This interview was recorded in November 2025. I did my best toward accuracy in this transcript, but I didn’t include every instance of laughter, so please just imagine that we were pretty much laughing every fourth or fifth exchange. Or more. Really. We had a lot of fun.
Show notes are included after this transcript. (If you somehow stumbled across this post without knowing about the podcast episode, hi! Here’s a handy link to find the interview on the web.)
TRANSCRIPT:
[jazzy jumpin’ music]Sandra Wong: Hello and welcome to We Contain Multitudes, the casual interview show with famous and accomplished guests who share the geek-outs, hobbies, and interests, which they might not necessarily be famous for. I am your host, Sandra Wong, and today I have the pleasure of being joined by Premee Mohamed. Hi, Premee.
Premee Mohamed: Hello. Hello. Thank you for the invite.
SW: Thank you so much for agreeing without having any idea what this is about. I really appreciate it. Okay, so for my friends out there who don’t know, Premee Mohammed is an incredibly prolific and incredibly talented writer, a speculative fiction. She’s got your horror, your sci fi, your fantasy, and multiple inventive recombinations thereof. Premee has been nominated for prestigious awards from the international Hugo, British Science Fiction, Crawford, and British Fantasy Awards to the local Edmonton Book Prize. That’s our little hometown where we live. Premee has won the Ignyte, Aurora, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards, and now half of the, what was the prize?
PM: The Julia Verlanger Prize.
SW: Ooh, from the world-renowned Les Utopiales Conference, Convention in Nantes, in France. Premee has also won an Alberta Literary Award. She is also an accomplished editor and a real life scientist. But you may know her best as the person charged with the care and pampering of the famously independent and strong-willed Fiasco the cat.
PM: He is extremely famous. He actually has more social media followers than me. It’s fine. I’m not bitter.
SW: No, it’s it’s totally fine. It’s great.
PM: This is what the internet is for. The internet is for cats.
SW: That’s right. And we’re very happy for Fiasco. But we today are not talking about Fiasco. Sorry, Fiasco fans. That might be a different show. We are here to talk about a geek-out that Premee has, which some people may know a little bit about. So why don’t you tell us about that, Premee?
PM: Yeah. So when I was invited, the question was, what do you geek out about when you are not geeking out about science or writing? And I immediately said, well, fountain pens.
SW: Yes. Yes!
PM: Because, I thought this was going to be another kind of flash-in-the-pan ADHD hobby. And it turned out not to be. I think this one’s here to stay.
SW: Wow. Okay, so how long ago did you start and how did you get into them?
PM: So my dad got me one of those sort of very standard Waterman brown fountain pens, in, I think 2012 or 2013. And, it was actually handed down from his work because he got it for one of those little, like, recognition things. So he got like a ballpoint and a mechanical pencil. And then this fountain pen in, like, the gift set.
SW: Right.
PM: So he kept the other two and was like, well, I don’t really want the fountain pen. Do you want it? So I took it. Didn’t think much of it. I had, like, one bottle of ink, blue-black, I believe, Quink. And, I used it on and off. It was nice enough, but you know, I, I wasn’t using it all the time. And, slowly though, I started becoming friends with people who were fountain pen geeks.
SW: Right.
PM: And you know how it goes with these things. You start to covet what you don’t have. So that’s how I got into it.
SW: Oh, wow. Okay. But. So when you were using that, that Waterman, was that the right brand? Okay. What were you using it for? Because I have also been gifted fountain pens. I’ve never used it because I just found it was, like, so troublesome to, like, get the ink and fill the ink and dut-dut-dut-dut-da. So what were you using it for?
PM: Yeah, I, I’m one of those notebook guys. I just, I write a lot of longhand.
SW: Okay.
PM: Behind me, your listeners won’t be able to see this, but you will be able to see this.
SW: Yes.
PM: So I do a lot of, outlining, note taking, getting unstuck-a-nating, choreography, fight scenes, doodling, maps, anything that I can’t sort of intuitively do with the keyboard, I switch instantly to longhand.
SW: Okay.
PM: But yeah, I did find it a little bit of a faff because the pen came with cartridges. I don’t really like cartridges. And then, it also came with the converter, so I was using liquid ink, and yeah, I was like, oh, this is messy. And kind of annoying. And sometimes when you take off the lid and start to write, it doesn’t write.
