This interview took place over Zoom on February 23, 2025. Some of the questions were provided to the interviewees in advance. It has been edited for clarity and intention.
Sarah Marie: I know it’s a weird place to start but I would like to know more about the cover art for this book. Whose idea was this?
Jeff Dupuis: Well, it’s funny, because Dundurn Press gave us a template for how it should be designed in order to match what would go to the designer, and the cover was not what we had imagined. But it’s beautiful, and I love it. And this is why I think that since cover design is obviously not my thing, I shouldn’t be commenting on how it’s done anymore. I wanted something that was much more like 19-fifties sci-fi robots around a kitchen table or something, but I think this turned out much better.
A.G. Pasquella: Yeah, we had that kind of retro future vibe in mind. But absolutely the way the cover turned out is beautiful. Karen Alexiou is the designer. She did a fantastic job. Just knocked it out of the park. I love the glitchy apple dripping slime.
SM: I was reading an article by Tajja Isen about book cover art and she was saying that the person who wrote the book isn’t the one who communicates with the designer about their vision for a cover. I thought that was a little bit odd. I guess before that I just assumed that a writer would have some say in their book cover. Kind of like if you’re getting a tattoo, maybe? Because it’s going to be the cover forever. But, I guess there is value in trusting the process. The designer is also an artist and probably has very good judgement.
AGP: Yeah, it’s a give and take for sure. I have also talked to authors who were very unhappy with their covers. That’s such a heartbreak, because, as you say, I mean, these people have worked so hard. Others have worked so hard for years on their books, and then to end up with a final product that you’re not happy with would be heartbreaking for sure. Luckily for us, we are very happy with our cover. We did have some early input. Dundurn Press showed us the design they were thinking of, and we sent in some tweaks, and they did tweak it in the way that we suggested, which was very nice of them. And yeah, we ended up with this beautiful cover that I think we’re all happy with. I haven’t talked to all the contributors about it, but all the ones I’ve talked to thought it was beautiful!
JJD: If anyone hates it, they’re keeping that secret. They’re in the minority, and they’re not expressing their opinions. I would say that, especially in a book like this, it’s a collaborative process. Even though you usually only have one or two authors on the cover, between editorial design, cover design, etc. All of that is a team effort, and you have to trust that every member of the team knows what they’re doing. I don’t feel like the final product is something that A.G and I should have been able to take ownership of and dictate what the cover would look like.
SM: When did you start working on it? Or, I guess when did the two of you start talking about doing something like this?
AGP: That’s a great question. When was it, Jeff? I know it came about like a couple of years ago. I can’t remember exactly, Jeff. Maybe you do.
JJD: I think it was 2021 when we first started chatting about it. I was traveling a lot on the train between Toronto and Windsor and I was corresponding with the contributing authors at that time. A.G, I was checking some of those emails recently, just in response to SM’s questions that she sent us, and I remembered that you and I were having a messenger chat and we talked about the previous anthology that you did.
AGP: Yes. That’s right! We were having a conversation about anthologies in general, and how sometimes it’s pretty tricky to do anthologies. And I actually think the conversation started with us saying, we’re never going to do anthologies. Except, there was this one idea for an anthology. I thought it would be cool to have an anthology about the future. But that was it. It’s just a very amorphous kind of future idea. And then Jeff came along and we wondered together about narrowing that down. And then, yeah, it kind of rolled from there where we started thinking about the authors that we knew who might want to contribute.
SM: So did you go to Dundurn Press with your idea?
AGP: We took it to our agent, Kelvin Kong from K2 Literary. And he took it to various publishers and Russell Smith at Dundurn Press was the guy who liked the idea the most. So thank you very much, Russell.
JJD: I believe we actually signed the contract at the end of 2023. I just want to back up a few steps and say that we had to put all the authors and the stories together into a package before we sold it. We couldn’t sell it on the concept alone. So that was challenging because a lot of our authors were wondering what was happening with their contribution between when they sent it to us and when we finally signed with Dundurn Press. When you do something like this, you are asking people to put a good amount of work into something and they don’t know if it’s ever going to see the light of day. So it was very much a hustle at a certain point. We have these very talented people who’ve given us great stories, and now we have to try to sell them. I will also say that selling an anthology is not an easy thing to do, but especially to smaller publishers. That was a challenge.
AGP: Almost like hawking something from a street corner.
