Susan Emshwiller
I caught up with Susan shortly before the release of her latest novel, All My Ancestors Had Sex, to learn more about this quirky and riveting novel which exploits genealogy as a springboard for a wild, funny, fast-paced tale of redemption and to find out more about her writing process, her inspirations, and ask her questions I’d always wanted to ask. —AMA
You’re someone who has worn many hats— print maker, actor, screenwriter, director, novelist. If you were forced to choose only one hat for the rest of your life which would you choose and why?
I would really hate to make that choice, but since you are forcing me to choose, I’d pick novelist. The thing about it is you can do it on your own. Acting is pretty much done within the realms of film or theater and both of those generally involve productions that require collaboration. Screenwriting isn’t the finished product and also involves getting money/people/equipment… and so, many don’t get produced. I’ve had great fun directing plays and films but it does require a lot of finagling to get something off the ground. I didn’t do any short story/poetry/novel writing until about ten years ago. Previously it was all stage plays and screenplays. When I wrote my first short story I was ecstatic to be able to be “in someone’s head” because it isn’t allowed in writing for film or theater. With novels I can write when I want to and how I want to and not be constrained by anything but my own imagination and will.
Certainly, your mother, Carol Emshwiller, writer, and your father, Ed Emshwiller, visual artist and filmmaker, influenced you and your writing career, but who else in your life directly contributed to you developing into the person, the writer you are today?
As a person, going to therapy and finally getting comfortable talking was a big deal. My husband, Chris Coulson, a writer and actor, helped me learn who I was by listening and loving and giving me encouragement. And let me give a shout-out to writing groups! I’ve been in several— in Los Angeles, Kansas City, Durham NC, and Santa Fe —and all of these interactions have vastly helped me as a writer.
Your brother, Stoney Emshwiller, filmed himself at the age of 18 as if interviewing his older self. He spliced that footage with later footage of himself at 56 to create a sizzle reel, Later That Same Life, of his older self talking to that younger self. If you had this chance, what would you like to say to your younger self—let’s say you at 35—and how would you convince your younger self to listen?
I really would want to say, “Chill out. Don’t be afraid. You’re doin’ great.”
This ties in with the your next question. I didn’t speak except with family when I was younger. In kindergarten they were going to kick me out because they thought I was mentally impaired, but my parents showed the school my drawings, and those convinced them to let me stay. I had one kid I would whisper to if I needed something— “Mrs. Left, Susan says she needs to go to the bathroom.”
At one point I thought my life was characterized by Fear. Then a few years ago I realized this was wrong. My life was characterized by Courage. The thing about my younger self is— I was quite scared of people and situations but I never let that stop me from doing things. I have a lot of respect for that kid—whether age 10 or 35. She was tenaciously courageous.
As to how could I convince my younger self to listen? I couldn’t. I still fight some of those internal battles today.
You have a finished novel, as yet unpublished, in which the main character speaks only when with family. Talk a bit about the inspiration for that novel.
When I first started that novel Exclamation Point it was just for the joy of writing these people and a strange gothic mystery. Of course, the subconscious has its own agenda and pretty soon I was writing about a young teen girl who seemed remarkably like myself. In having her face her own inability to speak with non-family, I healed a part of my past self.
Speaking of inspiration, what are the origins of your recently released novel, All My Ancestors Had Sex. Are there parts of your novel that you appropriated from your own life?
I never know what a novel is going to be when I start it— or even if it will be a novel. I really love to work in a place of discovery via the subconscious. One of the reasons I love art-making is to find out about myself. So, I started this novel with a young woman living a “paint-by-numbers life” that was all mapped out. A while later, I had a dream of a German soldier in WWII who wakes up in a ditch and his leg is no longer attached. I wrote out that dream and for some strange reason, I thought, “I’ll just throw this into that other story.” It didn’t fit at all, but I continued. At the same time, in a prompt-writing group, I wrote a short piece about a thrift store find I have—a silver cup trophy engraved with “Log Race. 2nd Place. 1962. Dragon Lady.” I added that to the mix and little by little this strange tale emerged.
I think we always appropriate elements of our own lives as we write. Most all of the locations in the novel are places I know well. I’ve experienced incidents similar to some in the story. I’ve thought similar thoughts.
If I flew out to visit, walked into your kitchen, and opened the refrigerator door, what would I find that would surprise me?
