The Interstitial Arts Foundation is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the study, support, and promotion of interstitial art: literature, music, visual and performance art found in between categories and genres – art that crosses borders. 
The third in our series of interviews with Interfictions 2 contributors is Christian Desrosiers’ Q&A with Alaya Dawn Johnson. Johnson is the author of “The Score”, which inspired “Harmonium Mundi” by M. Panitch, up for bidding at the Interfictions Auction through 11/29!
Here’s an excerpt from Desrosiers’ interview:
Do you see similarities between “storytelling” in the to-be-believed mode of news and conspiracy theories and storytelling as art? Is engagement with a work of fiction significantly similar to engagement with the larger world through news media?
I absolutely believe that people who report news (particularly news as processed and massaged and sometimes outright manufactured as that of traditional US media outlets) are engaging in a type of storytelling. And sometimes that storytelling, as in all storytelling, rises to the level of artistry. The red scares of the middle of the 20th century had a poetry to them that I think is undeniable. The story of America, alone against the Muslim horde of those who “hate us for our freedoms,” clearly had a great deal of resonance around 2002 for many people. Engagement with a work of fiction is always going to be a step removed from engagement with true propaganda (though of course they’re not always so widely separated). A reader of fiction is always, on some level, aware that what she is reading is not true. Someone listening to a presidential state of the union speech, on the other hand, might find it impossible to grasp that what he is hearing might simply be a story. Fiction might be dangerous, but presidential charisma can be deadly.
According to her official bio, “Alaya (rhymes with ‘papaya’) lives, writes, cooks and (perhaps most importantly) eats in New York City. Her literary loves are all forms of speculative fiction, historical fiction, and the occasional highbrow novel. Her culinary loves are all kinds of ethnic food, particularly South Indian, which she feels must be close to ambrosia. She graduated from Columbia University in 2004 with a BA in East Asian Languages and Cultures, and has lived and traveled extensively in Japan.” More about Alaya Dawn Johnson can be found at alayadawnjohnson.com.
The full interview can be found here.
