April 14, 2026 • 22 mins
Shruti Swamy, author of A House is a Body and The Archer, explores how imagination, cultural inheritance, and intuition shape her work. Drawing from Hindu mythology and her experience growing up between cultures, she reflects on the flexibility that comes from a bicultural perspective and how it informs the way she sees and tells stories.
In this conversation, Shruti challenges traditional rules of craft, sharing why she’s moving beyond rigid frameworks like “show, don’t tell” and toward a more intuitive, truth-driven approach to writing. She also discusses the role of the subconscious in creative work, the importance of spaces that encourage experimentation, and how writers can reconnect with a sense of possibility when they feel stuck.
Throughout the episode, Shruti emphasizes the importance of telling the truth in both life and art, creating work that leaves space for the reader to step in, interpret, and find their own meaning.
01:28 Cultural Inheritance and Storytelling
03:32 Understanding Hindu Mythology
05:00 Growing Up Between Cultures
06:11 Bicultural Perspective and Imagination
08:23 Rethinking Writing Education and The Dreamside
11:07 Creative Practice and Reconnecting with Imagination
13:29 Risk Taking, Safety, and the Subconscious
15:31 Balancing Structure and Dreamlike Writing
16:56 Returning to the Writing Practice
18:46 Creativity and Telling the Truth
19:56 Advice to Her Younger Self
21:03 Building Courage and Creative Community
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Episode Transcript
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(00:03):
I don't want my stories to tell the reader how to think I or
what meaning to make. I want to place things with
enough space between them that the reader can walk into it like
a room and make their own meanings.
Welcome to Unapologetically Created, a podcast from the
(00:24):
Vermont College of Fine Arts, where we celebrate bold
artistry, transformative creativity, and the audacious
voices shaping the future of thearts.
I'm your host, Andrew Ram Sammy,and in this series we dive into
honest, inspiring conversations with artists who are pushing
boundaries and redefining what it means to create work that
(00:48):
resonates and endures. Shruti Swami is the author of A
House is a Body and the novel The Archer, a work explores
culture, identity, and imagination, drawing from Hindu
mythology and the experience of growing up between worlds.
In this conversation, Shruti reflects on how cultural
(01:09):
inheritance shows up in her writing and what it means to
create from a bicultural perspective, and how writers can
move beyond rigid rules to reconnect with imagination,
intuition, and creative freedom.Shruthi.
Welcome to an apologetically creative.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
So your credit around early family storytelling in your
(01:31):
immigrants experience and heritage for shaping your of
your writing has has kind of come in so many different
facets. How do you kind of carry the the
legacy of what you do into your story and into your craft?
What a nice question. Yeah.
So what I was noticing when I was putting together my story
collection was that there was a lot of Hindu mythology in it.
(01:52):
And it's a deeply personal collection.
I mean, both of my books are deeply personal in different
ways, but there was something really startling to me.
I think it was more visible because I had so many different
stories as opposed to 1 long novel where I could see the
influences of my culture, MyHeritage, my, the stories that
I grew up listening to, the mythologies, the world views,
(02:15):
all of those things. I could see the influence of
them in my writing, which hadn'treally been visible to me.
I grew up in, in America. I was born here and I was raised
by two parents of really from different communities who didn't
share a common mother tongue. My, my dad speaks Tamil and my
mom speaks Gujarati, so I learned English and I was
(02:36):
really, you know, when I was, I can especially remember when I
was really young, really wantingto be like everybody else.
I was in a really white environment.
So I was really trying out the project of assimilation was
really important to me. And I lost a lot during that
time. So it was actually really a
beautiful thing to look at thesestories and see, oh, actually I
(02:57):
grew up listening to, you know, I have, I, I did grow up
immersed in American culture andAmerican pop culture.
I also grew up immersed in this story, these stories, this
legacy, these different strands of cultural heritage.
And they're in me, even if I don't, you know, you know, even
if that's been my where I see myself in my identity is has
(03:18):
always been a little tenuous. I could see how deeply rooted
some of those parts of my, my cultural heritage actually were
when I was looking at my writing.
Yeah. So for someone who's unfamiliar
with Hindu mythology, what is Hindu mythology?
Well, I actually read this really wonderful, very long but
very readable book called The Hindus by Wendy Doniger which it
(03:41):
will taught me a lot about Hinduism.
One of the fundamental things being that when we think of
Hinduism as a like a distinct religion and a monolithic
religion, that is an extremely recent concept And that the way
that Hinduism was practiced in the end, there's so many
stories, teaching stories, religious stories that are
(04:03):
embedded in Hindu culture, that those stories were very place
based and not monolithic at all,that they were very different in
the different communities. They were, they were told.
So I think that now we have somecommon, you know, there's some
stories that I'm really drawing upon when I, when I'm writing
that are the, the two epics, theMahabhayat and the Ramayana.
