Under an Influence
Tiffany Tsao • 9 September 2022
What are your influences? – it’s the question that every writer should be prepared to field. This issue features Fariha Róisín, Lee Lai and Eloise Grills speaking, among other things, about what and who had an impact on their creative practices.
Some influences are passed down through generations, leaving marks on children, on landscapes. David Mason reflects on his father’s fascination with a fictional character – and the fascinating character that was his father. And Janet Manley traces the origins of American and Australian ski culture to European émigrés.
A Conversation with Fariha Róisín
Australian-Canadian writer Fariha Róisín speaks about the influences behind her novel Like a Bird and the positive impact she hopes the book will have.
I value older women. I value women that love themselves. It has always been such a sigh of relief to witness that. Those moments have been very pivotal for me, so I wanted to write somebody who was a little cheeky and also just completely her own being. I don’t know what happened, but I was able to really write her quite effortlessly. Even though I didn’t really have a full grasp of who she was, it was easy to understand her on some level.
(Supplementary reading: this Guardian piece by Róisín about writing Like a Bird)
5 Questions with Lee Lai
Last year, on the cusp of Stone Fruit’s release (and subsequent critical acclaim), Lee Lai spoke to Liminal about the inspiration behind and process of creating her debut work.
The artists that have influenced me are pretty countless. In the comics-realm, Mariko and Jillian Tamaki’s collaborative work has always hit me very hard, and closer to home, Tommi Parrish has been a close friend and a regular inspiration for the past decade – we were lucky to be working on our first books in a shared studio. Outside of comics, Celeste Ng’s fiction drastically affected how I learned to character-build. Plus the countless YA fantasy audiobooks I’ve devoured over the years...they’ve schooled me pretty damn well on how to pace a story.
(Bonus read: Lee Lai’s comic in Astra Magazine in response to Shaun Tan’s work)
A Graphic Review of Stone Fruit by Lee Lai
What more fitting way to respond to a graphic novel than a graphic review? Artist and visual essayist Eloise Grills breaks down the magic of Stone Fruit and the influence that Lee Lai has had on her own work.
Beloved Immoralist: One Man’s Love of a Fictional Character
David Mason – former poet laureate of Colorado and current resident of Tasmania – recounts his father’s life. And also how his father fell in love with a fictional character from Joyce Cary’s novel The Horse’s Mouth.
A man dies, but a character lives. A man seldom wishes to be a character, but he becomes one anyway, the moment he is recalled. At the end, the spark of my father’s character gave only the faintest light. A restless spirit was reduced to something less than infancy, tinged with paranoia. 'I’m in hell,' he said from somewhere in the depths of dementia. Before then, what a character!
The Curious Lives of Ski Migrants
Janet Manley traces the origins of ski culture and its distinctive aesthetic to homesick European migrants 'finding ways to slide about on patches of snow'.
Thanks to these émigrés, there is not only skiing in Australia, but also an outcrop of 'chalets' and 'Tyrolean villages' mixed in with the caravan parks, pubs, and bowling clubs. The scene is just as confusing in the United States, particularly in the northeast, where I now live. Driving toward a mountain, you will see CITGO gas stations disguised as alpine chalets and Swiss A-frames selling barbecue wings.