Check out our interview with Avery Curran, the author of "Spoiled Milk."
What was your inspiration behind your most recent book?
Several years ago, I was getting ready to start my PhD, which was on queerness in nineteenth-century spiritualism. I had always wanted to write fiction, and I thought that this might be my last chance before I was locked into years of thesis-writing (I actually ended up writing a second novel over the course of my PhD, but more on that later...). I was fascinated by the ways that spiritualism seemed to open up all these queer avenues of behaviour and expression, and I wanted to marry that fascination with my long-abiding love for horror and the gothic. From then on, everything important about the book seemed to fall into place with almost a sense of inevitability.
What does Reading Rainbow mean to you?
I think it's extremely important to read work by queer authors of all kinds, especially trans writers, working-class writers, and writers of colour. There is, quite rightly, often a focus on attempts to ban queer books, which is an assault on all of our dignity even if the heterosexual world doesn't seem to notice. But there is also an insidious way of censoring queer books, particularly books that challenge and confront the reader, which is that they never get published in the first place, whether because those authors are prevented from writing them because of their material circumstances, or because there isn't enough of an assumed readership. Fixing those material circumstances is most important, of course, but showing that there is an enthusiastic audience out there for these books is much easier.
Why do you feel representation of a variety of people is so important when it comes to writing books?
In "Spoiled Milk," I wanted to play with the idea of representation that isn't necessarily affirming or positive. Emily, my protagonist, is a complicated character, who often behaves very badly; the repression she so firmly sticks to has corroded her, and she finds it easier to feel anger than desire. I think there's sometimes an expectation that queer women and girls in fiction ought to be nice people, who are nice to each other. In my experience, we are just as likely as anyone else to lash out and hurt each other, or to manipulate, or to judge for fear of being judged first, and I think that should be portrayed in fiction just as much as we allow straight characters to be messy and even unpleasant. Even so, there are lots of different kinds of lesbians in this book--nicer ones, crueller ones, both frightened and brave. That's a benefit of having a majority queer central cast; you never feel locked into one single portrayal of queerness.
Tell us a little more about the book and why you decided to write it.
Spoiled Milk is a gothic horror about a group of students at a countryside girls' boarding school, who find themselves at the mercy of something that wants to kill them. It all starts with Violet, the school's brightest star, who dies suddenly on her eighteenth birthday; in their desire to understand what happened to her, or to find a distraction, they turn to spiritualism, only to receive frustrating evasions and dire warnings. In their exploration of the supernatural, the girls' relationships are tested and their adherence to the rules and routines of the school strained until, eventually, things reach a dramatic breaking point... I decided to write it because I love the thorny dynamics among people who both want and hate each other, I love the return of the repressed in horror fiction, I love isolated environments that seem to distill everything into its purest form, and I love the things that hauntings can force us to confront.
What can fans expect from your book?
I always say girls, ghosts, and gore, which is all very true. But also: peach silk slips, violet-scented perfume, complete and abject devotion, a very dangerous suit of armor, tinned tongue, rotten apples, something awful being done with a gramophone needle, ectoplasm, multiple funerals, an embroidered handkerchief given as a gift, a prefect's badge, learning very important things about yourself at the worst possible time...
What's up next for you in the bookish world?
My second novel is coming out in 2027! It's a lesbian gothic horror romance between a graduate student at a prestigious but failing university and the crisis manager brought in to manage the institution's decline... who also happens to be a vampire. I wrote it during the lull between the sale and publication of my first book, and I had more fun with it than I ever expected. But mostly I'm just trying to enjoy everything that's happening with "Spoiled Milk!"
