Gina Nutt: “The White Room” follows a painter named Dan, who leaves the beach town where he lives to visit Toronto, where he hopes to see his daughter. The story’s environments and characters bring a lot of pressure points to light. Was there a particular tension that sparked an entry point for you? What surprised you about this story as you worked on it?
Babak Lakghomi: The story was initially inspired by a real-life event. My sister was away and I was supposed to give her apartment keys to someone who’d rented it on Airbnb. I first met the renter, a man in his late sixties, and everything seemed pretty normal at our first interaction. But following that, I kept getting strange calls from him at very odd hours. He lost the key to the place a couple of times. Then, a few weeks later, the building manager called me. They had gone into the apartment for some maintenance work and found it in a terrible condition. The man had been very disoriented. I tried to find someone related to him to contact, but the task was proven to be very difficult. It was a certain loneliness to the character and poignancy to the event that was really moving.

So I tried to imagine a story that had led him there. I wrote 50-60 pages toward what I initially thought may become a novel later, but then cut most of it and turned it into a short story.

GN: This story’s structure lends itself to fluidity in setting and time. Could you share a bit about your approach to structure? What’s on your mind when you’re blending memory and the present? How do you calibrate cohesion alongside shifts?
BL: I was interested in blending the past and the present based on the main character’s experience of dementia. He has some lucid moments, but he slips into scenes from his childhood and earlier life in the middle of some present scenes. I very much wanted the structure to reflect the disorientation associated with his condition, but I tried to provide enough details to guide the reader through that. I got feedback from a few readers to make sure there is enough clarity despite the generally foggy atmosphere of the story.

GN: The sentences and imagery here resonate on a deeply poetic level. At the same time, you keep us steadily moving alongside Dan. How do you approach the sentence in terms of image, energy, and momentum? What successes and pitfalls do you find in a sentence-level focus?
BL: I think a lot of times I am interested in the imagery and the musicality of the sentence. I try to minimize relying on sentences that just work as connective tissue and exposition. But I am also concerned with how the sentences operate as parts of the bigger structure and narrative.

As a reader, I admire a lot of writers whose main focus is at the sentence level. I do wonder if the same momentum and intensity can be carried over a longer narrative. I see that as an interesting challenge to strive for.  

GN: What’s in your creative mosaic? Books, music, restaurants, films, visual art, fashion, ephemera, architecture, anything that energizes your writing.
BL: Books: I try to read diversely but I am also driven in my reading by my interest in strange and formally daring books. 

Visual arts: Visual arts especially painting has been a major source of inspiration. I think living with a painter has made me much more conscious of form and the parallels and differences between writing and painting. Something that is present in this story.

Films: Films have been very formative to my writing. In regards to films too, I have always been more attracted toward the experimental and uncanny.