By Verónica Ordóñez ||
Refractions is Glass Mountain’s monthly interview series. This month, Verónica Ordóñez speaks with Wafa Kazmi, a recent graduate of the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program.
1. What is your favorite underappreciated novel?
My honest answer is Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke. At my fourth grade Scholastic Book Fair, Igraine had sold almost no copies (some cruel person had set it up next to the Percy Jackson series–it barely stood a chance) and my mother was so overcome with pity for its low sales that she made me buy it instead of the cool light-up pen I wanted. I begrudgingly read it on the car ride home and had fallen in love with the whimsical fantasy by pretty much the second page. It’s a short feminist coming of age adventure with castles, magical forests, and beautiful illustrations. It’s a warm hug of a book that I never get tired of re-reading.
My literary answer is Fantasia by Assia Djebar. It’s a short yet stunning read following an Algerian girl’s journey to the liberation movement against French colonialism.
2. What does literary success look like to you?
I’m 21 with no real successes under my belt, so I’m not sure I’m qualified to answer. But I think literary success happens when your work offers something important that hasn’t been offered before. When lines you wrote keep running through people’s minds long after they’ve put your work down because they’ve been moved in some way.
3. What is your writing Kryptonite?
Once I settle into a fictional universe, I have a hard time writing my way out of it. A lot of my stories tend to get stuck on the same characters/voices/setting and it’s hard to figure out which plotlines in that universe to pursue or let go of. I have a horrible, horrible habit of re-writing the same story but with three or four different versions instead of picking one draft to revise fully, and then I get so sick of the story that I jump into another fictional universe and the cycle starts all over again. When I was an undergrad, I was so happy that my fiction professors made us stick to one story for the entire semester, and for a moment, there was a flash of hope for my commitment issues. Then I graduated and fell back into my old ways.
“When lines you wrote keep running through people’s mind long after they’ve put your work down because they’ve been moved in some way.”
4. What writers/mentors have had the biggest impact on your life and writing? How have they helped you become a better writer?
I owe a lot to Dr. Hayan Charara, who mentored me throughout my research and writing projects at UH. It goes without saying, but Dr. Charara is an incredibly talented writer with a wealth of knowledge, and I’m grateful I get to learn from him. He taught me how to craft impactful stories, how to balance political/cultural topics in my work, and how to research and write ethically. His advice, not only on technical writing skills but on life itself has been invaluable. Dr. Kimberly Meyer is another mentor I am so grateful for. From introducing me to other incredible women writers in Houston to guiding me through working with refugee populations, she’s helped me find my footing as a writer in many ways.
5. Have you read anything that made you think differently about your genre?
Dubliners by James Joyce opened my eyes to the structural potential of literary short stories. The stories in Dubliners are more like photographs than movies: they vividly describe brief moments rather than track big sweeping changes. Whatever changes or movements that happen in the stories are small, usually not impacting the main character in a grand or obvious way. The stories are in a sense structurally paralyzed compared to traditional fiction plot shapes, and in this way mirror the theme of emotional paralysis explored throughout the work. Prior to reading this collection, I assumed that tailoring a work’s shape to its message in a non-gimmicky way was something reserved for poetry, but Dubliners showed me how to explore those avenues in fiction as well.
6. What does your creative process look like?
Usually, I’ll have one vivid element of a story, whether it be a setting, a line of dialogue, or a character. I’ll start the story with whatever element I have, and then I’ll write whichever scene pops up next in my head; I don’t think I’ve ever written a story chronologically. If I hit a roadblock, I find that talking about the plot out loud to someone else helps immensely. Creating bullet lists and diagrams helps in dire moments too. Other times, if I’m starting with a blank brain, I find that documentaries, podcasts, newspaper clippings, and interviews on YouTube are great places to get inspired. I also get very vivid and very plot-driven dreams, and I’ve started writing them down as soon as I wake up so I can exploit my subconscious for creative content later on.
7. What has been your hardest piece to write? Why?
For my senior thesis, I wrote profiles of Iraqi refugees who had been impacted by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There were a lot of times during the interviews I was conducting where keeping a professional emotional resolve became pretty much impossible. One of the interviewees had witnessed a massacre of Iraqi civilians by American soldiers and began to weep when describing what a young girl had seen happen to her mother. Another had lost countless family members. Another had seen her father tortured. The interviews were often scheduled back-to-back and by the end of the day, after hours of discussing the gruesome realities of war, it was difficult not to feel drained and jaded by the world. I had to remind myself to remember the warmth and hope the interviewees held on to; nearly all of them mentioned repeatedly that despite all they had been through, they felt they had blessed and luck-driven lives. I learned so much about patience, resilience, and the beauty of human connection through that project, and I’m grateful the lessons didn’t come easy.
“I learned so much about patience, resilience, and the beauty of human connection through that project, and I’m grateful the lessons didn’t come easy.”
Wafa Kazmi is a writer from Texas. She was a 2019 Mellon Fellow and is a JD candidate at Washington University in St. Louis.
