All About “The World I Found”: An Interview with Latika Vasil

I enjoyed The World I Found, Latika Vasil’s new novel, a great deal – so I wanted to ask her more about it. Here is our interview!



Cover image of novel "The World Found" by Latika Vasil

How would you describe “The World I Found” to a potential reader?

The World I Found is narrated by 15-year-old Quinn and closely follows her journey from Campbell Island to the Wairarapa and finally home to Wellington, as she navigates a dangerous and eerie post-pandemic world. It will appeal to readers who enjoy a fast-paced adventure story as well as a dystopian setting. The familiar New Zealand environment in which the story is set may also appeal to readers who enjoy a local setting.

I really enjoyed Quinn as a protagonist. Did you enjoy writing from the point of view of a 15-year-old girl?

I enjoyed writing from Quinn’s point of view very much! I like that Quinn isn’t the perfect heroine. Like all of us she makes mistakes and gets things wrong. She has some wonderful qualities, such as her intelligence, adaptability and loyalty to those she cares about, but she is also impulsive and stubborn and these characteristics often get her into trouble. As the novel progresses, Quinn grows in confidence and also develops a love of nature and I enjoyed writing this.

I admire Quinn’s resourcefulness. Is that a case of her stepping up when circumstances demand, or is that innate in her character?

This is a tricky question and it is probably best answered as a bit of both. In the novel, Quinn finds herself in exceptional and totally unforeseen circumstances. She never expected to face the challenges that present themselves. I think we all wonder how we would react and cope if the world suddenly turned upside down, and all the many things we take for granted and which are essential to the smooth running of our day to day lives, disappeared. Quinn is faced with this reality and realises she has to step up and learn to look after herself. At first this doesn’t come easily but as the story develops, Quinn becomes more confident in her abilities and in her own judgement.

This novel is about a pandemic and its aftermath, and it was written during the Covid-19 pandemic. Did the real pandemic influence the fictional pandemic?

Funnily enough, I started the novel before the Covid-19 pandemic and then fiction became reality to some extent! Coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic I did wonder what things would be like in Aotearoa if a worse pandemic had hit us. I explored this scenario in the novel.

Without giving too much away, society reorganising itself after the pandemic in your novel doesn’t go entirely smoothly. Quinn and her friends Jeroen and Cal all respond in different ways to the situation they find themselves in. What leads them to respond in those different ways?

The trio of Quinn, Jeroen and Cal are all very different characters and all have had different upbringings and life experiences that influence the way they react to the new world they find themselves in. Jeroen, especially, has had huge trauma in his life and this impacts how he relates to people and situations. Quinn is more open and receptive to the way she feels about things. She is intuitive and this allows her to see things through a different lens than Jeroen who is very much operating on surface level and as Quinn observes ‘sees what he wants to see’.

Quinn is on Campbell Island when the pandemic hits. Did you need to do lots of research to write those scenes on the island?

Campbell Island is very remote and inaccessible. It is one of New Zealand’s subantarctic islands, 700 kilometres south of Bluff in the South Island. So, while I would have loved to travel there to get a firsthand experience of the island, I had to settle for second hand accounts. Luckily, Campbell Island is a fascinating place and there is quite a bit of material available describing the island and what it is like to live there. It is uninhabited but is occasionally visited by scientific expeditions and small cruise ships. One day I hope to visit!

You’ve previously written adult fiction. What, if anything, was different about writing YA fiction?

The main difference was being able to create an authentic voice for Quinn as a present-day young person. While all of us as adults have been 15 years old once in our lives and can draw from this experience in our writing, it is important to be in touch with what it’s like to be a young person currently, or in the near future as is the case in The World I Found. Once I found Quinn’s ‘voice’ and she began to feel fully fleshed out and real to me, the writing came easily.

Where can readers of this blog buy copies of “The World I Found”?

The World I Found is available from www.latikavasil.com and selected bookshops (see bookhub.co.nz)

Latika Vasil bio

Latika Vasil is an Indian New Zealander who lives in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington. She has worked as a university lecturer, a researcher, a creative writing tutor and currently as a freelance writer. Her fiction has been broadcast on Radio New Zealand, and published in various anthologies and magazines, including Landfall and takahē. She has written two books of fiction: A collection of short stories, Rising to the Surface (2013, Steele Roberts Aotearoa) and a YA novel, The World I Found (2023, Black Giraffe Press).

