“Our lives reflected in stories should never be banned”: An Interview with Cait Gordon

All Lit Up: Tell us a little about your latest novel, Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space!: Season One. What can readers expect? Is there a Season Two coming?

Cait Gordon: Season One: Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space! is a collection of episodes featuring the crew of a science vessel who are part of an intragalactic network known as the Keangal. That’s based on the Irish word Ceangal, which means a relationship between people, groups, or things. Within this network, accessibility and accommodations are the norm, so all bodies and minds are celebrated. The principal cast are (according to our terms on Earth) Blind, disabled, neurodivergent, Deaf, selectively speaking or nonverbally speaking, and/or they manage mental illness. They have adventures on a massively accessible ship called the S.S. SpoonZ. My hope is that readers can expect a fun ride with plenty of humour, found family and solid friendships, a little romance, and how the bond of healthy community can be everything—and help defy ableist pirates. I also hope that readers who share lived experiences with these characters feel the joy in how they are out in front as the stars, and not put in as an afterthought. What else? Oh yeah, for it to be an authentic Cait Gordon space opera, there has to be scenes with food. Especially cake. And for sure there will be a Season Two or else a lot of people are going to be very cross with me!

ALU: As a writer of space opera, can you tell us a little about how you came to this subgenre?

CG: I am “I was a kid when the original Star Wars movie came out” years old. Between that and faking illness so I could skip church to watch Star Trek reruns, I became hooked on space adventures. I love space opera as a subgenre because it’s often so character driven, and I really care about the relationships between folks in stories. I can put my foot on the gas of my imagination and just have a blast making up stuff too. What was really fun for me about Iris and the Crew was creating sentient assistive tech. They even have their own social culture as we discover in “Episode 10: Clarence Has a POV.” (Clarence is Iris’s guidebot.) And Security Chief Lartha’s leg prostheses are security guards in their own right!

ALU: We hear you’re a musician too. Does music play a role in your writing at all? Are you a writer that thrives on a playlist while writing?

CG: Yes, I am singer, bassist, and drummer. You just made me realize my first bass guitar is now 40-years-old this summer. (Which is really weird because I’m only 25.) Music has always been a part of my life. I began singing at two-years-old. While I typically don’t listen to music while I write, I did have Iris and her buddies enter an open call for bands at a music festival when they’re on leave in “Episode Four: Shore, let’s go!” The concert is inclusive for all bodyminds, even on the floor in front of the stage. And Head of Engineering Horatio Herbert (“Herb”) enjoyed it from his generated private room, where we assume he’s tweaked the volume to his liking because of auditory sensory stuff. There’s another episode where Iris is playing her electric harpsichord for an old friend, who is moved to tears of joy. So, I’m glad I got music in this book. Music has saved my life many a time, to be honest. I listen to it every day and am always singing. I just keep it off while I’m writing because I might be too distracted and stimmed by the sounds. I have a really complex relationship with sound, as an autistic human.

ALU: The anthology you co-edited with Talia C. Johnson, Nothing Without Us, featuring protagonists (and authors) that identify as disabled and neurodiverse is a really important piece of work. It contains so many talented writers in the area of speculative fiction and beyond. What was it like working on that project? What did you take away from it?

CG: The Nothing Without Us and Nothing Without Us Too anthologies all began with my blurting out loud at the Renaissance vendor table, “I wish I could put together an anthology that only has disabled writers, but I don’t know how to do that.” Thankfully, I blurted that out to Nathan Fréchette, who was the publishing director of Presses Renaissance Press at the time. He said, “Renaissance will publish it!” And I panicked about curating it alone, so he suggested Talia C. Johnson, my best friend join me. Now there were two editors with no experience! That was so much better! Hahaha! But what struck me about putting out that very first call for submissions was how many authors thanked us that we were doing it. Quite a few added that they’d buy the book even if their story wasn’t accepted. I wanted to create the anthology because I had only known one book that starred a disabled protagonist that was written by an author with the same lived experience. That wouldn’t do. I wanted to be able to list off many disabled creatives when asked for suggestions. But yeah, Talia and I couldn’t believe how many submitting authors really wanted this to happen. Then, my dream wish came true: Nothing Without Us became part of a syllabus for a disability studies course at Trent University. It’s still being taught there today! It also was a finalist for a 2020 Prix Aurora Award. What Talia and I hadn’t expected was how much work an anthology was, so now I appreciate anthology editors so much more. I think another challenge was that while we received amazing stories, we were also really jolted by unashamedly ableist ones. That was tough. But it was a labour of love and just as we were ready to take a nap, people said, “When’s your next anthology coming out?” So, we pitched Nothing Without Us Too, and it was accepted. And we ran that project during the pandemic…that’s a story for a whole other article. When it won a 2023 Prix Aurora Award, we were gobsmacked. But yes, we definitely need more stories by us and for us because we’re often not represented in a way that reflects us. Nothing about us without us!

ALU: What do you hope readers take away from your writing?

CG: I sincerely hope people feel good after reading my works, that they feel lighter and glad they took the time to dive into my stories. Maybe not every single scene in my books falls under “rainbows and sunshine,” but I like to write stories that help people escape in a fun way, while perhaps being seen. In Iris and the Crew, I wanted a queer-accepting world building as well, and with all that’s going on these days trying to erase us, I feel books with 2SLGBTQIA+ characters and protagonists are more important than ever. Our lives reflected in stories should never be banned. We should never be banned. We’re here, so why can’t we have adventures too? I mean, we can PEW-PEW-PEW with the best of them! So, perhaps I should say instead that even though not everything in my work is sunshine, I hope it’s always rainbows!

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Cait Gordon is an autistic, disabled, and queer Canadian writer of speculative fiction that celebrates diversity. She is the author of the award-nominated, disability-hopepunk adventure, Season One: Iris and the Crew Tear Through Space! Her short stories featuring disabled and/or neurodivergent heroes appear in Spring into SciFi 2024, We Shall Be Monsters, Mighty: An Anthology of Disabled Superheroes, There’s No Place, and Stargazers: Microtales from the Cosmos. She has had poems published in Polar Borealis and Mollyhouse. Cait also twice joined Talia C. Johnson to co-edit the (award-nominated) Nothing Without Us and (award-winning) Nothing Without Us Too disability fiction anthologies.