Video transcript
2019 NSW PRC author interview – Mackenzi Lee

TAMARA RODGERS: Hi, I'm Tamara Rodgers from the Premier's Reading Challenge. We're here at Riverside Theatre Parramatta for the Sydney Writers' Festival All Day YA, a celebration of everything that's amazing about YA literature. We've been joined by some fantastic Australian and overseas authors. We're really excited to bring you these chats.

We'd really like to thank the Sydney Writers' Festival for having us along and also thank our programme sponsors, our media partner, NewsLocal, and our supporting partner, Dymocks Children's Charities. Thank you so much for your support.

Hey, we're at Riverside Theatre for All Day YA, joined by one of the amazing international author guests today, Mackenzi Lee.

MACKENZI LEE: Hi!

TAMARA RODGERS: How are you?

MACKENZI LEE: I'm so great. I'm so happy to be in Australia.

TAMARA RODGERS: So this is your first Sydney Writers' Festival?

MACKENZI LEE: It is.

TAMARA RODGERS: Nice.

MACKENZI LEE: It's my first international event--

TAMARA RODGERS: Oh, wow. That's exciting.

MACKENZI LEE: --ever, which has been a big right of passage.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah. So the Premier's Reading Challenge is all about encouraging kids to read, read really widely. Were you a big reader when you were a kid?

MACKENZI LEE: Yes and no. I really liked to read when I was a kid, but I look back now, and I don't think I was a very good reader necessarily. I read a lot of 'Star Wars' novelizations. I read a lot of the same books over and over because once I knew what was there, I could just sort of come back to something familiar. I read a lot of audio books because I was a little ADD, so I could do something else while I was listening to a book.

But young adult was not really a thing when I was growing up. And so after I finished sort of reading the middle grade books, there was nothing. You move right into adult books. And I was so not interested in adult books. And I hated all the books we were assigned to read in school. And I just felt dumb, like I felt like I couldn't get through classics. And so I just kind of quit reading for a long time.

And I ended up coming back to it when I was living abroad. And I was travelling a lot, and so I had a lot of time in bus stations and airports and ended up reading some of the books that had been really, really important to me when I was a kid. And I was like, oh, reading is magic. I forgot it's wonderful. So now I'm just trying to be less concerned, in general, with what I should be reading and just reading what I want to be reading and how I want to be reading it.

TAMARA RODGERS: Nice, and 'Star Wars' novelizations--

MACKENZI LEE: Yeah, they're awesome! They're awesome.

TAMARA RODGERS: It's Star Wars Day today.

MACKENZI LEE: I know. Happy May the 4th day. My high holy day.

[laughter]

TAMARA RODGERS: So at what point then did you decide that being a writer was something that you wanted to do?

MACKENZI LEE: Gosh, probably when I was at university. I wanted to be a historian. Initially, I thought I was going to go get a PhD and be an academic and spend my life in costume and things like that, and had a professor that sort of very gently steered me towards writing fiction and sort of said, I think your writing style is a little more suited to fiction, especially because of the way I was trying to write my academic papers was like I wanted to write dialogue for Richard III, and I wanted to write scenes of history. And she's like, that's not really what we're doing here. And so she kind of steered me into thinking about writing fiction.

And then because I was sort of coming back into reading at the same time and coming back via children's books, I ended up discovering why I kind of-- by accident, since it really hadn't been a thing, and just really, really loving it. And those were the books I was I was most excited about and the books I felt most connected to at the time.

TAMARA RODGERS: Nice. So that interesting history has really informed what you write [inaudible] historical fiction.

MACKENZI LEE: Yeah, at the time it felt really sort of nonsensical to go from this PhD history track into a creative writing master's degree programme, without ever having taken a creative writing class. I'd like written a little bit when-- I wrote fan fiction for a long time, and that was sort of all the creative writing I'd ever done.

And so to go into this MFA programme, I remember even having professors tell me like, nobody's going to take you seriously at that programme. You're not going to get in. Like you have no reason to be in this programme. I was like, I have no reason to be here. But now I look back on it, it makes perfect sense. It worked out really well. It's just something I kind of needed hindsight to understand.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah, because one of the things that's really striking about your historical fiction is just the level of detail about the research and--

MACKENZI LEE: Oh, thank you.

TAMARA RODGERS: --the historical times in which it's set. So can you talk to us a little bit about that process? About deciding where you want to set your books and how you create really fascinating and interesting characters, set in times that you've not really lived. You know, you've not got--

MACKENZI LEE: No, I have not lived in any of the times.

