Author leverages blacksmithing and boxing in researching her acclaimed queer crime novel set in Old Town Tacoma in 1888
interview by Cathy Carroll
In her widely acclaimed crime novel Rough Trade, Seattle author Katrina Carrasco vividly reimagines queer communities in Old Town Tacoma in 1888 amid the turbulent dawn of modern media and medicine and the pleasures and perils of satisfying desire. Carrasco plunges readers into the hardscrabble world of dockworkers and opium smugglers who spend their days moving crates and nights at the center of Tacoma’s queer scene, where skirts and trousers don’t signify and every-one’s free to suit themselves.
How did you embody your characters through boxing, blacksmithing and powerlifting—treating the body almost as a research tool?
Using my own body as a research tool is a very apt description! I wanted to know how my characters’ bodies would feel while unloading steam-ship cargo or while throwing a punch, and be able to describe those sensations. I drew on my weightlifting experience to embody hauling heavy loads and the soreness that comes after. I joined a boxing gym to prepare for writing fight scenes in Rough Trade, and I took a terrific blacksmithing class at Pratt Fine Arts Center in Seattle to learn about the physicality of that trade. My hope is that these visceral descriptions connect readers to my characters in an intimate, immediate way that also builds empathy. For example, Alma, the book’s main character, has strong appetites that propel her through the world: hunger, lust, love of muscle. One of the reasons I wrote her this way was to explicitly depict female physical strength—to celebrate it as an asset that women can cultivate. Our society can be hostile toward strong women who take up space and pursue their desires, so I wanted Alma to revel in her physicality and invite the reader to connect with her in that experience.
How do you think the themes of gender, identity and community in the novel resonate with readers today, and what do you hope they carry away from your work?
I hope the book provides queer readers with a sense of history and visibility—things I’m always hungry for as a queer reader myself. With Rough Trade, I wanted to recreate a queer community in a place and time we might never have seen or even imagined one. LGBTQIA+ people have always existed and built families and communities, and one of my primary drivers as a novelist is to make our queer past visible and, therefore, unerasable—writing us into existence where the historical record and homophobia have obscured what traces of us remain. Obviously it’s important to invite non-queer readers into this project as well so we can collectively recognize and celebrate our shared history. Another aspect of Rough Trade that I hope speaks to all readers is its consideration of how gender can be an expansive place of exploration, play and discovery. We would benefit greatly from less fear and more curiosity about gender and its many expressions.
Following the acclaim for Rough Trade, how are you thinking about what comes next—have you changed how you approach the stories you feel drawn to tell?
My novels are always queer and always political, and the recognition Rough Trade received has helped me feel confident to take on even bigger questions in my writing. My next book is a contemporary novel concerned with border militarization, immigration and the prison industrial complex. With it, I’m using fiction to try and understand our current moment in America. I want to learn how we arrived here as a country and explore how we might find the resilience and resources we need to fight state violence and fascism.
