Interview with Author Tiffany Morris
Interview with Tiffany Morris
1. First, congrats on the upcoming publication of your Stoker eligible novella Green Fuse Burning! For readers just discovering this book, can you tell us a little about it?
Wela’lin- thank you, Nico! Green Fuse Burning is a swampcore ecohorror novella about a queer Mi’kmaw artist who goes on a retreat at a remote pond and confronts natural and supernatural threats. The story is structured around the paintings she’s done while on the retreat and we get to see how weird and gory the art gets as her time there progresses.
2. What sparked the premise for this novella?
Our mass culture is very death-denying, and I really wanted to write something that interrogates what that means and how it shows up in the world. I was also developing this idea around grief and swamps. I think that swampcore – while not a full-fledged aesthetic movement just yet – could be a rich field for examining the forces of life and death. Wetlands, including swamps, ponds, et al. are disregarded, but vital – they’re where still waters drain toxins and sustain ancient, primordial ecology. Uncovering and embracing those mysteries is a fascinating antidote to capitalism’s false ideas of eternity – I’m thinking Ice Age bogs versus the half-life of plastics in a landfill.
3. Where there any scenes that were more emotionally taxing to write than others?
Oh gosh, so many – while Rita is not me, we share some of the same trauma experiences, so every flashback scene was difficult. Making up a person where you are both the architect of their misery and someone who empathizes with it in the very process of inflicting it is a wild emotional experience.
4. You also have a horror poetry collection out entitled Elegies of Rotting Stars. Do the writing techniques applied to poetry cross over to your prose, and if so, how? For example, do you find it easier to write descriptive lyrical prose?
Definitely – my writing across genres and mediums tends to be image-heavy and metaphorical, with less emphasis on plot than theme and atmosphere. Writing fiction can be hard for me in this way; I want to be true to my style but leave some room for my reader to breathe. I don’t feel compelled to do that in poetry, as the space is shorter and the expectations for storytelling are different. Mi’kmaw language reclamation is present in both, as well – the process of reclaiming the language and feeling my way through the different ideas that it can express is so important to me.
5. Do you have a favorite short story that has been published?
I’m partial to this flash story that was published in Dose of Dread! The Corpse of Hours – Dread Stone Press. Some new stories and other favorites that are not online will be in my collection coming out from Nictitating Books in 2024!
6. Where can readers find you online?
I’m sticking it out on twitter for the moment - @tiffmorris. Same name on bluesky! Cryptidsarecute on Instagram. Also my website: tiffmorris.com. Wela’lin!