(04:27):
But those stories as like a one single story.
That's an extremely modern invention.
In fact, they're in. There's so many different
strands this multi layered living document, or has been
until very recently I think. And you described talking about
how both your parents came from from two different parts of
(04:48):
India and speaking two differentlanguages.
Is it safe to assume that being Indian and coming from an Indian
descent that it's not monolithic?
Yeah, I think that that's reallytrue.
I mean, my parents, I grew up inthe Bay Area for some time we
lived in Palo Alto where there was an Indian community.
We participated in different ways.
(05:09):
My dad is a a musician, my mom is a dancer.
So we were really involved in the Indian classical music scene
in the Bay Area and we had definitely had there.
That's a very vibrant community.Then we moved to Northern
California and to a yoga, to an ashram where that was mostly
that was an Indian gurus. There was some Indian culture
(05:32):
there and it was also a mostly white community, but who were
adopting these practices. So even within my own, you know,
even within my own family's experience, as opposed to some
of the people that I grew, I grew up knowing our our
experiences are vastly different.
Yeah. And how did those experiences
(05:52):
influence what, what you ultimately ended up doing, kind
of straddling the, the world's between realism and speculative
And, you know, were there boundaries?
Were there things that informed the the kind of everyday work
that you did, or how things become kind of otherworldly in
your fiction? Well, I think there's 2 answers
to that question and one of themis the positive and one of them
(06:14):
is like the sad one. They're both true at the same
time. I think when you're growing up
between two cultures, you are feel like an outsider and both
of those cultures. And of course being an outsider
is a really powerful place, a powerful vantage point to look
into both of those cultures. So I think some things were
available to me from that vantage.
And I also think that the the positive thing was that I have
(06:39):
forever been trying to find thisquote and I've never been able
to actually find it again. Somebody told me this when I was
kind of like when I was a teenager and it really stuck in
my brain where they were talkingabout being bilingual and
learning about how it was told to me.
But I've never been able to findit where somebody was talking
about being a child and acquiring more than one language
and understanding that like the concept of a chair is not tied
(07:03):
to the word chair because you have two words for chair.
And how flexible that makes yourthinking to know that there's so
many different. There's like there's, there's a
material reality that exists. And then there's all these
different vantage points that we're using through language to
look at them. And I'm not bilingual, sadly, to
my great sadness, I'm not bilingual, but I am bicultural.
(07:26):
So I think that that same kind of flexibility of thought where
you're like, OK, you know, at school, I'm I'm hearing this
about the world at home, I'm hearing something really
different. And I trust both of these
sources and they both line up with my material reality.
Like one language isn't wrong, right?
It's just a different way of looking at it.
So I grew up with, I mean, I'm saying 2.
(07:47):
But of course, like many storiesfrom my home world and many
stories from the outside world, but I was able instead of those
being like one of those is wrong, I was I, I think that
that kind of way of growing up really gives you a kind of
flexibility of thinking that is extremely valuable when you're
creating diction. So as a a founding teacher of
the dream side along peers like Rachel Kong, what do you aim to
(08:11):
create in that space at the dream side, and how does it
differ from what perhaps we might be experiencing right now
in this kind of institutional kind of academic sense here at
VCFA? Yeah, it's such a nice question.
Thank you. So we've just started this new
collective and one of the instigating ideas was kind of
like we have, we all have been trained, you know, like we've
(08:36):
all have Mfas, we've all gone through writing workshops.
And I think that some of the stuff that I feel very grateful
for, some of the stuff I learnedin my MFA program and some of
the stuff I feel like I'm unlearning and I don't think
what are some of? Those what are some of those
things that you're unlearning from your MFA?
Program Yeah, I think also it's like I went to an MFA program
like 15 years ago. So I think it was a it was a
(08:57):
really different time that wasn't quite as critical of some
of the I mean I went through a great MFA program and I had some
really great experiences there. So I'm trashing I'm not I mean
shout out to as of state with great MFA program.
But I think there were some things and there was a great I
mean one of the things that was wonderful about being there was
that there was a great traditionof experimental work,
(09:17):
experimental fiction and poetry,which I benefited from.
I think some of the like show don't tell.
This isn't like this is like decades of workshop, like the
kind of like handed down received rules of form and craft
and the Duvas. Not that that was just I feel
like has been embedded in me from, you know, decades of
doing. I, I started doing writing, you
know, I was studying writing in college and actually here we are
(09:39):
at Cal Arts and I I saw the signfor CISA.
I was, I went to Lisa and I was 16.
So this is the last time I was here at 3:00 there.
Are so many people who have beencoming back here to Cal Arts,
you know, for for our residents here VCFA and they have been
saying the same. Thing.
Oh, really? Yeah.
So you're not the only one. It is an extremely special
program. Yeah.