SM: Yeah, yeah, I mean, if the writer is waiting to see if that story is going to get published, they can’t also place it somewhere else. That must get frustrating.
JJD: Yes, and we had some authors eventually asking to take their pieces out to put them in their own collections, and it’s fair as a writer to say, you know, if this isn’t going anywhere, my publisher wants me to put it in my collection that’s coming out, you know? As an author myself, I don’t want to say “no, you gave the story to us and we own it now.” What you really want is to see other authors get their stories published. You know, you want your fellow authors to be successful. But, it was also the case that we almost lost one of the tentpole stories of the anthology.
AGP: That’s right. Yeah, Jeff did a lot to reassure me during this moment. But it all worked out and that story is in the anthology. I think that author is happy with the final outcome. At least, as far as I know.
SM: I guess that sort of answers the question “what was it like working with all of these writers?” What was it like working with Dundurn Press? I assume they were pretty supportive of the project. And, you ended up with a cover that you seem to be really satisfied with. But, what was that experience like? How is it different from placing your own book with them?
JJD: Yeah. A.G and I have published three books with Dundurn Press each.
AGP: One thing we really had going for us, and Dundurn Press as well, is that the writers in this book are really excellent. It was very, very easy to edit the stories, because the stories really didn’t need much editing at all, right? These writers are so good. For the most part we were just handed these beautiful, polished, finished stories. So Dundurn Press was very happy about that. There was not a lot of heavy lifting to do in terms of the actual line editing or copy editing, and I guess it was mostly yeah layout and graphic design, right? I’m sure there was a lot of work for them to do there. But in terms of working with Russell Smith, it was pretty hands off, really. I’d say he gave us some good advice. And oh! Working with our publicist. I’ve got to give a shout out to Eden Boudreau. She’s been fantastic throughout this whole process, she’s gotten us a lot of good buzz. We’ve been written up by CBC Books,Quill and Quire, 49th Shelf, and the Toronto Star. Thank you to all those outlets. And hopefully, we’ll get some more coverage. And yeah, hopefully, this buzz will keep building and end up getting the book into the hands of the readers who will love it.
JJD: [laughing] I actually just want to contradict A.G for a little bit here, because I think so many months have passed that it’s easy to forget the editing process. Working with Dundurn Press has been great so this isn’t a complaint or anything. But when the line editing, for example, is for someone else’s story, I could only really be the go between. Edits would come to us, and then we’d have to kind of split up the work and take that to the authors. It’s a lot of people and a lot of coordination. And you know, some people keep noticing things that they want changed at various points in the process. Or, we had a lot of those requests over the summer, when the publisher was kind of on a shutdown. Of course, it’s just the logistics of working with so many people. That was the only real challenge, but it wasn’t as simple as handing the stories to Dundurn Press as is.
SM: Oh, I see
AGP: That’s true. That was the most challenging part for sure, being the go between.
JJD: Or if the publisher wanted a change and one of the authors said “I’m going to be in Sweden for 6 months!” So that means you as the editor are going to be out of touch with them also. It’s managing these things and then stuff like, trying to get the blurbs for the cover, you know, you’re asking a lot of a lot of people.
AGP: I’d agree with that. Yeah, absolutely.
SM: So Dundurn Press was on a shutdown for a bit of it, but otherwise they were supportive and it went smoothly in the context of an anthology?
JJD: It’s just a lot different from doing our own books. I mean, it’s easier to stick to your own deadlines. It’s different than when you have so many contributors, and so many people adjacent to the project.
SM: Honestly, I think 90% of my day job is trying to get all of these other people to do their part, and not having any authority to make them do it on time. But then another team of people insisting it should have been done.
AGP: Oh no!
JJD: Oh, yeah. My day job is much the same.
AGP: Yeah, there was a lot of logistics. Yup absolutely.
SM: What has the community engagement been like so far? I mean, you’re both so popular among writers, so I can’t help but wonder. I know I have seen this book being mentioned in spaces outside of a larger writing community that I was not expecting. Or, at least, not so long before the book comes out. I think I expect that from, like, a very famous writer who has already had a few major books out, or something like that.
JJD: I think the subject matter carries the book into fields that it might not otherwise go to. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives did an issue recently about the future of food security, for example. The future of food is something we see on the news. It’s something we see on television. And, I think when media outlets realize like, that this is something that Canadian writers are talking about in a Canadian context, it kind of elevates an anthology beyond what it might be if it were just, you know, stories of artificial intelligence more generally, or subject matter that’s been written about for a long time. We’re starting to see more engagement with climate change, with pollinator die-offs, it hits home. People who have been fishing on the east coast are starting to catch fish they’ve never caught before because of warming waters. It’s changing the culture. And, I think savvy media people will pick up on what our book talks about. Certainly more buzz than any of my books got. It’s a much more universal subject that’s on everyone’s minds right now.