TAMARA RODGERS: --no time travel thing going, yes?

MACKENZI LEE: My TARDIS is out back. So when I research, I so far have only written about time periods that I knew nothing about because I'm kind of a masochist, I guess.

TAMARA RODGERS: All the work load.

MACKENZI LEE: Right. So I always start by panicking and just feeling so overwhelmed by everything I don't know I don't know. But my access into history has always been through narrative, and that's like I got into history because of historical fiction when I was a kid. And because of things, like there was this great computer game I had as a kid called 'Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?', and so narrative is how I access history.

So I always start by reading other historical fictions in that time period, in that place, and that for me is a really good gateway into finding both the time and the place, but also reminding myself of sort of the individuality of history, which we tend to lose when we read these sort of big, sweeping overview texts.

And then from there, I go into those big sweeping, overview texts and try and figure out what's happening socially and politically and culturally at the time and then keep narrowing my focus. But the big thing with research that I've learned, especially with historical fiction, is you just have to start before you're ready. You have to start writing before you're ready because you're never going to feel like you know enough. You're never going to feel like you know it all.

And at a certain point, researching becomes a really great way to procrastinate actually doing any work. So you just kind of have to go for it and know that you're going to get three sentences in, and be like, I've been reading about this time period for seven years, and I have no idea how they would set a dining room table. And then you're going to have to sit on Google for like four hours, figuring out how they'd set a dining room table. And then you're probably going to cut that scene with the dining room table in it.

TAMARA RODGERS: But at least you've seen the dining--

MACKENZI LEE: Right, exactly. That you know it. And so that's always-- like I just have to remind myself I never feel ready to start writing. I never feel like I know enough. Even the books are out, and I still don't feel like I know enough about these time periods to have written these books.

But yeah, and in terms of creating the characters in the setting, I really, really believe that history changes and the world changes, but people don't really change. And so, for me, sort of the guiding principle with creating these characters is thinking about them as individuals, thinking about them as individuals in their time period, but also thinking about these universal things about history.

And I've had like really cool moments in my life, like when I was researching 'Gentleman's Guide,' finding certain diary entries and journals from different people who were on their tour. It was like nothing-- I can't relate to anything. You have so much money. You're seducing countesses at the opera, and I cannot relate to this. But then there would be like one or two lines that I was like, oh, my gosh, that's also how I feel about being a young person in my 20s and having no idea what I'm doing with my life.

And it's those touchstone moments, those universally human moments that I try really hard to sort of focus on and infuse the book with because I think it's what makes history come alive and makes it feel real.

TAMARA RODGERS: Nice. So you mentioned a time in your past when you were reading the classics. And one of your books is really heavily influenced by one of my favourite classics. I love Mary Shelley and 'Frankenstein'--

MACKENZI LEE: I do too.

TAMARA RODGERS: --was one of my favourite.

MACKENZI LEE: But yeah, I will never-- the great irony of my life is that I never finished a book I was assigned for English class in school, and now my first book is Frankenstein fan fiction, basically.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yes. So can you tell us a little bit about the process of going, well, I want to write my own version of this Frankenstein story because it's a really-- like it's just a fantastic take on that whole Frankenstein--

MACKENZI LEE: Thank you.

TAMARA RODGERS: --monster story.

MACKENZI LEE: So I didn't read 'Frankenstein' in school. That was not assigned to me, which is, I think, part of the reason I like it is nobody noted it to death for me in a classroom. And I actually accessed it through a stage play, and I was living in England at the time. There was a version on stage at the National Theatre in London that I went to go see and was just totally taken by. I was like, this is Frankenstein. Like it's not the shambly green monster that is on my Halloween decorations.

I had no idea what the story was. And there was a note in the programme about Mary Shelley. And I was like, what an incredible woman. I want to know more about her. And she was 19 when she wrote the book and--

TAMARA RODGERS: And she basically invented science fiction.

MACKENZI LEE: Right, and we're still reading it 200 years later. Every work that came after her-- we will not turn this into a Mary Shelley appreciation video.

TAMARA RODGERS: It would be a very long interview about the fan club of Mary Shelley.

MACKENZI LEE: But she's amazing.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yes.

MACKENZI LEE: And so I ended up reading the book because I had the play, I sort of had my access point into the narrative, and then just got really into it. I was looking for adaptations. I wanted to read everything about Mary Shelley. And at the time, was kind of starting to get into thinking about maybe writing fiction. And I was at a writing conference and heard someone-- it was a panel on steampunk, which was also a genre I was very new to, but I was excited about, and I wanted to learn more about it.