That was the first time I think I'd taken a writing class and I
(10:01):
learned so much. So I don't know.
I think that there's some some things and maybe even the format
of the workshop of just this, like this side of the cone of
silence that one must sit in andrestroof this.
I think we're just interested inhaving conversations in a non
hierarchical way that there's ways that every time that I have
been a teacher in a formal institutional setting.
(10:24):
This is going to sound like a cliche, but I think that like
the best, the best times are like when my students bring in
and their perspectives that are surprising and thrilling and
interesting, right? And that those the conversations
that happen where we might be inthat structure of I'm the
teacher and they're the student,but we are having a
conversation. We are sitting in a room and
saying this is what matters. Writing matters so much to us in
(10:46):
this moment in the burning world.
This still matters to us and we're having a conversation.
We're not thinking about the roles necessarily.
Obviously, I feel like when you're the facilitator, it is
your job to hold that space. But yeah, I think we're
interested in a kind of non hierarchy model for this and
being able to just have those conversations in those rooms.
(11:06):
Well, it'll be interesting to see what your perspective is as
you come here to residency and also, you know, embark upon our
VCFA experience. And I think it's a combination
of all those worlds. But in thinking about that this
especially in things like what you do around your your creative
teaching. The kind of retreat style.
Like the, the, the rewilding craft workshop that you do, you
(11:28):
help writers kind of reconnect with their imagination.
Everyone always talks about thatlike idyllic place that writers
have to go to or in what you're doing in your teaching, that
kind of, you know, retreat. How important is that to to have
that space? Yeah, I think for many people
it's very important. I can't speak for everybody.
(11:49):
I think for me, it's really important to have a space.
I think it's actually easy to forget for me, especially now
that I've gone through so many writing programs.
You know, I've gone to. I've gone through an MFA
program, I've gone to conferences.
I feel like I've learned a lot and I'm not necessarily signing
up for craft classes anymore, but I, I, I'm always startled by
(12:13):
it with a good one. I'm always startled by how much.
Sometimes I think being, having a creative practice, it's, it's,
you can get a little bit stuck, not not just because of all the
other factors, but also because like you, you might know what
you're doing a little too well, you know what I mean?
(12:34):
Like I feel like with stories now, I sort of have a muscle
memory for writing stories and sometimes that's cool.
I just spent like, you know, years trying to try to hone that
skill of being able to write a short story.
But I almost now am like lookingto be bumped out of it and
startled out of it and come backinto that beginner mind where I
(12:57):
like, I think the first story inmy collection is the first one I
like of all of the stories of the first one I wrote and it's
the strangest 1. And I didn't know to not do all
of that stuff in that story. You know what I mean?
Like I Jazzle's like, why not try it, right?
You know, so I think that sometimes retreats in creative
spaces. And this is definitely what
(13:18):
we're aiming to do with Arbor Wild and Craft Retreat, just to
startle people out of their their stuck places and just get
some fresh perspectives in thereto get out of your your loop.
So you talk about the kind of the setup, but what are the the
the values that guide all of this, especially like with
things like with the with the dream side, both as a kind of
teaching collective and A and a literary platform.
(13:40):
What are the things that people would see that would become very
clear in terms of, of the of what you're committed to?
Do you foster risk taking? Do you, you know, do you invite
and encourage experimentation? What are the actual things that
are done to establish that as the structure for your workshops
or your retreats? For me, I think in my workshop,
in the way that I'm approaching this, I'm really interested in
(14:04):
writing as a, I'm really interested in the wild space.
There is our subconscious that is the like the like we are the
dream side, the kind of the wildsubconscious dreaming side and
the act of dreaming that is writing.
So I think that for me, I will be focusing on getting us to
(14:26):
relax. I mean, how do you risk take?
You have to feel really safe andgrounded in your body in your
practice. And then you have to feel, you
have to have access that deep wild space of that subconscious,
creative, dark, psychedelic dream space, right?
So there's both a sense of like,we've got our feet on the
(14:47):
ground. We have some like, you know,
some pretty basic or not basic, but we have some foundational
writing tools. We are using language, like we
have some touch points. We're not just like floating out
into space. But I'm going to be doing things
like one of the foundational texts that I'm working with
right now is Otra Lords uses of the erotic and poetry is not a
luxury. So that is for me, that is like
(15:09):
the kind of framework that I'm thinking about.
And I am hoping to give participants a feeling of both,
like grounded in language, in text, but also places to let
that Channel open between the waking life and the dream life,
which is where my writing comes from.
(15:30):
Typically when you think about dreams, right, dreams are like
kind of untethered and we see ourselves floating and like
there's no kind of connection towhether or not just be fact.
But like in a linear sense, things aren't very linear.
So they become very sensory, very emotional.
But then there's always this kind of driving force around
(15:52):
intimacy. How do you balance all those
things kind of driving back towards intimacy in your prose?
