Who’s speaking? An interview, some workshops, pre-news.
So, last year, one of my favourite writers Camilla Grudova (The Doll’s Alphabet, Children of Paradise, The Coiled Serpent, who writes great things on Substack too) asked if she could interview me as part of her ongoing writer interview series.
The questions sat in my inbox for months and months because I felt like I had too much going on at the time and I wanted a clear head to enjoy the interview. I then put it off even longer out of mortification from taking so long.
I finally responded to the interview last July, before a hugely active period for Camilla, and then we both forgot about it. I found it lurking in my Inbox while looking for something else, and Camilla has kindly let me put it here. She has been incredibly supportive of my writing, and I really appreciate her patience and questions.
Below our interview, you’ll find details of three workshops/courses I’m doing online in March. But for now…
Camilla Grudova: Your style is so freshly unique and original, how did you develop your voice? Did you always write the way you do, or did it take years of experimentation and development?
Jen Calleja: Thank you, I have at times doubted I have a style! It's hard to know from the inside. I haven't consciously tried to develop a style, only to fully trust what comes out in the first draft before redrafting and to practise writing constantly hoping that style would happen as a matter of course. In a way I'm grateful that I was quite 'under-read' as a young person - I don't think I started out by trying to copy other writers so much and focused more on story over voice. I enjoy reading all kinds of writing, but it does feel important to me not to replicate or mimic a higher or middle-class register in my prose style.
When an earlier version of Vehicle was doing the rounds at publishers, one editor said it all sounded too much like me. At first I was ashamed at having failed to create the illusion, but then I realised that quite a few writers get to sound like themselves in their books. It's similar to translation. Translators can get anxious that their translations sound too much like them, but that's inevitable to a certain extent because they wrote the translation. Some are even praised for the strength of their voice in translation. Some writers/translators are allowed to sound like themselves, others aren't. I could talk forever about how homogenous writing seems sometimes.
CG: You are also a translator of German, what led you to the language? How does it influence your creative writing in English if at all? Does it feel hard, on a day to day basis, to switch your brain from translation to creative writing?
JC: I did German and French at school, but it felt as abstract as learning maths to me back then. There was something about German that linked with my quite inflexible personality though. It "keeps to its rules", you don't have to roll your 'r' as much as with Spanish or French, gegangen is a fun word to say. Then I left home at 18 and moved to Munich for a year before going to university to study media and English lit back in the UK, and while there I read German-language books in my spare time to further improve my German.
While translating a book you have to read it over and over and re-write the whole thing, and this personally gave me the confidence to try and write book-length work. Every day I choose what I feel like writing - if my mind is blank, I get to write by locking into a translation. If my mind is fizzing with ideas, it's pointless trying to translate, so even if I should be, I work on my own writing.
CG: Who are some obscure authors, dead or living, who inspire you?
JC: The first thing that came to mind is how there are so many writers who are deemed obscure because they're not available in English. There's Loranne Vella, for instance, who has been a famous writer in Malta for decades. In the last few years, Vella has been published in my co-publisher Kat Storace's English translation by our small press Praspar and The White Review and she has been 'discovered' by new readers. She is both obscure and not obscure at the same time. Her writing has really impacted my work, and Fraiveru Alma in Vehicle is partly inspired by her.
CG: If you could be a writer in any era which era would it be?
JC: The era when writers could live off of publishing short stories, poems, the odd review, if that era really ever existed. Or I'd like to live in the era when there's universal basic income for all.
CG: What is the grossest thing you have ever eaten?
JC: Sea urchin with my friend Michelle. I was visiting her in Rome while I was translating her debut novel and she ordered sea urchin spaghetti after seeing a woman complain about it at another table. They looked like little black slugs and were disgusting. We still call each other 'urch' and 'leech' after that meal.
CG: Doll or Doll’s house which would you prefer to write about?
JC: Doll's house, but mainly doll's house food! I recently started what might become a large collection of tiny food. I got a tiny chopping board and knife in a toy shop in Lille, and a tiny breakfast tray (croissant, black coffee, egg cup, egg, fork, fried egg on toast - double eggs?) and newspaper from a toy shop in Lewes. Both times, the shop owners asked if they were gifts and I looked them in the eye and said 'Yes. For me.' Plus my friend Helen, who inspired me to start writing when we were about 16, recently sent me a tiny cup of tea, slice of cake and cake-loaded fork.
WORKSHOPS
I currently have a few workshops coming up…
Writing Experimental Fiction (online)
Monday 3 March 2025 6.30-8.30 PM (UK) via Zoom
Monday 10 March 2025 6.30-8.30 PM (UK) via Zoom
Monday 17 March 2025 6.30-8.30 PM (UK) via Zoom
In this three week online course we will discuss and explore a range of approaches and practical tasks. There will also be some reading before the sessions and a reading list at the end.
There will be two pricing options: £110 (max. 12 participants, minimum 6 participants) or £135 to additionally have a 1hr feedback meeting over zoom on up to 3,000 words produced during the course or outside of it and to discuss your writing in general.
Please send messages of interest to the below address. jenniferannecalleja [at] gmail [dot] com
Editing Yourself & Others (online) - WORKSHOPS4GAZA X JEN CALLEJA
16 March 6.00-8.00PM via Zoom UK TIME
In this fun and informative workshop, I will lead participants in a discussion and series of exercises around the editing process. How do we approach re-drafting and editing our work? What are important things to remember when editing other people's work? How can we edit translations, including and especially when we can't read the original language?
All proceeds go to The Sameer Project. Booking here: https://www.workshops4gaza.com/calendar/editing-yourself-and-others
Goblin Writing: Goblin as a Mode (online)
Saturday 22 March 2025 9.00-11.00 AM (UK) via Zoom
In this fun morning workshop, we will explore how we can write ‘like a goblin’. What does the goblin write about? How does it write? How can the goblin inspire us as writers? This workshop will comprise a series of writing prompts so you can ease into your Saturday morning by writing with others around an impish theme.
Price: £20
To book a place, please send an email to jenniferannecalleja [at] gmail [dot] com
Please note: I will possibly run this workshop again on Saturday 12 April if there is enough interest, so do drop me a line if you can make this date.
There will soon be more events announced for my latest book Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode (Rough Trade Books), and my next book Fair: The Life-Art of Translation (Prototype) will also soon announced shortly. Tomorrow is also the 2-year anniversary of my novel Vehicle (Prototype) getting released, thank you to everyone who continues to read it.
My posts are free, but paid subscribers receive 4 writing prompts a month via my Someone’s At The Door writing prompt series. Consider signing up if you’d like some structure to your writing practice, or to just get me a coffee every month.
Thanks for reading!