We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Dave K a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Dave, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?
I’ve been lucky enough to work on a lot of meaningful projects as a writer, so in the interest of narrowing things down, I’ll talk about my prose/poem chapbook The Candle Moth, released by akinoga press in 2022. I wrote the first draft shortly before the pandemic hit and worked on it throughout quarantine as I had the time and energy to do so, and it’s based on the song “She Wanted to Leave,” from Ween’s 1997 album The Mollusk. In fact, the lyrics from that song are the story’s basic outline.
I wrote it as a prose poem of sorts because, frankly, I didn’t have the energy to work in my usual prose style. This ended up benefiting the story a lot, as I was able to add in little flourishes (alliteration, internal rhymes, etc.) that don’t normally appear in my writing. As a result, it sounds and feels much different than my usual output, more lyrical (fitting for a story based on a song) and more playful.
I also challenged myself with tone and subject matter in the second and third drafts. I don’t write about love often as it’s not a strength of mine, but The Candle Moth is very much a love story, which caught readers familiar with my work off-guard (a friend described its effect on her as “fuzzy-but-sad”). I tend to write about alienated people in tense, paranoid, and unpleasant circumstances, but I found the main character to be a yearning romantic sort, someone who took great pride in his job and the identity it gave him, and who had great faith in the ship’s captain he served under. The captain is a romantic sort too, albeit in a more unhealthy, tempestuous way. These aren’t emotions I’m used to accessing in fiction, and it felt like a risk to move forward with a project so far outside my comfort zone, but I’m glad I challenged myself and threw some genuine vulnerability into that story.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I’m a writer, primarily of speculative fiction. I have an MFA from the University of Baltimore ad I’ve written four books: a collection of short stories titled stone a pig (which was my MFA thesis), a western novelette titled MY NAME IS HATE, a novel titled The Bong-Ripping Brides of Count Drogado, and a prose/poem chapbook titled The Candle Moth. I’ve also published in a handful of literary journals, both online and in print.
I like art that challenges perceptions in a literal way, casting doubt on what we hear and see, and I appreciate art that acknowledges and implicates its audience. I also like a creeping sense of dread in fiction, one that builds and gets more acute as the story progresses. I’m drawn to messy, ugly things and the way they make people feel, and I love straddling the line between laughter and discomfort. If I have a calling card as a writer, it’s my belief that fiction is more effective when it gives you space to interpret and decide how you feel about it/react to it, rather than just telling you. Well, that and my love of skeletons. They show up in my work a lot.
Can you share your view on NFTs? (Note: this is for education/entertainment purposes only, readers should not construe this as advice)
They’re a scam propped up by the laundered money of people who don’t care about or understand art.
In your view, what can society to do to best support artists, creatives and a thriving creative ecosystem?
If we want a society where the arts are valued, we must build a society where people are valued. That means universal health care, properly-funded schools and libraries, robust public infrastructure, investing in things besides cops and luxury real estate development, basically turning away from capitalism altogether before it destroys everything humanity has built. And more state funding for the arts, while we’re at it. Simply put, creative ecosystems flourish when the people in them (and outside of them) aren’t constantly worried about money.
Contact Info:
- Website: okaydavek.com
- Instagram: @davekisdavek
- Other: Sign up for my newsletter: https://tinyletter.com/Dave_K
Image Credits
Niki Rae Koch, Anne Kiefaber, Nessa K, Michelle Junot