I hope that in my stories there is like a balance between like
there is a ground beneath your feet.
You're not like floating off in space.
You have characters you are understand as human beings.
You know that we you understand the rules of the of the story or
(16:13):
of the world within the story. And I also, you know, do you
want a feeling of like wild, of the wildness of possibility of
spaciousness and, and yeah. And I think that that does
foster kind of intimacy with thereader.
I don't think my stories, I don't want my stories to tell
the reader how to think I or what meaning to make.
(16:33):
I want to place things with enough space between them that
the reader can walk into it likea room and make their own
meaning. So I think that's a really
intimate practice of reading, anintimate way of reading and an
intimate way of writing. And partially that is choices I
make in editing, and partially that is just how like it feels
right to me when I'm writing. So a lot of people try to kind
(16:56):
of get into like the daily practice of writing.
There are things that are going to happen in the world, things
are going to change, you know, stories are going to hit
writing, all that sort of stuff.How do you get back to the
writing when all of that, that that continues to happen and it
continues to happen at an incessant rate?
Yeah, well, you entice yourself back into writing in that, like
(17:19):
you read work that it feels thrilling and invigorating.
I mean, I think that writing is really, really hard work.
And sometimes it is hard. Like I have written like the the
my novel, it was not like every single day.
It was just flowing out of me. And right now I've been working
on a novel for like 7 years and it's still, it's just where it
(17:42):
is. It's not done yet.
So it's not like unless the inspiration strikes me as it's
flowing through me that I. Yeah.
The muse comes down from up above and strikes you on your
head and you're like, ha, no, I have it right.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I don't think that that pleasure is also available, that
I don't think that pleasure is always available.
I think there's other things that are pleasurable about
(18:03):
writing that are more subtle andthat we can.
I am trying to tune myself to those things.
Like sometimes you're swimming and the water is really rough,
but you're swimming really hard and it feels good to swim hard.
You know, like sometimes it can be like that.
That's a different pleasure thanswimming in a calm sea, a warm
calm sea. Sometimes you're swimming really
(18:23):
hard. But that, like, the pleasure of
work can also be the pleasure of, like, rhythm and routine can
also be a pleasure, the pleasureof just like, being in
conversation with the writers that you love just by writing,
you know, by reading deeply, talking to your friends, talking
to your, you know, talking to and, like, living deeply.
I think that that can translate into the pleasure of writing.
(18:45):
Yeah. What does it mean to you to be
unapologetically creative in this moment of kind of cultural
flux? I don't know.
I mean, I'm not so much interested in creativity as
truth telling really. I think at this moment I feel
like I'm really interested and concerned with telling the truth
(19:06):
in my writing unapologetically. And obviously I write fiction.
I'm writing some nonfiction as well as fiction now, but
obviously I even mean that in fiction I want to be able to
tell the truth with my work, andthat is kind of scary.
I'm trying to train myself to tell the truth in real life and
in my fiction and not apologize for it.
I want to be able to tell the truth so much, even when it's a
(19:29):
terrifying truth that it's no longer become scary, that that
is just my natural state. I think I've been socialized as
a woman, as a people pleaser, asan American.
I am socialized to lie, to give convenient truths, and the my
practice as an artist is an absolute opposition to that is
to telling the truth. If you can go back in time and
share advice with your younger self in that first burst of kind
(19:52):
of imaginative writing, what would you tell yourself?
I don't really have any advice for her.
She figured it out, you know, She, I don't know if she would
have listened to me. If she could bet, and that's not
the question. If she if she did listen to you.
Yeah, You know, I honestly thinkI would be asking her for advice
(20:14):
because I think like. What advice would she offer?
I think she would. She would just she didn't doubt
her purpose. She knew that she was here to
write and I have spent a lot of years in doubt.
I think that she had a real clarity of purpose and and a
(20:35):
kind of arrogance. Maybe some of that arrogance was
necessary to burn away, but someof it you need some arrogance, I
think, to be an artist in America because otherwise how
are you going to get? How are you going to get keep
going at all? You have to have some kind of
hard headed belief in your work.So maybe I would ask her where
(20:57):
where the source of that is and and how to channel some of that
as a middle-aged woman. How do you hope that your work
and the communities that you build through like the dream
side kind of contribute to more of a an inclusive and daring
literary landscape that can expand and and grow beyond what
it currently is right now? Well, I think like there are
(21:17):
certain stories right now that Ican tell are about there's
certain not just stories, but modes of storytelling, ways of
storytelling that are are already becoming very
marginalized and hard to access.And my hope is in my writing and
in community that we can give each other the courage that we
need to be like to tell the truth right now.
(21:40):
Like we need that right now verymuch.
