‘It Has to Be Fun, It Has to Be Funky’: Rion Amilcar Scott on Ursa Short Fiction
This week, Dawnie Walton and I chat with writer Rion Amilcar Scott, sharing stories, craft advice, 90’s hip-hop references, and more
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*dons Ursa Short Fiction co-host hat*
This week on Ursa Short Fiction, Dawnie Walton and I chat with writer Rion Amilcar Scott, sharing stories, craft advice, 90’s hip-hop references, and how experience as parents, as teachers, and as lovers of music can inform the writing process.
We discuss our reactions to elements of our work playing out in real life, and call for not forgetting the joys and humor of the Black experience that coincide with the tragedies. Rion talks about his generative and drafting process—his beginnings and endings, the structure and limitations of flash and short fiction, the revision process, and his playfulness and improvisation as an approach to the work.
Here’s a snippet of our conversation:
Rion Amilcar Scott: “We have to write what we’re obsessed about. Big things and small things. That’s not the only thing that we’re obsessed about as a people, as Black Americans and around the world. It is one of the things. We have to talk about our pains and, of course we have to talk about our joys too, and I think a lot of people ignore the joys. Take, for instance, I think one big example is Heavy by Kiese [Laymon], I think a lot of people, if you read reviews or interviews, they focus on the tragedies and the sadnesses, and that’s a part of that book, but there’s so much joy and laughter. The book is hilarious…”
Deesha Philyaw: “That Black abundance.”
Rion Amilcar Scott: “That’s right. Black abundance! He puts it up front, and then a lot of people still ignore it, you know? And so, I think a lot of people, white, Black, everybody, oftentimes ignore the fact that we are writing about the complexity of life.”
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Check out these show notes curated by our awesome associate producer Marina Leigh:
Reading List: Authors, Stories, and Books Mentioned
The World Doesn’t Require You (Rion Amilcar Scott)
Insurrections (Rion Amilcar Scott)
“The N****r Knockers” (Rion Amilcar Scott, Tyrant Books, 2017)
“Percy and the Fire Plums” (Rion Amilcar Scott, McSweeney’s 64: The Audio Issue)
Heavy (Kiese Laymon)
The Sellout (Paul Beatty)
Heads of the Colored People (Nafissa Thompson-Spires)
Walking on Cowrie Shells (Nana Nkweti)
“David Sherman, The Last Son of God” (Rion Amilcar Scott, Midnight Breakfast, Issue 8)
Rising of a Legend (Review by Jessica Sequeira, berfrois, 2016)
“Special Topics in Loneliness Studies” (Story from The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott)
“A Loudness of Screechers” (Rion Amilcar Scott, Barrelhouse)
“Klan” (Story from Insurrections by Rion Amilcar Scott)
To Sir, With Love (E.R. Braithwaite)
Between the World And Me (Ta-Nehisi Coates)
Night of the Living Rez (Morgan Talty)
Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest (Hanif Abdurraqib)
The Invisible Man (H.G. Wells)
The Women of Brewster Place (Gloria Naylor)
Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson)
Miguel Street (V.S. Naipaul)
Rion Amilcar Scott is the author of the story collectionsThe World Doesn’t Require You and Insurrections, which was awarded the 2017 PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction and the 2017 Hillsdale Award from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He teaches creative writing at the University of Maryland, College Park. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Kenyon Review, and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020, among other publications.
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