I have been a fan of Delia Sherman's for a long long time and particularly adore her short stories. When the divine Sharyn November sent me a copy of her recent urban fantasy Changeling (due out in pb in July and also to appear in my Bookslut column with a rave review then) I was delighted with it. Once I started reading I couldn't put down this delightful romp through NYC with so many staples of Faerie (The Wild Hunt, changelings, actual faeries, etc.) but told in a brand new and decidedly hip (as in retro hip) kind of way. It's a great adventure but also an unorthodox coming-of-age (with TWO - count 'em two resourceful heroines) that turns many quest novels on their collective heads with its rare combination of humor and thrills.

But still, even without Changeling I would be a fan of Delia's. First, I just think she is the coolest in that smart, sassy bookish sort of way that so many of us female reader/writer chicks adores. Here's a bit from her bio that explains her appeal in that quarter:

Sherman shares a 1910 urban farmhouse in Boston with Ellen Kushner and many pieces of paper. She loves airplanes, hotels, and unfamiliar places, gardening, and researching in brick-and-mortar libraries. She looks upon the country as a nice place to visit, but she is unable to contemplate life without cafés (where would she write?) and public transportation (she hates to drive).*

Delia and her equally impressive wife Ellen Kushner are just so clearly committed to their craft - so determined to be writers and editors of excellent and unusual fantasy fiction. It's inspiring both to read their work and the the work of others that they are part of ushering into the world. In another time and place, say Paris of the 1920s, they would be at the acknowledged center of a literary renaissance (or a least a fantasy writers literary renaissance). Here's hoping that they both receive the fans and attention they deserve and that Delia Sherman in particular continues to write her wonderful stories.

*Oy - just found out this info is a bit dated. Delia and Ellen "now live in a 1909 apartment building on Riverside Drive in New York". She assures me that everything else the bio remains true however. I hope that apartment is as wicked cool as the farmhouse sounded!
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I have read several of your stories in the past ("La Fee Verte", from Salon Fantastique, was a particular favorite) and it seems like you are now moving between historical subjects and contemporary NYC stories. (I'm likely over generalizing but I hope you see what I mean.) In the past you've said in interviews that you enjoy writing about history a great deal - why did you decide then to set Neef's world in a NYC of the modern day? Were you looking to write a contemporary story or was there something about placing it in modern times that fit more with your overall plan for the book (and its sequel)?


Neef’s New York is not, except in the broadest sense, modern day. Neef’s New York is the city where I grew up in the 1950’s and ‘60’s, with side excursions into the Broadway of the 20’s and the 30’s chronicled by Damon Runyon and the timeless folkloric world of nature spirits. Like mortal New York, fairy New York is built on layers of history. Whether or not a reader (or Neef) has heard of Damon Runyon, Guys and Dolls is part of the Myth of New York on both levels, accents, lovable rogues, and all. It’s just that in New York Between, the Damon Runyon guy is running Broadway. Things move more slowly in the fairy world, where nobody grows old or dies.

So I am writing about history, because history is all around us all the time. You just have to learn to identify it.

You know I think I missed that Changeling is not set in contemporary times because there was nothing obvious - meaning it clearly wasn't the Victorian era because there were no carriages going down the street! From your explanation though, it seems New York Between is a mix of times. Clearly writing about a "hidden world" allows the author a great deal of freedom in how to design it. Did you know from the beginning that you were going to reach back for characters from earlier times and place them in the narrative (mixing the 20s and 50s so to speak)? I'm curious as to how much pre-planning went into the design of your world.

I'm not a deliberate world-builder. Most of what I write for adults is set in a particular historical moment, so my world-building is more a matter of research and discovery than planning. With Changeling, the process was even more haphazard. I simply started writing. I was living in Boston at the time, and hadn't lived in New York since I graduated from college. So the New York I remembered was more the New York of my childhood than the place I visited a few times a year. As I wrote, taking Neef to neighborhoods outside Central Park, I thought about what those neighborhoods felt like to me, what they reminded me of, what tales and stories and associations I had with them. That's where the ancient child actress/vampire Honey came from, certainly, and the Producer of Broadway and the Dragon of Wall Street. I don't have a clue where the Mermaid Queen came from. She just seemed to make sense at the time.

It occurs to me that I've always been sensitive to this kind of layering--and become more so as I get older. Contemporary popular culture references events and TV shows and music from 10, 20, 30, even 40 years ago. As the child of much older parents, I was raised with books and music and theatre and folklore (family, urban, and Southern) stretching backwards to 1900. I don't think I could write anything that didn't use the past somehow as background to the present.

I really enjoyed “CATNYP” - anyone with a fondness for libraries would love it. When you wrote it were you already working on Changeling or was the novel the result of writing that story?

It’s kind of complicated. When Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow asked me for a story for their anthology The Faery Reel, I had an idea for a story about a girl who’d been stolen by the fairies and brought up in Central Park. Maybe 10,000 words later, I was still in the thick of Neef’s childhood, with no end in sight. Both Ellen (Kushner, this is, not Datlow) and Terri, when I appealed to them for advice, informed me that I should quit trying to fit an ostrich into a quail’s egg, and go ahead and turn it into a novel.

So the answer to your question is: Yes. I was already working on a book set in New York Between and Changeling was the result of writing “CATNYP.” And the material in the Ur-story of Neef and how she came to Central Park? It’s an unfinished novella and a pendant short story I haven’t had time to do anything with.

