Unexpected Questions with Ai Jiang

Ai Jiang is a Chinese-Canadian writer, Ignyte, Bram Stoker, and Nebula Award winner, and Hugo, Astounding, Locus, Aurora, and BFSA Award finalist from Changle, Fujian currently residing in Toronto, Ontario.

Her work can be found in F&SF, The Dark, The Masters Review, among others.

She is the recipient of Odyssey Workshop’s 2022 Fresh Voices Scholarship and the author of Linghun and I AM AI.

The first book of her novella duology, A Palace Near the Wind, is forthcoming 2025 with Titan Books.

If you were transported into one of your books as a character, what kind of character would you be and what kind of adventures would you have?

One that is chaotic and unpredictable—I’m thinking someone like Jinx or Nezha. As for adventures, I think what I’d love most to become some kind of demon hunter or collector or mayhaps a beast tamer, travelling across the realms in search of these folkloric beings. Another thing that would be cool is having battles between immortals or RPG style adventures like in Solo Levelling or hero’s journey like Naruto.

If you could swap lives with any of the mythical creatures from your books for a day, which one would you choose and why?

One I’d recently written about is called Bai Ze, which is essentially a blend of a lion and a goat with six horns and nine eyes. But what’s most interesting about this creature is the fact that they know the secrets of the universe including other folkloric beings such as immortals, deities, ghosts, demons, among others.

If you could have any fictional pet as a companion, what would it be and why?

A stone lion. I feel like they would be just like oversized cats but also fierce protectors. Plus, cooler to travel on their backs compared to cars!

If you were a character in a fantasy RPG, what character class and abilities would you have and how would you level up?

I used to play maplestory religiously when I was younger, and the class I’d always choose is Cleric (which advances to Priest then Bishop) and what I enjoyed most about playing a Cleric was their ability to heal and replenish mana as they’re out grinding on the monster hunting grounds. It felt as though I was essentially immortal, unless of course, I’d forgotten to heal myself or attempted to target monsters far out of my level range.

If you were to write a story featuring yourself as the main character, what kind of adventure would you embark on?

I feel like I’d attempt to live out several lives at once, of unrealized dreams and attempt to acquire skills that I don’t think I’d be able to in this lifetime—both fantastical and practical like being able to summon demons and martial arts.

If you were to write a book about a group of superheroes with completely useless powers, what would their powers be?

Being able to chew superfast, turn their fingers into cactuses, blowing giant bubbles from their noses, growing feathers on demand but can’t use them for flying.

If you could have any magical power, but the catch was that you had to perform a ridiculous dance every time you used it, what power would you choose and what would your dance look like?

My dance would look either like Lee Kwang Soo’s mosquito dance and my power would be to stop time.

If you could have any sci-fi gadget in real life, what would it be and what practical uses would you have for it?

In relation to my previous answer, I’d love to have some kind of time stopper bubble that I can just go in and write and catch up on my TBR so when I step out, I’ll have a good number of things done, caught up on sleep, yet no time would have passed at all.

What’s the silliest misconception you’ve had about something scientific, what was it and how did you learn you had misapprehended?

I remember when the memes about studying osmosis first popped up, before I learned what osmosis actually was later on in class, I’d thought for the longest time that having knowledge penetrate your brain through sleeping on a textbook was actually a thing.

What off-beat location would you like to see host a convention, and why?

What I think would be fun is to have a sci-fi conference in the middle of nowhere, on an isolated mountain, where there’s no signal because the irony would be quite funny and absurd.

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What’s Next?

You can find me at Glasgow WorldCon, CanCon, World Fantasy Convention, and DreadCon this year, and if you haven’t already, do consider preordering A Palace Near the Wind. Also, keep watch on my various socials and website for forthcoming announcements on projects and more!

https://aijiang.ca/
https://x.com/AiJiang_
https://www.instagram.com/ai.jian.g/?hl=en
https://bsky.app/profile/aijiang.bsky.social

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