Zilla Novikov
658 Luftballons St
Kitchener (neé Berlin)
Ontario, CanadaDear

Katharine,

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Yes I would like to do an interview it seems VERY COOL INDEED. Those interviews you've got up look RAD AS HECK.

I self pub and I work with Rysz who is fully amazing and I know that presses are just people who are probably as unhinged as I am (/affectionate), but I still feel the pull of "SENPAI NOTICED ME" when press people notice me.

My biggest line is that I keep my meatspace self separate from Zilla Novikov in public forums. You can ask anything but I will veer away from things which would break that line. That said, there are literally billions of people in the world, and it's surprisingly easy to say things about myself without giving away incriminating details.

My friends keep saying that I should save for retirement because I live in the Global North, we'll still have a society by the time I'm old enough to retire, climate change will decimate the Global South in 10 years but we've got 30 here. If the fascists don't get me before then. People like me are the first with their back against the wall, or at least early in the line. All Jewish children grow up playing the game "who would hide me when the fascists came". It's hard to work for the future, sanding boards or saving money, if we don't have a future. But you've got children so you don't have the luxury of nihilism. Children are an investment in hope.

I don't have children but I don't think that needing to exist makes you a monster. A toddler wants you to exist only for them, but as an adult, it becomes a cruelty to have another adult who defines themselves solely around you.

I dread not hearing from you?

--Zilla Novikov (she/her)

Katharine Blair
stockpiling sawdust
Somewhere near the coast

Zilla,

Yeah, there's a real tension about visibility, isn't there? People buy our books and I'm elated but also exposed. I like to keep my own part at an extension then I'm typesetting an acknowledgments page with my name in it and it's hard not to feel a flash of excitement followed by the tug of another stitch marking my place in the world.

I'm staunchly private about my irl life, family, and location by default so no worries there. I am, as I've mentioned, only tangentially (reluctantly) real.

The questions are still incoming though it turns out that my technique of taking pictures of the pages I liked in an effort to avoid getting sucked back into the book has utterly failed. Every, 'let me just remind myself of the context' hails a losing of minutes and yet another chance to get distracted by something undoubtedly crucial like, say, the precise number of cracks my (carefully guarded number of) children have put in the walls. I'm working on it and by that I mean the interview and the distraction.

And now, because I've again been distracted, I'm suddenly expert in the finer points of lathe and plaster repair. I exhaust me but we'll get there. We will.

I, too, struggle with the thought of retirement. How does one retire in productivity culture? What is retirement for someone with an unrecognized job? Shall we really all save for such an uncertain future or is it best to take what we have and enjoy the world now? I'm not sure how long I want to live underwater and I've done the math. My front yard sits at sea level and the front door mere inches above that. Perhaps instead we should all work on our stroke form. Buy stocks in the flipper economy. I don't see how an IRA will save us when the stakes are more likely, when the day comes, who come down on sink and who swims?

Children as hope is a nice thought, I wish it were mine. I parent perhaps (absolutely) to prove that I'm able. That a child mis-parented can learn to do better and, in doing, leave better in the world in their stead. I want to know in some small (large) part that I am right in my anger. That parents make choices and mine could have made ones that trended more often to good.

So pessimistic this all sounds and yet the sun is shining and my shed has walls. Today's book is Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel (Julian K. Jarboe) and I highly recommend it. It has so far proven excellent company and needs much less drowning out which is helpful given that staining is largely silent. Stop by if you're ever in [(not telling)] cause I'm in a real mood to show off these walls.

Every response another stitch and yet. I find myself hoping you will,

- The Sign Painter*
(Katharine Blair, she/her)

*please tell you've played The World Of Goo and this doesn't fall flat. When I read your last reply to my child (of undisclosed age, sex, and gender) they said, "you've become the sign painter" but I made sure to tell them I stole it from you.

Zilla Novikov
658 Degrees Warmer Ln
IPC CIty
Ontario, Canada

Hi,

I like having Zilla. She's kayfabe. She's real but she's not real. Which is true of everyone all the time but it's explicit for her.

It's like with children who don't realize their parents are humans, because when you're a child it's impossible to imagine that your parent is a person the same as you are. Except Zilla isn't a person, she's a construct made up of a person. It's easier to be not real when it's only a part of your existence not your whole being.

