at it.” – Alison Gadsby (03:31)
On Empathy for Imperfect Characters:

“The characters in this book sometimes do horrific things, but they’re not bad people.” – Alison Gadsby (05:26)

Timestamps for Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|------------------------------------------------| | 01:34 | Start of interview; introduction of collection | | 03:31 | Alison on origins and personal history | | 05:26 | Alison on discomfort & moral ambiguity | | 09:28 | Discussion of humanoid stories/worldbuilding | | 12:19 | Analysis of prose style and reader discomfort | | 17:43 | Power, unsanitized women, turning tables | | 22:33 | Alison reads from “The Deal with Roger” | | 29:58 | Hardest stories to write | | 34:52 | Upcoming works and novel preview | | 38:35 | Host’s closing words and endorsement |

Flow of the Episode

The conversation is candid, darkly humorous, and unafraid to feature “uncomfortable” truths about trauma, power, and the strange ways people move through the world.
Holly's tone is warm, direct, and unpretentious, matching Alison’s own willingness to discuss both craft and personal context with vulnerability and wit.
The episode digs deep into the ethics of fiction, the pleasure of disquiet, and the power of reading and writing about flawed, messy people.
Substantive excerpts from the book bring the tone of Gadsby’s work alive for listeners.

Takeaway

Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive is a fiercely original, psychologically astute collection that insists readers confront the unsavory, the ambiguous, and the raw spaces of human experience. Gadsby’s fiction—as showcased here—refuses to offer comfort, but it does offer rare honesty and empathy for the uncomfortable. For those seeking literary fiction that challenges and lingers, this episode and the collection it spotlights are essential.

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Transcript29 lines

[00:01]
A
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[01:34]
B
Hello everyone and welcome to nbn. I'm your host, Holly Gattery, and I am excited to be joined today by the excellent Allison Gadsby to talk about her collection of short fiction, Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive, which was just released with the excellent Also Guernica editions in 2026. Welcome to the show, Alison.
[01:57]
A
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to talk to you.
[02:00]
B
I am excited to talk to you, and I'm making a personal vow that I will not describe anything else as excellent for the rest of the show. Well, you've already said it twice. There's your quo vow. That's ridiculous. So many other words can be used to describe this collection of short stories. So for our audience, a woman learns to swim. A girl falls in Love with her teacher. A man hires a humanoid nanny. A woman is abducted by her trash collector. A dying mother recycles time. Connected stories that blur the lines between horror, speculative fiction and psychological realism, where characters struggle to stay afloat in the wake of childhoods they barely survive. Now, Allison Gadsby is a wonderful writer of so many different genres, but I am really excited that your first collection of short stories, because short stories are absolutely one of my favorite genres. Allison writes in Toronto, where she lives in a multi generational home that includes several dogs. Her writing has appeared in various literary journals including Blank Spaces, the Thames Review, the Ex Puritan, Blue Lake Review, and more. She is the founder and host of Junction Reads, a prose reading series. And you can learn more about her at Alison Gadsby Cat. Allison, let's dive right in and let's ask the question that anyone who reads this, store, this collection of stories, even one of these stories is probably going to be asking themselves, which is, where did this come from? Alice
[03:32]
A
I honestly, I would love to get a psychology degree just to understand that question. I don't know. I have always been weird. I have always had weird ideas swarm my mind. I didn't really appreciate how much of my own sort of traumatic childhood was in the collection until it was finished and an editor looked at it. But I am a swimmer. My kids are swimmers. Water has always been my kind of safe place, I guess. And so the collection itself has a lot of water, a lot of swimming, a lot of weirdness, a lot of darkness. And that I think, is just me. My, my psychology makeup is in this book.
