On Thursday, April 15, the Advanced Creative Writing class taught by Tobias Buckell met with author and essayist Kameron Hurley. Hurley answered questions regarding how she has maintained her writing career and inspiration over the course of 20 years, all while keeping a sense of stability with a day job in advertisement writing.
Hurley is known for her science fictions novels ‘The Light Brigade’ and ‘The Stars are Legion,’ as well as her essay collection ‘The Geek Feminist Revolution.’ She has written a dozen novels and numerous essays, earning her the Ignotus Award for 2018 and 2020, the Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer and Best Related Work in 2014, and the 2017 Locus Award for Best Nonfiction.
With Hurley’s passion for creating characters and building worlds also comes her love for justice and history, often bound together with her feminist “crush the patriarchy!” attitude. Which is why she reiterates to the class that to be the best writer you can be, you need to write something you’re passionate about, and that readers want that passion and confidence too. With her background on the history of women in war and resistance, Hurley wrote the essay ‘We Have Always Fought’ where she targets the assumptions society has revolving around women, which ended up being Hurley’s first sense of virality.
“I still see it happen all the time in twitter threads and all sorts of places,” Hurley says. “As soon as one guy jumps in like “well women have never-“ people are like SLAP and they will link this essay to end the argument.”
Hurley has been able to travel, having gotten her undergraduate at University of Alaska Fairbanks and graduate degree from KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. She is originally from Washington, having lived in Chicago and now Dayton. With the contrast in scenery, students ask how it’s possible to keep getting inspiration going from an environment like Alaska to Ohio.
“Once you’ve traveled or taken advantage of opportunities, you start to appreciate things around you more,” Hurley says. “I’ve spent a lot of time at the library, I love the Dayton library! My mom is actually jealous of how easy it is for me to order books.”
She encourages the class to make use of their surroundings no matter where they are. She mentions going to metroparks to write, using new hobbies like her gardening as inspiration, as well as life experiences.
Hurley also emphasizes the importance of making connections, saying many of the opportunities she has had have been thanks to connections made with people from all different careers and locations. One of her connections being Daniel Abraham, a previous guest of Buckell’s writing class. Hurley had written a review of one of Abraham’s first novels back in 2004, and they ended up meeting later on at a writing convention.
“He wasn’t really anybody at the time, but I was a nobody!” Hurley said. “I was just writing stuff for my blog at the time.”
To find more information about Hurley and her books, essays, blog, and podcast, go to https://www.kameronhurley.com/
