Q&A with Cat Leeches, author of “Ichor”
Cat Leeches’s “Ichor” was published in The Offing’s Fiction department on July 30, 2018. Q&A conducted by Jax NTP, Assistant Editor, Fiction.
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Jax NTP: Does your nightly dreamscape ever enter your creative work?
Cat Leeches: My favorite stories and poems have always been dreamlike: blurry, atmospheric, and strange. And thank you for asking this question (and all the other Qs they’re terrific!)
“Ichor” is in part inspired by a dream I had repeatedly as a child. In the dream, a very tall woman would stand in the corner of my bedroom. I used to tell others that she was 9 feet tall, but how on earth would I know? I was too scared to ever approach her or ask. I remember her fingernails were very wide and long, nearly identical to a small dolphin carcass I had found on the beach by following its smell. It seemed very different than the rotting fish and seaweed that I was used to. I’m not quite sure how the woman and the dolphin became entangled in my head, but they are.
I’ve tried to write about the tall woman before, but this is the first story where it felt like she belonged. I guess maybe because I let her exist in her natural environment: a dream.
JNTP: National Oceanic and Atmospheric (NOAA) declares that we only know about five percent of the ocean. How does this bit of information add another layer to “Ichor’s” tropes and themes?
CL: I grew up near the Gulf of Mexico, and I can’t help but think of the ocean as the ultimate queering/blurring/distortion space. My relationship with the ocean is complicated. I’m still trying to understand it, and I think that comes through in this piece. But I’m apprehensive about answering any question that might impede on a reader’s relationship with a story? As a writer, I’m not sure that’s my place.
I’m in awe of the Gulf. I fear and desire it. Who doesn’t? It is one of the most diverse ecosystems in the hemisphere. But every day on the news we see oil spills, fracking, flesh-eating bacteria. We are destroying — or altering — something that is mysterious and vast. How is it pushing against us? How is it changing us in return?
I used to get so angry at tourists when they would say our beaches were ugly. That they smelled bad and the water was the color of shit. I used to stubbornly deny these charges. Even when the water was actually brown, I would have sworn on my life that it was bluish-green. Since then I’ve learned what we love can be polluted.
When I was a child, it felt like my whole life revolved around the ocean and in some ways, with this story, I think I’m trying to capture that feeling. Even though it feels impossible to capture or understand again. That part of my life is gone for better or worse.
JNTP: Do you have a favorite myth or lore about the sea? If so, can you share one?
CL: I’m not sure if it’s my favorite, since it caused me a lot of anxiety! But it’s something I’ve been thinking about quite often because I don’t even know where this belief came from. When I was a child, I believed that fish desperately wanted to escape the ocean and live on land. The easiest way for them to escape of course, was to swim up someone’s orifices and hitch a ride (so to speak).
I loved to swim and this caused me plenty of anxiety that was circular in nature. How would I know if a fish had gotten inside me? Would it itch or sting? Feel cool or slimy? Would it feel any different from the surrounding ocean water?
I wasn’t the only person who thought this. A girl at school once told me that a fish could only enter you if you weren’t a virgin anymore. And I’m not sure if that was meant to comfort or scare me. But it certainly amped up my anxiety. If a fish did get in, would it slide out in the bath? Do laps in the tub, loudly announcing to your entire family that you were a “whore?” Or maybe worse, would the fish never slide out at all? Would it rot inside you, an olfactory announcement, that let everyone around you know the kind of girl that you were?
I think my friends and I were aware, even as children, that we invaded an entirely different world every time we went swimming, and that by doing so, we risked being invaded by it. Each time we came out of the ocean we were a little bit different (yes, even if we remained fish free).
But I also want to mention books, which feel mythic and watery, and are filled with the kinds of distortions that I love:
Jennifer S. Cheng’s Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems.
Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl
Vi Khi Nao’s Fish in Exile
Moss Hope Angel’s Sea Witch Vol. 1, Vol. 2 (and I can’t wait to read Vol. 3)
JNTP: How do you balance editorial responsibilities vs. your own creative writing? In other words, does your editing eye change or remain the same?
CL: Black Warrior Review is the only thing currently getting me through 2018. There is so much cool fucking art being made. But I also think it is best to be honest — Editing is hard work, and I often choose it over my own writing. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I’ve always seen myself as a reader first. And I love how often my opinions are being challenged, and altered, about what literature and art even is. I think my time at BWR has made me more willing to take and appreciate risks when I see them.
I’m also completely in awe of the editors I work with, Wendy Dinwiddie, J. Taylor Boyd, Chase Burke, Elizabeth Theriot, and SELMS. Their passion for literature and this community is contagious. I can’t wait for y’all to be able to read the upcoming online issue and 45.2.
JNTP: Finally, who are you reading? Can you name your favorite writers; one dead and one alive?
CL: I shy away from using the word favorite! But there are two books that I carry around with me constantly at the moment:
Hiromi Itō’s Wild Grass on the Riverbank. Yes, its poetry, but it also feels like the best novel I have ever read.
And Unica Zürn’s The Trumpets of Jericho, published by Wakefield Press. This press is a complete gem and their whole catalogue is worth checking out.
Cat Ingrid Leeches lives in Alabama, where she is the current Editor of Black Warrior Review. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Passages North, Mid-American Review, The Collagist, and other journals. Follow Cat on Twitter @Lizard_Eyes.
