I refuse any ounce of cynicism around the topic of Dreams.
I've been meaning to ask Nadia Ragbar
I’ve been meaning to ask you is an interview series where Kathryn Mockler invites people to answer questions on being human
Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of existing?
Nadia Ragbar: When I was three we were living in Queens, NY and I used to go to pre-school across the street from our apartment. I have one distinct memory of following my teacher, who I remember I adored, down the fire escape. We were about to perform for a spring concert, and it was almost show-time. I remember she had long brown hair that hung all the way down to her bum. I remember trying to find my parents in the audience. I don’t remember performing.
KM: What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc)?
NR: It was Fashion Plates when I was about 4 or 5. You could mix and match the embossed tiles with different heads, torsos and legs of (skinny white) ladies in different 80s outfits and make a rubbing. Hours of endless outfit combos!
KM: What is the best or worst dream you ever had?
NR: I love dreaming, I love hearing about other people’s dreams, and I don’t subscribe to the notion that it’s bad writing to write about characters’ dreams!
I’ve had dreams that answer questions that I’ve asked before falling asleep. I’ve had three dreams that I’m certain were about different past lives—one of which, was so out of the ordinary and so deeply healing after I experienced a traumatic loss, that I refuse any ounce of cynicism around the topic of Dreams.
My favourite dreams are when I (or anyone else in my family) dreams about family members who aren’t here anymore.
KM: What is your favourite or significant coincidence story to tell?
NR: It’s not interesting to anyone else, but I love it when identical images, names, or motifs start popping up at the same time across the random books, movies or conversations I’m engaged with. Whenever it happens I’m always dying to tell my partner, and every time he looks at me like I’m telling him about my dreams.
KM: Do you have a preferred emotion to experience? What is it and why? Or is there an emotion that you detest having and why?
NR: I love the moment of inspiration—that bubbling anticipation of something new and exciting coming up to the surface of my brain. I love the urgency to capture it before it fizzles.
The most painful feeling has to be shame. It’s deplorable and so sad and probably the opposite of inspiration. Inspiration makes me feel connected to a bigger, more expanded part of myself, whereas shame makes me feel inherently worthless and contracted and disgusting.
There’s a lot of grist for the mill in the vast contrast between these two emotions, though, isn’t there?
KM: What do you cherish most about the world?
NR: Kindness.
KM: What would you like to change about the world?
NR: Big picture, out there, I wish humanity had evolved away from capitalist, colonial, supremacist hierarchies. I feel those macro systemic issues reflected back on a micro-individual level as selfishness, duplicity, fear, arrogance, greed. I’d rub my genie lamp to wish away the lack of kindness toward ourselves and others.
KM: What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.
NR: Don’t waste your twenties having low self-esteem.
KM: Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?
NR: Yes. When I was around 15 my brother and I experienced a crazy series of paranormal activities when we were off school on Christmas break. And into my 20s, I experienced a few very pronounced, unexplainable and seriously nuts events that would take so long to describe here. I will say though, as I’ve gotten older, my experience with “ghosts” are less spectral and more spiritual and guiding. Now it feels more like my grandma conveying lovely sentiments to me from beyond, and less like cupboard doors opening and closing on their own.
KM: If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?
NR: I would like to take this moment to send my love to anyone I have hurt through some flippant word or careless deed. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me. I love you!
Nadia Ragbar lives in Toronto with her partner and son. Her short fiction has appeared in Broken Pencil and This Magazine, among other outlets. Her flash fiction appeared in The Unpublished City, an anthology curated by Dionne Brand, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Toronto Book Award. The Pugilist and the Sailor is her first novel. Website: nadiaragbar.com
The Pugilist and the Sailor by Nadia Ragbar Invisible Publishing, 2025
Publisher’s Description
The Pugilist and the Sailor follows conjoined twins, Bruce and Dougie. Dougie is an ambitious amateur boxer, having dragged his brother into the ring since childhood. Bruce is a bookkeeper who has become smitten with Anka. Unaware of the facts of the twins’ physicality, an epistolary relationship unfolds between Anka and Bruce, as he wrestles with broaching the topic of separation with Dougie. Dougie’s sole focus is the Heavyweight Amateur Boxing title as one half of “The Reuben Beast,” though he is trying to ignore his mysterious blackouts and severe headaches.
A character-driven story with an ensemble cast, told across multiple points of view and time periods, The Pugilist and the Sailor examines the unique relationships between conjoined brothers, parents, crushes, and unexpected mentors. A story about the intertwined nature of longing and belonging, compromise and connection, this novel is ultimately a consideration of family and finding your unique place in it, and in the world.
“This book is so strangely moving and truly funny and sad and beautiful. An impressive debut from a writer already in possession of a unique voice.”—Miriam Toews
“Bruce and Dougie are conjoined twins—one a fiery boxer, the other a dreamy bookkeeper. Inseparable by birth but diverging in desire, they share a body, a home, and a tangled history of longing—for solitude, for love, for a different kind of life. A deeply intimate, character-driven novel about family, yearning, and the aching complexity of connection, The Pugilist and the Sailor is a story of bodies that defy definition, and the invisible lines that bind us—through time, through blood, and through the stories we carry.”—Carrianne Leung, author of That Time I Loved You and The Wondrous Woo
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