[04:25]
B
When we were at the launch of this collection, you mentioned something you were working on now. And for our listeners, this is a really great example of the delightfully fractured nature of Allison's brain. I think you were talking about writing a story about a maid who kept keeps hurting herself to find like to uncover new ways to not have to do her job. And how that was inspired by you just saying, maybe I'll just like pull this cabinet over on myself so I don't have to fold laundry. And what I thought when you said that, other than like hilarity and what I felt, lon I was reading your book, this collection of short stories was that you are constantly saying the quiet parts loud and really loud. And a comment that you made during your book launch was that I'm paraphrasing, but you don't care if you make people uncomfortable. I want you to talk about that.
[05:26]
A
I mean, mainly I think I have a hard time with what the world, what society, polite society, defines as good and bad. What, you know, what is morality from a morality perspective, Good and bad. So I have a hard time with people being judged as one or the other. And the characters in this book sometimes do horrific things, but they're not bad people. And so I want to place the reader in an uncomfortable place where they have to consider themselves either as this. This, you know, traumatized or just horrific person, or they have to find another character with whom they can empathize, I guess. And it's uncomfortable to imagine yourself as either a bad person or a person potential. A person who has the potential to do horrific things.
[06:28]
B
And.
[06:29]
A
And that's it, really. I. I don't think that reading. I don't think that art. I don't think that anything that is worth anything should make people feel comfortable with the way their lives are being lived. And I just. This is my landline. I have a landline still. This is the landline answering a message that you can hear in the background. I just don't think that people should feel comfortable after they read something. I want. I want people to think more deeply after they finish.
[07:04]
B
I was having a conversation with someone recently about the. The. The breadth of my reading. What I mean is that I very publicly and gleefully read things like smut, but then I'll also read a lot of experimental poetry or academic nonfiction. I read everything. And I was saying that I love smut. I love dark romances. I love. I love the reads that make me feel like I'm sitting down with a pack of Bubblicious, right? And I'm one of those people that just probably my addictive nature will eat a whole pack of gum in, like, 10 minutes. Because as soon as it starts to even, like, show that is losing a little bit of that sugary goodness, I'll just shove another piece there. But after a while of reading that, I need to go back and read something else. Something that doesn't give me that serotonin hit. It's like, okay, I need something else now. And when I'm done reading those books, I don't necessarily feel like I've gleaned anything that makes me think about the world differently or that makes me a different person and hopefully even a better person, or at least a more awake person. That's. And again, that's fine. Like, some books are great for that now. When I was reading your book, I feel like my mind had split into about a dozen pieces and that I left your book feeling like a Different person. And one of the ways in which you did that. We start with that first story is through the use of these humanoids and my reactions to inhumane things happening to seemingly human but not human creations and then how that affected my response to what was the horrific things that were actually happening to humans. So let's start with the first story. The deal with Roger and this is an abusive humanoid partner and his, his wife told from the perspective of his wife. And quite frankly, not to beat this metaphor over the head, but you threw us into the deep end with that one. Let's talk about starting with that. And I adore for you to tell the audience a little bit about that story.
[09:28]
A
So the world in which fantastic forms, which is this corporation that makes these humanoid people in various categories from 1 to 5, with skills ranging from level 1 to level 10, level 1 being, you know, kind of a child form and level 10 being soldier, police officer form. So the world in which these fantastic forms exist is also a world where humans are extremely lonely and they purchase humanoids for various reasons, but because they're human, they grow tired of these humanoids. And so what doesn't exist in any of the stories, and I think there's a, there's four or five of them within the world of, of fantastic forms. What we don't learn explicitly is that when people grow tired of these humanoids, they just throw them into the welland canal, a body of water somewhere. And they do that when they're alive, when they're still kind of processing, I guess, as, as humanoids. And I wanted to imagine a reader being horrified at this kind of sociopathic behavior, if you can describe it that way. Again, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not a psychologist, but maybe I one day could be the idea that humans treat these humanoids terribly, that was kind of running through my head. And then I thought, okay, well what if, you know, somebody, either by accident or on purpose, gets a humanoid that treats them poorly? And that's where Mirabel came to be. She's a 6 foot 5, 250 pound woman who, you know, was always a big girl and her dad had very little confidence that she was going to lead a happy life, nevermind find a partner. And he finds this humanoid at a police auction. And I won't spoil too much of it because I'm hoping to read a little bit from there. But essentially this humanoid becomes tired of Mirabel and tired of this life that he's kind of been given. And really and truly with all of the stories in the collection, I want the reader to be sat in a very uncomfortable place thinking about how these characters choices are affecting themselves and affecting the people around them. And again, who is good and who is bad. In the context of what happens in the deal with Roger and the other stories where Humanoids exist.
