Gillian Kendall

Gillian Kendall is a freelance writer currently living in Australia. She is the author of two books both published by The University of Wisconsin Press, How I Became a Human Being which she co-wrote with Mark O'Brien and Mr.Ding's Chicken Feet published in September, 2006. She is a regular contributor to The Sun and has published essays or fiction in a number of other periodicals including Curve, Girlfriends, and SurfMetro.

I first read Gillian Kendall's work in The Sun magazine and was taken by her wry humour combined with sometimes painful topics. I later met her at one of The Sun retreats where her encouragement on one of my essays helped me to take my own writing more seriously. Since then I've followed her work and enjoyed her recently published book, Mr. Ding's Chicken Feet. We caught up recently on the phone for this interview, which I then followed up through e-mail.

Jordan: Where have you traveled and how has this traveling inspired your writing?

Gillian: I've traveled a lot, sometimes I think too much. We moved a lot when I was growing up. I was the only American in my family - everyone else English and Australian. I've lived in five countries - Australia, Germany, Egypt, England and the U.S. and seven or eight states. In between I traveled, teaching or on vacation, around the world. I've also worked on navy ships as a civilian college teacher.

Gillian: My father was a doctor. We just seemed to move a lot, and as an adult I've kept up the tradition. For generations, my family has been prone to making these vast changes often. And I've always been open to jobs overseas.

Gillian: As a child it was awful. Moving is really hard on kids, especially when they are teenagers. One of the things that helped is that I loved the children's book, Harriet the Spy - a great children's book. Harriet wants to be a writer when she grows up and her governess tells her that it's important to see a lot of different people and how they live so that when she grows up, she'll know how she wants to live. I think I took those words to heart, so even though it was hard I told myself that it would be good for my writing.

Gillian: I've always written. In second grade, when my teacher praised a poem that I wrote I told her I was going to get it published.

Gillian: Bill Bryson, Larry McMurtry, Garrison Keillor - all are good story tellers. They make me laugh, and they make me want to tell stories. There's something about hearing a good story that makes people want to tell one of their own. I, of course, really support women writers and there are many that I love, but I think it's these three men who have really inspired me to write.

Jordan: Mr. Ding's Chicken Feet would be considered a cross between a travel narrative and literary non fiction. What other types of writing do you do?

Gillian: I also write short stories, essays, interviews and freelance journalism. I have done articles about travel, women's issues, parenting, education, food, and the environment. Right now I'm writing about airplane emissions offset programs, and about the north shore of Hawaii.

Gillian: I didn't realize till after I wrote it and people started mentioning it to me what a big part food played that book. From what I saw in the microcosm on the ship, food is such a big, important part of the Chinese culture. It's also very important to people on long ship journeys, for obvious reasons. I have a theory that tolerance and real multi-culturalism happen almost entirely through food. We learn about a culture first by going to foreign or "ethnic" restaurants and eating their food. When traveling we meet people over the table and share meals with them. Or it's a great coup, if you're traveling in another country, to be invited to a local person's house for food.

Gillian: Hot and sour soup, but now I'm a vegetarian I can't always get it in restaurants. When I got off the ship, incidentally, I found using a knife and fork again to be very awkward - I love chopsticks now!

Gillian: Unfortunately, no. I miss them and dream that I will hear from them again.

Jordan: What was the process of getting Mr. Ding's Chicken Feet published?

Gillian: I knew the press and the editor from my previous book, How I Became a Human Being, which I co-wrote with Mark O'Brien. After working with me on that book, the editor asked if I'd be interested in reviewing some manuscripts for the press. Of course I was - I love doing that work - and one of the books I read was about China. I thought that my own book about China (then in manuscript form) was nearly as good as that one, and so I asked the editor to take a look at my manuscript. At that point the manuscript for Ding was some five or six years old.

The University of Wisconsin Press editor looked at it, sent it out for review, and came back and told me it needed substantial revision. He wanted it to have a personal element that was otherwise lacking. That's when I added in the part about realizing I was gay while on that ship. Before, there was no mention of that nor much mention of my existing, het relationship. After I added that element, UWP took the book. However, it was three or four years between the contract and the publication, so I was thrilled when it finally came out last September (2006). It'd been, at that point, some 15 years since the event that I wrote the book about teaching on the ship. So it's been weird to revisit that time in my life from this vantage point. Everyone who reads the book and wants to talk about it, of course, thinks of it as fresh information and a recent event, but to me it's so long ago I can hardly remember a thing other than what is in the book. But the book does a good job of reminding me what it was like.

