Khang-Ninh Đặng

What was your favorite book as a child?

I am too old to remember and young enough to feel embarrassed about my childish reading times. But the last book that I can recall before I lost my childhood is One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez. There was something liberating in reading a work so fresh and so different from what I had seen before, so profound that it refused any cliché interpretation my naive self could come up with. That was the moment when literature lost its innocence on me, and thus I began to write.

What was the original reason or motivation why you started writing creatively?

I guess I first wrote creatively to find my way into humanity, to feel less lonely in my flesh and more in touch with the world outside. It is different now, I think: I am much less interested in what is common than what is unconventional — the eyes we refuse to see, the voices we refrain from listening to. So, in a way, I am not finding my way into humanity anymore as much as I am uncovering it; and literature, broadly speaking, is my way of speaking what the world has been hidden from. Therefore, I just hope I am doing a good job at it — that I am making a good case for this lonesome planet we all live on.

What was the most adventurous or thrilling thing you ever did/experienced?

Go hiking alone in the woods, or send a poem unedited to literary journals. Both significantly decrease my chance of survival; both require me to trust the invisible voice inside as I make my way outward.

Do you listen to music while reading or writing?

My listening stats last year were 211,053 minutes, so I guess… yes? Sometimes music acts as white noise for me to pour out my thoughts clearly; sometimes it directly inspires me to sharpen my words.