[12:20]
B
Your writing style has a quicksilver quality. Everything is beautifully, immaculately, painfully described. It's like sitting under an interrogation lamp. Nothing is, nothing is too painful to be illuminated. But there is not a ton of sentimentality and not a ton of moralizing about what's going on. So I wanted you to talk about that, talk about your very singular style, because I've never read anything like it as much as you say George Saunders. George Saunders. No, George. George could not do what Alison Gadsby's doing. It is fascinating.
[13:07]
A
So I think I've always been struck as a reader and I, I have always been a reader. I, I don't, outside of, you know, the, the time when I was lost to either postpartum depression or other mental health crises, I've never not been reading something. And I am not an overly sentimental person in that I do not like writing that is overly metaphorical, that has this tendency toward describing everything as a, as a vision or as, as a kind of sensual experience. Because I don't think that any of us look at the sunset and get the same feeling. I don't think that any of us look at a body of water and get the same feeling. Again, the idea that water exists in this book, it's terrifying to so many people. I, I, it's probably more than half the population who would imagine me jumping into the middle of a lake and diving down as deep as I possibly can and coming up breathless. That's a horrifying image to some people. And so I want the experiences, the sensuality, the feelings to exist in a place that can belong to the reader as much as it belongs to the characters. And again, to kind of put the reader in a place of discomfort so that they kind of have to think about it. They have to think, why do I feel this way about this character? Why do I feel this way about that character? And I was on a walk yesterday with my sister, and she works at a large healthcare facility in the United States. And she said to me that she wants to tag the book alongside the American Psychology association because she felt, reading it, that it really is a psychological study of what I had said before, that these characters who are not one thing or another, and yet each of them in some way will make a reader feel one way or the other, and that no reader is going to feel the exact same way about Mirabel and Teresa the recreation manager and what they end up doing to Roger. Not everyone's going to feel the same way about Roger as I feel about Roger. And throughout the book, you know, the mother who recycles time, that's going to. That's gonna feel awful for a lot of people. You know, how could this mother kind of recycle a year in the life of her child just because she's afraid to die or afraid of the sadness her kid's gonna feel? And yet there will be a reader who says, yes, please, like, I, I would do that.
[15:59]
B
And I think this is why this particular collection would be an ideal book club read. Because one of the things I love about book clubs is seeing everybody react differently to exactly the same book and even discussing this book with people after you're reading. My 14 year old came home and read the story that you read from about the person kidnapped because it, she thought it was hilarious and dark and we had really different reactions to the story. She didn't like. She found your reading funny, but the story as a whole she found horrifying. Whereas I thought it was hilarious. I just thought the whole thing. I said to her, I think you have to live to like middle age to find it as funny.
[16:45]
A
I, I also think that you and I share the, the not, not welcoming of intrusive thoughts, but the understanding of intrusive thoughts. Right. We are, we are who we are as a result of the lives we've lived. But I think you and I both know that intrusive thoughts exist and they don't mean anything. They don't come into your head as reality. It's not realism for this, this woman to be in the trunk of a car and to not give a shit that she's going to die. But the intrusive thought is real, right? The I, the idea that I, Alison Gadsby AUTHOR, have. I've had that thought. I've had the thought of, you know, you. Yeah. Abduct me. Go ahead. I don't give a shit. I'm not afraid of dying. I'm not afraid of this life ending. Pass on, pass me a little bit of that serenity that I know I'm gonna get after death. And that's, that's just her. That's Claire, the character.
