Q&A with KA Ren Wyld

Interviews / By
A black and white photograph of KA Ren Wyld is set against an orange-tinted image of clouds. Ren has shoulder-length curly hair and is wearing glasses, bracelets and rings. They are gazing away from the camera, resting their chin on their hands and smiling. ‘#39 Climate interview KA Ren Wyld’ is written to the left of Ren’s image.

K. A Ren Wyld lives on the coast south of Adelaide. In addition to two novels and a children’s non-fiction book, Ren has published short stories, narrative non-fiction, poetry, opinion pieces, critique essays and reviews.

Your poem ‘take a picture’ guides us on a vivid journey through scenes from nature. How does nature inspire you and your writing practice?

Sparks of ideas occur whenever I observe nature, and walking helps me fix plot and character issues. I’m surrounded by beaches, wetlands, scrub, hills, and vineyards, so there’s many beautiful and quiet places to walk and think. Something will catch my attention—an unusually shaped branch, a cluster of fungus, bird behaviour, an ominous copse of trees, an interesting shell half-hidden by sand, a mob of roos, wispy clouds in a blue sky—and a story or poem soon begins to flow. I wish my writing could better articulate the wonderment, aliveness and connectedness of nature.  

In this current political climate, what role do you believe writers have in speaking out?

Writers don’t have a greater role in speaking out than people in other occupations or positions in society. Writers who use their platforms and creative work to focus on social or environmental issues, or speak up against injustice and oppression, were probably engaging in resistance and change-making prior to becoming writers. We aren’t exceptional beings bestowing words of wisdom, although we can tell stories of monsters. Antonio Gramsci wrote in 1929: ‘The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.’ I aim to be more courageous when I write back/speak back to privileged monsters resuscitating an unjust, dying world.  

What is on the horizon for your writing? What can we expect from you next?

I’m optimistic Which Way Shimmering Dust, a novel that honours the Stolen Generations and is a call for justice, will be published. I’ve been writing poetry, which is like a creative cleanser after producing a Masters and two historical sagas. This thesis and novels allowed me to explore, both academically and creatively, elements of fabulism in realist literature and magic realism as a narrative device. My latest work-in-progress, Why Butterflies Don’t Dream, is a mock memoir narrated in short chapters of poetry and lyrical prose. With this one, I’m keen to push my creative practice by incorporating literary devices such as the grotesque, surrealism and absurdism.

Maki Morita
Maki Morita is a writer and performance-maker of Japanese descent on unceded Wurundjeri Country. Her play Trash Pop Butterflies, Dance Dance Paradise debuted at Theatre Works in 2023. They were a 2022 Wheeler Centre Playwright Hot Desk Fellow, and their writing has appeared in Cordite, Mascara Literary Review, Portside Review, More Than Melanin, and more. Maki graduated with a Master of Theatre (writing) from the Victorian College of the Arts.