🎙️ Larina Warnock

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Read Larina’s story, The Calling, on Foofaraw now!

It’s pretty clear from your story that education is something that’s important to you. Has that always been a passion of yours, or did you discover it later in life?

Education saved my life. School was the one place I felt safe with adults. As I got older, I realized that wasn’t true for everyone, for a wide range of reasons. I’d say that’s when I became passionate about changing the education system.

Were you pushed in any specific directions growing up?

My mom always thought I’d be an English teacher. Because I was so good at school (yes, that’s a thing), most of my teachers tried to pull me into their subject matter, and I was a curious enough person that for a long time, I had no idea which direction to choose--or why we had to choose at all.

Did it feel like your friends and others around you knew what they wanted out of life in a way you didn’t?

I don’t know that it was that they knew what they wanted out of life more than I did or whether it was that it felt like others had more options than I did. In my limited world experience, people like me went to high school, got a job, and had kids. What I knew of jobs was limited to teachers, doctors, lawyers, welfare workers, retail workers, and manual laborers.

Do you think a system like the one in The Calling, where jobs are assigned, would be overall positive for our society?

It’s been attempted, and it never works, even in countries less individualistic than the U.S. I value people having a choice about who they want to be. I do think there are times when people make that choice for the wrong reasons--because it’s expected of them or because they don’t think they have what it takes to get where they want to be or because they just don’t know how. As an educator, I’ve seen hundreds of high school students trying to figure this out their senior year. It’s extremely stressful. Ironically, I think the majority of kids don’t know what they want but feel like everyone else does. They think they’re behind in some way.

Do you think the world of the calling has any other eccentricities?

The world of the calling is full of rites and rituals for every occasion, and ancestral ghosts play a role in all of them. What’s life without a little peer pressure by dead people?

What’s one of your recent favorite short stories?

“Judy Blume Didn't Prepare Me for the Apocalypse” by Christina Tudor, published in Smokelong Quarterly.

What book are you reading right now?

I am always reading three books at a time: one on paper, an audiobook I listen to alone, and an audio book I listen to with my husband. Right now, those books are a reread of The Sword of Shannara by Terry Brooks, The Invited by Jennifer McMahon, and The Fireman by Joe Hill.

Please promote your writing (or friends’ writing) that has been published elsewhere (or anything else you’d like to promote)

My friend, Ellen L Saunders, has a new book coming out in November that is fantastic. It’s a space opera called A Dubious Hope, available from Slimhorn & Wren. I have a newsletter on Substack where I publish others’ work from writing prompts, talk about the creative process, and share pictures of my dogs at larinawrites.substack.com.

I want to thank Larina for taking the time to talk to us about education and community today!

Don't forget to snag a copy of our newest novella, The Bodies by D.H. Parish, direct from us, or anywhere books are sold online.

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