What I learned from my year of submitting poetry to magazines in Aotearoa

Back into writing poetry

Earlier this year, I returned to writing poetry. I’d been focused on writing fiction since the publication of my 2016 poetry collection New Sea Land, with the exception of the music poems I wrote for my 2019 chapbook Big Hair Was Everywhere – most of which dated from 2016-17 anyway.

It was a real joy to return to writing poetry after five years focused on fiction, but I went into it thinking that there were few to no magazines left in Aotearoa that published poetry. Happily, I was wrong about that.

This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list – check out the New Zealand Poetry Society website for more poetry markets – but here are some poetry magazines I submitted work to in 2022, together with how I got on.

(There are all sorts of ways to get your poetry out there – live performances, competitions, videos, anthologies. Time permitting, I’ll post more about those next year – including what I’ve learned about poetry in Aotearoa from editing the 2021 and 2022 New Zealand Poetry Society anthologies, Kissing a Ghost and Alarm & Longing.)

Landfall 244 cover - Seacliff train station

How I got on

I had poems accepted and published by:
a fine line – “Villagers” in a fine line, Autumn 2022, p. 24
takahē“Restraints” and “Bento Box, Mt Victoria” in takahē 105, August 2022 (online edition)
Landfall – “Uncles” in Landfall 244, pp. 154-155. (I’m particularly chuffed about that one, as I’ve had reviews published in Landfall previously, but never poetry.)
broadsheet – “The Passage South” in broadsheet 30, November 2022
Tarot – “She Fell Away” and “Closer to the river” in Tarot 5, December 2022.

Thank you to the editors of those magazines!

I submitted unsuccessfully to Poetry New Zealand (which is an excellent yearly magazine/anthology that I’ll definitely be trying again), two competitions, and in a swing-for-the-fences moment, Asimov’s – another place I haven’t been published but would like to be. Happily, there are plenty of other science fiction poetry markets.

I’m very pleased with that ratio of acceptances to submissions – but experience has taught me that one good year of getting work accepted doesn’t guarantee another. Nevertheless, once my current round of novel revisions is finished, I plan to dip my bucket in the poetry well once again – I still have a bunch of ideas for poems, and some partial drafts, to pursue. I hope there will be a collection’s worth of publishable poems by the time I’ve finished.

What I learned

These are pragmatic comments about how to maximise the effectiveness of your submissions, rather than advice on how to write poetry!

Follow the guidelines. If a magazine says they want to see up to five poems, don’t send them six – it will just piss them off. (Well, it would if I was the editor.) If they say they want poems of up to 40 lines, don’t send them a 50-line poem, and so forth. And whatever you do, don’t send the editor a poem they’ve previously rejected! (I don’t *think* I’ve ever done this, and I try really hard not to.)

Find out what the editor likes. What style of poetry do they write themselves? Is that the style of poetry they tend to select for publication, or do they select a wide range of poems and poets? Have they posted or commented about what sort of poems they are seeing too much of, or not enough of?

Find about the journal. Bonza Bush Poetry and the Extremely Academic Magazine of Post-Post-Post Modernist Poetics are unlikely to publish similar poems: which one is your work better suited for?

Send a range of work. This is one I have learned from editing poetry myself: if I have a range of poems I could submit, I try to include some shorter poems as well as those that are near the length limit, some lighter poems as well as serious ones, etc. Be that poet who gives the editor a range of options when they are completing their selection for an issue.

Submit earlier rather than later in the submission window if you can. Because I tend to be deadline-focused, I don’t often follow my own advice here. But if a magazine says “submissions are open from 1 September to 1 November” and you have poems that are ready to submit, I’d get them in early in the window if possible – that probably gives you the best opportunity to get your work, and particularly longer or more complex poems, selected.

Send your best work. What a cliche! But it’s true.

Be gracious. Nobody likes having work rejected – I certainly don’t – but don’t take it out on the editor. From my own experience, poetry editors are battling against time pressures, money pressures, fatigue and other commitments to do the best job they possibly can, and they almost always receive far more poems than can be fitted into an issue. Plus, complaining isn’t likely to make the editor look more favourably on your next submission.