As I was reading Changeling I kept thinking "of course - of course!" The dragon made perfect sense, as did the Green Lady and the Curator's significance was entirely appropriate. This might be a trite thing to say to a writer but it seems like this book was a lot of fun to write. While I can appreciate the hard work that always goes into writing a cohesive story or novel (or poem or song...), what parts of Changeling did you particularly relish working into the plot and were there some sections of "New York Between" that you had to leave out? (I realize that might be asking too much but if you could be properly vague about it, that would be cool.)

Broadway was far and away my favorite part. I LOVE Damon Runyon. I love the voice, the things he did with language, the way he stitched violence and sentimentality and comedy and tragedy into stories that are uniquely and utterly, not only American, but New York. I just giggled all the way through writing the chapters about the Producer (whose office is based on the set of the Broadway musical of that name, by the way) and Honey and Raoul and the Bram Stoker Hotel. Getting it right was less lighthearted process, but then it always is.

New York is a big city. There’s no way I could get it all into one book—which is why I’m writing a series. In the next book, I take Neef to the Bowery (where “They say such things and they do such things”), which is a truly dangerous place. She also goes to the Upper East Side, which is scary in its own way, and Lincoln Center, where real swan maidens dance Swan Lake. I’m a little reluctant to follow her to Harlem, because the mythology around that is so politically fraught. But if the logic of a plot takes her there at some point, I’m just going to have to deal with it.

Changeling is an entirely appropriate YA novel but as a quest story it could have been written for adults. Did you want to write for teens and develop the novel as such (in other words it was always about a couple of teenage girls from the very beginning) or did you shift the idea of a novel set in "NY Between" to work for a teen audience? (This is kind of a chicken vs egg question! ha!)

Changeling was always going to be a kid’s book. It is a kind of metaphorical chronicle of my own childhood in New York in the 1950’s and 60’s on the Upper East Side. Central Park was filthy, run-down, and genuinely dangerous. I never went to Broadway when it was daylight, and couldn’t imagine what it looked like when it wasn’t lit with neon and crowded with excited, dressed-up people going to the theatre. There are exhibits in Neef’s Metropolitan Museum that are now in storage. The Fountain Court also featured in E.L. Konigsberg’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, is now a fountainless exhibit hall in the new Greek and Roman Wing. I have no adult memories of being terrified in Central Park or eating in the Fountain Court. But I have thousands of child’s memories. And that’s what I was working from.

Just an observation on my part, but has there been a more NYC YA novel than The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankenweiler? I think yours is one of the first to so completely immerse itself in NYC culture and landmarks - to the extent that you have even included the Fountain Court. Is it hard to write a book that is so tied to a location, or - if you know the area as well as you clearly do - is it easier?

Yes, New York is easy for me to write about, because I love it. I want to tell stories about it, share what I know (and what I've discovered) about its history and its development, acknowledge its dangers and celebrate its beauties. I began writing Changeling while I lived in Boston, and was a little afraid, when I moved back to New York, that I wouldn't be as driven to as I had been when I was feeling homesick for Central Park and the lights of Broadway. There was nothing to worry about. There are, in the famous tag-line from the 50's TV drama Naked City, eight million stories in the naked city--plenty to hold me for the rest of my writing life.

[Note - I never saw Stuart Little as a NYC novel because I couldn't past the fact that he was a mouse that no one treated as a mouse. The movie just messed with my head even more. But the All-of-A-Kind Family books? LOVED THEM. Better than Little House that's for sure - way better.]

And finally, with Interfictions (see my review at Bookslut) and the Interstitial Arts Foundation, you are intricately involved in an effort to join together arts that defy traditional genre category assumptions. I've often thought that some of Ray Bradbury's work would fit in this area and certainly Chris Barzak and although I have not read The Shadow Year by Jeff Ford yet, from reviews it seems to fit there as well. (And I know there are many many other works out there.) How successful do you think the IAF has been in raising awareness of genre defying works and what else would you like to do in this effort?

I think we’ve made a start. Art grows by taking chances. Commerce succeeds by going with the tried and true. Consumers tend to like the kind of art they’re used to seeing. It takes a while for new genres (or even the idea of new genres) to become familiar enough for people to be comfortable with them. In the meantime, the artists who are taking chances find themselves misunderstood, misjudged, and all too often, dismissed and overlooked.

We’re starting out by trying to give these artists a place where what they’re doing will receive the recognition that innovative work deserves. As we grow, we hope to be able to offer more practical support in the shape of market reports, art shows, salons, maybe even grants or awards. Since we’re interested in the visual and performing arts as well as writing, this is a fairly ambitious goal. We’re taking it slowly, adding more people to our board with roots in music and the visual arts, talking about projects that will bring the discussion we’ve started in the speculative fiction community to a broader audience.

I am very intrigued by your comment that "art grows by taking chances, and commerce succeeds by going with the tried and true". American society has been, for a very long time, more concerned with commerce than art. I think you would have to look back to the 1920s to a time when art was celebrated (at least in some parts of the country) more than commerce. Do you think American attitudes about art and commerce might be shifting in the new century? Are we becoming tired of the "tried and true"?

This is not an easy question to answer, and I'm not really a theorist. What I think, for what it's worth, is that most consumers--ordinary people, who don't know much about art, but know what they like--prefer to look at, read, and watch stuff that is familiar to them. They want to be entertained and pleased, not challenged. Which is fair enough. There's plenty of room in the world for stuff that's just fun or pretty or relaxing to be around.

So I guess I don't think things have really changed very much. Artists will keep taking chances, and consumers will keep being shocked by them. Until they aren't shocked any more, and a new crop of artists blows their minds with a new way of looking at things.

[Post pic - That's Damon Runyon in all his glory.]

Don't forget to check out the SBBT Master Schedule for direct urls to all the interviews this week!