Walking Away and Coming Back: Interview w/ Fresh Voices Finalist, Zen Ren
We are delighted to highlight one of the seven impressive finalists of this year’s Fresh Voices Fellowship, which seeks to bring visibility to emerging writers of color. Zen Ren was a fellowship finalist in the category of poetry.
Zen Ren is a queer first-gen Chinese American writer in Austin, Texas. Their work is published or forthcoming in New England Review, Electric Literature, Swamp Pink, Nimrod, Boulevard and more. They are a ’23 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, won Nimrod’s ’23 New Writer Award for fiction, and have been recognized in Glimmer Train and New Letters contests. Their poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart. Outside of working on their first novel, they work in UX research and also knit, sew, and surfskate.
Read two poems by Zen Ren, “Tricks for good weather and bad” and “The way you are good to me.”
Epiphany: What were your first experiences with art like? Is there an art encounter that remains vivid in your memory?
Zen Ren: My mom always felt she didn’t understand art, but she did understand successful people liked discussing it. She was always dragging me to museums and making me interpret everything I saw. I took these tests very seriously because I thought she had an answer key inked in her palm. Now what she did understand, and enjoy, was Days of Our Lives. Every time I caught those sweeping violins of the theme song I’d sneak behind the couch. If I’d been good that morning, and she was too tired to scold me, she’d pretend not to notice. I was thrilled to get away with something that salacious. At the museums, my mom covered my eyes whenever we passed by an intact Hellenistic nude; but behind the couch, I still learned about romance, jealousy, ambition, and the art of the shocking reveal.
What is the best writing advice you’ve received? How did it alter the way you think?
You don’t actually have to write every day, like the classic advice insists. All those years I worried I wasn’t legitimate because I couldn’t manage 500 words at 5 am, then I saw one tweet that said: “what about not,” and my spirit was freed. Yes, discipline and routine are important. But it’s okay if it looks a little different for you! Especially if, like me, you have ADHD. I work with what the hyperfocus wants, which can still include challenging myself to put down some words even if I’m stumped. This month I wrote 30 poems for National Poetry Month. They didn’t come daily—there was a week where I didn’t sit down at all. But I spent that time filling my well with books, movies, and other hobbies (knitting and sewing), and the writing routine became paying attention to new rhythms and images. Then one morning I woke up and had 4 sewing poems ready to go at once. All that mattered was that at the end of a month, I had 30 attempts. The door didn’t open every day, but every time it did, I pushed it as far as it would go.
In your development as a writer, what is one thing you have discovered that is completely different than what you first imagined at the start of your writing journey?
In my early twenties, as a fiction writer, I had more ambition about the title of “good writer” than the craft. I’d hate myself if my first drafts sucked—what did that say about who I was at my core? Every sentence became a representation of how much I sucked and I’d just agonize over polishing those little turds while not really improving. Then I heard this somewhere, probably on the radio: you have to take joy in the process itself, because that’s all you’re guaranteed to have. So I walked away, for seven years. That whole time I kept repeating this mantra: you won’t ever “be” “a writer.” You will never be published. Would you still be happy writing anyway? Only when I could envision this version of me with total peace did I start writing fiction again. 2023 was my first year back.
Walking away like that made me realize revision shouldn’t be decorative—it’s fundamentally destructive. I’ve shifted away from hoping to be a “good writer” towards simply trying to honor the piece and what it’s striving for. The me of 2016 would be horrified to hear this—where’s your ambition? Where’s your fire? But sometimes the fire needs to burn everything else before you can get clarity on what needs to be saved. For me, I needed to destroy my old dreams to rebuild them towards serving my heart and not my ego.
Do you have any rituals or practices that help keep you focused when creating? Or do you let the chaos of the world seep in as you write?
Yes, Wellbutrin and a glass of water. But honestly, I struggle more with stamina. I regularly carry 5 notebooks of varying degrees of ugliness. I don’t think writers have difficulty accumulating pretty notebooks, but for me, the ugly ones are better for staying loose and light and experimental. If it’s a spiral bound notebook with gridlines, then I won't be compelled to produce a first draft that mostly tries to be pretty and therefore limited. I have to start drafts by pen or Notes app because I type way too quickly. It’s not great to transcribe thoughts faster than they come—my fingers begin to fill in the blanks, and my fingers are stupid. Everything I do in my writing ritual is an attempt to screw with myself a little. If all my mediums are perfect and fast, I lose stamina.
Is there anything specific (project-wise, writing-wise, other-wise) you are currently working on?
My main writing project is a major revision of my first literary/speculative fiction novel, about two lifelong frenemies. The formerly famous one is sick, the other’s her caretaker, and they’re both trying to curate a museum exhibition about their lost culture as they bicker over whose recollection of historical and personal moments is correct. (They also happen to be hyper-realistic androids, but the story’s heat is really in their complicated friendship!) On the side, I’m also loosely working towards a poetry collection about language acquisition and loss, viewing it through immigration, my memory disorder, love, and more.
Outside of writing, I’ve been trying to land one smooth one-handed backside bert slide at the skatepark. Right now they’re two-handed and I look like I’m dying the whole time.
Getting up on your soapbox, what are three books you would recommend to anyone and everyone?
This is so hard. I mainly read to learn something about the parts of me that don’t yet have words, which is what I want for everyone else, too, but I’ve got no clue what will strike other people. For me, these epiphanies can come from Richard Siken’s Crush, or a meme, or some really sublime copy on a cereal box—but I can’t recommend the cereal box just because mine happened to have a prize! That said, here are books I feel are absolutely packed with leaping points for hopefully many kinds of people:
The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker: an instructional book about escaping violence. It completely rewired my framework of what an emotion really is and gave me strategies to break it down in writing.
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott: a craft book about writing that made me recognize how neurotic I can be and gave me a way to laugh about it. Instead of trying to quash my fears, it let me pop a clown nose on them and invite them in. It’s ostensibly about writing but really about life; everyone who’s recommended it to me, for instance, has not been a writer.
Then the War by Carl Phillips: a gorgeous collection I’ve been reading and re-reading. Its undulating, interrogative force! It reminds me of how I want to think, to approach all things rotten and beautiful and dreadful and bizarre, and then approach them again. It’s a framework for rediscovering the things that are so startling about being alive.
What are you looking forward to in 2024?
Writing-wise: finishing this revision of my novel. Getting my rejection from Taco Bell Quarterly. Surprising myself with my poetry—it’s a new discipline for me, and there’s so much to learn. Writing something that really affects the people I love, that would be incredible.
Not writing: all my wedding stuff! Our dog is going to be our witness. I can’t wait to see his paw print on the certificate.
