Spotlight on a Storyteller: Marisca Pichette
An excerpt from "Where Walls Once Rose"; plus, an interview with the author
Good morning all!
Today, we are spotlighting Marisca Pichette’s wonderful short story “Where Walls Once Rose”, featured in Storyteller, along with an interview with Marisca about defiance, belonging, and humanity in fiction.
Excerpt from Where Walls Once Rose
Gloaming stole over the city below and crept up the cliff to nip at Deyna’s taloned feet. She clutched a book in her claws and ripped it down its spine, synthetic strings snapping with a disconsolate twang. Unmaking it, she forced its secrets out like the folk had harvested poison from her fangs. They had trapped her; now she trapped them.
This is where she stumbled, where her mind grew foggy. The folk had cared for her. They taught her words, gave her medicine. Only they came to visit her, faces obscured by shimmering, reflective masks. Only they touched her—with gloves that smelled of anguish and antiseptic.
And yet, when she looked at a book, she felt fire brewing in her veins.
She pinned each reflective page to its own branch, the latest book spreadeagled in her familiar unfamiliar, private forest. Now she extended herself fully. Her taloned toes dug into ashen earth, her sinuous neck stretched out. Her nerves tingling with diluted medicine, she worked for hours suspending books of every shape and size. No page was left free, no spine intact.
Her work done, Deyna read until she lost all light.
To read all of “Where Walls Once Rose” and more impactful fiction, pre-order Storyteller at this link!
Marisca Pichette is a queer author based in Massachusetts, on Pocumtuck and Abenaki land. Her work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fantasy Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, and others. Her debut collection, Rivers in Your Skin, Sirens in Your Hair, was a finalist for the Bram Stoker and Elgin awards. Her first novella, Every Dark Cloud, is forthcoming from Ghost Orchid Press in Spring of 2025.
When did you first come across Tanith Lee, and how has she influenced your work?
I first came across Tanith Lee's work in my school library. I was captivated by the high adventure and headstrong female characters in Piratica: Being a Daring Tale of a Singular Girl's Adventures Upon the High Seas, which influenced my own characters when I began writing short stories in high school.
How did Tanith Lee help shape “Where Walls Once Rose”?
Defiance is a central theme in much of my writing today, and it ties back in some respect to those stories I read when I was still figuring out what I could be and the place of women in fantasy. While craft is honed, we can't underestimate the importance of the first books you encounter as a reader. Essentially, the writing style and even plot don't necessarily matter. It's how those stories make you feel that will stick with you forever.
In “Where Walls Once Rose”, Deyna struggles to regain her memories. Why did you choose books to become such a significant point of reference for her?
In this story, I was interested in non-belonging. Deyna doesn't belong in the city and the city doesn't belong on her world. While the broad shape of "Where Walls Once Rose" is science fiction, it owes much to the genres of folk horror and foot footage. The books were part of this interrogation of natural and unnatural, defamiliarized into something alien. I enjoyed flipping the script a bit with this one, taking something I love—books!—and making them part of the horror.
“Where Walls Once Rose” displays the aftermath of forced assimilation and cruelty on a distant planet. Did you pull inspiration from any historical events in particular?
Always. I don't believe that any story—speculative or realist—can be fully divorced from the layers and layers of human history and conflict. This is a story of anger and desperation and hope. While calling attention to injustice never loses its relevance, it holds particular weight to me today.
Deyna grieves her memories, perception, and culture. How did you shift what could easily have been a dark story into a bittersweet and surprisingly gentle one?
This might have a bit to do with how I tend to cope with darkness. I sit with things, turning them over and searching for the edges. While I wanted Deyna's vengeance to burn bright, I put that violence deliberately in the past, occuring before the story itself. Her disorientation in the aftermath is what interests me. How can she adjust when her world has been reshaped twice—once by force and a second time by choice? Silence gives her the space to think. Time in isolation allows her to remember, to move, and ultimately to wonder: what comes next?
Thanks for joining us for Spotlight on a Storyteller, and we will see you for the Sunday Archive!
The Essential Dreams Press Team