Maybe the scions (twigs) of apricot, peach, apple trees in a plastic bag waiting for me to graft them onto our trees. I like playing the mad scientist and creating a tree full of multiple varieties of fruit.
Do you plan your novels with a theme in mind? If you had to describe the theme for both your novels, Thar She Blows, and All My Ancestors Had Sex, what would they be?
I never know what the themes will be when I’m writing. I don’t plan at all. I love that I write the first draft and then read it and go, “Wow, look at that! I was writing about what was happening in my life and didn’t know it!”
Thar She Blows was written after my husband and I moved from Los Angeles. I’d lived there for 34 years and it was a shock to no longer have California as home. I felt like I didn’t have a home. I feel like one of the themes of the novel is Home. Brian, living in a whale, names his whale Home. Anne gives up her home to search for her son. And they both find home in themselves.
In All My Ancestors Had Sex I was going through a difficult period of my mother dying in our home, then being executor of her estate, facilitating a retrospective of my father’s art and films, and I was sick of having the past be my present. I wanted to rid myself of the past. That’s the feeling that came out as a theme in the novel.
I’m curious about the cover for your novel, All My Ancestors Had Sex, which I’m told you’d created yourself. Mind telling us more about it?
Having been a visual artist before I was a filmmaker or writer, I feel comfortable in creating the covers. I tried compiling various ancestor pictures into one young woman’s face, but wasn’t happy with it. Finally, I got the idea of buying old ceramic figures and breaking them and using pieces to create one amalgam creature. It’s visually weird and putting it against an artificial background, which I borrowed from another assemblage I’d made, made for a provocative and mysterious image. The title-text is trying to be pulp-sensationalist which I hope makes it seem a bit funny. Which the novel is.
What do you do when you’re not writing? Share a bit about a typical non-writing day.
I really love being outside and creating an oasis. I’ve done this in all the yards we’ve had. Since moving to Santa Fe two years ago, I’ve planted many, many fruit trees and berry bushes and perennials and done more grafting. I love to watch the slow miraculous changes that take place every day.
If a writing genie magically appeared and offered you a wish to select any phase of writing — Inspiration | Drafting | Revising — which would you choose and why that one?
I love all the phases, but the genie is getting impatient so —I like revising the best because the whole massive pile of mud and rusted metal and bits of bone and bird nests and lost marbles is there on the table and now comes the real work of shaping it, pulling out this, shoving in that, discarding, adding… learning what it’s trying to say to me and striving to augment that.
Of all the characters you’ve created, which one would you invite to your house to spend the weekend? Why that character?
Right now, I think it would be Dragon Lady from All My Ancestors Had Sex. She’s really quite an asshole, but for a weekend, she might be the most lively, unpredictable, and —we could listen to Dean Martin, curse, and drink dirty martinis together.
Thank you, Susan, for your straightforward answers. I even learned a few things I hadn’t known about you. I hope our readers enjoy the opening chapter of your novel, All My Ancestors Had Sex, as much as I enjoyed the reading the entire novel.
Susan Emshwiller is a produced screenwriter (including co-writer of the film Pollock), a filmmaker, a published playwright, novelist, teacher, artist, and short story writer. Her novel Thar She Blows debuted in 2023. Other writing can be found in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Dramatists Play Service, Playscripts, Independent Ink Magazine, Black Heart Magazine, Gone Lawn, and Smoky Blue Literary and Arts Magazine. Ms. Emshwiller was a set decorator for many years in Hollywood and a featured actress in Robert Altman's The Player. Her feature film, In the Land of Milk and Money, a wild social satire, garnered awards and rave reviews at festivals in the US and internationally. Susan has taught screenwriting at North Carolina State University, OLLI at Duke, the Met Theatre in Los Angeles, and in conferences and festivals around the country. She lives with her husband and dogs in Santa Fe, NM where she enjoys inventing stories and backyard contraptions.
Novel Except
Vegetable Plan
As I vomit my meds on the sprouting vegetables, I wonder if this plan will work. So far, the plants seem happy. Little leaves reach toward the glass roof in a prayerful gesture as I hydrate them. No matter that the hydration is via stomach acid tinged with a cocktail of drugs I can’t name except for Lithium.
