Amber Blaeser-Wardzala Interviews Bojan Louis

Bojan Louis is Diné of the Naakai dine’é, born for the Áshííhí. He is the author of the short-story collection, Sinking Bell (Graywolf Press 2022), the poetry collection Currents (BkMk Press 2017), and the nonfiction chapbook Troubleshooting Silence in Arizona (The Guillotine Series 2012). His work can also be found in Shapes of Native Nonfiction: Collected Essays by Contemporary Writers, When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, Native Voices Anthology, and The Diné Reader: An Anthology of Navajo Literature. His honors include a MacDowell Fellowship, a 2018 American Book Award, and a 2023 National Endowments for the Arts Literature Fellowship. In addition to teaching at the Institute for American Indian Arts, Louis is an assistant professor in the Creative Writing MFA and American Indian Studies programs at the University of Arizona.

Nonfiction Editor Amber Blaeser-Wardzala: I read in another interview you gave that you previously worked as an electrician. What was your journey to choosing writing as a career? Have you always had an affinity for words or storytelling or was that a love you discovered later in life?

Bojan Louis: If you were to ask my parents they might say that I’ve always had an interest, or penchant, for story, for imagination, for reading. I don’t recall my childhood as such, but then I don’t, or can’t, recall much of my childhood. But what I can say with some certainty is that I started writing in high school. And I kept doing it. I never imagined a “career” in writing, or if I did it was extravagantly far-fetched, and I’m reluctant to say that I have a career in writing, although a large percentage of my job as an assistant professor is to research and publish, which constitutes writing, but it is easily eaten up by a myriad of other things. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have a job, and I’ve always had a job that pays my bills, etc. and then I write. I work, I co-parent, and I write. That’s the career. 

ABW: A few years ago, I read your poetry collection Currents and loved it. I also have read a handful of your nonfiction pieces. I was wondering how you navigate your writing of multiple genres. Is there a genre that defines your writerly identity more than another (poet, essayist, fiction writer)?

BL: The nonfiction pieces I’ve written were either solicited or fit a call for a journal’s thematic issue. It seems that one has to publish in nearly every genre to get a job these days, so that was my motivation. Now that I have a job, I’m less inclined to write nonfiction. I don’t know that I ever will again, to be honest. I work on poems when I want to work on poems and I work on fiction when I want to work on fiction. Deadlines are certainly a factor, however. The other day I had a strong desire to work on fiction but I had a deadline for a poem in the next couple of days. So every free moment went to completing that poem despite my want to work on fiction. Anytime I complete something, or the draft of something, I take a break, which can be an hour or a month. After a week I thought I’d return to fiction, but instead I checked out two books on the history of haiku and art and also returned to reading the essays of composer Morton Feldman. Now, I want to be reading and learning about art, music, and writing, and not write at all. 

ABW: In “Before the Burnings,” the main character is a non-Diné man named Karl who is interested in Angela, a Diné woman. As an Anishinaabe woman, my protagonists are almost always Anishinaabe so I was wondering what the experience was of writing a main character who is an outsider to a large part of your identity. Specifically, what were the challenges and surprises when writing Karl’s experiences at the medical research facility and in his interactions with Angela?

BL: I don’t know if I had any. It’s fairly cut and dry for me. I exist in a world that continually erases the existence and experiences of my community, my people, that misidentifies us, that dismisses us, that rebrands us, and that chooses to ignore us even when we have been standing, living, breathing, and experiencing life right there next to everything. Karl lives in that world, too, and so does Angela. 

ABW: One of my favorite stories in the collection was “Silence.” You wove Tony’s and Katie’s third-person narratives together beautifully, and I loved the magical/mythic/unexplained elements of the story as well. I was hoping you could speak a little about the inspiration and process of writing this story.

BL: Failure. Failed marriages. Failed sobriety. Shame. The shame of feeling that one has failed, or will continue to fail. The shame that comes with being a survivor of neglect and abuse, both sexual and physical. And maybe, cowardice, because the thing that could free Tony of some of his suffering has arrived too late in his life, or at least he feels that way, but he can change, or simply welcome something new and healing into his life, if he wants. 

The “magical/mythical/unexplained” elements are simply relapse and withdrawal. It’s easy to come up with some wild ass shit when going through relapse and withdrawal, and it can all feel real and unreal at the sametime. 

ABW: Now that I’ve gotten a chance to pick your brain about one of my favorite stories, is there a story in your collection that you consider your favorite or one you are particularly proud of?

BL: “A New Place to Hide.” Because it is the gateway, the futurity for the next book. And because it is the newest, most recently drafted and completed story in the collection. 

ABW: Sinking Bell opens with the story “Trickster Myths,” and I was wondering if you see this collection, your writing in general, or any particular stories in your collection as trickster stories or working within that tradition?

BL: No, just the one you mention. I wanted it to be a metaphor for the destruction of the trickster myth trope. But, I also wanted it to be a love story with cocaine.

Amber Blaeser-Wardzala is an Anishinaabe writer, beader, fencer, and Jingle Dress Dancer from White Earth Nation in Minnesota. A current MFA Candidate in Fiction at Arizona State University, her writing is published or forthcoming from The Iowa Review, Passages North, Tahoma Literary Review, CRAFT, and others. Blaeser-Wardzala is a 2022 Tin House Fellow and a 2021 Fellow for the inaugural Women’s National Book Association Authentic Voices Program. In 2022, her novel in-progress was shortlisted for the Granum Foundation Prize. She is the current Nonfiction Editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @amber2dawn.