AGP: I think that’s exactly right. It’s a very timely topic. Unfortunately, it’s timely and that gives it a built in hook and the media can definitely work with that.
SM: So, you had been spending some time with the topic for a while, and that’s how this anthology came together in your messenger conversation?
AGP: I think it was an extrapolation of thinking about that idea of food in the future. How are we going to feed ourselves in the future? And then looking around at sort of what’s going on around us and just looking at that further into the future. Right? It’s like, okay. Well, if pollinators are dying off now, so in a hundred years, what is that going to look like? And then, yeah, you explore that idea in fiction, which the writers all did amazingly in their various topics. I know Carleigh Baker wrote her story on pollination, and it was very, very good.
JJD: Most of my writing has had science overlaid on the subject matter. It has the intersection of science and everyday life, but for people who are into cryptozoology, or something like that. I think for most of us, though, science intersects with our lives the most with food, because everybody eats. We see the droughts, we see how some animals can no longer exist in a particular environment, and we can wonder how that affects what people are eating. And, that’s what really made the future of food so relevant, to me, is that everything I hear is bad. You know, when I hear about what’s happening to bats, for example, that white-nose syndrome. When I hear that sort of thing, it’s not immediately obvious how that bad thing is going to change my life personally. But, at the very least, I know this bad thing is going to change my life based on what I’m able to eat in the future.
SM: So, how do we feel about bad science in stories? Not in this book specifically, but there are some stories that are very bad at explaining the science behind the story. Any film with an erupting volcano, for example, would be a very bad place to learn about volcanology. Journey To The Center of the Earth is a very bad geology story. Maybe the worst. My friend told me about her experience with writing science in science fiction. She said that if you’re going to do science fiction, make sure the science is very good, because the nerds are going to come for you. They’re going to pick it apart. Which makes someone like me, based on my explanation of bad science stories, a person who can really ruin a great story. Given that the science conversations around the future of food are so relevant, and there is so much non-science conversation kind of happening around them, how do you think readers will engage with the science in the anthology? Say, if the book does get pulled into the larger dialogue about something like food security and pollinators and bats, how would that conversation go with the science in here?
JJD: I would say that the outcomes of the scientific problems in the stories were believable enough and real enough that even if somebody would nitpick particular details, they would find the human reaction to things like the impacts of climate change compelling. The authors weren’t going for that kind of blockbuster energy you mentioned. Even if maybe a horticulturalist would say something like “that’s not how plant viruses work” they would know that this is a story about a human reaction to being deprived of some plant or food that had been a long part of tradition. As much as I love having real science in the stories, it’s more about trying to create a plot that gives us real characterization and real human reaction and gets to the heart of the matter of who we are.
SM: That is such a good answer! I’m putting all of that in there.
AGP: I think that was a great answer too.
SM: The technical science in the story isn’t the point. The story is exploring our relationship to that science. The point isn’t learning the mechanisms of a scientific principle, it’s to explore how we behave when we are deprived of something.
AGP: Yeah, and with 16 authors, I think in an anthology, there’s going to be some stories that lean sort of more towards hard science than others. There’s a wide, wide range in here.
SM: Do you feel like you’re getting asked more questions about any specific story?
AGP: I think so far in terms of reactions from people that has been Catherine Bush’s story, which is amazing. It’s called “Pleased to Meet You” and it’s about laboratory grown meat developing sentience and the moral implications of that. People have been really reacting positively to that one for sure. Both because it’s a fascinating topic, and because of Catherine’s skill as a writer. I think it’s a combination of both of those.
