Each year, the Writing University conducts interviews with writers while they are in Iowa City participating in the International Writing Program's fall residency. We sit down with authors to ask about their work, their process and their descriptions of home. Today we are talking with Nathalie CHANG 張亦絢, a fiction writer and film critic from Taiwan!
Nathalie CHANG 張亦絢 (fiction writer, film critic; Taiwan) is author of the novels 愛的不久時：南特/巴黎回憶錄 [A Short Time in Love: Memoirs of Nantes / Paris] (2011); 永別書 [The Book of Farewells] (2015), which won the Rising Constellation of Twenty-first Century Award; and 性意思史 [Herstory of Sex] (2019), which won the Openbook Award and was the Mirror Weekly book of the year. She has won the Golden Tripod Award for Excellence in Columns and Commentary and is the author of the Column “Unexpected Taiwanese Films” in the National Film Center’s FA: Film Appreciation. Her participation was made possible by a grant from Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture.
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1. Do you have a plan or project in mind for your time at the residency?
Before I came to the residency, I was processing a fiction that made parallel between involuntary travel and rape—Of course I am on a free journey and it is nothing like my heroine in the fiction and gives me a lot of inspirations by contrast.
2. What does your daily practice look like for your writing? Do you have a certain time when you write? Any specific routine?
There are two wonderful periods of time for me to write in Iowa: one before 8:00 and one after 17:00, because the sunlight then is so tender and sublime. All I have to do is to concentre myself in the moment at a table around any beautiful corner in the street. To change the mood a little bit, I like to watch people walking and talking through the windows.
3. What are you currently reading right now? Are you reading for research or pleasure?
I am deeply touched by James Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice, which is my reading before bed, you know, Cain so insisted that his heroine ‘comes from Iowa’, it shouldn’t be random … Another work I have already read in translation is written by John Williams (1922-1994). Go Iowa, you could understand better Williams … I say often “any city we find Williams is a good city”, so Taipei and Iowa are both good cities for me (smile). I bought The 272 for research but I believe that I will find pleasure by the courage of the author, and to see someone overcome the difficulties of writing is always a pleasure.
4. What is one thing the readers and writers of Iowa City should know about you and your work?
I'm from Taiwan, an island where the important contributor of IWP, Hualing Nieh Engle (聶華苓), lived before she became one of the greatest writers. I could tell some stories about her in a bigger picture by this rapprochement … I am considered as a writer who dares everything about violence and erotism but when I read her works, I saw how far she had gone, and I can’t help myself from trembling … Where the politic failed, the literature stood up …
5. Tell us a bit about where you are from -- what are some favorite details you would like to share about your home?
Once I listened to an interview of Viet Thanh Nguyen, and he said that Vietnam is a country, not a war—— that made me laugh because we can say it’s almost the same for Taiwan. Although people often think of us when there is a war here or there in the world, Taiwan is more than a place of potential military conflicts. I am not only proud of our achievement of institutional democracy but our cultural democracy. We have many issues because of our historical complications, however, we have dealt with this situation through our experience、endurance and vigilance. We are so imperfect but never lost too much on the road of democracy. How we are conscious of our destiny instead of drunk deadly of illusion……That’s my personal concern and the reason I wrote about our democratic memories. By the way, I also wrote some love stories that made me seem less serious as a writer……however, I thought the love stories are more serious than everything else (smile)……because we have to make all the decisions ourselves and we don’t have the mentors forever……
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Thank you so much Nathalie!