SW: Right.
PM: I think the issue for me at the time was I just hadn’t found a good pen.
SW: Okay.
PM: Because good fountain pens have none of those issues.
SW: Okay. So,
PM: Yeah.
SW: because I’m probably like a lot of people who aren’t fountain pen nerds. What do you mean when you say a converter?
PM: Oh, I don’t know if I can…Let’s see.
SW: I can figure out a cartridge.
PM: Yeah
SW: I can figure out what that is.
PM: So a converter, I just grabbed a random pen, this is hilarious.
SW: A random pen
PM: A converter is…you can’t see—this little doodad, which is a transparent plastic tube with a piston fill at one end.
SW: Right.
PM: And that’s what lets you use, bottled ink such as this.
SW: A very lovely bottle.
PM: A very lovely bottle, a French ink.
SW: Ooh. La la.
PM: Yeah. They, the French have a very long history of
SW: Oh, yes.
PM: Loving and using fountain pens. So the converter lets you use bottled ink and it lets you very, very easily swap out your inks. A cartridge also does that, but cartridges tend to come in very boring colours.
SW: Right. Because they’re pre-filled by
PM: Because they’re pre-filled and
SW: by the manufacturer.
PM: And you don’t always want to write in, like, blue or black or red, you know, maybe you want to write in turquoise with sparkle in it.
SW: Oh, that is such a lovely colour.
PM: It’s a beautiful colour. And that, to me was also kind of the appeal of fountain pens is.
SW: Okay.
PM: Inks that shimmer or inks that have, you know, kind of a sheen to them or inks that look iridescent or metallic or inks that have shading to them. So there’s the visual interest and there’s kind of the, the fun kind of hands-on aspect of, you know, maintaining your pen and keeping your pen clean and filling it and swapping out the inks when you get bored and
SW: Right.
PM: And then for me also, there was kind of the practicality of it, which is that I do so much longhand writing that, eventually I was starting to get a little strained, but with fountain pens, you’re pressing down less hard. So I felt the relief pretty much immediately once I switched completely to fountain pen.
SW: Wow.
PM: Yeah. I just, my arm felt better and I was like, I guess I better
SW: RIght.
PM: stay. Like, I think this is how they get you. They’re like, you have to use it now. It’s for your health.
SW: It’s for your health and safety, yeah. I have actually never heard of that benefit of a fountain pen at all. So that’s brand new to me. So then, of course, this is the inevitable question. How many fountain pens do you own?
PM: About 60.
SW: Whoa.
PM: I think? I recently gave away a handful. I actually gave a couple to our mutual friend, Candas Jane Dorsey.
SW: Oh of course.
PM: Because we happened to be getting together for something, and I was like, do you just want some ink? And, like, a couple of pens that I’m not currently using or that I have duplicates of? Here you go. Kind of, so [laughing]
SW: I’m sure she was thrilled because she
PM: Yeah, she was delighted.
SW: Because she’s always curious about everything, anything and everything. So. That’s so cool.
PM: Yeah.
SW: Oh. Is she. Or is she already a collector like you?
PM: She, she uses fountain pens. I think she was quite curious about some of the inks I gave her, which were,
SW: Yeah
PM: some of the more unusual, sparkly or glittery ones, because she was like, well, you know, I usually just use normal inks. I’m like, oh, but there’s a whole world out there.
SW: Yeah. So does this mean that if you, and we will get back to how you choose your pens, but does this mean that if you want to get into fountain pens, you pretty much are just going to have to expect yourself to get into inks?
PM: Yeah, I don’t think I know anyone, if you got into fountain pens, and is just using like blue or black plain ink. Yeah, I think for a lot of us the appeal was interesting inks, and the fountain pen companies and the ink companies are very well aware of that and are like, let’s take your money. So, for instance, every year around this time, they start advertising their “inkvent” calendars.
SW: Right. Ohhhh.
PM: And, inkvent comes with 24 little bottles, three quarters of an inch high, of interesting inks. And then on the 25th day, you get a slightly bigger bottle. And, you know, it’s fun. You get… But then, again, your whole house fills up with these little bottles.