You know, we need people engagedin art making right now, like
desperately. And it's and there are many more
roadblocks in place now than there were, you know, six months
ago. If it's anything, it's just
courage. It's to and to feel a sense of
solidarity in in community. Shruti Swami's perspective
(22:06):
points to a shift in how we think about creative work away
from rigid rules and toward a more intuitive and truth driven
practice. Her approach makes room for
complexity, contradiction, and multiple ways of seeing.
It's a reminder that writing canbe guided by what feels right,
(22:27):
creating space for readers to step in, finding their own
meaning, and to connect more deeply with the human experience
behind it. Thanks for listening to
Unapologetically Created. Be sure to follow the show and
stay tuned for more insightful conversations.
In the episodes ahead. To learn more about the Vermont
College of Fine Arts, visit vcfa.edu.
I don't want my stories to tell the reader how to think I or
what meaning to make. I want to place things with
enough space between them that the reader can walk into it like
a room and make their own meanings.
Welcome to Unapologetically Created, a podcast from the
(00:24):
Vermont College of Fine Arts, where we celebrate bold
artistry, transformative creativity, and the audacious
voices shaping the future of thearts.
I'm your host, Andrew Ram Sammy,and in this series we dive into
honest, inspiring conversations with artists who are pushing
boundaries and redefining what it means to create work that
(00:48):
resonates and endures. Shruti Swami is the author of A
House is a Body and the novel The Archer, a work explores
culture, identity, and imagination, drawing from Hindu
mythology and the experience of growing up between worlds.
In this conversation, Shruti reflects on how cultural
(01:09):
inheritance shows up in her writing and what it means to
create from a bicultural perspective, and how writers can
move beyond rigid rules to reconnect with imagination,
intuition, and creative freedom.Shruthi.
Welcome to an apologetically creative.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
So your credit around early family storytelling in your
(01:31):
immigrants experience and heritage for shaping your of
your writing has has kind of come in so many different
facets. How do you kind of carry the the
legacy of what you do into your story and into your craft?
What a nice question. Yeah.
So what I was noticing when I was putting together my story
collection was that there was a lot of Hindu mythology in it.
(01:52):
And it's a deeply personal collection.
I mean, both of my books are deeply personal in different
ways, but there was something really startling to me.
I think it was more visible because I had so many different
stories as opposed to 1 long novel where I could see the
influences of my culture, MyHeritage, my, the stories that
I grew up listening to, the mythologies, the world views,
(02:15):
all of those things. I could see the influence of
them in my writing, which hadn'treally been visible to me.
I grew up in, in America. I was born here and I was raised
by two parents of really from different communities who didn't
share a common mother tongue. My, my dad speaks Tamil and my
mom speaks Gujarati, so I learned English and I was
(02:36):
really, you know, when I was, I can especially remember when I
was really young, really wantingto be like everybody else.
I was in a really white environment.
So I was really trying out the project of assimilation was
really important to me. And I lost a lot during that
time. So it was actually really a
beautiful thing to look at thesestories and see, oh, actually I
(02:57):
grew up listening to, you know, I have, I, I did grow up
immersed in American culture andAmerican pop culture.
I also grew up immersed in this story, these stories, this
legacy, these different strands of cultural heritage.
And they're in me, even if I don't, you know, you know, even
if that's been my where I see myself in my identity is has
(03:18):
always been a little tenuous. I could see how deeply rooted
some of those parts of my, my cultural heritage actually were
when I was looking at my writing.
Yeah. So for someone who's unfamiliar
with Hindu mythology, what is Hindu mythology?
Well, I actually read this really wonderful, very long but
very readable book called The Hindus by Wendy Doniger which it
(03:41):
will taught me a lot about Hinduism.
One of the fundamental things being that when we think of
Hinduism as a like a distinct religion and a monolithic
religion, that is an extremely recent concept And that the way
that Hinduism was practiced in the end, there's so many
stories, teaching stories, religious stories that are
(04:03):
embedded in Hindu culture, that those stories were very place
based and not monolithic at all,that they were very different in
the different communities. They were, they were told.
So I think that now we have somecommon, you know, there's some
stories that I'm really drawing upon when I, when I'm writing
that are the, the two epics, theMahabhayat and the Ramayana.
(04:27):
But those stories as like a one single story.
That's an extremely modern invention.
In fact, they're in. There's so many different
strands this multi layered living document, or has been
until very recently I think. And you described talking about
how both your parents came from from two different parts of
(04:48):
India and speaking two differentlanguages.
Is it safe to assume that being Indian and coming from an Indian
descent that it's not monolithic?
Yeah, I think that that's reallytrue.
I mean, my parents, I grew up inthe Bay Area for some time we
lived in Palo Alto where there was an Indian community.
We participated in different ways.
(05:09):
My dad is a a musician, my mom is a dancer.
So we were really involved in the Indian classical music scene
in the Bay Area and we had definitely had there.
