You Don't Just Lose Your Life: An Interview With Gabino Iglesias

Gabino Iglesias is a busy writer living in Austin, Texas. He teaches, he writes and he reads. What’s listed here is only a sampling of the places he has contributed to. I’ve seen him writing everywhere lately but the first credit for putting Gabino on my radar goes to noir (dare I say professor?) extraordinaire, Benjamin Whitmer. Gabino Iglesias’ latest book Coyote Songs is out now and is dedicated to the aforementioned Professor. You can find Gabino Iglesias (@Gabino_Iglesias) on Twitter to get his latest work and thoughts on the writing life.

Gabino Iglesias

Gemma Webster: Art is a hard job to make work and by that I mean pay. How do you make the writing life work? 

Gabino Iglesias: I have a day job as a high school teacher. I also teach writing online at SNHU's MFA program. I edit and write. I've been a professional book reviewer for a decade. I'm the book reviews editor for PANK Magazine. I'm working on editing an anthology for CLASH Books. I write columns for LitReactor and reviews for Vol. 1 Brooklyn, NPR, Criminal Element, HorrorTalk, and other places. 

GW: Do you sleep? Is it witchcraft?

GI: I do sleep! I force myself to be in bed by 12:30am and wake up at 4:00am. Sleep is overrated.

GW: Lately I’ve been gravitating to horror and darker stories (even writers from darker times). I’m finding hope there. What draws you to the darkness? Is there light for you there?

GI: There has to be light for there to be a shadow. The darkness is there because we know light, so I write about each and the space between them. At least I try. Hope is a strange thing, but I work hard at having some of it. Darkness just feels honest to me. It always has. I've always gravitated toward dark things, and my fiction has always been dark. I like positivity. I like being happy. However, I judge people by how they act when they're screwed, not by how they act when everything is great

GW: In the RA for All Horror interview you spoke about being drawn to horror because it is about people who are in danger and scared, people who are haunted and cannot escape. In Zero Saints your protagonist makes decisions from that place of fear. It feels honest to me. What do you like about writing characters who are afraid? 

GI: I'm sure there's someone out there who will say "I've never been afraid!" but I think fear is the unifying feeling for all of us. It could be a monster or losing your job, cancer or being alone, an angry family member or a secret from you past coming to light, ghosts or eviction; we've all been there, and writing about characters like that makes me feel like I'm writing with certain degree of authenticity.

Gabino Iglesias’ latest novel Coyote Songs

GW: I was already feeling a haunted by the story of journalist Jamal Khashoggi when I read the opening to Zero Saints. I know that the inspiration for that scene probably had a different genesis for you, but are you feeling a resonance?

GI: Yup! Violence is everywhere. We live in a country where violence is dealt with in strange ways. Fellow journalists talk about people who "lose their life" in shootings. That's misleading: most are brutally murdered. We take away some of the power of violence by using soft words. For me, violence was a constant. I grew up going to sleep listening to gunshots split the night in half in Barrio Obrero and the Luis Llorens Torres projects, the largest projects in the Caribbean. All violence resonates with me, and I try my best to put it in my work without diminishing its impact. 

GW: Honestly I was terrified reading that piece. Where did it come from? Does it haunt you?

GI: My scenes come from stuff I lived, heard, read, or imagined. If someone is found beheaded in this country, we make a big deal out of it. Across the border, that is almost normal. Carteles operate under a very different set of rules. What is shocking to some is pedestrian to them. I think we are not having the discussions we need to have about a lot of things, so sometimes I write about extreme things to force people to think. It's easy for me. 

GW: How do you cope?

GI: My only coping mechanism is writing. Once I get something out, I move to the next thing. Readers who were shocked by some of the violence in Zero Saints will find Coyote Songs is a bit worse.

GW: Readers, we’ve been warned! In Zero Saints there is a through line theme of borderlands and straddling divides—divided cities, La Frontera (US/Mexico border), languages that bleed into each other, life and death. What inspires you about stories and life in between?

GI: I am a bilingual, multicultural creature. I am an educated brown man. English is not my native language. I inhabit Otherness daily. I am the migrant son of a migrant. These things are my blood, my DNA. I live in interstitial spaces. I know Gloria Anzaldúa's words to be true: once you leave, you can never go back home. My heart belongs to people like me, to parents looking for a chance to give their kids a better life, to those running away from violence, to those dreaming of a brighter future. I am a first generation college student, but women ran away from me when we stepped off the bus at the same time. I get asked where I'm from and hear comments about my accent. How in the world could I write romance when my life is about difference? I write about the in between because I am the in between. Coyote Songs is about this as well. It's about people with a dream. It's about migrants and abuse and vengeance. It's about old gods and women being harassed. It's extremely dark and bloody, but only because I want to throw light on some things.

GW: What do we need to know about the cover art for Coyote Songs? 

GI: The cover, just like the one for Zero Saints, was done by artist/author/musician/wizard Matthew Revert. I love that it captures blood and devotion, which are two elements at the hear of barrio noir.

Zero Saints Cover Art

GW: They are great covers. What was the last thing you read that you really loved?

GI: Some recent reads everyone should check out: Iain Reid's Foe, Chaya Bhuvaneswar's White Dancing Elephants, Jeff Jackon's Destroy All Monsters, Kelby Losack's The Way We Came In, Caroline Kepnes' Providence, Jennifer Hillier's Jar of Hearts, and David Joy's The Line That Held Us.

GW: What is inspiring/obsessing you right now? 

GI: Old gods, new pains, frustrated ghosts, music, and the weird desire to keep existing when everything around us presents itself as a barrier. 

GW: Do you prefer dreams or nightmares?

GI: I prefer the experiences you have while awake that inspire both! 

GW: Well said and thank you for taking the time to talk to us. 

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