This month I am uploading past interviews I’ve done onto YouTube, where I am slowly building a library of advice from professional authors about how they got started.
One of these old interviews is of Kiini Ibura Salaam, an old friend of mine who has made waves in the world of short fiction. When I conducted this interview back in 2013, she had just had her short story collection, Ancient, Ancient published. We had a great talk about how she’d gone about finding a publisher and the successes and pitfalls she experienced along the way, from dealing with an alternate distribution model to her decision to spend her advance on a publicist.
The very next month, that short story collection won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award. All in all, an inspiring story of making headway even when you’re not following the traditional path of writing a novel, submitting it to the big five publishers, and suchlike. A lot of authors who read AML are likely in this position, so I present this interview for your listening pleasure.
Please note, as it is an old interview, we will be talking about past events as if they are current.