Billy-Ray Belcourt on writing short stories that reflect the complexity of queer, Indigenous love

23:50Billy-Ray Belcourt: His debut short story collection and writing about queer, Indigenous love

Billy-Ray Belcourt didn't intend for his latest book, Coexistence, to be a collection of loosely interconnected short stories. In an interview with Q's Tom Power, he says he was trying to write a novel when he first started the project.

"I wanted to write about two queer, Indigenous young men who are in a relationship, and who love each other, and can endure the vicissitudes of history as they manifest in a relationship," he says. "And I did do that. I wrote about 10 or 15 pages, and then I thought, 'Well, I think I've actually said what I want to say in these 10 or 15 pages, so I don't need a novel.'"

That story, Lived Experience, opened the door for Belcourt to create what he calls a "multiverse of queer Indigenous men from Northern Alberta." He says that he returns to Will and Tom — the protagonists of Lived Experience — later in the book, but that amounted to about 40 or 45 pages, which felt sufficient to him.

Belcourt, who is from the Driftpile Cree Nation, says he wanted the book to reflect "queer Indigenous complexity." Specifically, he wanted to tell stories that show "forms of love that are about mutual flourishing, rather than some scene of marginalization."

"I wrote about this a bit in my memoir," he says. "In my early 20s, I was in these relationships and situationships — we didn't have that word yet — where it was clear that I was being understood in very specific ways as an Indigenous person. I was either a fetish or a compromise. And neither of those two positions can withstand the test of time. You can't be loved authentically as a fetish or a compromise."

Belcourt, who's previously written a novel, poetry, essays and a memoir, says the switch to short stories meant he had to totally rethink how he structured a story.

"Even when you're writing about invented people going through made-up scenarios, you want to get to some kind of sense of truth," he says. "In a novel, you can withhold that truth until the last 10 pages, but with the short story, you have to get to it fast."

Having said that, he says the process of writing short stories really grew on him over the course of writing Coexistence. He says it's a healthier, more balanced way of writing.

"With a novel, I'm thinking about everything all the time," he tells Power. "With short stories, I could have two days to get a draft done, really work it over, read it, edit it, get it to a place where I could proceed with my life. Write it down, move on. Write the next one down. Move on. It seems like a healthier way to write. Less obsessive for sure."

The full interview with Billy-Ray Belcourt is available on our podcast, Q with Tom Power. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Billy-Ray Belcourt produced by Cora Nijhawan.