The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #113: Jen Calleja
"The fear to write about these experiences came from taboo and shame regarding mental illness, poverty and trauma, which makes it even more important to write about them..."
Since 2010, in various publications, I’ve interviewed authors—mostly memoirists—about aspects of writing and publishing. Initially I did this for my own edification, as someone who was struggling to find the courage and support to write and publish my memoir. I’m still curious about other authors’ experiences, and I know many of you are, too. So, inspired by the popularity of The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire, I’ve launched The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire.
Here’s the 113th installment, featuring , author of Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode. -Sari Botton
P.S. Check out all the interviews in The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire series.
Jen Calleja is a British-Maltese author who is known for her experimental and hybrid work across fiction, memoir, essay and poetry. She is the author of Vehicle: a verse novel, which was a cult hit in the UK and chosen as a Book of the Year in Granta, and the long poem Dust Sucker, first published online by The White Review. A short story from her collection I’m Afraid That’s All We’ve Got Time For, ‘The Natural’, was recently adapted into a short film by the actor Charlie Rowe, who stars as ‘the natural’ actor Willem of the story. She is also the translator of twenty works of literature from German, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize for her translation of Marion Poschmann’s The Pine Islands.
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How old are you, and for how long have you been writing?
I’ve just turned 38. I started writing when I was about 16 or 17, spurred on by a friend who showed me a short story she had written when we were about 14 or 15. I didn’t realise that normal people could write literature. I first started publishing my work when I was 19 while at university—regularly in the university magazine—and haven’t stopped since.
What’s the title of your latest book, and when was it published?
It’s got the ridiculous title Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode. It came out Halloween-time last year (2024) from Rough Trade Books.
What number book is this for you?
Number 7. Three poetry, one short fiction collection, one novel, one pamphlet essay. Now this.
In Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode, I trawl through my life and popular culture in relation to the figure and characteristics of the goblin. Through six interlinked essays—‘Green’, ‘Gurn’, ‘Gobble’, ‘Gag’, ‘Grunt’ and ‘Grotto’—and seven connected poems—‘Greensward’, ‘Gutter’, ‘Gorge’, ‘Grimace’, ‘Gather’, ‘Gird’ and ‘Goodbye’—I explore the colour green, puppets, mischief, the film Labyrinth, sex, food, grief, and the act of writing memoir itself.
How do you categorize your book—as a memoir, memoir-in-essays, essay collection, creative nonfiction, graphic memoir, autofiction—and why?
It’s a memoir-in-essays-through-cultural-criticism. But not as you know it! It’s something hybrid, where you’re not really sure what you’re reading. Is it an essay about the film Fresh? Is it an homage to The Muppets? Is it someone monologuing at you about their special interests because they don’t want to talk about what they really need to talk about, which in any case starts slipping into what they’re saying? It’s been great having readers say things like “It’s completely changed how I think about non-fiction” or “I didn’t think an essay could be like this.”
There are also a series of poems snaking between the essays as a form of ‘quest narrative’ that anchors that idea of it being a memoir-as-fever dream, so there’s that in the mix too. I think of the poems as pauses between the essays that both give a breath after their intense nature, but also bolster the themes and keep me in the reader’s mind.
What is the “elevator pitch” for your book?
In Goblinhood: Goblin as a Mode, I trawl through my life and popular culture in relation to the figure and characteristics of the goblin. Through six interlinked essays—‘Green’, ‘Gurn’, ‘Gobble’, ‘Gag’, ‘Grunt’ and ‘Grotto’—and seven connected poems—‘Greensward’, ‘Gutter’, ‘Gorge’, ‘Grimace’, ‘Gather’, ‘Gird’ and ‘Goodbye’—I explore the colour green, puppets, mischief, the film Labyrinth, sex, food, grief, and the act of writing memoir itself.
What’s the back story of this book including your origin story as a writer? How did you become a writer, and how did this book come to be?
I had pitched a pamphlet essay called Goblins to Nina Hervé at Rough Trade Books in 2019, thinking it might fit into their counterculture pamphlet series, and it came out in 2020 during the pandemic. I thought I had used up all my gobliny interests in it, but instead, this weird obsession kept growing at an alarming rate, so I asked Nina if she might be interested in a book-length work and she said yes straightaway. The pamphlet ended up being a prototext for the book, though I used very little from the pamphlet in the end.
After years of half-trying to be “taken seriously” as a literary writer and translator of literary fiction, I realised that I wanted to write about the things that really interested me, that had always interested me, and that I had tried to hide for fear of being deemed unserious. I like writing in a range of styles, and love matching the style with the content when I’m writing. I was in the final throes of a PhD when I sat down to write it, the unruly style is a slimy byproduct of writing an academic thesis.
