Before we enter the interview itself, I would like to take a moment to express how impressed I am by Ailanthus’s writing. At the time of the interview, I had only read some of their nonfiction and blog. Now, when this blog posts, I have read and reviewed The Elf, the Dwarf, and the Telegraph. The story is timely, thought provoking, and the sort of story I’m still pondering over long after finishing it. I encourage anyone looking for literary fantasy with a historical flare to check it out!

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I had the wonderful experience of interviewing author and naturalist Caroline Ailanthus, over Zoom. Here is a transcription edited for ease of reading.

We began our conversation with a fun back and forth on the correct pronunciations of Ailanthus before delving into the more literary questions.

Arlo Z. Graves: would you mind giving a brief overview of your writing history?—think a mini biography like we might see on the back of a book.

Caroline Ailanthus: If I could remember it, I would recite my mini biography from the back of my book. I’ve been a writer my whole life. My mom has pictures that I drew that we know are illustrations of stories because I dictated the story to her…so I’ve been writing longer than I’ve known how to write. I decided I wanted to do it professionally when I was twelve, and I’ve been obsessed with getting better at it ever since.

I broke into print in my late teens and then again, more consistently, in my early twenties. I’ve also been obsessed with other things, but writing has been the through-line. I now have three and a half novels out, a bunch of blogs, and I’ve done some freelance work, mostly without a byline. You might have read my work and not even known it.

Note to the reader: Ailanthus’s blog is excellent, and can be found here.

AZG: You said that you started when you were twelve. Was there a specific event that happened around then? A specific story? What was the starting point?

CA: Kind of two things. I forget which happened first. One was that I realized, grown-ups weren’t allowed to spend their time telling people about their imaginary friends, unless they’re writers…

AZG: I never thought of it that way—that’s brilliant!

CA: That part was very strategic on my part (laughs). I read a collection of essays called Jaguars Ripped My Flesh by Tim Cahill. He’s a wonderful essayist. The name of the collection is very tongue in cheek—no actual flesh ripping is involved. He’s one of the founders of Outside Magazine, so he has all these cool stories about doing things outdoors. His job might be ‘go learn how to hang-glide and write about hang-gliding badly,’ and I thought: well, that sounds like a lot of fun. And I realized writing can also be a way for grown-ups to do cool and whacky things for the fun of it and then tell other people about it. So, I want to do that.

AZG: Have you done any whacky things for writing?

CA: Yes and no. I’ve never been in a position where someone was willing to pay me to go do things like that, but I’ve definitely done things like told my husband: ‘bye! I’m going hiking now, I need to do research for a novel!’ I’ve definitely been able to talk to people I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to talk to. Like emailing the Jane Goodall Institute and being like: ‘I’m writing this novel, and I need to know about ape behavior, can I pick somebody’s brain?’ And they said: ‘sure.’

For another book, I emailed the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and said: ‘hi, I’m writing this book, and I really need to know if, in this (fictional) scenario, if all the reactors in the country would melt down or not.’

A very nice man got back to me—it was his job to handle these sorts of questions. He listened to my scenario and said: ‘nah, they could get them shut down in time, you’re good!’

AZG: Oh, that’s cool!

CA: Yeah!

AZG: Is that for a book that’s in print that I can direct people towards?

CA: Yes! It was for Ecological Memory but also applies to Bifurcation Events. Both are set in the aftermath of the collapse of civilization, due to a global pandemic, by the way. I wrote this before covid, which was interesting. Like: oh, that’s what this looks like.

The (pandemic) in the books is worse and shuts down civilization. I had worked out, mathematically, how long it would take for enough people to be sick at the same time that everything would just sort of collapse, and at what point it would become obvious that was going to happen. So, I had a window of time in which people could do things like initiate cold shutdowns of nuclear reactors. So, the question was: could it be done this quickly? And it could. So, I didn’t have to work nuclear disasters into the backstories of either book…so that was great!

AZG: That’s something I’ve never thought of, but of course (shutting down reactors) would be a thing.

You have your masters in conservation biology. I know you write creatively on the topic, but I’m curious if you write creative nonfiction, or nonfiction on the topic, and if so, how it is similar or different, from your fiction.

