Sense of the Strange: An Interview with Chloe N. Clark

Chloe N. Clark holds an MFA in Creative Writing & Environment. Her chapbook, The Science of Unvanishing Objects, was published by Finishing Line Press and her debut full length poetry collection, Your Strange Fortune, was published by Vegetarian Alcoholic Press. Her poetry chapbook, Under My Tongue, was published with Louisiana Literature Press in early 2020. She is founding co-editor-in-chief of Cotton Xenomorph. She teaches multimodal composition, communication, and creative writing. Her poetry and fiction have appeared such places as Apex, Bombay Gin, Drunken Boat, Gamut, Hobart, Uncanny, and more.

In Chloe Clark’s new short story collection, Collective Gravities, published with Word West, she takes us to the stars. She takes us to the zombie apocalypse and to mysterious research facilities. She frequently bends genre, putting horror side to side with sci-fi. It was a true joy to read Chloe Clark’s new collection, and I was privileged enough to have the opportunity to chat with her about the process of writing the book.

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Dana Diehl: Please tell us a little bit about how this book came to be.

Chloe Clark: On one level, there’s the simple answer: I had a lot of stories and wanted to collect them up. On the truer level though, I kept finding that I’d circle back to similar themes and ideas, often seeing them in different ways, throughout the course of my writing and so I began to see a collection taking shape based on those qualities. 

This collection spans ten years of writing: the oldest story in the collection was originally drafted while I was still an undergrad. Which is weird to think about because I now teaching writing to undergrads. So the stories in this piece have gone through a big, important chunk of my life.

DD: I see images repeat themselves in several your stories. The image of the bruised woman. Space travel. Mysterious illnesses. The images have different significance in each story. It was fun for me as a reader, because I felt like I was seeing alternate realities play out. It was also fun looking for the ideas that strung your stories together. How intentional were the similarities between your stories? How do you think reoccurring images might strengthen a collection?

CC: Often the similarities were very intentional, in my mind a lot of my stories exist within the same universe (or slightly altered versions of it). I’ve always loved writers whose work invites conversation between pieces (it’s a bonus for people “in the know” who have read the other stories and see the connections, and it also feels like a reader can see the world of the stories more fully). Sometimes, they were less intentional when I was writing the stories, but then when editing I’d see that I’d done it and it was because I had felt that the stories shared some connection. 

I’m a huge proponent of novel-in-stories, so I think that continuity strengthens and redefines the way we read the pieces when we notice the connections or when we go back for a reread. They feel somehow “truer” when there are those connections that help us see the story beyond just the one frame.

DD: Another prevalent theme I see in your stories is isolation. One of your stories, “Bound,” explores a plague that sweeps the planet and forces the speaker into isolation. As we do this interview, we’re approaching the third month of quarantine in the US. When I read “Bound,” I found it to have chilling similarities to what we are experiencing today. Have recent events changed the way you view these stories? Has quarantine changed the creative work you’re doing now?

CC: This is a multilayered question to me. I’ve always been fascinated by isolation and how it affects people. Many of my favorite writing and movies, growing up, dealt with this. In some ways, I think isolation is one of the ultimate human fears.

I think recent events have, if anything, made me feel more strongly about the need to deal with isolation in writing. I think voicing the fears and anxieties of isolation, for people, is important. Writing and reading help us feel less alone.

DD: So many of these stories take us into the stars. What draws you to outer space as a setting for your stories? 

I’m not sure I have a great answer for this. For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved space. The unknown and the thought of all that exploration that has yet to be done is so compelling. Plus, what has been discovered through the reach for space has been so important and profound.

In my heart, I’m a wanderer and what better to go towards than the stars?

DD: Is there a movie or novel that has especially fueled or inspired your interest in space?

CC: Oof, that’s hard to narrow down. But I think the main media of my childhood were three distinct space pieces of art: Ray Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles, the BBC radio production of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and the film Aliens. I think that mix actually kind of perfectly sums up my writing about space: A lot of hope and exploration, a distinct sense of delight, and a dose of fearing the unknown.

DD: In Collective Gravities, you explore a huge range of genres, from realistic fiction to science fiction, horror, and even zombie apocalypse. What do you like about playing with speculative fiction? What genres are your favorite to consume in your everyday life?  

CC: I think I think in multiple genres. It’s very hard for me to stick in one, even within the scope of a single piece. I’ve said before that I think speculative is how we live our lives—everyone has a sense of the strange about how they view the world and it makes sense to imbue our stories with that, too.

I read pretty widely. I’ve always had a love of sci-fi and horror, but I also read tons of domestic fiction and literary fiction. My favorite writers tend to be the ones who have feet in every genre like Colson Whitehead, Helen Oyeyemi, and China Mieville.

DD: In your bio, you mention that you have an MFA in Creative Writing & Environment, which is a degree I didn’t even know existed! What is your relationship with the environment and space as you’re working through a story?

CC: It’s a very cool and unique degree, from Iowa State University, that I wish more people knew about!

I think environment is extremely important to every piece I write—because environment encompasses so much: it might be a small town, but it also applies to the reaches of outer space or a haunted apartment building. Place influences character and story as much as any other element. 

We all have places that center us—be it our homes or a spot that makes us feel something. And I think that’s true of most good works of fiction too—there’s some distinct sense of place that makes the reader understand or feel the piece in a way. 

Because I’m a very visual writer, I usually know exactly what a story’s environment looks like. But I also hate describing that stuff in too much depth—because I want the reader to have input in the place they conjure up as they read. So one thing I always try to be cognizant of is finding the key detail that brings me into an environment and that’s what I’ll include. Sometimes I know that key detail right away, but it’s often one I eventually find in revision and pull into the forefront as I strip the other details away.

DD: One of my favorite lines in this collection can be found in “The Collective Gravity of Stars”:

“’Well, everything will be better now,’ her mother said. Callie wondered if anyone had ever said that and watched it come true.”

For me, this line captures the way your stories seem to pendulum-swing between pessimism and optimism. However, they tend to more often than not end in a moment of hopefulness, of light. Can you speak to this

CC:  I often describe myself as an optimistic pessimist. I think there’s a lot of importance to knowing and understanding how much is flawed and terrible about this world. But hope is equally as important, because that’s what helps us strive to actually make change.

And from a storytelling perspective, I think pessimism has its place, but it’s a lazy device. Hope is an active choice to be made and that’s far more exciting to me.

DD: If you could take off into outer space with your characters, where would you most like to go?

CC: Honestly, I’d be overjoyed just to go to space at all. But if I had the means to go anywhere, I think Mars would be a good start. There’s such a build up of Mars in my head from all of the sci-fi of my youth that imagining feeling the ground of Mars beneath my feet would be as close to living inside my dreams as I could get.