Born in the U.S., and raised in Bethesda, Maryland, V.V. Ganeshananthan is the talented journalist and author behind articles and short fiction which have appeared in The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly and many others! Her powerful novel Love Marriage was first published by Random House in 2008, and since has been published in Italy, France, the U.K., Romania, Germany, India and Serbia.

TC had the chance to find out how V.V. pursued a career as a writer. Read more below!

TamilCulture: How did you start pursuing writing?

V.V. Ganeshananthan: I love reading, so I suppose that was the beginning of it. My parents also felt that creativity was very important and supported my having an active imagination, including my imagining that I could become a writer, which was something I wanted from the time I was small.

I was fortunate to go to schools with excellent and generous teachers, who taught me to write both journalistically and creatively. Our community took the arts very seriously—not just writing, but also music, theatre, and visual art. We were encouraged to be disciplined in whichever ones we chose. That continued when I went to college, where I was an English major. The first draft of Love Marriage, my novel, was my senior thesis.

TC: What challenges have you faced in making writing your career?

V.V.G.: I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I also knew that I wanted to support myself while I did that—without going into debt, if I could manage it. I graduated from college with that draft of my book, but I needed more time to expand it and make it stronger. I originally tried to avoid going to graduate school in creative writing because I thought it would be too expensive, but then I realized what useful resources universities can offer artists, and I also started to understand that some MFA programs offer financial support.

After a year working at the Atlantic Monthly, I moved to Iowa City to get an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. While I was there I had a job as a graduate instructor, and that funded my being in school. I was in the middle of a community of people who cared about art. I loved that. I loved living there. I had incredible teachers and classmates and time.
The following year, I got a fellowship from Exeter, a school in New Hampshire, and that kept me going. I really liked being part of a larger community, and have tried to keep that going. Now I teach at the University of Michigan, which has an MFA program and a community that’s deeply interested in the arts. It’s a great place to be.

TC: What would you say have been milestones in your writing career?

V.V.G.: There are obvious ones—having my first book published—and less obvious ones: the moment a favorite high school teacher of mine gave me an Ondaatje anthology, for example.  I’ll opt for the latter category and say that quite probably, most significant milestones of my writing career have involved reading: key books like The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao or A Room of One’s Own or The English Patient or Funny Boy. These books are among those that changed how I think about writing, or maybe even just how I think.

TC:What influences your writing?

V.V.G.: As an undergraduate, I worked with Jamaica Kincaid, and I’ll never forget how exacting she was. She was an early and huge influence. Beyond that, my sense is that everything I read and see influences me (mostly on a subconscious level), and that I’m best served by consuming a reading cocktail with many different ingredients: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essays, and newspaper and magazine journalism.

TC: How has your diasporic background inspired your writing?

V.V.G.: A great deal. It has given me a terrific view into a wide range of possible stories, and the need to complicate narrative instead of flattening it. For a long time, the dominant discourse about the diaspora has referred to it as a monolith. That reflects a serious failure of vision and imagination and empathy—gaps fiction can fill.

Since 2009, I’ve been a member of Lanka Solidarity, a North America-based collective of activists interested in Sri Lanka. It’s comprised mostly of members of the Sri Lankan diaspora, and is multiethnic. That group has been very important to me.

TC: Is there an ultimate goal for your writing? br />

V.V.G.: I hope my writing does what all good fiction does—bring people a tiny bit closer to understanding other people.

TC: What advice would you offer to someone pursuing a career in writing, given how challenging it is?

V.V.G.: If you really want to do something, always say yes to yourself; other people will offer up plenty of NO and it’s good to be in the habit of not listening to that.

TC: What can we look forward to from you in 2012?

V.V.G.: Probably some short stories, some essays, and a good deal of radio silence as I keep going on my second book!

Quick 5

TC: Favourite author/type of writing:

V.V.G.: Literary fiction.

TC: If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

V.V.G.: I’m a nomad by nature—how diasporic of me?—so I can’t pick one place.

TC: A favourite quote:

V.V.G.: “We felt strongly that the community must revive, and to do so we must face the truth in all its nakedness, both about ourselves and about all those who purported to be our saviours…. Besides trying to tell the truth, our purpose is also to challenge those Tamils both at home and abroad who may be in confusion as to what they must do to help their fellows.” —The Broken Palmyra, by UTHR(J)

TC: If you hadn’t become a writer, what do you think you would be doing?

V.V.G.: Reading. In case that answer’s cheating… I’d probably try to tell stories in some other medium. Maybe film.

TC: In one word, finish this sentence “To me, Tamil culture is:”

V.V.G.: Dissent.

—Nive Thambithurai, Editor (Entertainment, Spotlight)
—Photo credit to Preston Merchant for the image of the author