I’m told, “Working in the greenhouse is a privilege liable to be rescinded at any time for behavioral infractions.” I intend to keep this privilege by acting pliant and pleasing, thus getting good marks on my daily evaluation.
Early on, I learned that it’s impossible to hide four pills tucked in the gums or under the tongue. My keepers are used to that subterfuge. Nurse Blinky repeats the song for each of us. “Lift tongue, to the side, other side, thank you.”
Swallowing is the best option.
That day I was strong-armed up the wide steps and into the Institution was the day I succumbed to the effects of my meds—a squirt of bile in my brain that led to confusion, lethargy, dizziness, and dull contentment. I’m not sure how many months I was in this state but as I floundered, part of me, many parts, swarmed to my rescue. My right hand had its finger down my throat when I finally came to. Now I pretend to be confused, lethargic, dizzy, and dully content—all the while keeping this garden fertilized with meds. I intend to stay awake and aware. Mine is a serious sentence and it’s up to me to extricate us from this situation. Up to Me. Us. Me/Us. You’ll get it.
But I’m charging ahead of myself. You want the low-down on how I came to be in this nuthouse. Reckon I’ll start at the beginning.
Paint by Numbers - Born
I’m not cognizant of what went on before I was born or immediately after, so you’ll have to give me license to speculate. Although much of what I’ll recount is fact, other moments are informed extrapolation.
I do know mine was to be a paint-by-numbers life. My course was set and the outcome expected to be magnificent.
When I was not even a twinkle in Evelyn and Philip’s eyes, they made plans. Perhaps you’ve heard of Vision Boards where people paste images and words on a surface, creating a collage of what they want to manifest in their lives. My parents didn’t do that. My parents made Vision Books. They (Mother) cut pictures from periodicals: Architectural Digest, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Prestige, Town and Country. From clippings of beaming babies in bassinets to well-dressed young professionals in well-appointed homes.
My parents planned each milestone of my projected journey and created thirty-one leather-bound Vision Books. One volume for each anticipated year of my life. Babyhood onward to thirty.
Being members of the super-rich and used to outsourcing everything, they opted to forgo the muss and fuss of pregnancy and implanted their fertilized egg into a surrogate womb. Yasmina was already known as a reliable and hardworking housekeeper and was amenable to the incubation payout.
In a Petri dish, Father’s sperm was injected into Mother’s egg and presto-chango I was created. The parental chromosomes mingled, set about sorting which parts of the Deoxyribonucleic acid to keep or discard, and I was concocted of these randomly selected strands. Millions of bits of countless generations. I was made entirely of the past. But whoever did the fertilization procedure got a text or notification on their phone and didn’t give me a stir. At least, that’s my theory. I wasn’t stirred and all that DNA didn’t get homogenized.
After five days in an incubator, I graduated from a multi-celled embryo to a blastocyst. A syringe sucked me up and squirted me into my new home—Yasmina’s insides.
In our Central Park West building, Yasmina was moved from her housekeeper quarters off the kitchen to the suite of rooms that was to become the nursery. She was fed nutritious meals, our chauffeur Alberto took her to weekly checkups and ultrasounds, and Mother brought her to the Upper West Side Yoga Center as a guest member to keep the blood and amniotic fluid moving—and to show off. My parents did not ask to know the sex of this growing fetus, yet they had the baby clothes, silver spoon, and silk sheets monogrammed with E.G.G. in anticipation of Edward Gregor Gaston. As I grew, Philip and Evelyn counted the days and set aside Tuesday the 4th of April in their schedules. They pre-enrolled me in pre-school at Sebastian’s and, with a generous gift, secured me a place in Rothschild’s Academy for my high school years. My life was in place.
My first crime:
On April Fool’s Day, during downward-facing-dog, Yasmina groaned and I popped my head out, my features stretching the crotch of her yoga pants. I hollered, Yasmina screamed, and Mother yelled, “Shove it back in!”
Yasmina didn’t. She lowered her pants and I slid out, landing face-first on the yoga mat. Yasmina gently turned me over, and Mother gasped.
My second crime:
I was female.
Unaware of the horror of this infraction, all the ladies in the yoga session curdled around me, cooing.
They say all babies come out a red-faced, scrunched, wrinkly mess that fairly quickly evolves into the cutest button you ever saw.
I didn’t.
My third crime:
I was ugly.
