Colleen Anderson

Colleen Anderson lives in Vancouver, BC and has been nominated in poetry for the Pushcart Prize, Aurora Award, Rhysling, and Dwarf Stars Awards, and longlisted for the Stoker Award in fiction. She is a BC Arts Council and Canada Council grant recipient. Her writing has been published in multiple venues, including Polu Texni, Cascadian Subduction Zone, HWA Poetry Showcase and Space and Time. Her fiction collection, A Body of Work (Black Shuck Books) is available online. www.colleenanderson.wordpress.com

Get to know Colleen...

Birthdate?

April 27

When did you start writing?

I guess it all started with those banal 5-year diaries I had from about the age of 8. I still have them. I then explored poetry in my teens and started a novel in the theme of The Most Dangerous Game. Poetry was both the existential exploration of teenagerhood and coping with a not very happy family life.

When and what and where did you first get published?

My first published piece was a poem titled “Weathered Memories” in Carousel Magazine back in the mid 80s. Then it was a few more poems, followed by the story “Phoenix Sunset” in Tesseracts 3 in 1990.

Why do you write?

I have a pin that says, Write Hard, Die Free. I write because I must, to share strange worlds, because it keeps me sane and it hurts too much to stop. Sometimes the rejections hurt a lot but I can’t help myself and must keep writing.

Why do you write Science Fiction and/or Fantasy?

I was steeped in fairy tales and myths as a child and my older brother moved out leaving a collection of SF/F books. After the Nancy Drews and my mother’s novels there wasn’t much else to do but read them. Those and the dozen comic books that I read over and over. So I write in the genre (mostly) because there are fascinating permutations, the imagination stretched to new perspectives. We still touch on humanity and what it means to be alien. And because my mind just always wants to veer off the path and look at things askew. The what-ifs broaden the horizon.

Who is your favorite author? Your favorite story?

That changes so often, it’s hard to say. I love the way Angela Carter wrote. Jeff VanderMeer’s Strange Bird caught me in its otherworldness. I was very tied to Andersen’s “The Little Match Girl” when I was a kid. It’s a dark story and ends in death. I guess that was a sign. I also loved Ray Bradbury’s work. There are so many stories….

What are you trying to say with your fiction?

Different things, depending on the piece. Often it’s a morality tale. In poetry, it’s a twist on the common view or perception, another way to view a character’s or item’s place in the world. Sometimes it’s just to open the box a little wider.

If you could write your own epitaph, what would it say?

You think I’m gone, but I’m not.

Do you blog?

Yes, though it’s become far too infrequent and the pandemic has made it harder.

www.colleenanderson.wordpress.com