There's a thing economists talk about for how much we value money now vs money in the future and it's got a fancy economics name, but since the pandemic and *waves hand at the world* we value now more than later. It's hard when you don't believe in a later. Rachel Rosen's high school students were made to do a stupid assignment where they wrote a postcard from themselves in 2050 to themselves now and all I'd tell myself from 2050 was that I need to get to higher ground.

I hear you've met Rachel and other Rachel now! They're both my friends and both high school teachers. I told them about you and showed them one of the interviews and they were both like OMG THIS IS SO AMAZING. DO YOU THINK I COULD EMAIL KATHERINE. I AM GOING TO EMAIL KATHERINE.

If medication didn't exist, I would probably have turned into my mother. But medication does exist and I choose to take it. I can hate her and pity her and understand her at the same time.

That sounds like a much better book.

I have not played World Of Goo. I tried to ask the internet to explain, and it told me the context, but not enough to understand, not really.

Your website is really quite delightful, despite the lack of dancing hamsters,

-- Zilla Novikov (she/her)

katharine blair
my backyard
faultline, usa

Zilla,

I'm genuinely sorry you haven't played World of Goo for so many reasons but, chief to us here, because it speaks to the corporate overtaking of natural resources and how we are called on to give of our bodies if we want to survive. The sign painter serves as prophet and wayfinder to the player, writing tiny, heart aching, truisms to guide you on your way. I've included three at the end of this letter to give you the gist. Read them in the way they are ordered and you'll find there's a magnetic poetry aspect that slips in when I read them, a desire to find sense where there's no sense at all.

Your higher ground really resonates. Over the years I've been asked countless times by the well meaning what I'm wanting, what accomplishments I'd like to attain, and I'm just not that kind of ambitious. I think I'm meant to have aspirations but I only want peace. If you have to define higher ground for me, what is your threshold? Do the Rockies call to you or would the Escarpment suffice? Is it an evolving idea? I remember when I believed in Blue Mountain for instance but the last time I drove past it it was unavoidably small. Time does that or growth does, both in our own physical and in our capacity to understand the scope of the interconnected fate of the world.

As for your thoughts about Motherhood and how much we can ever know our parents as people, I'd refer you to my interview with Jessica Cuello about her haunting Yours, Creature but it isn't out yet so a simple 'I have so many thoughts about this' will have to suffice.

The firefighters have been out to re-up the sand pile again which can only mean we're at the farthest point from the rains. Bureaucracy does have a sick sense of humour that way. No doubt that does not come a s news to you. one who has clearly extensively researched the ins and outs of daily operations in the City Planning Department of Whitchurch-Stouffville in the writing of this book. Thankfully the people are cunning (afraid) also so I've been gathering the sand for my own sandbags and heaving them around the backyard.

If I can't hold back the water, I can at least be prepared?

Like Zilla pre-protest, I've also never been to jail. But I have stood between police and intended victim and I'll do it again between us and the flood. Or the fires. Or the world and my children. Or or or or. This world is full of threats now and oncoming once you start to look. My advice? Don't.

If only I could keep my eyes averted. Is it possible? Can or would you?

I'm wondering if you'll be upset to find no questions are coming, that we've been conducting this interview form the first? I'm wondering if you'll be mad that I co-opted your format, or tricked you, or. I used to hide these anxieties but with age I've grown tired. Can you relate?

I'm going to miss you and these letters. Our work is nearing completion but I surely am not.

The imagined you in my head—the you that I write to, is holding my home

down. I'd block the Byway, lorax-like for my beloved Carolinian if only I could, which is to say my people are near you, near Zilla, in that specifically Canadian definition of 'near'. As I watch the [nope] burn around me I mentally tally road closures (escape routes) and wonder if it's best to just start walking now.

Shout if you need me, I'm no doubt out back making sure my meatspace is ready to shoulder my children and set out for home.

Sincerely,
Katharine Blair (she/her)

Sent from The Print Shop (my rechristened shed)

Zilla Novikov
658 Biggus Dickus Ln
Athol
Ontario, CanadaHi,

Oh no those signs fill me with PATHOS. Yeah. I feel for the Goo Balls and the chronicler of the Sign Maker.

