In the lead-up to the release of Hope: The Thing with Feathers, I’m going to be posting mini-interviews with my fellow ToC-mates! You can pre-order Hope: The Thing with Feathers here.
In “The Letter Writers” two part-human, part-bird children, born of a hawk larger than a man, are rescued from hunters by a cold-eyed man. But he has his own designs, and uses their blood and feathers to serve him as tools for writing letters for the patrons of his great city. But how much can the narrator’s brother sacrifice to protect her, and what of their own hopes for escape from captivity? This story is probably one of my favorites in this collection, and will appeal to anyone with a soft spot for Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities or the surreal magic of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.
Writing Question: Writing can be a tough profession, and authors of all stages tend to get “no” more often than “yes.” How do you cope with rejection?
Is it too on-brand to say that it’s a matter of keeping up hope? JK, JK. Actually, my goal is not to put too much energy into hoping for the eventual “yes,” since there’s no guarantee that will ever come… That sounds very defeatist, but I don’t mean my response that way. It’s more that recognition (in the form of story sales, or positive reviews, or just someone else complementing my work) is something outside of my control. Working on my fiction, finishing stories, even sending them out—those are all things that I can act on, but whether anyone likes my writing… well, it’s amazing when it happens, but I can’t center my relationship to my work around the chance of getting that rush. The act of writing, creating worlds and stories that I can disappear into, engaging in craft study and practice—that’s what I try to make my goal, in-and-of itself, so that my work feels meaningful to me, first, before I look for any outside validation. That’s the idea, anyway. I don’t always achieve that level of equanimity, but I keep trying.
Spec Fic Question: What’s the best SF short story you’ve ever read? What about it really spoke to you?
My personal favorite favorite is “An Important Failure” by Rebecca Campbell . It’s a heartbreaking story about luthiers and climate change and making peace with impossible dreams. I cry every time I read it. Despite that, and despite the grim vision of the future it paints, I think it’s a powerfully hopeful story, highlighting the way that humans can persist and find new ways to support each other, even as the world burns around them. It’s also stunningly written, and it folds in history and detail I never knew I wanted to learn about the science of building musical instruments.
Oddball Questions & Hope-related: Any life hacks you’ve learned that you couldn’t live without?
I’m not sure this this is a life hack, per se, but something I’ve particularly appreciated recently is my connection to a community of fellow writers. I really value the mutual support, encouragement, and understanding that comes from knowing people engaged in the same struggles, especially as it counterbalances the inherently isolating nature of writing and the anxieties that come from trying to carve your strange imaginings into coherent words.
Chloe Smith’s short fiction has appeared in Haven Speculative Fiction and Bourbon Penn, among other places. Her debut novella, Virgin Land, came out from Luna Press Publishing in 2023. She is a graduate of Your Personal Odyssey 2024 and a member of the Clarion Writers Workshop class of 2025. When she’s not writing, she works as a middle school teacher librarian. In past incarnations, she’s been a classroom teacher, a proofreader for Locus and Fantasy magazines, a barista, and a ballet dancer. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. You can find more information about her work at https://imaginaryresearch.wordpress.com/, and she is semi-active on Bluesky @chloehsmith.