That's a very vibrant community.Then we moved to Northern
California and to a yoga, to an ashram where that was mostly
that was an Indian gurus. There was some Indian culture
(05:32):
there and it was also a mostly white community, but who were
adopting these practices. So even within my own, you know,
even within my own family's experience, as opposed to some
of the people that I grew, I grew up knowing our our
experiences are vastly different.
Yeah. And how did those experiences
(05:52):
influence what, what you ultimately ended up doing, kind
of straddling the, the world's between realism and speculative
And, you know, were there boundaries?
Were there things that informed the the kind of everyday work
that you did, or how things become kind of otherworldly in
your fiction? Well, I think there's 2 answers
to that question and one of themis the positive and one of them
(06:14):
is like the sad one. They're both true at the same
time. I think when you're growing up
between two cultures, you are feel like an outsider and both
of those cultures. And of course being an outsider
is a really powerful place, a powerful vantage point to look
into both of those cultures. So I think some things were
available to me from that vantage.
And I also think that the the positive thing was that I have
(06:39):
forever been trying to find thisquote and I've never been able
to actually find it again. Somebody told me this when I was
kind of like when I was a teenager and it really stuck in
my brain where they were talkingabout being bilingual and
learning about how it was told to me.
But I've never been able to findit where somebody was talking
about being a child and acquiring more than one language
and understanding that like the concept of a chair is not tied
(07:03):
to the word chair because you have two words for chair.
And how flexible that makes yourthinking to know that there's so
many different. There's like there's, there's a
material reality that exists. And then there's all these
different vantage points that we're using through language to
look at them. And I'm not bilingual, sadly, to
my great sadness, I'm not bilingual, but I am bicultural.
(07:26):
So I think that that same kind of flexibility of thought where
you're like, OK, you know, at school, I'm I'm hearing this
about the world at home, I'm hearing something really
different. And I trust both of these
sources and they both line up with my material reality.
Like one language isn't wrong, right?
It's just a different way of looking at it.
So I grew up with, I mean, I'm saying 2.
(07:47):
But of course, like many storiesfrom my home world and many
stories from the outside world, but I was able instead of those
being like one of those is wrong, I was I, I think that
that kind of way of growing up really gives you a kind of
flexibility of thinking that is extremely valuable when you're
creating diction. So as a a founding teacher of
the dream side along peers like Rachel Kong, what do you aim to
(08:11):
create in that space at the dream side, and how does it
differ from what perhaps we might be experiencing right now
in this kind of institutional kind of academic sense here at
VCFA? Yeah, it's such a nice question.
Thank you. So we've just started this new
collective and one of the instigating ideas was kind of
like we have, we all have been trained, you know, like we've
(08:36):
all have Mfas, we've all gone through writing workshops.
And I think that some of the stuff that I feel very grateful
for, some of the stuff I learnedin my MFA program and some of
the stuff I feel like I'm unlearning and I don't think
what are some of? Those what are some of those
things that you're unlearning from your MFA?
Program Yeah, I think also it's like I went to an MFA program
like 15 years ago. So I think it was a it was a
(08:57):
really different time that wasn't quite as critical of some
of the I mean I went through a great MFA program and I had some
really great experiences there. So I'm trashing I'm not I mean
shout out to as of state with great MFA program.
But I think there were some things and there was a great I
mean one of the things that was wonderful about being there was
that there was a great traditionof experimental work,
(09:17):
experimental fiction and poetry,which I benefited from.
I think some of the like show don't tell.
This isn't like this is like decades of workshop, like the
kind of like handed down received rules of form and craft
and the Duvas. Not that that was just I feel
like has been embedded in me from, you know, decades of
doing. I, I started doing writing, you
know, I was studying writing in college and actually here we are
(09:39):
at Cal Arts and I I saw the signfor CISA.
I was, I went to Lisa and I was 16.
So this is the last time I was here at 3:00 there.
Are so many people who have beencoming back here to Cal Arts,
you know, for for our residents here VCFA and they have been
saying the same. Thing.
Oh, really? Yeah.
So you're not the only one. It is an extremely special
program. Yeah.
That was the first time I think I'd taken a writing class and I
(10:01):
learned so much. So I don't know.
I think that there's some some things and maybe even the format
of the workshop of just this, like this side of the cone of
silence that one must sit in andrestroof this.
I think we're just interested inhaving conversations in a non
hierarchical way that there's ways that every time that I have
been a teacher in a formal institutional setting.
(10:24):
This is going to sound like a cliche, but I think that like
the best, the best times are like when my students bring in
and their perspectives that are surprising and thrilling and
interesting, right? And that those the conversations
that happen where we might be inthat structure of I'm the
teacher and they're the student,but we are having a
conversation. We are sitting in a room and
saying this is what matters. Writing matters so much to us in
(10:46):
this moment in the burning world.
