Speculating on Fiction: A Conversation with Tananarive Due

Tananarive Due is an American author and educator. After completing her first novel in 1995, she has since continued to produce fiction in the speculative, horror, mystery, and historical genres all while forging a career in filmmaking and screenwriting. She is the author of multiple series and standalone novels along with one civil rights memoir, the winner of the American Book Award, the New Voice in Literature Award, the NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literature, and the Carl Brandon Kindred Award. Recently an endowed chair at Spelman College, Due continues her work as a social activist and a teacher beyond the classroom.

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What draws you, as a reader and writer of speculative fiction, to speculative fiction? How is it unique among other genres of literature?
My introduction to “speculative fiction” was mostly in the horror genre, especially as a teenage reader, though I was writing my version of space operas and kids stowing away on space ships when I was in about fourth grade. I think almost all children are fascinated by space, aliens, and the idea of space travel, but I initially outgrew my attraction to science fiction and began to more toward horror. As for what appeals to me: I really attribute my love of horror to a hyper awareness of my mortality from a young age. I remember sharing a bedroom with my great-grandmother during a family visit. She had emphysema and was using an oxygen tank, and I was nervous all night that she would stop breathing. That grew to a more general understanding that although I was very young, I would be much older like her one day. I tried to wrap my mind around it: I was going to die one day. That is the puzzle I have been playing with, in some ways, ever since. Writing horror and supernatural stories helps me create metaphors (i.e. demons) to process my real-life fears.


Do you find that we generally stress the lines between literary fields too much, or can there be a difference between distinction and division?
Ha! Well put. A lot of authors tend to see those categories as division, especially since there traditionally has been bias against genre writers in MFA programs, for example—though that is beginning to change, I think, because of the financial benefits of embracing genre writers. The conversation came up a great deal among black authors—”Why is there a black section”—but I recently saw an interview from a major library, I believe, where they said far fewer black books were checked out when they weren’t in a specific section. We get lost in the ocean, so to speak. So I have come to see categories as a necessary evil—useful to a point, but not to be mistaken for a stone tablet in terms of who we are as writers and readers.

I won’t ask you to choose between reading and writing . . . but what about writing and teaching? After your time as an Endowed Chair at Spelman College, how would you say having students in the classroom (reading and writing alongside you) changed your interaction with literature in general and speculative fiction in particular?
It’s interesting: I’d always assumed that so many writers believed teaching interfered with their writing simply because of the work of teaching, which can be very time-consuming. But now that I have been doing more teaching, I realize that another reason teaching can interfere is that I can also touch a kind of “flow” when I’m teaching, or when I’m reading the student works, which really can seep away some of the urgency writers generally feel that drives them to obsessively carve out time for their own work.

Admittedly, I have not made major progress on a new novel since I have been teaching—the ones I’ve published were all under contract before I began teaching at Spelman, for example. But teaching enabled me to stop relying on writing to make a living, so I have instead concentrated on short fiction, film/TV treatments and screenplays. The short fiction has been useful in keeping my name “fresh,” since several readers are discovering me for the first time through my short fiction (!!!). The film/TV treatments are part of my quest to transition from the page to the screen, which is roughly akin to packing up a wagon to try to cross the country to California, braving elements and attacks along the away.  I can’t control the amount of success I find in television and film writing, but I do have a goal to be a very, very good screenwriter. So I’m taking some time to practice that now. And I do have another novel idea I have been allowing to stew . . . and I think it’s time to start stirring that pot more too.

Spelman was life-changing for me on so many levels: the amount of enthusiasm for speculative fiction among the faculty was very exciting, and I felt a sense of helping to build a growing movement. And the students were also electrified by Octavia’s work, so it was exciting to watch the light bulb go off as students shed their old concepts of what they could be as writers and ventured into new territory.  Literature is always more dynamic when it’s shared with others, like finding family.


Of course I must ask if you have a favorite work of Butler’s, but I also want to know if you have a favorite book of yours? When did that book become your favorite; during the writing of it, the later re-reading, or after receiving responses from readers?
My favorite book of Butler’s is KINDRED, mostly because I was raised by civil rights activists with a deep sense of history, and it answered so many questions for me I didn’t know I was asking. I especially love the moral ambiguity of some of the protagonist’s decisions throughout the story, so it isn’t simply a “slavery is bad” story, but also a “wow, humans are complicated” story—which helps explain why slavery was so bad.
As for my own work, there might have been a time I would have said that MY SOUL TO KEEP was my favorite novel, since it spawned three sequels—and perhaps my immortal, Dawit, is my favorite character (or his daughter, Fana). I also appreciate JOPLIN’S GHOST for the way it forced me to grow as a researcher and writer. But the Hollywood process is beginning to color my perceptions of THE GOOD HOUSE, which I believe is my scariest book, and the pure adaptability of it has really made me appreciate the richness of that story. Whether I visualize it as a theatrical film, TV film, mini-series or traditional series, each time I pluck out and rearrange the elements of that story, it still holds up as very scary and the emotional journey remains intact. And Angela, the protagonist, is emerging as my favorite female character.

You do a lot of collaborative writing. The OEB Society exists to enable and ignite collaborative reading. How do you find that collaboration changes the end product, whether that product is a book or anything else?
Collaboration is fascinating because it can be so unnatural to writers—and it’s definitely not for everyone. My primary advice is that writers should not collaborate unless they MUST to tell the story. If I can write something alone, I’d rather write it alone. But sometimes an idea comes as a hybrid, drawing inspiration from more than one person, and that’s the time to collaborate. I recently re-read a speculative TV pilot my husband, Steven Barnes, and I wrote for a series version of THE GOOD HOUSE, and I found myself chuckling at dialogue he’d added. That’s the great thing—there are little surprises hidden throughout in collaboration in a way I can’t recreate in solo work. And I have learned to curb my natural desire to be faithful to, say, my own dialogue and accept a different sensibility that adds a new dimension to the writing. But again, collaboration is delicate. It’s useful for one person on the team to have the final vote.

I know that you and your husband, fellow writer Steven Barnes, knew Octavia Butler personally. What would she say about the relevance and/or importance of forums like this one, where the conversations about literature are as important as original literature itself?
I think Octavia would be slightly bemused but mostly humbled at the degree to which her literature has found footing in our culture. When I was planning Spelman’s Octavia E. Butler Celebration of Arts & Activism in the spring of 2014, Steve pointed out to me that Octavia was not an “activist” in the traditional sense. But at the same time, her fiction has helped spark an activist sensibility in some readers, and her work is a large part of the fascination with Afrofuturism that has helped spark a genuine cultural movement. As an artist, you can only sit back and watch while the spark you lit with your work turns into a fire. In many ways, an artist’s work is not about what we think it’s about—its only real meaning is the meaning to the readers.

Lastly, you are featured in a new anthology entitled Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction From Social Justice Movements. Would you tell us a little about how you chose to become involved with that project?
I was approached by Adrienne Maree Brown and Walidah Imarisha some time ago, and as the child of civil rights activists, I was thrilled to see this new lens through which Octavia’s work and impact could be viewed. While Octavia was a “writer’s writer,” very close to a hermit in some ways, anyone who studies her work can see that she wanted to create a better world. Some of us create a better world through art, some through activism, some with a combination. This anthology shows the relationship between art and societal change.

Interested in learning more about Tananarive Due’s work? Visit her website, www.tananarivedue.com , and once there make sure you check out the Stephen Barnes and Tananarive Due film collaboration Danger Word. Interested in sharing your thoughts on science fiction in general and Octavia in particular? Come be a part of the conversation! Contact [email protected] to volunteer an interview for posting on our website!