Nic Guo
ORP: What inspired you to begin writing or creating? Has that source of inspiration changed throughout your life?
Nic Guo: Young adult fiction and Astro Boy. I still draw on media (although the media I consume has changed), but I now mostly draw on people and places I’ve encountered or heard of.
ORP: Who do you consider to be your creative ancestors and contemporaries for your art and/or writing? How does your creative work converse with theirs?
NG: Roberto Bolaño, Yu Hua, Raymond Carver, to name a few. I find Bolaño to be singular and difficult to emulate, but I admire him greatly. I aspire to borrow elements of Yu’s keen sense of sociopolitical strife and Carver’s economy. Outside of literature, Osamu Tezuka, Abbas Kiarostami, and Edward Yang all serve as inspirations.
ORP: Do you know more than one language? How does this influence your art and/or writing?
NG: I have some fluency in Mandarin and the Shanghai dialect. Art and writing is an exercise in translation, not just inter-linguistically, but in translating meditations, emotions, and daydreams. I appreciate and try to produce translation that carries over elements of its native culture/tongue.
ORP: What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given about writing or creating? What advice would you give to another writer or artist?
NG: Write every day. Or, as much as you can. Don’t forget that writing is inextricably linked to the geo-sociopolitical and that it cannot look away from the world.