Gillian: The first time I got really positive attention was reading at an open mike in college. I read a short account of something that happened to me in Spain. It was about being alienated in a strange country and actually being attacked after a misunderstanding. It was well received, and I got good response from the audience - gasps at the appropriate moments and all. I put it together right then that people liked drama and foreign countries. That enthusiasm was a positive response and I knew that I wanted to do more.

Gillian: The truth is, and I have just admitted this for the first time yesterday, I am quite bored with the book I am currently revising. It's about working at Victorian Parliament, and it's quite different from Ding - not nearly as funny or personal. It's more sort of academic and abstract, being a lot about language and personality. The title, which may be the best thing about it, is Notes from the Strangers' Corridor: A Memoir of Editing, Insomnia, and Minor Mental Illness. Some parts of the book stand out and hold my interest; others just leave me cold. But my plan is to finish this draft and then send it to the UWP editor. I am hoping that he will once again be able to tell me what the book needs to make it publishable.

Then, when that's done, I want to write a great novel full of emotions and amazing insights, all expressed in beautiful language, in the vein of Ian McKuen's work. Wish me luck!

Gillian: I used to. I have journals by my bed. These days I write a lot of emails and real, paper letters, and they seem to keep the accounts of my daily life.

Gillian: I want to keep writing almost every day, as I do now. I'd like to do more travel writing. I'd like to sell the movie options for Mr. Ding. My friends and my film agent have suggested Renee Zellweger or Drew Barrymore playing me, which is funny, but apt, I think. And I'd like to be more involved with Esalen. It's one of my favorite places on earth. I'd love to teach one of their month-long classes.

Gillian: Read The Sun magazine. Go in a room and shut the door, and be quiet - until you know what you want to write about. Look deeper and deeper inside and don't listen to what other people think you should write about.

Gillian: The workshops are amazing for me, and the people who have taken them have said they've been terrifically helpful and enjoyable. It basically feels like a bunch of very smart, creative people who get energized from each other and from the exercises and suggestions that I provide. It's very hands-on, lots of writing in distinct styles and systems, and the results are profound and beautiful. Last time we gave a reading to which a lot of the Esalen community came, and it was one of the best readings I've ever attended; every person had written work that was soulful, intense, and in many cases very, very funny. I can remember laughing so hard, during one of those workshops, that I was curled up fetal on the floor. Other times we were all crying or just very moved by what someone had written and shared.

Some of the group from my last weeklong workshop, Writing With Passion, has formed an ongoing online community, and we exchange work, gossip, and ideas. We commiserate with each other's rejections and celebrate great successes - one of us just got a Penguin book contract! Lately we've been saying we feel a little like a single, ever-shifting, ever changing entity or personality, a conglomerate of friends and writers ... it's really a community even though we've only been together once in person.

Gillian: I think self-expression is the greatest reward, but also being heard and being listened to. It's extremely rewarding to hear from people or meet people who have read my work and been affected by it. It's also very satisfying to re-read something I've written and feel happy about it, although that happens very rarely, maybe once or twice a year. Another reward is emotional balance. If I don't write, it's bad for my psyche

Gillian: It's usually a mood. Often what makes me want to write a story is that someone else tells a story that inspires something else. People who can tell a good story always inspire me. My mother was a great story-teller. Sometimes I'm sort of inspired by a sense of loss - someone said all fiction is basically about loss. And that sort of goes with traveling. You gain a lot but you lose a lot too, especially people. Esalen, in Big Sur, inspires me more than any other place on earth.

Jordan: Since you now live in Australia, what is the one thing that should not be missed by someone visiting the country?

Gillian: The Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne, is my favorite part of Australia so far, but I haven't been to Uluru or the west or north yet! The Mornington Peninsula features two completely different kinds of beaches, only a few minutes from each other - the safe, shallow, toddler-friendly "front" beaches, and the wild, rock-pooly, freezing cold beaches facing Antarctica. You can tell which ones I like best! And after the beach, head to the Peninsula Hot Springs for a soak.

After accepting a job teaching English on a small engineering vessel traveling from Shanghai to Texas, Gillian Kendall embarks on a strange journey with no ports of call but exotic emotional landscapes. She is the only female aboard, surrounded by Chinese men. The cosmopolitan graduate student suddenly has to adjust to an alien world, thick with cigarette smoke, unusual sea creatures, and male sexuality. Kendall invites readers to travel with her across cultural divides as deep and mysterious as the Pacific while she explores her own culture, orientation, and heart. - book description

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