CA: I manage a blog about climate change that, among other things, covers scientific topics, including a lot of things I learned in grad school. Some of my freelance writing has also been related to that. I guess that would fall under the heading of Popular Science writing. It doesn’t differ so much from creative writing, especially my creative writing. When I talk about science, I talk about science. I don’t just add sciencey language, I really do it, because that’s one of my special interests.

You take the core scientific topic that you’re talking about and does that grow into the population crisis among the mysterious Derger people or does that turn into why it’s really important you don’t use chemicals on your lawn because we’re losing fireflies and that’s part of their habitat. So, it’s just which direction you go from the common idea.

Stylistically, it’s not as much of a difference as you’d think. One of the greatest writing teachers I’ve had—Charles Curtin, my thesis advisor, if you’re looking to read some serious science, check him out—he thought he was teaching me to do science writing, and he was, and he did, but my creative writing improved leaps and bounds with what he taught me.

He thought he was teaching me to do science writing, and he was, and he did, but my creative writing improved leaps and bounds with what he taught me. He taught me to figure out what I was talking about first.

Once you know what you’re talking about, figuring out how to tell someone else about it isn’t that hard, but you have to figure out what you’re talking about first. He taught me how to do that.

AZG: Pivoting a little, but you write a lot about fantasy food. I’m going to show my hand here and say I’m obsessed with that. I’m not very skilled in the kitchen but I love eating food. I’d love to hear more about that. Do you come up with food ideas and then make them? Do you make them and then put them into the fantasy world? What does the process look like?

CA: The fiction comes first. Partly, I’m aware people like to read about food, but more so, food is such a nexus of worldbuilding. You’ve got culture, economics, geography, technology, all of those things impact how and what people eat and what they think about food.

When I want to make sure the reader gets an immersive experience, I could give them a fifty page treatise, or I could describe a meal. I started drinking chicory tea in the morning because my characters in Ecological Memory do that. Because, you know, civilization crashes, there’s no more coffee. This time, with the elf books (The Elf, the Dwarf, and the Telegraph), I’ve jumped into it a lot more because it’s a high fantasy, an entirely fictional world. And I wanted it to be culturally diverse. So, I have multiple cultures, each of which has their own cuisine, and within each culture there are different social-economic brackets where everyone eats differently. I really wanted to know what that was like.

I tried cooking some of them and some of them worked, some of them didn’t. I got more and more into worldbuilding and more and more into cooking, and it’s just sort of turned into a monster. Now I’m preoccupied with cooking these different foods and figuring out like, what’s the difference between phyllo dough and puff pastry and can I make either of them? I’ve never approached (cooking) in such an exploratory way before.

It’s a dramatic expansion of a long-term interest that’s happened because I started worldbuilding on a level I hadn’t before, with food, on a level I haven’t before.

AZG: And this is for The Elf, the Dwarf, and the Telegraph?

CA: Yes.

AZG: Are you willing to talk about the three different cultural foods (in the books)?

CA: Very little of it (worldbuilding) ends up on the page. You get the tip of the iceberg in the text. The reason I can do that is: I know where the rest of the iceberg is.

There’s more than three of them. There’s five or six of them. The cuisine I’m developing the most is the one from the culture most of my characters belong to. The dominant ethnicity in the Empire. The Itarye. The ye ending is adjective form of a place. They’re analogues for Rome, so I’ve been reading a lot about ancient Roman cooking online. There’s a surprising amount of information about it because there were Romans who wrote cookbooks, and we still have them in many cases.

Itarye people’s primary meat is goat meat rather than beef. They will not eat pork, they think it’s gross. There’s a flatbread I’ve been making that’s loosely inspired by Indian Naan, and it’s part of Itarye cooking. I’ve started using spices and ingredients I’ve never used before like fish sauce. I’ve been putting it in everything.

There are no New World ingredients (in the setting) like tomatoes and potatoes. One ingredient I never thought of as being New World is round beans. Those are the beans I’m most familiar with: kidney beans, black beans, they’re all round beans.

AZG: I am learning things today!

CA: They are completely different than European broad beans. Round beans and broad beans are really no more alike than beans and peas are. They’re just fellow legumes.

AZG: Mind blown.

CA: Seriously! I’ve been cooking with lima beans, which I never tried before. And it turns out, they’re great! I got some venison and made venison jerky. I made a stew involving lima beans and venison jerky, Greek olives, fish sauce, of course, white wine, and dried figs, and you serve it with this naan-like yeast risen flat bread, and it’s so good! It doesn’t taste like anything you normally get in America. It tastes like some newly discovered ethnic food. Like hey! I’m eating Itarye food! I made it up! (Laughs).