[17:43]
B
Well, one thing that's really great, I mean, a lot of things are great about Claire, but about the whole book, but really exemplified in this story is the way that women being. I was about to say messed up. It's not messed up. It's the way we are. But when women refuse to sanitize themselves to make themselves easier to look at, to digest, to hold, to smell, to love under a patriarchal view, it takes a moment that could be potentially humiliating and terrifying. Like Claire being abducted in her pants coming down as she's being pulled out of the trunk, and then making a comment about whether she waxes or not. And all like these things that could be humiliating. It. It makes. It's making the men uncomfortable. And I live for that. I live for that. Like, complete reversal of power. And a lot of that happens in the book. And I just really think that it's such a beautiful theme. We can see it in even one of the youngest characters in the book, the daughter whose father brings this nanny, teacher, nanny into their home. And the way that she takes back her power quite beautifully and unapologetically. And I'm not gonna spoil that, but I'd really like for you to talk about the reversal of power in this book. And again, for readers of the book, it's not going to be comfortable, but I think you're really gonna love it.
[19:11]
A
I hope so. I think the female characters, I tried to give this kind of I don't give a fuck mentality that they exist in this place that is. And I will say that they're messed up because especially Claire, she hasn't gone to therapy at this point. And Claire exists in a couple of other stories with her brother Cameron. Claire, in this story, hasn't spoken to her brother Cameron in a couple of years because he went to therapy. He got clean and sober and decided to no longer live immersed in the trauma that they were both drowning in. And so she. She, at this point, hasn't talked to her brother in a couple of years. She's messed up. She refuses to see that she's messed up. And she's also. I don't give a fuck. Like, I don't care if I die. I don't care that you see me naked. I don't care that my body's gonna be maybe cut up into tiny pieces and thrown into this field up north somewhere. And so that's what I wanted all of the characters to feel. There's a story at the end where a young girl does something horrific because she's in this place where she's like, I'm suffering. I'm in so much pain. I. There's no reason that anyone else should be having a happy life right now. It's not fair and I don't care. At the end of the day, you know, the repercussions of, of my actions. And maybe that's kind of a, a, a speaking point to the patriarchy. But also I don't want my characters to exist in response to anything, anything like that. I want them to exist kind of free of repercussions, free of the implications of their words and the fallout of their actions. I want them to just kind of be like, well, what am I supposed to do? That kind of thing. I hope that makes sense. Does it make sense?
[21:17]
B
And I felt that, I think that's why I felt that after reading this book that the world was full of possibilities again. Which sounds like a strange thing to say. I could just go out there and do messed up stuff. No, There is a point to which the external pressure is something I am manifesting for myself. Not completely, obviously there's tons of external pressure, but I can choose what it does to me for sure.
[21:48]
A
And I do that too. That's why, that's why I love characters who, who aren't like me. Like, I want characters who are like, yeah, so what are you going to do about it? Because that's not how I live. Right. I live in this place where it's like, oh no, what are you going to do about that? And I just want, I want my, my characters to be the opposite.
[22:12]
B
Well, it was a therapeutic read to me and you know, if somebody from a psychological association hears me say that, they might have some feedback they like pass on to me about what I should do or who I should talk to. Well, we're, let's give people, while we're on this topic, let's give people a taste of your book. Would you read to us from your collection?
