Emerging Writers Series: Kylie Mirmohamadi
How do we define our relationships? When they end – in whatever ways they end – how do we look back and reflect on the active and passive parts of ourselves?
How do we know what we lost and what we gained?
These are just some of the questions I felt sat at the heart of Kyle Mirmohamadi’s brilliant debut novel, Diving, Falling (2024, Scribe). As Mirmohamadi shares below, it’s a book about privilege – the characters inhabit a world that many of us only dare to glimpse – but it’s that fishbowl quality that she dives into with her characters that kept me so engaged.
It’s also about so much more. When the privilege is washed away, we are left with what so many women (and men) contend with about the ways they’ve existed in the most intimate connections of their lives.
I caught up with Kylie about her writing life, her (exciting) path to publication, and what putting her debut novel out into the world has helped to teach her about her writing – and herself.
Enjoy!
Diving, Falling is such an evocative title. Can you tell us how it emerged and what it signifies for you in the context of the novel?
The title is a reference to a comment made by Carl Jung about James Joyce and his troubled daughter, Lucia – that they were two people going to the bottom of the river, one falling and the other diving. This image of two people twisting in the water, but one of them having more agency and intent, was a key element of the book’s symbolic landscape – or perhaps I should say symbolic waterscape – in its writing.
Initially, I understood the two figures to be Ken and Leila, but as the story grew and layered, I realised that the reference could also be to other relationships: Leila and Sebastian, perhaps, or Sebastian and Otis, or Otis and Ken.
So much of this book is about what we do to the people we love and if we can ever fully determine our (or anyone else’s) true motives.
Leila, your main character in Diving, Falling, navigates both literal and metaphorical emotional depths as she comes to terms with the death of her husband, Ken Black, and the true impact of this relationship across her life. What inspired you to explore these themes?
I wanted to present a complex picture of Leila, a woman in her middle age. To show her life in the aftermath of Ken’s death, and also give glimpses of what had gone on before it, his impact across her life, as you say. This famous man has died, and everyone thinks they know who he was and what his life was – their home, after all, was a highly visible landmark and had a glass frontage – but Leila knows the truth and how much his genius cost, and who paid it, and she’s going to tell her story. This novel had to be written in her voice. She’s a privileged woman, to be sure, financially and culturally, but she’s also navigated some rough emotional waters over the years. This is her testament.
There is a great power, I believe, and a defiance in a woman of a certain age using her voice, claiming her knowledge and experience, asserting that she still has some living to do. It was important to me that Leila did all these things, not with a view of finding approval for her every thought and action but with a commitment to her own selfhood and a movement forward. She’s cleaned up a lot of messes after Ken. Now, she’s going to make some of her own.
Your writing has been described as immersive and lyrical. How do you approach crafting language that resonates so deeply with readers?
Getting the language right is so key for me. Even though, like all writers, I make multiple drafts, I don’t really move on from a scene or a page until I’m largely happy with the writing. The tone is not something that exists separately from other elements such as character or plot or setting; these things emerge and are worked on together. There is no other way for me.
The flow and rhythm of language is the foundation. When I am working from a true and deep place, the prose has a certain aural quality. The emotion and the ideas are conveyed in the sound of the words, how they are placed in proximity to each other, and their meanings. It’s like Virginia Woolf’s image of a wave in the mind – the rhythmic rippling as if from a stone dropped in water.
Can you take us through your publication journey with Diving, Falling? Were there any challenges or surprises along the way?
Well, the biggest surprise of all (and one from which I’ve still barely recovered) was being in the position of choosing between publishers when the manuscript received multiple offers.
I thought Scribe would be a great fit for this book, and it turned out to be so. The editorial process was actually a beautiful experience, and Marika Webb-Pullman worked on the book with me with such deep attention and respect. With her skill and vision, the work of everyone at Scribe, and my amazing agent, Jenny Darling, this book has had remarkable care on its way into the world.
Many writers say each new book teaches them something about their writing process or creative philosophies. What did Diving, Falling reveal about your evolution as a writer?
Diving, Falling was an exercise in trust. It taught me that once the voice and the characters are in place, I can trust these things to make their small world, the web of relationships, a semblance of real life.
Its writing revealed to me, more than anything I had written before, the importance of accessing my unconscious and allowing it room and freedom. After the book was finished, I could discern patterns and connections in it that were shaped by these processes, and that was kind of spooky but also very cool.
In terms of creative influences, are there any authors, artists, or life experiences that shaped your vision for this book?
This is a very dangerous question because it might require a whole essay in response!
There is firstly, Virginia Woolf, whose writing I have loved for many years. And there is an element of Jungian influence and reference in this book. I also read a lot of poetry and mythology as I was writing it, sources that capture the heart of what it is to be human by confronting and exploring mortality.
Yumna Kassab has inspired me in my life and in my writing. Her deep creative understanding and belief in the possibilities of literature run throughout her work.
You’ve had a varied career in writing and academia. How do these different aspects of your professional life intersect or inform each other when you’re creating new work?
I started writing fiction later in life, following a career in academia, and at first, I would have answered this question by drawing a clear distinction between these two stages in my life and work. I liked to think there was a scholar ‘me’, and then there was a novelist ‘me’.
But as I have thought and spoken about these things in the context of this debut, the intersections and shared areas have become more apparent to me. Yes, I had to unlearn (or not apply) the scholarly skills of argument, logic, and analysis and learn to give free rein to emotion and the unconscious in order to write fiction. But all our thinking is inevitably shaped by the thinking we’ve done leading up to it.
My research in literary reception has definitely informed my understanding of how novels exist in the world and in readers’ minds. And Jane Austen and the Brontës, whose literary afterlives I have studied, are towering influences in women’s writing. There is something a little Austenesque in moments of spikiness in Leila’s narration and in its focus on the entanglements of family relationships.
What advice would you give emerging writers looking to take that next step into publication, especially when it comes to balancing creative integrity with the realities of the industry?
The best (if obvious) advice I can give is to seek out and work with people whose judgement you trust on both the commercial and creative fronts, not just on one or the other.
And do not forget that before it gets to that stage, when it’s just you and your story, the only thing that matters is its creative integrity. Bringing in any other type of consideration is to kill your ‘product’ before it even exists.
Kylie will be speaking about her debut at the Salon Series organised by Paperback Books in Melbourne on 24 September 2024 at 6:30pm and part of the Wheeler Centre’s Spring Fling in ‘The Next Big Thing: Wild Abandon’ on 14 October 2024.
Kylie Mirmohamadi is a writer and academic from Melbourne/Naarm whose research spans domestic Australian landscapes, online fan fiction, and 19th-century English literature. She has a PhD in History and is currently an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow in English and Creative Writing at La Trobe University. She was the recipient of a Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellowship in 2022 and her unpublished manuscripts have been highly commended in the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett Award (2020). Diving, Falling is her first novel.
Instagram: @kyliemirmohamadi
Website: kyliemirmohamadi.com
Elaine Chennatt is a writer, educator and psychology student currently residing in nipaluna. She has a special interest in bibliotherapy (how we use literature to make sense of our lives) and is endlessly curious about the creative philosophies of others. She lives with her husband and two bossy dachshunds on the not-so-sunny side of the river (IYKYK). Find her online at wordswithelaine.com.
