An hour-long conversation with Adria Laycraft, author of Jumpship Hope (Tyche Books), freelance editor, and wood artisan, an Odyssey Writers Workshop alumna whose short stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, both online and in print.

Websiteadrialaycraft.com

Facebook@adria.laycraft

YouTubeCarving the Cottonwood Girl Gone to Ground

The Introduction

Adria Laycraft is an author, freelance editor of fiction, and wood artisan who earned honours in journalism in 1992 and has always worked with words and visual arts. She coedited The Urban Green Man Anthology in 2013, which was nominated for an Aurora Award, and launched her debut novel, Jumpship Hope,, in 2019. Her short stories have appeared in various magazines and anthologies, both online and in print. Adria is a grateful member of Calgary’s Imaginative Fiction Writers Association, and a proud survivor of the Odyssey Writers Workshop. She also has two YouTube channels, Carving the Cottonwood and Girl Gone to Ground.

The (Lightly Edited) Transcript

Adria, welcome to The Worldshapers.

Thank you, Ed. It’s wonderful to be here.

Now, I say I feel like I’m kind of an honorary member of the IFWA, because we’ve known each other for a long time through conventions in Calgary, and so, although I’ve never, you know, really been a member of the organization, I’ve been part of the Writers at the Improv that that group does every year, for many, many years now.

That is so much fun, Writers at the Improv.

I’ve done it a couple of times as a program. In fact, I did it when I was writer-in-residence at the Regina Public Library, and I did it again this year at the Saskatoon Public Library. Except I didn’t really have anybody show…it was just before everything closed down and I think people were a little iffy. All I had was an English As a Second Language class, and none of them wanted to compete. So what I did was, I just took words from them…because for those…I guess I should explain…Writers at the Improv is like any improv, you get words in the audience and you write a story using those words. I wrote a story on the words that they gave me. So that was kind of fun for me. It wasn’t quite the usual kind of a process, though. But anyway, enough about me. You’re actually here to talk about you. So, we have known each other a long time and you’ve been a writer all that time that I’ve known you. So, let’s take you back into the mists of time, as I like to say. How did you get interested…well, first of all, in science fiction and fantasy…and in writing? Which came first, or how did those two things come together for you?

Well, I can…of course, that’s why my phone rings…I have definitely been a re...