I dunno that I have ambitions of that sort. I wanted to write my novel and have people read it before the end of the world. And now I have. Query is out. I don't want to die, and that means I'll keep writing the way a shark has to swim to breathe. Living means doing.

Higher ground, to me, is literal. It's owning property on top of a hill so when the sea levels rise my house doesn't flood. I don't know that I want to outlive civilization, though. I think a lot about what I would do in a mass human-caused famine. I read this thing, a long time ago, about one of Stalin's famines, and the piece I was reading said the first to die were the people who shared food. I don't know if I want to be someone who survives by hoarding or by living on a hill. I don't know which side of my animal nature would win out if I was hungry or drowning, though. People can be incredibly cruel or incredibly kind under duress. If things go well, I'll never I'll never know that about myself. I guess it's not that important.

Fires and floods. Can you drown while you're on fire, too? That seems unfair.

I can't look away. That's one thing I know about myself and it was a huge relief to find out, because it made a lot of things possible that had been impossible. I will look and I will act. I haven't been a coward until this day, I have been waiting, and when my wait is over, I will do what is necessary. And then I will return to waiting. Not cowardice. Looking is exhausting and I hate it but it's not a choice. It's baked into who I am. If I stopped looking, I would be someone else, and that someone else already exists and would be confused that they were suddenly doubled. It's a curious form of predestination to be forever trapped in my own identity. I don't see everything and I don't act at everything I do see or even at enough of it but the risk of being In Trouble is not sufficient to dissuade me.

A clever ruse! I thought these were simply e-mails between strangers. But hopefully they make for an excellent interview. And hopefully we e-mail again at some point. These e-mails are good fun.

I wrote two short stories this weekend. I am very surprised at myself because I never know what I'll write next, and between writing I always think I'll never write again, and then I do. They're about reading a novel as a form of sex work. I promise it'll make sense when you read them.

Thank you for the tiny dancers. Your website is now perfect.

Please don't rep me, trad publishing is a death cult,

--Zilla (she/her)

katharine blair
the hermitage
quarantined before it was cool, usa

Zilla,

I'm digging back over your responses this morning from the window seat of my 'remote office' while listening to Solar Sands's video essay Voluntary Extinction about David Benatar's Better to Have Never Been, (yes, I'm getting closer to just reading the thing) and it's hard to describe the weirdness of silicon valley. Imagine smart cars and shit transit. Eight dollar coffee, fly in employees, and constant road closures as we race to hold back the next flood. It is dystopic right here in the now.

To answer your question, you can in fact have a flood and a fire in tandem. I wish I knew that as intellectual concept instead of as truth. Much as my sister's street on Cape Breton can flood one afternoon only to freeze overnight and rival the Ottawa river in winter as a great place to put your kids on skates for the first time and watch them rise and fall like the tide. There is just so much evidence that we've already tipped this planet to dying. But sure, mass mail that paper flyer reminding me again to recycle, I guess.

I look when I'm able. It's a hard thing to know. My brother is loud, angry, and righteous - always so sure that we're owed - but I only ever want quiet. I'm Bob Ross but less skillful. A deliberate choosing of peaceful, a forever attempt to mitigate damage and hold back the rage.

What does it say about me that your short story connection between sex work and reading needs no explanation? Probably that I read here, and for the press and the magazines, with my whole heart, mind, and meatspace and the experience often takes as much as it gives. To read is to enter into communion, to offer passage for another's ideas directly into your brain. Good, meh, or destructive, the experience stays.

The writing has become its own project and for that I can't thank you enough.

I'm terrible in person. god, I hate small talk. So much nicer to have a proper back and forth in the ether that lives in my phone.

I would never. I'd rather the By-Way stretch up to my doorstep then see a Publisher's Weekly post with our names

I'm restarting the video,
Until we talk again,

Katharine (she/her

Zilla Noviko
658 Wrong Turns Ave
Make Worse, Choices

Good day,

I worry about movements like that. I worry that we'll tip into eco-fascism. I worry that we'll forget that we need to save the planet for people, not against them. I worry that we shouldn't turn suicidal ideation into a policy platform.

I don't have kids, but I want to make a world that's safe for kids. That's why I fight. Life will survive regardless of what we do to the planet—for 3.5 billion years, life has survived. But people might not. That's what Ian fights for in Cascade—a few months more, so someone can learn to ride a bike, so someone can fall in love, because every second of life matters to someone.