AZG: I’m into it, that’s so cool (also laughing).

I have a couple of writing craft questions. Your writing has such a sense of immediacy, and the language is so active. For me, learning to write in an active voice took a lot of work. Have you had to train yourself to write in such an active voice, and if so, do you have any tips for people learning to write in an active voice?

CA: Some people will say: ‘oh, the passive voice is bad,’ and it’s not. Knowing which one to use when (active or passive) and why does require some thought. I don’t think I ever had an issue using passive voice too much. I did have an issue with using overly-complex sentences and using unnecessary stylistic curly-cues. I got introduced to Ernest Hemingway’s work in high school, and while I never wanted to mimic him, exactly, I did want to become good the way he was good. That meant dropping the curly-cues.

My teacher and friend, Charles—whose work you should check out—he really focused on that with me. One of the things he did, was he decided he wouldn’t read an email more than two lines long. And he didn’t! So, figuring out what you need to say in as few words as possible is really helpful. Focusing on what you’re trying to say and how quickly can you say it.

When you take the unnecessary goop out of your writing, even the parts that you think are your style, your writing gets a lot more immediate and a lot stronger, which isn’t just great for academic work, it’s really great for fiction. You get yourself out of the way.

AZG: I love the juxtaposition of deep worldbuilding and ‘say it in as few words as possible.’ That’s lovely.

I am curious if you are a plotter, a pantser, a discovery writer, or something else?

CA: I tend to refer to myself as a nonlinear pantser. I start out with something that could be an outline. I get an overview of the story, characters, main points and maybe the last scene. Imagine looking at a map out of focus, and you’re dialing it in until you get clearer focus. I discover things as I write, sometimes major things, like the entire point of the book. I don’t go: ‘I have to do it this way because the outline says it goes this way.’ The book is revealing itself gradually, but for me it happens largely out of order or as an overview. I do less moving from beginning to end and more moving from general to specific.

AZG: Research has come up several times, of course. Do you go about research differently if you are going to be using it for a fiction vs nonfiction piece?

CA: Going about the research is going to be very similar but documenting it is going to be different. If it’s nonfiction, I have to cite my sources, there are rules about how you do that, so I’ll need to keep track of the information and where it’s coming from. In a nonfiction context, I’m not allowed to make anything up. In fiction, I am allowed to make things up. If I can’t remember where something came from, or if it’s not reliable, I’ll call that the fiction part. With fiction, I can use more questionable sources. In some contexts.

If my characters are going to be talking about the species area curve, THAT has to be right. That has to be the same as if I were writing nonfiction. But if it’s if Roman posca was alcoholic or not, Itarye posca can be nonalcoholic because I said so.

AZG: Tangenting off of the research question, I’m interested in what went into your book, To Give a Rose? The era it’s set in is still so untapped. I’ve read very little fiction set in the Stone Age.

CA: To Give a Rose isn’t in the Stone Age because they’re not using stone tools yet. They ARE using tools, but it’s twigs, bits of grass, pieces of bone, the kind of technology that modern chimpanzees use in the wild.

It is hard to wrap your head around how long ago this was.

Anyway, when I started the project that would become To Give a Rose, I hadn’t been to college yet, so I had to figure out how to find information, and even what information to look for. So, for example, my characters belong to this apelike species called Australopithecus afarensis. How did they act? How did they think and feel? Well, I figured their closest living relatives are humans, chimpanzees, and bonobos, so I decided to just sort of triangulate. So I went to the nearest university library and read their whole shelf on ape behavior. I read some anthropology, too. I contacted the Jane Goodall Institute and picked their brains. And I just tried stuff. Like, how do you dig a hole if you don’t have a shovel? Turns out one of the best things is an ungulate leg bone.

For Elf, (the research) was reading everything I could about William Tecumseh Sherman. He is my current special interest, so he makes me giggle.

If you’ve made it here, please let me welcome you once more to check out Caroline Ailanthus’s website and their work here(The Elf, the Dwarf, and the Telegraph), here( To Give a Rose), here(Bifurcation Events), and here(Ecological Memory). I am so glad to have met them, and it was an honor to interview them.