Year’s Best Interview #33: Yoon Ha Lee on “Ghostweight”

“Ghostweight” by Yoon Ha Lee will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2012 edited by Paula Guran. Andrew Liptak interviews her on the story.

You make a point about what people carry with them: what is most important to have for the end of one’s days?

I couldn’t presume to answer that question for anyone else, so I’ll answer for myself. “End of one’s days” isn’t even meaningful. It’s no secret that everyone eventually dies. So the question reduces (in a mathematical sort of way) to what’s most important to have in the moving now, because that moment could at any point be the last one.

There is, sadly, a difference between what I would like to tell you I believe, and what I really believe based on my actions. I would like to tell you about love or honor or honesty. But when I look at what I do–always knowing death might be about to knock–what I think is important is having something to do, and trying to excel at it; trying to create things that are beautiful. I don’t recommend this as a way of life. It doesn’t have much in common with happiness or kindness or any of the thousand things that make people worthwhile. But whenever I have to make choices about what to do with my life, that the priority that comes out.

MORE: Read the rest of the interview here!