The planet won't die. Humanity will, at least most of us, and the Global South will go first. But in the words of Jurassic Park, "Life finds a way." You can take comfort in that if you like.

I am angry. I wrote a book about compassion, and about hope, and about depression, and now I'm trying to write one about anger. I despise unfairness, and while we as a species have done great harm to the planet, the individuals who have done the most will suffer the least, and the ones who have suffered the most will suffer yet more. I want justice.

I think it would be lovely to talk about books and philosophy in person. It is. But I can't speak about these things in meatspace, where I talk to workmates and family and I must be a different version of myself. Smalltalk is a disguise.

I always wonder if I would buckle and break if trad pub knocked on my door. It's easy to live my values when I have no other choice. As long as I write obscure metafiction, I'll never need to find out.

More like crapitalism, amirite?,

--Zilla Novikov (she/her)

Katharine blair
through the gaps in her fingers
neck out, usa

Zilla,

I've been delaying this letter for days for no better reason than I'm afraid of what I'll say while I'm living with grief. Not a death but a losing of possible futures. Amazing the way we hitch our whole hearts to things long before we have proof of the path. May we never stop.

Amazing also how I picked up Query never knowing it would eventually lead to this moment with you.

It would be nice to talk books in person if either of us truly found 'in person' nice or comfortable or geographically easy to do.

You've been so willing so far to join my antics. I'm going to try my luck on one more. What if we turn off the cameras? We stop being spectacle and close the fourth wall. What if I sign off here for the last time as editor? What if I send you this poem I screengrabbed from Tumblr and you understand it to mean that I want to keep talking about life and disasters but I'd rather we did it as friends?

SAN FRANCISCO NOTE

I think I'll stay on this
earthquake fault near this
still-active volcano in this
armed fortress facing a
dying ocean &
covered w/dirt
while the
streets burn up & the
rocks fly & pepper gas
lays us out
cause
that's where my friends are,
you bastards, not that
you know what that means

//

Ain't gonna cop to it, ain't gonna
be scared no more, we all
know the same songs, mushrooms, butterflies
we all
have the same babies, dig it
the woods are big

- @anaparastasi, revolutionary letter #53

I dread not hearing from you,

Katharine

Katharine Blair
Between a hill and the ocean
Middle-ish (earth)
California, USA

Zilla,

I finished Query: a novel last night in the second sit down, a fact that may not seem impressive but trust me, it is. I've a text processing disorder linked to anxiety that likes to team up with my rampant distractibility and well. Sitting to read just isn't my brain's kind of thing.

I'm sitting down with the book to draft questions over the next couple of days but thought I'd first drop in here and say hi and give you a preview of the kind of interview I tend to do.

My tried and true bio is:

Katharine Blair
reader • writer • poet • mother • tired • hungry • scared (reversed)]
Editor of kith, Corporeal & en*gendered, maker of lists of the things she'd do if

I would add that I'm TransMad and use the she/her same as ever despite the pretty cool beard because it delights me and because I ask for divulsion so I owe you that too.

The interviews for Pressed tend to get messy and personal but the limiting factor in that is your comfort and you. I send questions aplenty but you'll only answer those that feel good to you. I have no ego to speak of. I take instruction and take hints and need no explanation for what you don't answer or do.

Take a poke through the others (www.kithbooks.com/pressed) and get ready to answer or say pass or tell me to f*ck off.

I was in the backyard yesterday listening to Monsters by Claire Dederer and sanding a stack of fence boards one after the other to be turned into wall boards in the bedroom I'm building myself in backyard away from my kids. It was mothers as monsters. For being selfish, for wanting, for trying to be people apart from their kids and I wanted her to just shut up. How dare she? The traitor! ffs JKR and Hemingway and Roman Polanski and now you want to put me (us. she's also a mother/monster and clearly an equal opportunity bitch) in this book? Needless to say I turned down the volume and kept up the sanding. The waters are rising and I live so near the ocean. If I keep sanding at this rate, trees and kWh depleting, how many more nights do we even have left?

I look forward to hearing from you,
Yours sincerely,

Katharine Blair (she/her)