JJD: Truly! Catherine Bush has such a long history of writing in a style that I would call Science Fiction, which is not actually what someone would generally refer to as Science Fiction. She writes literary fiction and the scientific underpinnings help guide it. In Blaze Island, for example, climate change heavily underpins the story there. She’s a genius when it comes to these kinds of topics. You know, in the anthology, “Pleased to Meet You” makes you think a bit about Frankenstein, and science fiction writing in that way. We know humans will create irrespective of moral obligation. I mean, we’ve created AI. We know somebody would try to create life if they could in this artificial capacity because that’s just what humans do. And, to see it done in a way of such subtlety. I thought that it’s like we are trying to grow life now. But we’re thinking we’re not growing a life form. We’re just growing flesh that we can consume, and that might lead to something more intelligent, something that can watch us back when we’re watching it. Now, you know this, the nerds might come for us and say “that’s not accurate, because you’re not developing brain tissue” or something like that. I mean, so be it. But it makes us think about what we’re capable of and what limits we should put on ourselves, what happy accidents might just happen when we’re trying to create living tissue.
SM: That story felt a lot like something I would have seen in Doctor Who, which is why I think I wanted to talk about science fiction. Sometimes not explaining every little detail is the thing that would make the science in the story more plausible. You know, whether or not an alien species with a plunger hand is realistic, the show has never contradicted itself because it doesn’t explain every single thing, so science nerds can relax and watch without fact checking the whole time. They can just think about how they feel the situation was handled by the Doctor. Having made that comparison, do you think the book could be a show or series?
JJD: CBC, if you’re listening. Anthology series: Devouring Tomorrow.
SM: I am a fan of the show in a very casual way. You really can’t ask me any follow up questions. Or, as the majority of their fan base would describe me, not even a real fan.
AGP: I love science fiction. I still love Star Trek!
JJD: Broadly, I love science fiction. I also love comic books. Just, all sorts of speculative culture. I do feel Devouring Tomorrow would be like a great anthology series. I mean, the Outer Limits series from the 90s was on the movie network, it was shot in British Columbia. I think of that more than something like Doctor Who. Putting the viewer in this world that’s very much like our world, then there’s a darker twist. And how do we react? How do we get around that?
AGP: That’s right. Yeah. It’s all about the problems to be solved. How does each individual author, or how does each story solve the problems that we’ve presented? How do they deal with the situation of feeding ourselves in the context of climate change? Each episode would approach that problem in a different way, trying to solve that problem, using different tools.
SM: What questions are you not getting asked about Devouring Tomorrow that we should be asking? What should we call attention to that we are missing?
JJD: I think it’s more so the overall theme of food security. It’s hard to imagine that we won’t have the access to the food we have now. We have such a global food chain and a global supply system to get us whatever we want. Most people understand climate change. They understand pollinator die-off, to a degree. But I don’t think they’ve thought as deeply about what that means for being able to eat. It’s so hard to imagine that I won’t be able to go to the grocery store and buy something like fresh pineapple.
JJD: I think when I get into conversations about the book, people still seem to think that the problems in here are 200 years in the future, but the problems are already here. It’s so counterintuitive because I know that I won’t be able to go get fresh everything, but it feels far away. There’s really no shortage of anything now.
SM: Yeah, there are whole aisles for pet food, I guess. I don’t remember not having food that caters to the special diet of finicky cats.
JJD: It’s a land of plenty right now, and the fact that it could change feels impossible sometimes. It’s possible that people aren’t prepared to even think about modifying their diets for these reasons. One thing that comes with a topic that intersects with politics is this notion in Canada that those of us who take climate change seriously are going to somehow force everybody else to eat bugs for protein. Even acknowledging that there is a problem is treated as being a radical left conspiracy or boogeyman. And, so, one Canadian politician has mentioned that in his speeches, this idea that “elites” are going to force people to eat insects in the name of fighting climate change. No, but we do have to change how we do things. Nobody’s going to force you to eat locusts, but perhaps you will have to adjust. A weird hobby of mine was to go through online libraries and look at old cookbooks and just see how we used to make food in jello.
SM: Oh, my God!
JJD: God, so much jello. But, also, all of the ingredients in everything was canned, right? And that was the future! In the future, you could have canned pineapple. Canned food is the glory of the post-war era.
AGP: Yeah. We are seeing some adjustments. In the case of a bird flu epidemic. For political reasons and not scientific ones, I don’t think every country has a policy to inoculate the chickens against bird flu, and so, yeah, millions of birds are being culled. Because of that, the price of eggs in some cases have gone through the roof.
SM: Yeah, yeah. Hmm.
AGP: I’ve been seeing on social media, actually a lot of people putting up recipes for stuff like, how you stretch out your eggs with tofu and things like that, right? And so that definitely speaks to exactly what you were saying, Jeff, about people changing their eating habits in the face of these ongoing crises.
