Vivek Shraya quotes:

As a brown artist, I have mixed feelings about my relationship to art and my "responsibilities" post-Trump.

As a general rule, I tend to collaborate with artists whose work I admire.

As a person of color, I know race can't be stripped from admiration or preference.

As much as I believe in the capacity for art to create change, and as much as being an artist is physically and emotionally challenging, there is ultimately something a bit comfortable about making art in the comfort of your own home.

Despite the fact that I'm not highly skilled in any visual art, aesthetics have always played a strong role in my art, including my first albums.

I always work with text orally in the writing process, saying passages aloud to measure flow.

I do use art as a site of protest, particularly in relation to dominant narratives.

I don't yet know what style will be required for my next novel, but my sense is that each book will involve a new relationship to language.

I especially worry about the ways Canadians can be glib about our supposed difference from the US in our "acceptance" of "diversity."

I feel like I have had to catch up to the art I've made, and learn from the protagonists I have written, especially in relation to gender.

I have always considered the aesthetic of a project, including press photos, as a means to further the message of the art itself.

I worry about what Trump will inspire in Canada, especially given incidents that have already occurred here since the election.

I would love to see more dialogue around the "responsibilities" of art consumers - how can audiences better financially support artists we love, artists who are doing the work, so that artists have a more solid foundation upon which to make art?

Art can sometimes be separate from the artist.

Children are receptive to talking about gender creativity, confirming the importance of the book as a means to instigate this dialogue at an early age.

Children's books have great potential to reveal new possibilities to readers, because the intended audience is at an age of genuine learning.

Generally, I start by observing the existing and popular narratives in my social spheres and media, and the pressures I face in my own life experiences. As someone who is "newly" trans, I am constantly thinking about what the dominant narratives are around transness, how my work can push against these narratives, and how it already falls into these traps.

I am always hesitant to call myself an activist, mostly out of respect for the activists who are using their bodies and voices to protest or activists online who are constantly engaging and educating others.

I am more likely to get paid for my art if it's presented alongside a white artist, so the questions around value and agency arise: What choices should I make, or do I have to make, if I want to be compensated for my work? Why isn't my art valued on its own?

I continue to explore poetry.

I couldn't write about love without writing about hate - specifically, how the experience of hatred embeds itself in the body and prevents love from entering or leaving.

I didn't want to give the white reader an opportunity to think of racism as imaginary - a sentiment that is already a central barrier in addressing the problem.

I have been and continue to be committed to art as a tool to ignite, comfort, and discomfort.

I have dedicated a significant portion of my time and artistry to making art that addresses various forms of oppression, including white supremacy, misogyny, and biphobia.

I recently did a reading at an elementary school in Ottawa, and one of the children asked me if I was a girl. I said yes. Another child commented that I had a deep voice. I responded: "Can girls have deep voices?" There was a pause and then the group responded, "Yes!"

I tend to focus less on genre as a starting point and more on idea or intention and let the idea dictate genre.

I used singing as a safety measure. I would pay attention to what songs the popular girls liked, learn those songs from the radio or library cassettes, and then "accidentally" sing or hum these songs in class. This would impress the girls, who would then defend me from the boys.

If anything, I have witnessed the ways my art travels, or is rendered more accessible, when sanctioned by or connected to white artists.

In my thirties, I have felt a greater urgency to make art that highlights what it feels like to be racialized, likely due to living in a country that obscures our racism with the idea of "multiculturalism."

In poetry, I didn't have to provide resolution. I could ask hard questions without feeling responsible for the answers.

It's exciting to consider how art, in its ability to reveal, can be ahead of the artist.

Making music has been connected to one of my greatest heartaches, because my own music has never quite connected with audiences. But it was this heartache that pushed me to explore other artistic avenues, like writing and filmmaking, and I ultimately feel most at home in a multidisciplinary environment.

Music is my first love, where my artistic journey began.

My art career often feels less like an art career and more like a career in educating, usually by using my body.

My intention was never to write a "trans novel" - which is perhaps an effective strategy for writing a trans novel.

My interest in language is steadfast, but I think each project and its accompanying intentions dictate how language must be used.

Now is not the time for Canadians to be sanctimonious. It is time for us to be prudent and active.

Of course, I can't separate my queerness from my brownness - if anything, my queerness amplifies my brownness, and vice versa - but I spent so much of my early twenties trying to erase my differences, often without awareness of what I was doing.

Should I be collaborating with artists of color solely because of their race and my politics? This question is weighted with my own worry that I have been invited to speak or collaborate solely because of my race, and not because of my abilities.

When I do book readings, I always incorporate music or singing.

When I was writing, I wanted every word to be not only deliberate, but musical. Precious.

When I wouldn't leave home without my blue contacts or when I was bleaching my hair, I didn't have the language to articulate that I was trying to assimilate to whiteness. If anything, I was trying to "look normal."

Writing about racism requires a directness that writing a love story does not.

I think white artists have a responsibility to be not only naming white supremacy, but to be using their power and privilege to support artists of color.