This still matters to us and we're having a conversation.
We're not thinking about the roles necessarily.
Obviously, I feel like when you're the facilitator, it is
your job to hold that space. But yeah, I think we're
interested in a kind of non hierarchy model for this and
being able to just have those conversations in those rooms.
(11:06):
Well, it'll be interesting to see what your perspective is as
you come here to residency and also, you know, embark upon our
VCFA experience. And I think it's a combination
of all those worlds. But in thinking about that this
especially in things like what you do around your your creative
teaching. The kind of retreat style.
Like the, the, the rewilding craft workshop that you do, you
(11:28):
help writers kind of reconnect with their imagination.
Everyone always talks about thatlike idyllic place that writers
have to go to or in what you're doing in your teaching, that
kind of, you know, retreat. How important is that to to have
that space? Yeah, I think for many people
it's very important. I can't speak for everybody.
(11:49):
I think for me, it's really important to have a space.
I think it's actually easy to forget for me, especially now
that I've gone through so many writing programs.
You know, I've gone to. I've gone through an MFA
program, I've gone to conferences.
I feel like I've learned a lot and I'm not necessarily signing
up for craft classes anymore, but I, I, I'm always startled by
(12:13):
it with a good one. I'm always startled by how much.
Sometimes I think being, having a creative practice, it's, it's,
you can get a little bit stuck, not not just because of all the
other factors, but also because like you, you might know what
you're doing a little too well, you know what I mean?
(12:34):
Like I feel like with stories now, I sort of have a muscle
memory for writing stories and sometimes that's cool.
I just spent like, you know, years trying to try to hone that
skill of being able to write a short story.
But I almost now am like lookingto be bumped out of it and
startled out of it and come backinto that beginner mind where I
(12:57):
like, I think the first story inmy collection is the first one I
like of all of the stories of the first one I wrote and it's
the strangest 1. And I didn't know to not do all
of that stuff in that story. You know what I mean?
Like I Jazzle's like, why not try it, right?
You know, so I think that sometimes retreats in creative
spaces. And this is definitely what
(13:18):
we're aiming to do with Arbor Wild and Craft Retreat, just to
startle people out of their their stuck places and just get
some fresh perspectives in thereto get out of your your loop.
So you talk about the kind of the setup, but what are the the
the values that guide all of this, especially like with
things like with the with the dream side, both as a kind of
teaching collective and A and a literary platform.
(13:40):
What are the things that people would see that would become very
clear in terms of, of the of what you're committed to?
Do you foster risk taking? Do you, you know, do you invite
and encourage experimentation? What are the actual things that
are done to establish that as the structure for your workshops
or your retreats? For me, I think in my workshop,
in the way that I'm approaching this, I'm really interested in
(14:04):
writing as a, I'm really interested in the wild space.
There is our subconscious that is the like the like we are the
dream side, the kind of the wildsubconscious dreaming side and
the act of dreaming that is writing.
So I think that for me, I will be focusing on getting us to
(14:26):
relax. I mean, how do you risk take?
You have to feel really safe andgrounded in your body in your
practice. And then you have to feel, you
have to have access that deep wild space of that subconscious,
creative, dark, psychedelic dream space, right?
So there's both a sense of like,we've got our feet on the
(14:47):
ground. We have some like, you know,
some pretty basic or not basic, but we have some foundational
writing tools. We are using language, like we
have some touch points. We're not just like floating out
into space. But I'm going to be doing things
like one of the foundational texts that I'm working with
right now is Otra Lords uses of the erotic and poetry is not a
luxury. So that is for me, that is like
(15:09):
the kind of framework that I'm thinking about.
And I am hoping to give participants a feeling of both,
like grounded in language, in text, but also places to let
that Channel open between the waking life and the dream life,
which is where my writing comes from.
(15:30):
Typically when you think about dreams, right, dreams are like
kind of untethered and we see ourselves floating and like
there's no kind of connection towhether or not just be fact.
But like in a linear sense, things aren't very linear.
So they become very sensory, very emotional.
But then there's always this kind of driving force around
(15:52):
intimacy. How do you balance all those
things kind of driving back towards intimacy in your prose?
I hope that in my stories there is like a balance between like
there is a ground beneath your feet.
You're not like floating off in space.
You have characters you are understand as human beings.
You know that we you understand the rules of the of the story or
(16:13):
of the world within the story. And I also, you know, do you
want a feeling of like wild, of the wildness of possibility of
spaciousness and, and yeah. And I think that that does
foster kind of intimacy with thereader.
I don't think my stories, I don't want my stories to tell
the reader how to think I or what meaning to make.
(16:33):
I want to place things with enough space between them that
the reader can walk into it likea room and make their own
meaning. So I think that's a really
intimate practice of reading, anintimate way of reading and an
intimate way of writing. And partially that is choices I
make in editing, and partially that is just how like it feels
right to me when I'm writing. So a lot of people try to kind
(16:56):
of get into like the daily practice of writing.