No Other Place To Stand: An Anthology Of Climate Change Poetry From Aotearoa New Zealand

Pile of copies of poetry anthology "No Other Place to Stand" ion table, with trees shown through window in background

I’m very pleased that my poem “Not for me the sunlit uplands,” first published in New Sea Land, is included in this new anthology. I’m looking forward to the Wellington launch on 14 July – check out the details below:

Auckland University Press invites you to the launch of NO OTHER PLACE TO STAND: AN ANTHOLOGY OF CLIMATE CHANGE POETRY FROM AOTEAROA NEW ZEALAND.

Join editors Jordan Hamel, Rebecca Hawkes, Erik Kennedy and Essa Ranapiri – as well as plenty of special guests – to the celebration and launch party of this brilliant new anthology.

6pm, Thursday 14 July
Meow
9 Edward Street
Wellington
All welcome!

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/389905359776491

Editors’ note: We’re also planning a Te Waipounamu launch for the anthology with Word Christchurch later in the year. 

Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy, Volume III

Cover of Year's Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy Volume III

I’m really pleased that my climate fiction story “The Double-Cab Club”, first published in Stuff’s Forever Project in January 2020, was selected for inclusion in this excellent annual anthology from Paper Road Press, edited by Marie Hodgkinson. Check out the Table of Contents – lots of fine writers and stories included! – and get your print or ebook copy.

Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy: Volume 3, edited by Marie Hodgkinson

The third volume in our annual anthology series celebrating the strength and diversity of local SFF writing.

Cover by Rebekah Tisch.

Buy the paperback here, or the ebook at all major ebook retailers.

Table of Contents:

New Zealand Gothic, by Jack Remiel Cottrell
Synaesthete, by Melanie Harding-Shaw
Kōhuia, by T Te Tau
Death confetti, by Zoë Meager
For Want of Human Parts, by Casey Lucas
How To Get A Girlfriend (When You’re A Terrifying Monster), by Marie Cardno
Salt White, Rose Red, by Emily Brill-Holland
Florentina, by Paul Veart
Otto Hahn Speaks to the Dead, by Octavia Cade
The Waterfall, by Renee Liang
The Double-Cab Club, by Tim Jones
Wild Horses, by Anthony Lapwood
You and Me at the End of the World, by Dave Agnew
The Secrets She Eats, by Nikky Lee
How To Build A Unicorn, by AJ Fitzwater
Even the Clearest Water, by Andi C. Buchanan
You Can’t Beat Wellington on a Good Day, by Anna Kirtlan
The Moamancer (A Musomancer short story), by Bing Turkby
They probably play the viola, by Jack Remiel Cottrell
Crater Island, by P.K. Torrens
A Love Note, by Melanie Harding-Shaw
The Turbine at the End of the World, by James Rowland

Year’s Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction & Fantasy: Volume 3
Edited by Marie Hodgkinson
ISBN 978-1-99-115030-1

Protest! Shaping Aotearoa

Many Hager’s new book Protest! Shaping Aotearoa is being launched this Thursday in Wellington, and you’re invited to the launch – if you’d like to come, please RSVP to media@onetree-house.com by Tuesday 10 August.



Invitation to launch of Protest! Shaping Aotearoa, including image of cover and image of the author, Mandy Hager

Launch details

Where: Vic Books Pipitea, Rutherford House, 27 Lambton Quay Wellington
When: Thursday 12 August, 5.15-6.30pm
Who: The book will be launched by Nicky Hager, with an introduction by Chloe Swarbrick

I’m looking forward to attending the launch and getting this book – not only because I think such histories are vital to inform and inspire new generations of activists, but because it contains a chapter on the Save Aramoana Campaign, the successful campaign to prevent a second aluminium smelter being constructed on a salt marsh at the entrance to Otago Harbour. I was involved in that campaign and gave some info to Mandy about it for the book – I’m looking forward to reading that chapter, and all the others!

Transformative Works: a poem for Level 3

This is the daily shipping news. Jashley,
Ashinda: behind them, the promise
of transformative works, the old Ministry
reassembling from neoliberal dust.

The old and the new scramble
for debt-free gold at the rainbow’s end,
the schemers of irrigation schemes
circling the circular economy.

Tunnel borers sharpen iron teeth.
Laws join the bonfire of regulations.
“What’ll it be, New Zealand –
the money or the body bags?”