[22:33]
A
Yeah. So I'm going to start. The deal with Roger is the first in the collection and I'm not going to read like I'm gonna drop a few bits of it at the beginning and I, I won't, I will or I won't indicate what I'm leaving out. So this is from the beginning. Mirabel wants to learn to swim, but she's been told her whole life she's just sank to the bottom and that swimming is not only a risk to her, but to the lifeguards who might have to retrieve her extra large body from the deep end of a pool. At 6ft 8 inches and 250 pounds, Mirabel has always been self conscious. But as the newest Partner at the country's largest forensic firm. She learned success comes with hard work and determination. She's tired of being told she can't do something. When Mirabel was 13 years old, her father bought Roger. She was already over 6ft tall. And after her only friend Shannon was shipped off to a boarding school for at risk youth, Mirabel had nobody. Roger was supposed to be the high school boyfriend, the high school prom date, the boy back home when she was in college, and the husband she introduced to people at work. If she ever found an employer who'd hire her instead of purchasing him new, her father went to police auctions until he found Roger, a 6 foot 7 humanoid who was erased and reprogrammed for reuse. It was clear what her father loved about him. He looked like Dolph Lundgren from the old Rocky movies. And because he was built without a penis, her father didn't have to imagine Mirabel using him as a glorified sex toy. The most Mirabel has ever done is have him lick her nipples while she masturbated. Even that was short lived because Roger was sure he could masturbate her better and refused to keep his hands to himself. At 32 years of age, Mirabel has never had sex. The toys in the bathroom might have removed the anatomical evidence of her virginity, but she can't believe a real person could love the sight and smell of her as much as the abstraction. She fucks in the tube. Roger can never learn to swim. Where are you going? Roger asks. Maribel is afraid to say because he'll want to come and watch her at the pool. She always worries his rage is escalating. She also worries his rage is escalating. He swears all the time, and when they were watching Housewives, he told Maribel he'd like to take a cold AR15 and kill them all. When he went into fantastic forums for the age upgrade, she mentioned it and the broken dishes. She also told the technician that he'd started to call her names, which she didn't at all enjoy, even if he was joking. I am here for you, he says. I know that. I'll be back before Survivor comes on. She says. I am here for you, he says. As in I have nobody else with which to distract myself. Do you want me to press pause? No, I don't want you to press pause. How many times have I told you? You lay one salami finger on me. Well, you do not want to know. I promise I won't be long. I spent all day cooking this fucking carbonara. For you. Roger lifts the lid on the pot and digs his right hand into the hot linguine. He shakes a fistful of it in her face and she watches bits of bacon fly around the kitchen. Mirabel steps back as he moves toward her. Roger, stop. This is not appropriate. He raises an eyebrow and slowly places the remaining noodles back into the pot and stirs it with a wooden spoon. Roger used to apologize when he crossed the line. He used to let her pause this program pauses program when she went to work. But he convinced her a decade ago that he could use the time during the day to make her life better. And isn't that what he was for? I'll be back before Survivor. Fine. Maribel slips her feet into a pair of flip flops and before she walks out the front door she feels something hit the back of her head. It's linguine, an egg. She leaves without turning around and picks all the bits out of her hair on the way to the pool. Her hips have been bothering her and her doctor warned her she needs to lose weight or hip replacement surgery will happen sooner than later. And then I'm just gonna skip ahead to the foot. The recreation manager informs her that she's been kind of jumped ahead a level and she's gonna need to swim a couple of times a week and she just knows it's not gonna work out at the pool. Mirabel explains to the recreation manager that she can't do the next level. Her husband is busy with work and she can't be out more than one night a week. Is everything okay? The recreation manager asks. Her name is Teresa. She isn't as tall as Mirabel, but she's tall enough that when she stands, her fingertips don't touch the desk. She wears a bathing suit under a tank top and blue jeans. Mirabel enjoys it when Teresa sometimes gets in the water after the adult lessons. Her face is the sort she'd describe as kind, bright smiling brown eyes that widen instinctively when she greets Mirabel or anyone at the front desk. The marionette lines around her mouth don't make her look sad, and she wears her long salty brown hair and two braids behind her ears. She has a dozen beaded bracelets on her left wrist, wrists that present various ocean species she wants to protect from the plastic that's killing them. It's fine, you know. It's just difficult. It only takes one person to ask Mirabelle if she is okay for her to start crying. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. It's just I've noticed how much you love the water. Your face lights up in the pool. I can't. I can't do this, maribel manages to say. I'm sure if your husband saw you here he'd figure out a way to make it work at home. Perhaps a babysitter. We don't have kids. Maribel takes the tissue the women offers and wipes the tears from under her eyes. You don't have kids. Then why, if you don't mind me asking, why can't you be out two nights a week? Roger doesn't like to be alone. Maribel sees the surprise, the shock maybe. Why doesn't he come with you then? He can't swim. You could swim last spring and look at you now. He can't swim because Mirabel almost says it, but she signs her name on the attendance sheet and turns to leave. Her father said only the most desperate people purchase a humanoid for companionship, and only an idiot would tell anyone they have one. I'll leave it there. She and Teresa don't end up doing good things.
