Sally Wen Mao: Remain Open to Change

Sally Wen Mao is the acclaimed author of three poetry collections—Oculus which was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and one of Time Magazine’s 100 Must-Read Books of 2019; Mad Honey Symposium, which named a Top Ten Debut of 2014 in Poets & Writers; and The Kingdom of Surfaces, a finalist for the 2023 Maya Angelou Book Award. The recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, she’s been published in The Paris Review, Harper Bazaar, Guenrica, PEN America, among others, with rave reviews of her writing in national outlets such as the New Yorker, NPR, and The Washington Post. She currently lives in New York City. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Sally Wen Mao

Photo by Jelani Ameer

In this interview, Sally discusses the inspiration behind her new collection of short stories, Ninetails, the process of splintering the longer piece within the collection, and more!

Name: Sally Wen Mao
Literary agent: Clare Mao
Book title: Ninetails: Nine Tales
Publisher: Penguin Books
Release date: May 28, 2024
Genre/category: Short Stories/Fiction
Previous titles: The Kingdom of Surfaces, Oculus, and Mad Honey Symposium (poetry books)
Elevator pitch: Ninetails is a collection of nine tales that invokes the folklore of the elusive and ubiquitous nine-tailed fox or hulijing, a shapeshifting creature that can turn into humans and extract human essence in order to achieve immortality. These fabulist tales, set in diverse locales and times, reveal the human and animal impulse to seek freedom and belonging in a world that is determined to deem them alien.

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What prompted you to write this book?

In September 2016, I was on a fellowship at the New York Public Library when I found myself without a “project” to write or draft, due to my second book of poems being picked up for publication. By day I wandered the halls of the library, with its high ceilings and gilded rosettes, and by night I went on bad Tinder dates. So, then I came up with the idea of writing a contemporary tale of a nine-tailed fox woman trying to date in New York City. After I drafted the story, I realized it would not be a one-off—that there was way more to the fox woman than I could have imagined, the more I read about its cultural history.

I started investigating the origins of this curious creature that lurked in the periphery of my childhood stories, the epic dramas that my grandparents watched—I remember watching palace dramas with them, which often ended with the revelation that the beautiful women had tails, that they were really foxes. With the nine months I had at the library, I set out to draft nine tales that reflect the nine tails of the hulijing. That first drafted story didn’t make it into the collection, but I recall it fondly as the force that led me here.

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

From 2016 until 2024 was the timeline from idea to publication—so eight years total. It took several years to draft and edit, and I received the book contract in 2022—so post-2022, it was the revision and editing stage. The central idea for the book didn’t change, but there were many versions of it—many stories were switched out for other stories, and the last stories I wrote later in the process. So, the idea got stretched in new directions.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

I definitely felt like there were surprises! Originally, I had planned the novella The Haunting of Angel Island to be its own long unit within the book, but when my editor suggested breaking up the novella and interspersing it, it felt like a big decision. I ultimately decided to go with fracturing the piece, though I hadn’t seen anything like that before in other books. I was interested in fracturing the long novella to demonstrate the experience of immigrating to the United States in the early20th century to begin with: the feeling of splintering, being cut off from one’s origins, family, culture, home, life.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

Yes—the Angel Island novella came a bit later, in the later parts of writing the book, but when I researched for the story, I knew the piece would complete the collection. I had wanted to write historical fabulist fiction, which combined history with fabulation, and Angel Island felt like a place where fox spirits would teem and thrive. I drafted it during the height of the 2020 pandemic, and being sequestered at the time in quarantine, I felt like I could tap into the minds and hearts of these women who are in limbo, detained on the island.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

I am hoping that they draw wonder and hope from this ancient creature, the nine-tailed fox—also perhaps I hope to awaken curiosity or emotion or righteous rage in them. I am mostly hoping that they enjoy the experience of reading it. I hope that readers will come away from Ninetails with a sense that being different, being strange or alien or feral, is a beautiful thing.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

I think a key component of my life as a writer, not just on the page but in life, is to remain open to change, to seek out the mystery. I think the nine-tailed fox has lived so many lives and adapted to so many places and languages and cultures because it is a shapeshifter, because it is open to the wilderness of the unknown, the allure of change and transformation. This mythical creature has been around for thousands and thousands of years, since the Classic of the Mountain and the Sea, so yes, it has something to teach us humans.

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