Marta Balcewicz

I have a postcard from a photo exhibit on my desk that brings me a lot of comfort. It’s a photo from a 1966 film about Moscow residents by a Latvian photographer. I got it in either Latvia or Lithuania, maybe at the actual art exhibit, I can’t remember. My father’s family hails from Lithuania, so I was visiting family graves there. The woman in the photo, however, looks exactly like my mother. She appears very satisfied and at-peace, floating in the water, or swimming, which if I could, I’d like to spend all day doing.

My writing space is presently under the dominion of kittens.

What do you feel is your best piece of work?

I’m enjoying the novel that I’m currently writing. For the moment, it feels like a genuine brain baby.

What music have you been listening to lately?

Lately I’ve putting on a single song, The Who’s “Disguises.” It’s a strange and funny track about being with someone but not recognizing them, physically, when out in public. 

Who is the last character you related to and why?

I re-watch the film This Is Spinal Tap every few months. Nigel (the character played by Christopher Guest) is an underreactor who is stoic but easily wounded. Our hair is also similar and I have the Gumby t-shirt he wears in one of the scenes.

Have you ever failed at something you care about?

When I was young, I was very into the plan of becoming a world-class athlete. For a time, I lived in Madrid, and the most popular cartoons on TV were about athletes (the cartoons were Japanese anime, though I didn’t know that then). The tennis player Arantxa Sánchez Vicario was big — you could find cards or stickers with her photo in cakes and candy. Also, the national department store chain, El Corte Inglés, had a promotion where they gave out very nice, glossy stickers featuring NBA team logos that became my prized possessions.

Anyway, for becoming a world-class athlete there’s a very real cut-off point. You need someone to steer you toward understanding the whole training-from-a-young-age side of things — that it’s not just about collecting stickers or finding athletes’ movements impressive and pretty. By the time I was in my teens and had a bit more agency, I thought athleticism was uncool. When I watch certain sports now, I do it with a slight bitterness. And when I engage in any athletics, I do it with a pathetic and misplaced competitiveness.   

Last gift you received?

Just yesterday I received a package from a friend who’s spending the summer in Nova Scotia. He sent me two coasters that are actually small hooked rugs with cat face designs. These rugs are hooked in the particular tradition of Cheticamp, Nova Scotia. The tag says the tradition is dying out because all the so-called “hookers” of Cheticamp are now in their seventies, eighties, and nineties. 

Best season? 

I find the height of summer to be nicest. 

Least favourite household chore? 

There’s nothing more disgusting than a Tupperware container left forgotten in the back of the fridge.

When did you first receive praise for your writing?

When I was 20 or so, an editor of a magazine I’d submitted fiction to (it was called Punk Planet and is no longer around) wrote back and offered a suggestion and compliment. The suggestion was that I was trying too hard and if I stopped doing that, there was something special there that she wanted to help me bring into relief, which was the compliment. She offered to read more of my work and gave me her address, which I was excited about because it was in NYC (this was when snail mail was still fairly normal). I believed that a compliment from an “NYC editor” meant something. It wasn’t like a compliment from a teacher, or family member, or someone not from NYC.

Years later, I understood that having an editor write back in this way is truly exceptionally generous. I wanted to find her contact online and thank her. Through googling, I discovered she’d been a playwright and TV-writer, and that she’d passed away from Leukemia in 2008, at age 44. A foundation now exists in her name, granting various funds to emerging playwrights. I wrote the thank you note that was meant for her and sent it to the foundation. The head of the board of directors wrote back and seemed quite excited. He said that she was known for precisely that: being an unusually generous and supportive person. He said he’d shared the note with her mother and wanted copies of our old communications, for the foundation’s archives. It all turned into something quite sad. 

Latest book you’ve read or favourite book ever?

I recently finished Caren Beilin’s Revenge of the Scapegoat, which came out with Dorothy Project. It’s one of the oddest books I’ve read in a long time, maybe in all time, and its oddity is so engaging. For a brief moment at the beginning you think: is this too much odd? But it isn’t.

Anything you’d like to promote?

This feels like a long time from now, but I have a novel coming out called Big Shadow, with Book*hug Press, in spring 2023. 

Marta Balcewicz’s fiction appears in Catapult, Tin House online, Washington Square Review and other places. She lives in Toronto. Her website is martabalcewicz.com and her IG is @wiczcraft.