After university, I started sending stories and poems to magazines, and then other publications asked me to write something off the back of those, and then this whole thing stated snowballing.
What were the hardest aspects of writing this book and getting it published?
It was a few years of research (collecting and collating material) before sitting down to see how I could bring it together. It was perhaps one of the strangest experiences of writing I’ve had. Once I’d narrowed down 6 themes or umbrellas for the material, each essay manifested almost of its own accord. This isn’t to downplay the immense about of work and focus it took. I think this happening is a sign that I had been thinking about it for so long, my brain had started the process of ordering and arranging already before I’d sat down to write. I wrote each essay within a few days, and sent them one by one to my editor at Rough Trade Books, the poet Will Burns. He helped me choose an order for them, which I couldn’t see for the trees. The poems came last, and were written also with the essays they fitted between in mind.
One of the hardest aspects, unsurprisingly perhaps, was that I was looking at very personal and painful aspects of my life—my childhood, my mum’s mental illness and death, how intergenerational trauma had affected my family. The way I felt about writing on these topics changed on a daily basis. Sometimes it was unbearable, other times very comforting and soothing. I’ve been doing lots of events for the book, and that, too, can sometimes be a difficult aspect of putting it out into the world, when you get an unexpected rush of emotion.
Goblinhood is a memoir-in-essays-through-cultural-criticism. But not as you know it! It’s something hybrid, where you’re not really sure what you’re reading. Is it an essay about the film Fresh? Is it an homage to The Muppets? Is it someone monologuing at you about their special interests because they don’t want to talk about what they really need to talk about, which in any case starts slipping into what they’re saying? It’s been great having readers say things like “It’s completely changed how I think about non-fiction” or “I didn’t think an essay could be like this.”
How did you handle writing about real people in your life? Did you use real or changed names and identifying details? Did you run passages or the whole book by people who appear in the narrative? Did you make changes they requested?
I first touched on my childhood and family in my poetry collection, Serious Justice, which came out in 2016, and I feel the same way about writing about my family then as I do now.
Firstly, that my family has never read any of my writing, ever, so I knew that they would never know what I had written about. It used to make me sad that they had no interest in reading what I had written, but now I feel lucky that I have that freedom.
Secondly, that I don’t really need permission to write about things that have affected me because I’m allowed to have my side of the story too (which is especially important for someone who grew up being told everything was fine, when it wasn’t).
Thirdly, I’ve grown to become aware that just because you feel OK about something that happened in your life at the moment of writing, the way you feel about it may change—it might become raw later, or it might need further excavation, you might event regret it. But if you preempt regret, you won’t write a memoir, you have to weigh up the risks and benefits.
Lastly, the fear to write about these experiences came from taboo and shame regarding mental illness, poverty and trauma, which makes it even more important to write about them, no matter how personally difficult it is for me—it might possibly “corroborate” someone else’s experience.
What has been different with this book was that my brother and my cousin read it, which I didn’t think was going to happen. I had literal sleepless nights worrying about what their reactions might be to my writing so honestly about my parents and upbringing. But their responses were totally unexpected in that they were validating, permission-giving, understanding, supportive, complimentary.
Who is another writer you took inspiration from in producing this book? Was it a specific book, or their whole body of work? (Can be more than one writer or book.)
Definitely Charlie Fox’s This Young Monster and Todd McEwen’s Cary Grant’s Suit: Nine Movies That Made Me the Wreck I Am Today. They both write about film and other mediums with total idiosyncratic and personal abandon. Also the writer Gregor Hens. I’ve translated both of Gregor’s memoir-essays Nicotine and The City and The World, and his weaving together of an array of cultural references alongside his life has stayed in me, I picked up that skill directly from him, from having to write the way he does.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to publish a book like yours, who are maybe afraid, or intimidated by the process?
I’ve been told throughout my time as a writer—usually by editors at mainstream houses/publications—that I needed to change my voice, my style, the complexity of my work, the experimental nature of my work, that I need to remove the political aspects of my work, in order to be published and read. I just didn’t believe them at all.
Part of the reason for my belief was that other people were publishing my work elsewhere, readers enjoyed my work, they even and especially enjoyed the strangeness and challenge of it. I’m not a unique writer, I’m bolstered by writers trying similar things or writing in ways other people don’t tend to write in, and I recommend finding writers and publications that do what you do.