There are things that are going to happen in the world, things
are going to change, you know, stories are going to hit
writing, all that sort of stuff.How do you get back to the
writing when all of that, that that continues to happen and it
continues to happen at an incessant rate?
Yeah, well, you entice yourself back into writing in that, like
(17:19):
you read work that it feels thrilling and invigorating.
I mean, I think that writing is really, really hard work.
And sometimes it is hard. Like I have written like the the
my novel, it was not like every single day.
It was just flowing out of me. And right now I've been working
on a novel for like 7 years and it's still, it's just where it
(17:42):
is. It's not done yet.
So it's not like unless the inspiration strikes me as it's
flowing through me that I. Yeah.
The muse comes down from up above and strikes you on your
head and you're like, ha, no, I have it right.
Yeah. Yeah.
So I don't think that that pleasure is also available, that
I don't think that pleasure is always available.
I think there's other things that are pleasurable about
(18:03):
writing that are more subtle andthat we can.
I am trying to tune myself to those things.
Like sometimes you're swimming and the water is really rough,
but you're swimming really hard and it feels good to swim hard.
You know, like sometimes it can be like that.
That's a different pleasure thanswimming in a calm sea, a warm
calm sea. Sometimes you're swimming really
(18:23):
hard. But that, like, the pleasure of
work can also be the pleasure of, like, rhythm and routine can
also be a pleasure, the pleasureof just like, being in
conversation with the writers that you love just by writing,
you know, by reading deeply, talking to your friends, talking
to your, you know, talking to and, like, living deeply.
I think that that can translate into the pleasure of writing.
(18:45):
Yeah. What does it mean to you to be
unapologetically creative in this moment of kind of cultural
flux? I don't know.
I mean, I'm not so much interested in creativity as
truth telling really. I think at this moment I feel
like I'm really interested and concerned with telling the truth
(19:06):
in my writing unapologetically. And obviously I write fiction.
I'm writing some nonfiction as well as fiction now, but
obviously I even mean that in fiction I want to be able to
tell the truth with my work, andthat is kind of scary.
I'm trying to train myself to tell the truth in real life and
in my fiction and not apologize for it.
I want to be able to tell the truth so much, even when it's a
(19:29):
terrifying truth that it's no longer become scary, that that
is just my natural state. I think I've been socialized as
a woman, as a people pleaser, asan American.
I am socialized to lie, to give convenient truths, and the my
practice as an artist is an absolute opposition to that is
to telling the truth. If you can go back in time and
share advice with your younger self in that first burst of kind
(19:52):
of imaginative writing, what would you tell yourself?
I don't really have any advice for her.
She figured it out, you know, She, I don't know if she would
have listened to me. If she could bet, and that's not
the question. If she if she did listen to you.
Yeah, You know, I honestly thinkI would be asking her for advice
(20:14):
because I think like. What advice would she offer?
I think she would. She would just she didn't doubt
her purpose. She knew that she was here to
write and I have spent a lot of years in doubt.
I think that she had a real clarity of purpose and and a
(20:35):
kind of arrogance. Maybe some of that arrogance was
necessary to burn away, but someof it you need some arrogance, I
think, to be an artist in America because otherwise how
are you going to get? How are you going to get keep
going at all? You have to have some kind of
hard headed belief in your work.So maybe I would ask her where
(20:57):
where the source of that is and and how to channel some of that
as a middle-aged woman. How do you hope that your work
and the communities that you build through like the dream
side kind of contribute to more of a an inclusive and daring
literary landscape that can expand and and grow beyond what
it currently is right now? Well, I think like there are
(21:17):
certain stories right now that Ican tell are about there's
certain not just stories, but modes of storytelling, ways of
storytelling that are are already becoming very
marginalized and hard to access.And my hope is in my writing and
in community that we can give each other the courage that we
need to be like to tell the truth right now.
(21:40):
Like we need that right now verymuch.
You know, we need people engagedin art making right now, like
desperately. And it's and there are many more
roadblocks in place now than there were, you know, six months
ago. If it's anything, it's just
courage. It's to and to feel a sense of
solidarity in in community. Shruti Swami's perspective
(22:06):
points to a shift in how we think about creative work away
from rigid rules and toward a more intuitive and truth driven
practice. Her approach makes room for
complexity, contradiction, and multiple ways of seeing.
It's a reminder that writing canbe guided by what feels right,
(22:27):
creating space for readers to step in, finding their own
meaning, and to connect more deeply with the human experience
behind it. Thanks for listening to
Unapologetically Created. Be sure to follow the show and
stay tuned for more insightful conversations.
In the episodes ahead. To learn more about the Vermont
College of Fine Arts, visit vcfa.edu.
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