The quiet satisfaction of having written a phrase or description or paragraph that just seems to click into place.
I've been meaning to ask K. R. Wilson
I’ve been meaning to ask you is an interview series where Kathryn Mockler invites people to answer questions on being human
What is your first memory of existing?
The earliest memory I can access at this point is being in the hospital to get my tonsils out when I was four. One day I was part of a group of children who the staff set loose in a room full of toys. The slightly older and much more rambunctious boys immediately took over all the most interesting toys, leaving me with an empty toy holster which I just sat by the wall and looked at.
What is your first memory of being creative (writing, art making, etc.)?
Does looking at a holster in a hospital count? Probably not. But drawing was something so ingrained in me as a kid I think it probably goes back before my earliest memories.
What is the best or worst dream you ever had?
Once during an unsettled period of my life I had a dream where I encountered myself as a frightened child in the hallway of my parents’ home, and when I took him/me in my arms to comfort him we merged.
That’s a ‘best’, in case that isn’t clear. Which it might not be.
Do you have a preferred emotion to experience? What is it and why?
Probably satisfaction. The quiet satisfaction of having written a phrase or description or paragraph that just seems to click into place. The reflected satisfaction of seeing my family accomplish amazing things. The ‘now I can rest’ satisfaction of having completed something big or daunting or physically tiring.
What would you like to change about this world?
I would love it if there were a simple cure for right wing populist disinformation. We’d all be better off if fewer of us were so defiantly ill-informed.
What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.
Fuck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.
Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?
Nope. I love them as a notion or a trope or a metaphor, but I’m too much of a rationalist to buy them as a phenomenon.
If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?
Anyone struggling to find their confidence in the face of those who purposefully misunderstand them.
K. R. Wilson’s novel Call Me Stan was longlisted for the 2022 Leacock Medal. A sequel, Stan on Guard, will be published by Guernica Editions in the spring of 2026. His work has been published in various literary journals and in the anthologies This Will Only Take A Minute (Guernica Editions) and Sticks and Stones (Chicken House Press). He can be found at krwilson.ca and on socials as @krwbooks.
Call Me Stan: A Tragedy in Three Millennia by K.R. Wilson Guernica Editions
Long-listed for the 2022 Leacock Medal for Humour
When King Priam's pregnant daughter was fleeing the sack of Troy, Stan was there. When Jesus of Nazareth was beaten and crucified, Stan was there - one cross over. Stan has been a Hittite warrior, a Roman legionnaire, a mercenary for the caravans of the Silk Road and a Great War German grunt. He’s been a toymaker in a time of plague, a reluctant rebel in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, and an information peddler in the cabarets of post-war Berlin. Stan doesn't die, and he doesn't know why. And now he's being investigated for a horrific crime. As Stan tells his story, from his origins as an Anatolian sheep farmer to his custody in a Toronto police interview room, he brings a wry, anachronistic perspective to three thousand years of Eurasian history. Call Me Stan is the story of a man endlessly struggling to adjust as the world keeps changing around him. It is a Biblical epic from the bleachers, a gender fluid operatic love quadrangle, and a touching exploration of what it is to outlive everyone you love. Or almost everyone.
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