And somebody on the panel identified 'Frankenstein' as the first steampunk novel. And I was like, well, that's not right. Because that's like saying 'Pride and Prejudice' is historical fiction. It's not, it was contemporary for the time she was writing it. She was writing about issues-- she was doing science fiction. She taking issues of the day and then sort of forwarding them. But I thought, well, that's a really great idea, to steampunk 'Frankenstein.'

And then I immediately Google it to see if anyone else had done it, and I couldn't find any steampunk 'Frankenstein,'--

TAMARA RODGERS: Yay!

MACKENZI LEE: --so I was like, guess I probably write this. So yeah, it's an unorthodox way to come to 'Frankenstein.'

TAMARA RODGERS: And really kind of plays nicely with that idea about well, who is the monster?

MACKENZI LEE: Yes, which is like one of the most interesting themes of the original text, I think.

TAMARA RODGERS: Yeah. What's next for you? So anything that you're working on--

MACKENZI LEE: Yes, I have so many things I'm so excited about.

TAMARA RODGERS: --that you can tell us about. She says, knowing that [inaudible] there's a specific Loki thing that she was hoping to talk about.

MACKENZI LEE: Oh yes, that thing. I could be really rude and just evade that--

TAMARA RODGERS: Oh!

MACKENZI LEE: --and tell you about everything else. And be like, I'm really into my garden right now. I've got some cooking I want to do. So I have a book coming out for Marvel in September, and it's called 'Loki, Where Mischief Lies.' I just call it 'Loki' because that's easier. But it is sort of Loki's greasy teenage years. That's how I'm describing it. So it's about Loki as a young teenager before we see him in any of the comics really, or any of the movies.

And he is growing up in Asgard and sort of in the shadow of Thor and trying to figure out who he is and who he wants to be, and whether his villainy is inevitable, or if it's something he makes a conscious choice for, and ends up getting sent on a mission for Odin to Victorian London to solve some Jack the Ripper-esque murders that are happening down there. So it's like, yeah, it's Lokian Victorian England with true crime, and trains, and demons--

TAMARA RODGERS: So you just kind of picked like-- and these are all the things I really like, I'm just going to shove them-

MACKENZI LEE: Basically, yeah.

TAMARA RODGERS: --all into one book.

MACKENZI LEE: Mostly the promise of the-- there's like a big set piece at the end that I won't spoil, but the whole book came from this set piece, which is from an article my agent sent me like three or four years ago that was like, this is a cool, weird history thing. You should write about it someday. And I just had it sitting on my computer. And then when Marvel approached me, I was like, it's time.

TAMARA RODGERS: How does that happen? How does like--

MACKENZI LEE: I don't know.

TAMARA RODGERS: --Marvel-- She just drops in this line, 'When Marvel approached me.'

[laughter]

MACKENZI LEE: It's still very surreal and weird. Like every time I was working on 'Loki,' I was like telling myself, I was like, you got to stop working on this weird fan fiction and get back to your real work. I'm like, this is my real work.

TAMARA RODGERS: This is my job now.

MACKENZI LEE: The 13-year-old me was like freaking out. So I have that book, and then I have a non-fiction book coming out in October, which is in the same style as this one, 'Bygone Badass Broads,' except it's called 'The History of the World in 50 Dogs,' and it is historical events told through the lenses of the dogs of people that experienced them, or dogs that were involved in these various events. So it's everything from mythology, to Isaac Newton, to talking about the end of testing on animals, and dogs in space. And it was such a fun project to work on. And I got to look at lots of dog pictures, which was great.

TAMARA RODGERS: There's a lot of good dog pictures.

MACKENZI LEE: Yeah, exactly. And I got a puppy while I was writing the book, and so I ended up doing like the last round of edits sitting on the floor with her like literally chewing on me as I was working on the book. I was like, this is wonderful.

TAMARA RODGERS: It sounds like a pretty good work day.

MACKENZI LEE: Yeah, it's pretty great. I was kind of living the dream, as I'm sitting, writing my book while my puppy sleeps beneath my chair.

TAMARA RODGERS: Cool.

MACKENZI LEE: It's very cosy.

TAMARA RODGERS: Thank you so much for coming to chat--

MACKENZI LEE: Thanks for having me.

TAMARA RODGERS: It's been fascinating. I'm really looking forward to 'Loki' and the dogs of history--

MACKENZI LEE: Yay.

TAMARA RODGERS: --coming out soon. Thanks, everyone.