[28:40]
B
No. Yeah, but that's why I like them. That's why I like them. It's so eerie. I love it. I love the threads of the eeriness. I love the detail. The. The things. The details like in this story, Teresa being tall enough that her fingers don't touch fingertips don't touch the desk. The detail in another one of your stories about one of the characters peeing in Tupperware, which apparently you know just from my research is a lot more common than I thought for women that are women who have peed in Tupperware. That's what I said. You're saying the quiet part. Loud constantly these intrusive, dark brilliant thoughts. And when I mean brilliant, I mean the gem like quality of brilliant. I don't always I don't mean that they're necessarily the smartest thing on on the level of like logic, but they feel like they're intrinsically brilliant insofar as they mirror I think what a lot of people feel, probably especially a lot of of women feel. My question for you next is about which one of these stories would you say was the most, let's say difficult for you to write?
[29:58]
A
I think emotionally difficult are probably the Claire and Cameron stories because they are not autobiographical but they live a life that is running parallel to my own and my brother's life. Physically difficult, like from a writerly perspective is once there was a world which is Clive is a writer living right now but in the Grief of losing his sister when she was, when they were younger and physically losing her. He was responsible for her and she disappeared while he was supposed to be watching her. And so he's now kind of, you know, trying to, he loses his keys all the time. He's, he's, he's just lost. And it all happens around the time that they, they find his sister and he just can't believe that it's her. That was a. Probably a seven year long process. I submitted it to. And I'll try and be as accurate as possible without exaggerating. I'm at 30 literary magazines at various stages of its, of its light, of its, of its vision, I guess. And it has been revised probably 50 times. I'm not kidding. And to the point where I almost didn't put it in the collection because I, I still think maybe that it's not exactly what I want to say about this feeling of walking around detached from the world when, when you lose someone. And I started writing it after my dad died and I couldn't, couldn't feel the grief that I felt. You know, the moment, the moment after he died, right? The, the, the hours and the days that I spent crying kind of came and went. And then I had this feeling of being completely detached from myself and unable to think about him, unable to think about my life, unable to think about anything, whether it was positive or negative. And that's kind of the feeling I wanted to, to express in that book or in that story. And I'm, I'm not entirely sure even now if, if I got that. If there's a reader out there who read that story and what I'm saying about that makes you feel like, yes, yes, you did do that, then I would love to hear it because that, that's where I felt like I, I faltered a bit.
[32:51]
B
Well, this reader thinks you, you've achieved that. And remember, say on the show all the time, everyone, my opinion is the only one that matters about book. Like anyone believes that. But no, I think, I think you achieve that. But I, I do understand as a writer what you mean, and especially when you're talking about how many revision processes it went through. I mean, I've been there and I think there's a certain point where we can't see the forest for the trees anymore. Like it's almost impossible for us to objectively look at the finished product that the story is now, which I think captures exactly what you hoped it would. But you're living every previous incarnation that perhaps didn't While you're looking at it like you're feeling and seeing things that me as a reader who'd never read this story before, that just encountered this, this draft that we're just draft this, this version. It's on draft that we have in the book. I see that very clearly. But I do understand carrying previous versions of stories or poems or whatever with us into what we're seeing now. I've absolutely done that. And I think a lot of the best poem or poem stories can be like that. I have a poem that was rejected for 10 years and then it won the New Quarterly's occasional verse award. Like after and after being rejected, like, I can't look at it without seeing every failed attempt to get out there. So I still went at one. I was like, why?