My publishers—Prototype, Rough Trade Books, Makina Books, as well as lots of publications—have never told me to be less me, or to write in a different way. They’ve all supported me to be most me. If anyone tells you that you have to change your writing (which is different to working hard on it), don’t believe them, and find people that make you feel like a writer who can just focus on their writing. There’s also a lot more camaraderie within small and indie presses, everyone’s rooting for each other, and they’re often more likely to have open submissions periods where you don’t need an agent, and/or publish writing considered ‘niche’ or ‘unmarketable’ (the best writing).
What do you love about writing?
It makes me feel alive, listened to, excited about everything.
What frustrates you about writing?
How hard it is to earn a living, even while getting work and doing that work all the time.
What about writing surprises you?
How writing is thinking, that the thinking happens on the page, and that you don’t know what you’re writing about really until you get going. This was my experience with Goblins/Goblinhood — thought I was writing about goblins, but I was actually writing about my family. This is one reason why the normalisation of AI is so dangerous, people don’t realise that writing actually happens when you’re writing, writing is a process, not simply a record.
What has been different with this book was that my brother and my cousin read it, which I didn’t think was going to happen. I had literal sleepless nights worrying about what their reactions might be to my writing so honestly about my parents and upbringing. But their responses were totally unexpected in that they were validating, permission-giving, understanding, supportive, complimentary.
Does your writing practice involve any kind of routine, or writing at specific times?
All my long-form books—Vehicle, Goblinhood, and my next book—were all largely written in the iPhone Notes app. At least the stems for things were. This is because I often forget to have a notebook with me, or I would lose a notebook at home and start another one and things would get distributed and lost. I unfortunately always have my phone with me wherever I am. I then use those notes as a basis to write longhand in a cheap notebook with a cheap pen.
Like a lot of people, I like working in a noisy café (not a silent library). I can only write when I can’t possibly do anything else, when I’m completely motivated to do it, so not every day or even every week. I wake up and think: Writing? Translating? That article? Admin?
Do you engage in any other creative pursuits, professionally or for fun? Are there non-writing activities you consider to be “writing” or supportive of your process?
For almost as long as I’ve been writing English literature, I’ve been translating German-language literature. Some people have jobs unrelated to writing to support their writing, but I’ve done the stupid thing of supporting my writing with more writing; two precarious freelance jobs. But I don’t view translating German-language literature as lesser-than my own writing, I love them both equally, they both challenge me in different ways, and they are both writing.
For a long time, about ten years, I played drums in and fronted a few DIY punk bands. I “retired” in 2018, aged 31, because I wanted to feel a bit more settled and focus on writing more (and get some sleep). There was also the pandemic when venues were closed, and me and my partner, who I played in a couple of the bands with, also moved out of London to the south of England four years ago, an hour down the coast from where I’m from originally, and therefore away from the music scene. I have started to wonder if I should get back into being in bands, I miss the social aspect, life feels a bit off-balance in that regard right now.
Whenever I finish a big writing/translating project, I now make salt dough and clay models of food. I’ll spend a weekend making and painting them while watching films or TV shows. It clears my mind, gets me using my hands, and is very meditative. I see this process as a bit like translating across mediums—from the real thing or an image, into a 3D model. I’m not interested in the models looking wholly accurate, I actually like to see how little you need to do for a model to register as the thing (red ball with green flourish for a tomato, yellowish moon for a croissant), which is similar to writing; finding the essence of what you want to express and honing it down to what is necessary to communicate.
What’s next for you? Do you have another book planned, or in the works?
I actually have another memoir that came out in late May, Fair: The Life-Art of Translation. It’s a surreal work of autofiction about how I ended up learning German and becoming and being a literary translator set in a fictional art fair/book fair/fun fair. It’s about class, pay in the creative industries, teaching yourself a language, and is full of games, custard pies, pigs and rides.
I am so impressed you taught yourself German. I'll have to track down your book about that. And to be fluent enough to translate! I also loved hearing, as I have from others, that one's family story is yours to tell. I think I wrote that to Sari long ago when she felt she had hurt her parents by writing about how their divorce impacted her. "It's your story! You were a kid! Tell it!" I also loved that you thought nobody in your family would ever read your stuff, and then your brother and cousin did and supported you. I once attended a New Yorker festival talk with Mary Karr and Tobias Wolfe about writing memoir about family. They both said that their families and friends wanted to be written about more, not less.
Great interview! I recently attended a great class with Jen about literary translation, but somehow I missed the news about her new book. As a child of the 80s named Sarah, I am obsessed with Labyrinth (and the Muppets), so I'm clearly going to have to get myself a copy of Goblinhood.