Coffee Chat with Ilham Alam
Pour yourself a nice steaming cup and settle in to get to know Ilham Alam a little better.
Tell us a bit about yourself. Who are you? Where are you located? Do you have a day job?
I am a go-getter, let's try out everything at least once, perpetually busy, and a daydreamer of a person. I love being creative and exercising my creativity whether that is training actively in the classical Indian dance style of Odissi or playing Chess at chess.com (I kill it at Chess960, btw) or using my beloved Le Creuset French Oven to bake and cook recipes for my loved ones.
How do you take your coffee? A bit of milk. I prefer to brew my own coffee. I love my coffee subscriptions where I get my coffee beans from different parts of the world.
What Blank Spaces issue were you first published in? Volume 2, Issue 4, June 2018.
When did you first know you wanted to write? I knew it in grade 6 when we did creative writing as part of our language learning. I was a new immigrant to Canada and had never before done creative writing personally and certainly not at school for grades. I had come from an education system that really stressed proper spelling and reading comprehension (foundational skills and one which I appreciate to this day), rather than creativity and ingenuity.
So when I got the chance to flex my creative muscles, I wrote stories inspired by the genres that I liked to read (I was always an avid reader): so that was mythology, adventure stories, and mysteries. As a new kid in the class and the brown-skinned kid, story writing was the way I became part of my classroom community and became known for a talent, rather than my immigration status.
What are you reading right now? What is it about and what keeps you coming back to the pages? The Reading List by Sarah Nisha Adams.
I am also doing a re-read of my old favourites, so have started re-reading the Anne of Green Gables series. My favourite in that famous Canadian series is the 5th book, Anne's House of Dreams—it is so intimate, romantic, and has so much about getting a second chance at living life to the fullest.
What role has Blank Spaces played in your creative journey? Blank Spaces was the first time that I was professionally published! It was and still is a VERY proud moment. It is so hard to get your story into a literary magazine, so I appreciate Blank Spaces for giving me that opportunity.
Why is Canadian content important? As Canadians, we have unique experiences and even significant regional and cultural differences. So much of English language literature is either from the UK or USA and thus they are able to propagate and spread their way of life, thinking, and cultures, to all corners of the world. I find that Canadians are just known as the polite, tundra neighbour of USA and our famous cultural exports are the two Justins (PM Justin Trudeau and Justin Beiber). It is easy to get forgotten and swallowed up when you have such a political, economic, and cultural juggernaut as the USA, right next door. I mean can your average person from abroad even correctly point out our Capital City? Or name all of our provinces and territories and their locations? Do they know that the famous Margaret Atwood is Canadian?
That is why I think that it is so imperative to preserve and promote and increase Canadian content, especially literary content.
What is the first book that made you cry? Bridge to Terabithia.
Where has your creative journey taken you since being published in Blank Spaces? I have since published a children's picture book called Wonder Walk, with a small indie publisher in Toronto named Iguana Books. I have also written a number of short stories since then as well.
What do you tell yourself every time it gets hard and you want to quit? I tell myself what Scarlett o'Hara tells herself at the end of the Gone with the Wind movie--- "Tomorrow is a New Day".
Do you have any writing rituals that help the words flow? I LOVE listening to podcasts especially true crime podcasts and Harry Potter and the Sacred Text and any literary fiction related podcasts. Podcasts really help me to get into a zone for writing and working.
What advice do you have for writers struggling to break into the industry? I would strongly suggest that you find yourself a writing community. Writing can be a solitary task and can become a burdensome chore. Also, writing can be dispiriting if you keep making submissions to magazines and literary agents and keep rejected. So having a writing group either in-person or online or even a book club can give you new ideas, keep you motivated, and is a good place to find beta readers too. I find writers are very giving people. They will spend hours reading your work closely and give valuable and actionable feedback, but do it solely for the love of writing. And you also need to give back, as well, by providing ideas of new places to submit and beta reading and critiquing the writing work of others.
What are your creative goals? Where do you want to see yourself in five years? I hope to become a big-name and traditionally published author and known for my ownVoices fiction. Don't we all want that :)
What are you currently working on? I am currently working on revising my query submission package and submitting it to literary agents situated in Canada, US, UK. The ownVoices upmarket women's fiction is set in my own home country of Bangladesh. It takes a look at family dynamics, especially obeying your elders (family is a huge deal in Bangladesh. And respecting and deferring to your elders in every matter in your life, is even more so), arranged marriages, and the desire to live a life on your own terms as a woman who is not in the "first flush of youth". I began writing this story in 2006 when I was on a visit to Dhaka, Bangladesh and I only finished the manuscript to my satisfaction in 2021!
If you’re a past Blank Spaces contributor and would like to be featured in a virtual coffee chat, please complete our online interview form.
Learn more about Ilham’s work that has been featured in Blank Spaces here.
— this post contains Amazon affiliate links. Blank Spaces will be compensated for any purchases made through those links —