[34:16]
A
Yeah, yeah. Well, I have another story that's going to be in the next collection. And I submitted it, I think. I think only to three places. But I had already convinced myself that this particular story was going to be the once there was a world story, that it was never going to be accepted from anywhere because it wasn't ever going to quite do what I wanted it to do. But it just got accepted last week and, and got. Or a couple weeks ago and got published. So I'm like, oh, okay. Now I don't have to worry about Janie. I don't have to worry about that character anymore. She's got a home.
[34:53]
B
Speaking of homes and speaking about once and future characters, I know you have a novel coming out and I am in a privileged position because I actually know a little bit about it. But I'd like for you to tell our audience about what is coming out. So there's that what's coming out next year was one of the best projects presses in the world with exceptional taste, penult sets and you know, obviously best taste ever. But also what you're working on now, which I understand, you know, when we have a book published, we do still have to do some work with that or when we have a book accepted for publication. But if there's anything you're more actively working on in the beginning stages now that you'd like to share about.
[35:35]
A
So I'll. If I have time, I'll share the things. So the, the first is the collection that I. I alluded to at the launch, which is a collection of stories funny. I hope all of them are funny in some way because I am. Despite what you might believe, reading Breathing is how some people stay alive. I think I'm pretty funny. But the collection is essentially good people doing bad things. And the housekeeper doing, you know, little workplace injuries to get out of folding the laundry is one of the characters. There's a woman who's swallowed up by grief, but she goes to Aquafit every day and steals something from the pool. So they're just lit characters who are doing tiny little bad things. I am working. I finished a first draft and am working on a second draft of a book about a massage therapist single mom who lives with her mom and she. Semi autobiographical. No, it's not autobiographical. It's a speculative novel again, exploring good and evil in the world. And the novel coming out with palimpsest, either late 2027 or early 2028, is dreams of the Weary, which is a book about a mother and daughter. The daughter has a facial difference, as does my son. It takes place in the 50s and 60s and inspired just by my son asking if there was anyone famous with Sturge Weber syndrome. And I kind of just started writing this story, and it explores the idea of autonomy or not. The idea explores autonomy and agency for characters, for people with differences, facial differences and body differences. And how when the sideshows were shut down by, you know, wealthy disability activists and members of polite society, there was no consideration for the performers at a time when, for example, if you had a facial difference, like my son, for example, in, I think up to 1973, the. The law was on the books. If you were deemed ugly, you legally could not walk out of your house in public. And so the novel kind of explores the mom's. The mother's fear, not letting her daughter out of the house, hiding her away from the world, not letting her go to school. And the daughter, who is super intelligent and an extremely talented piano player is like, no, I don't. This is not the light. I don't want to be a seamstress in the attic of. Of this house. I want to live. And so it's the two kind of dual timelines exploring that time in history.
[38:35]
B
I cannot wait to read that book. And I can't wait to have you back to talk about that and whatever miraculous book you publish after that. I'm such a fan, you know that. And I encourage everyone. One. Yeah, of course. I encourage everyone to pick up Allison Gadsby's Wonderful. Now I'm saying wonderful too much. What I can never. Amazing, amazing, fantastic, Phenomenal. All of these things apply. And wonderful works because there is something wondrous about it. It feels like the most accurate thing when we think about that. The essence of wonder or awe. I feel that when I read your book, so I'm using it because it's accurate. Okay? I promise. Everyone Breathing's How Some People Stay Alive, which is published with Garnet Auditions, another wonderful publisher in Canada with excellent taste and I encourage everyone to get it. You can grab it anywhere books are bought or borrowed and for any input or insights into either Allison's or my my own mental states, maybe just eat a burrito, meditate on friendship and keep it to yourself. Allison, thank you so much for joining me today.
[39:47]
A
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