JJD: Yes. That’s the biggest thing about the book that I feel people aren’t talking about, is just that. And, I get why you don’t want to talk about it. You don’t want to talk about how a food-based apocalypse is foreseeable. If not for us, maybe for our children. Hopefully the book gets people thinking about these things, and what adjustments we might be able to make.
AGP: Yeah, absolutely. There are a lot of the scenarios in this book that are really wild and really far out, but at the same time, they’re also all too plausible.
SM: I’m still going to call Jowita’s story in Devouring Tomorrow, “science fiction” even if the science isn’t driving the story. In some ways, it’s a very uncomfortable, science-informed conversation about the biological considerations of disordered eating. I can see how no one wants to talk about something like that either. They don’t want to talk about the biological response to something like starvation. Talking about it from the perspective of the food was fascinating. But, I think that what happens to the character at the end of the story, there is an unavoidable consequence that is predictable using science. You know, what will happen to you when your relationship with food looks this way. This catastrophic thing we think that a person should be able to solve on their own if they are responsible, and the environment in which that person lives isn’t necessarily treated as the most important factor. It’s a killer. Maybe not apocalyptic, but I should probably be sophisticated enough to talk about food insecurity in terms of what I think will happen to me if I let my relationship to food evolve. Particularly with social media algorithms giving us so much immediate feedback about how acceptable or unacceptable we are. Maybe people probably don’t want to be talking about, you know, for their own reasons. Because they don’t necessarily believe that this is a real problem that can’t be solved with the individual making a different food shopping choice.
AGP: Yeah!
SM: Am I getting that right?
JJD: I mean, I think there’s no right or wrong to that. It is an issue very strongly rooted in the future of food, and where society is going because we have such a strange relationship with food and with our self image. Anytime you get Jowita writing about hunger, or desire, or mind versus body, you know, she’s just a genius that way! It was so different. It is one of the more grounded or immediate problems in the book that needs to be addressed.
SM: There is a narrative around restricting yourself. Somehow not eating “bad food” or the more expensive, fattening, more delicious food makes you feel like a better person, and that is very bizarre. There must be a more nuanced way to talk about that, since it can be so destructive.
JJD: Yes! It’s very compelling. So much of the complex struggle in the book has these very interior themes. To do that well, I think, for a writer is very challenging. To make readers feel it, whether that’s their lifestyle or not, or whether that’s their lived experience or not, I think, it works really well in an anthology like this one.
SM: I was so excited to get the book. I told myself I would read the stories by the writers as they popped up on social media. Mostly because social media is kind of how I ended up here.
AGP: It definitely works better as a book in sequence, you know, like a mixtape would. But I also think that’s one of the joys and beauties of an anthology is, you can do that. You can jump around between stories. I’ve done that as well.
JJD: That’s funny. You know, I remember when Napster first came out, and you would have people downloading music illegally, and artists would say things like “we curate it a certain way, and if you don’t listen to it in the album form. Then you’re not getting what we mean.” Then I would listen to albums in sequence, but also like, it doesn’t actually make a difference. Everybody approaches art differently. It would be strange to insist people look at a painting from left to right or not to look at it at all. No, it’s how you approach it.
SM: Yeah!
JJD: It’s what speaks to you. And at the end of the day, if you’re engaging with it, that’s what the artist wants, some kind of engagement.
AGP: I mean to that point, it’s a collaboration between the writer and the reader. You need to close that circuit.
JJD: Exactly right!
SM: I really appreciate you both taking the time to talk with me today.
Jeff Dupuis is the author of the Creature X Mystery series. When not in front of a computer, he can be found haunting the river valleys of Toronto, where he lives and works.
A.G. Pasquella is the author of the Jack Palace series, which include Yard Dog, Carve the Heart, and Season of Smoke. When he’s not writing, he makes music with the bands Miracle Beard and LaserGnu. Born in Dallas, Texas, he now lives in Toronto, Ontario.
Publisher: Dundurn Press (March 25, 2025)
Paperback 8″ x 6″ | 240 pages
ISBN: 9781459754980
Sarah Marie is a perfectly unqualified, no-talent, lit/poetry enthusiast.A~literal nobody~ on social media, you may recognize her from commenting on your posts as if you sent them to her personally. She isvery impressedby your dedication to your work and to each other, and she believes in you.
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- Sarah Mariehttps://miramichireader.ca/author/sarah-marie/
- Sarah Mariehttps://miramichireader.ca/author/sarah-marie/
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