Mariam Bazeed 2021 3rd Place - on finding community and renewed momentum
Mariam Bazeed - 2021 3rd Place, The Boy Made of Air
What made you decide to submit your work to the First Pages Prize?
As someone who needs a lot of external structures of accountability, and institutional support where it's available, I make it a regular part of my art practice to apply to prizes, fellowships, etc. Specifically for this novel project, I wanted to get back into it since it had languished for quite some time.
How did you decide what you wanted to submit?
It was easy because I haven't actually attempted any other novels! So it was a matter of returning to its beginning, re-reading it and making edits, and sending those in.
And then, what was it like to be one of the final winners?
I don't know many artists who aren't in some kind of constant need for infusions of cash, so that was an obvious and immediate benefit. But I don't want to understate how important it felt too to have my work acknowledged, to know that an external committee of writers and readers found something in it exciting and interesting enough to be awarded a prize. In a craft that is often solitary, whose product is often invisible until given space under the auspices of one kind of publisher or another, it is a rare occurrence to have in-progress work amplified and rewarded.
What changed for you as a result of being a final winner?
I'd lost a bit of steam with the novel, and winning definitely boosted my own energy and enthusiasm for the project. It has also been helpful, as I apply for grants and other kinds of institutional support, to point to this prize as a tangible piece of evidence that the work has some appeal, and that it's already garnered some kind of interest.
What impact did the agent consultation have? What did you learn from it?
It was helpful to speak to an agent about this and some of the other fiction projects that I have underway. Her enthusiasm especially for the short story sample that I sent in was heartening, as it was for a piece I'd reached some kind of dead end on, and that conversation motivated me to return to it and write another draft--which will now be recorded for audio!
What advice or tips might you have for people thinking of submitting to the FIRST PAGES PRIZE this year?
a. Do it!
b. Read your submission aloud to yourself during the editing process. I do this as part of every generative writing practice I have across genres—prose, poetry, plays. I think about the fact that storytelling, before it ever existed in textual mediums, was an orally transmitted and aurally received tradition. Reading something aloud can help the writer hear its internal rhythms, the various attributes that make up its voice, and can better hear where that voice lapses; a likely thing in something as long as a novel!
c. If you don't get anywhere close to winning, remember that there is an element of the arbitrary in every selection committee, and that no single acceptance or rejection is a definitive arbiter of promise. Believe that the main pleasure in making art is actually in the making of it. The day after this and every prize is announced, the winner wakes up and they are still just themselves, and the great and bustling world has moved on like nothing ever happened. So cultivate joy where you can in the making itself; the recognition, accolades, material support, etc, are all things that support the true privilege of this practice: to be able to spend time with your imagination and your craft, and make something that only you in the world could've made.
What have you been up to since winning the prize, Mariam?
Since the FPP announcement:
-I conceived and edited the volume I Want Sky, in partnership with the Asian American Writers Workshop & Mizna as co-publishers, celebrating Sarah Hegazy & Queer SWANA Life. In addition to editing the volume, I also contributed this cento, composed from at least one line from every writer featured in the digital and print editions. I also translated this poem, Hasten Your Burials, from its original Arabic, for inclusion in the same.
-I was awarded a workspace residency through Visual Muze, where I worked with my collaborator, visual artist and sculptor Jacob Nader, on phase i of a new hybrid project tentatively titled, postmortem family vacation, which we hope to develop in future phases into a book of collage + poetry, a multimedia installation, and a performance art piece.
-I had my essay, Coming Out Arab in a City of Windmills, published as the feature story in the new journal, XY&Z.
-I was a co-recipient of the Lanford Wilson Award, presented annually by the Dramatists Guild of America to emerging playwrights who show promise in the field.
-I was part of the Prelude Festival this year at the Segall Center, and presented an in-progress reading of my new full-length play, faggy faafi Cairo boy.
-I recently had my play, Kilo Batra: In Death More Radiant, written with poet Kamelya Omayma Youssef in three columns and two languages, produced at the Arab American National Museum in December 2021.
In the future:
-I've been working on turning my short story Hagar or the Desert, into an audio piece, under the auspices of the Sound Lab fellowship, and estimate it'll be done by the summer of 2022.
-I am one of the latest teams of 4 writers to be featured in Khôra, produced in collaboration with groundbreaking author Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing, and curated by Leigh Hopkins. I will be writing and publishing four pieces of new work in the next four issues, publishing February through May of this year.
- I'm teaching a two-session poetry workshop, [Era]Sure Poetry: Poetics of Additive Subtraction, in partnership with the Asian American Writers Workshop, considering erasure poetry and the politic in its poetics. The workshop is offered remotely, on February 21 & 28.
-I'll be working with performer and comedic writer, Morgan Bassichis, as my mentor to develop a solo cabaret show interrogating Gulf Labor dystopias & my British kindergarten as a site of neo-imperialist revival, told through the medium of song. I'll be presenting a showcase of this under the auspices of Queer | Art | Mentorship in December 2022.