Kirsty Logan: 'Place isn’t just an arbitrary pin in a map: it’s integral to the narrative'
BY Emily Powter-Robinson
4th Sep 2024
Kirsty Logan is the author of three novels, three short story collections, and a memoir. Her latest books are the novel Now She is Witch and The Unfamiliar: A Queer Motherhood Memoir. Her books have won the Lambda, Polari, Saboteur, Scott and Gavin Wallace awards. Her work has been optioned for TV, adapted for stage, recorded for radio and podcasts, exhibited in galleries and distributed from a vintage Wurlitzer cigarette machine.
We’re delighted to be welcoming Kirsty to our tutor team. She will lead our new six-week online Writing Gothic & Supernatural Fiction, delving into the strange and uncanny.
We caught up with Kirsty to discuss what first sparked her love for the strange and uncanny, reimagining fairytales and folktales, the inspiration behind her witchy novel Now She is Witch, and what she enjoys about teaching creative writing.
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
I always wanted to write but I didn't think people like me could write books. I didn't grow up in particularly difficult circumstances – I was solidly middle-class, not wanting for anything but not wealthy either. But I didn't know any writers and I don't think I met a writer until I was 16, doing my English Higher (Scottish A-levels), when my fabulous teacher Mrs Deans took us to hear Edwin Morgan read. That's so precious to me now as it was one of the last events he did before he died. He was an incredible poet, a vital part of the Glasgow literary scene, and an important part of LGBTQ+ history.
Where did your love for the strange and uncanny originate from?
I was a strange, spooky child who loved living in dark, fantastical worlds. In the late '80s and early '90s, when I was starting to read for myself, there was a trend for creepy children's books – Point Horror, Goosebumps, The Little Vampire, a series I now can't remember the name of about a vegetarian vampire. I loved them all.
I used to make up one-woman (or one-girl, I suppose) plays and force my poor family to watch them. Then as a teenager I wrote terrible poetry and got my dad to read them. A huge part of my writing life now is built on my family's support even in those early days, and particularly my dad, who always took my writing serious even when it was clearly awful. All teenagers want is to be taken seriously, and that meant a lot to me. He died before my first book was published, and I know he'd be so proud if he knew that creepy, thoughtful child he always supported now gets to write those stories all day.
Your latest novel Now She is Witch tells the story of two women who join forces to take their revenge on a powerful man. What first gave you the idea to write a story about witchcraft?
I was brought to writing about witches by the idea of the ‘perfect victim'. For a long time, witches were thought of as evil creatures who made pacts with the devil and ate babies. Then they were reclaimed and cast as innocent healers and midwives who never did anything wrong.
But I wanted to ask: why do they have to be wholly innocent or wholly evil? Does it have to be as simple as villain or victim? Witches show us that the world is more complicated (and indeed more beautiful) than a simple binary.
The settings of your novels and short stories range from real life places around the world to alternate realities and fictional lands. When you’re planning a new novel, do you often start from a setting?
I love to write about place. I don’t think I’ve ever written a setting that didn’t matter to the story. For me, place isn’t just an arbitrary pin in a map: it’s integral to the narrative. I think this is because I've never felt quite right, wherever I am.
I was born in the Midlands to a Scottish family, so I was always aware that I wasn't really 'from' where I lived. Then as a young teenager we moved to Glasgow where most of my family are from, but with my accent it was clear I wasn't really 'from' there either. I've been in Glasgow for almost 30 years now and it's very much my home, and where I consider myself to be from – but my accent clearly says otherwise. I think writers tend to be observers, never completely comfortable, never completely in the room, always overthinking and observing. Although it's not always a relaxing way to be, I do think it hones those observational skills very well.
Why do you think that readers are so drawn to reimaginings of folk tales and new takes on beloved supernatural creatures? And do you have any advice for writers planning to remould these tales in their own voice?
As a child, I don’t remember being especially interested in folktales and fairytales, at least not over and above any other stories. Like many children I had collections of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, and I read them along with my tales of giant peaches, Egyptian gods, and the Faraway Tree. But as an adult I was drawn back to them, and was shocked and thrilled to find that the pretty tales I remembered were full of sex, death, gore, loss and betrayal.
Now, every time I read a fairytale I get something new, and there’s a good reason for that: these tales will always be relevant to our lives because they were originally told that way. They weren’t meant as fun little stories; they were folktales meant to guide us, meant to show us our world and the people in it. They show us how difficult the world is, and go some way to making sense of it.
There’s an eternal relevance to fairytales: the father in a fairytale is my father, your father, everybody’s father. A heartbreak in a fairy tale is mine, is yours, is everyone’s. Fairytales might not seem relevant to us on the surface. We don’t live in the woods or a castle. We’re not huntsmen or princesses. But like any mythical tale, even when the details don’t connect, there’s always an emotional truth. Love, death, parental guilt, the desire to make something of ourselves: these situations ring with every generation.
This is also why I’m so drawn to fairytales as a writer. How do you tell a timeless tale? How do you take the deeply personal specifics of your life – your grief, your despair, your triumph – and make them connect with anyone, anywhere, anytime? You write a fairy tale. A gory, bawdy, unpredictable, bizarrely logical fairy tale.
My advice is to take what feels relevant and interesting to you from these stories, and leave the rest. There's no need to drag the prejudices or binaries of the past into the present. Fairytales and folktales are meant to change and evolve; they were never meant to stay static. They should teach us, not about the past, but about the world we're currently living in.
Alongside fiction writing, you have also written your memoir The Unfamiliar: A Queer Motherhood Memoir. What was the most challenging part of writing about your real life?
Going back to difficult times and figuring out how to make them palatable and understandable to total strangers. It's hard to write about physical pain or anxiety because they're so real and immediate in the moment, but aren't necessarily logical or easy to convey after the fact. I did find the whole process very cathartic though, and I'm glad I wrote it.
Do you have any gothic or supernatural books on your ‘to be read’ pile that you’re really excited about?
I have these proofs of forthcoming books on the pile and I'm excited to get to them. There's a feast of night-side writing ahead of me!
Idle Grounds, Krystelle Bamford
Curdle Creek, Yvonne Battle-Felton
Old Soul, Susan Barker
Feast While You Can, Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta
Ghost Story, Elisa Lodato
Carrion Crow, Heather Parry
Blob: A Love Story, Maggie Su
We Are All Ghosts in the Forest, Lorraine Wilson
We’re so excited about the Writing Gothic and Supernatural Fiction course. What was your favourite part of creating the course?
Imagining all the incredible dark, strange and spooky books that will be written by students on the course. Helping to bring more beautiful weirdness into the world makes me so happy.
Some of the books linked in this blog can be found on our Bookshop.org shop front. Curtis Brown Creative receive 10% whenever someone buys from our bookshop.org page.