A Few Questions with RC Hopgood
Story in the Anthology:
The Fairytale of Solana's Real Books
A Few Questions
What are some authors/books/events that have been influential to your work?I grew up in Puerto Rico with a cuentista family. Everyone had stories to tell. As a child, abuelo Pachu would make up children stories that I could participate in. Abuela Ame would tell mystical/magical stories that made me question the nature reality. Abuela Nanana would tell old family stories and political stories. And always, during the big Saturday family lunches, out of the din of multiple simultaneous conversations, would suddenly arise a story. And everyone would listen to the teller (uncle, mom, cousin) tell their story about this or that thing that happened to them, or something they learned about, and the story would be told dramatically, with verve, with passion, with a good ending. And everyone would listen, cheering or booing as appropriate with the events being recounted. Then everyone would go back to their multiple conversations, until another story would rise up. The way the stories would come out of the cacophony of conversations was very organic, almost random, like magic.
Then as a teenager, I discovered Magical Realism and it all made sense. Borges, Cortázar, García Márquez and later the Hernandez Bros (Love & Rockets) told stories in a way that made perfect sense to me. Reality is fluid and time is not linear.
As far as specific authors, besides the previously mentioned, there have been many where after reading a book I had to read everything else they ever wrote, and thus they embedded themselves in my psyche. These include Salgari, Moorcock, Dostoevsky, Vonnegut, Kafka, Walcott, Lem, Naipaul, Yunqué, and most recently Roberto Bolaño, J.M. Coetzee and Fernanda Melchor.
How do you see writing fitting in (or not) within the current world of books?
This is such a tough question. I don't worry too much about how my writing fits in, but it does come up, especially when the inevitable genre question is asked. Mostly I tend to feel out of place in any one category. Probably due to having grown up as a colonial subject. Being from the colony and living in the imperial nation creates complicated feelings about belonging/not belonging.
Lately, if pressed, I might say my work fits within the emerging Fabulist genre. It's still a fairly loose term and I like the way it feels. Plus I actually wrote a book of fables. My WIP novel, however, could be described in many ways: midst-apocalyptic sci fi, feminist magical realism, queer adventure romance. But at heart it's a story, not unlike mine, about a Latinx person who feels like they don't quite fit in.
What are you currently working on?
I'm currently querying a picture book that I wrote and illustrated. It’s a story written in six 'decimas' (10 stanza verses), and narrated from the POV of a tree, from being a seed, to being planted by a kid, to facing a hurricane and eventually growing up into a full grown tree.
I'm also revising the third and final part of the previously mentioned WIP. It's the story of Maria Collins, daughter of a poor immigrant woman and a corporate oligarch who is also head of the Verbista religion, a religion based on a seemingly magical book that changes its content every time someone opens it.
I also have an almost complete draft of a novella about a family of women who get pregnant through parthenogenesis. The novella follows the family from the 1800s in the wild American west through six generations to the present time.
What has/have been your proudest moment/s as a writer?
I was very proud to publish Bellows: Fables from the Musical Underground. Like Once Upon Another Time, it was a group effort. I wrote ten stories and then ten awesome artists illustrated one each. And eleventh artist designed the book. We ran a successful kickstarter so the first edition was almost sold out before it was printed. It was very exciting and I loved working with that group. Solitude is one of the shortcomings I find with writing, so working in group projects is one of the ways to counter that. I find the support of other writers, artists, musicians, etc to be invaluable. I'm lucky to be part of a great community and part of a workshop group were we share and critique each other's work as it takes shape. It has been vital during the long stretches of writing a novel, especially in a pandemic.
I am also very proud of a 52-week blog, Cuentos del Barrio Machuchal (machuchal.blogspot.com, 2014-2015). These are chronicles of my upbringing in Puerto Rico. When I was writing these stories, one per week for a year, the barrio was going through an economic and artistic resurgence that continues to this day. The response from readers was fantastic. Some of the stories were picked up by new publications in the area and I feel my stories played a small part in fostering a renewed sense of community and pride in the old neighborhood.
What books/authors are you currently reading or really into?
Last book I finished that i loved is Lacuna by Fiona Snyckers which is a really smart and impossible to put down feminist take on J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace. I recently went through my Coetzee phase and read every novel he's written, but I think Lacuna works even if you haven’t read Disgrace. I just started on Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-García and I have a good feeling about it so far. Also, my spouse and I are slow reading together The Unbearable Lightness of Being (Kundera). Amazing how mental AND physical that book is all at once. And finally, Í’ve got next in line, book two of the SEPA Series by fellow anthologist J. Moody. The first one was a captivating story about stolen memories that takes place in a fully realized future world. I’m looking forward to the second volume.
I'm also always reading non-fiction, mostly for story research purposes. Currently reading a bunch of science and linguistics books about language, how it functions, how we acquire it, how we sometimes lose it, etc.
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