SW: They actually look like, fingernail polish.
PM: They do. They look like nail polish.
SW: Yeah, nail polish.
PM: I keep my ink over there where the cats can’t get at it. And it’s on a Lazy Susan. And sometimes when I get it in the background of photos, people are like, wow, that’s a big nail polish collection. I’m like, That’s not what those are.
SW: Okay, so first of all
PM: You don’t want to get those on your fingers.
SW: First of all, shouldn’t you have…There is a place the cats can’t get at? I am very surprised, but I would assume, I would assume you had to keep them behind closed doors, so the cats didn’t get into them.
PM: No, I think they’re, they’re just used to them now. So they’re just kind of background.
SW: Right.
PM: I think if I, if I was over there messing with them a lot, the cats would be like, oh, what are you doing?
SW: Yes.
PM: What are you doing? Can we see, can we touch?
SW: Okay. So then do you have your carousel of inks? Do you have them arranged by shades?
PM: No
SW: In colour families? Okay, I’m just checking, nothing wrong with
PM: Sadly, I’m not that organized. I do have friends who have done, who have done that, a)
SW: Yes
PM: and who tend to keep their inks up on, like, shelves on the wall so you can see all of them.
SW: Right.
PM: And they also are much more consistent about, swatching their inks or putting a little sample on a card so they know exactly, you know, what manufacturer and what the ink colour is,
SW: Oh wow, yeah
PM: what the name is. And I keep saying I’m going to do that and I never do it.
SW: Yeah. That’s, I mean, there are as many different ways to collect as there are collectors. So, you know, no judgments. Okay. So how do you decide? Is it, you know, which pen, is it… It’s like, okay, this month I have this budget. And so, you know, I don’t have this kind of pen, and you’re going to look for it. Or is it just like, impulse, like whatever catches your eye?
PM: Oh, gosh. A lot of the time it is impulse. Like
SW: I’m shocked.
PM: I know, shocking, like, a writer with impulse control problems.
SW: Oh I don’t know what you mean.
PM: Who’s ever heard of such a thing? Quite a few of my pens actually have been gifts. So that’s been really nice.
SW: That’s lovely.
PM: This one… Again, your viewers won’t be able to see that this is a vintage, cloisonné pen that
SW: Oh, wow
PM: my friend Matt got me, with enamel and little flowers on it. And this is, again, because it’s vintage, I never would have bought this for myself.
SW: Yeah, that’s lovely.
PM: Like, I thought this was so beautiful and so thoughtful, but a lot of them are very much impulse because you get the email from like, a pen company or whatever. And they’re like, hey, what’s up? We have a new pen. I’m like, well, I have, I have lots of pens. I don’t need another pen. But then it’ll be something where they’re like, well, this is a pen you already have, but it happens to be in a blue and rose gold colorway, so maybe you should get this one. I’m like.
SW: How did you know?
PM: Maybe I should. Maybe I should. So a lot of them have been that. Some were just pens I was curious about because maybe they, you know, fit into my budget, which tends to be fairly low, but they had something unusual about them. Maybe, a filling system I hadn’t seen before. You know, it’s not just cartridges or converters. There’s also vacuum fills, there’s piston fills, there’s squeeze fills. That vintage one is a squeeze fill. This one that I picked up as a souvenir in France happens to be an eyedropper fill. So the whole body of the pen here is full of ink. This will write for months before I have to refill it.
SW: Oh, I love it. It looks very space age, though, this one, this French one.
PM: It’s filled with a, a green blue shimmer ink that is also French and from the same manufacturer.
SW: Gorgeous.
PM: And I thought it was so pretty. Like, it’s just… Sometimes I will just buy a pen for the aesthetics because I think it’s beautiful. And I think it’s nice sometimes to use a beautiful tool when we write, even if we’re doing something very everyday. I think it just sort of elevates things a little bit.
SW: Yeah. Yeah. And I can tell it brings you joy.
PM: Yes it does, it brings me joy.
SW: I love that. While I remember, shout out to Matt, that was a beautiful gift. I got to see that cloisonné…
PM: Yes. Thank you, Matt.
SW: Very lovely. So I guess anyone who wants to send Premee a gift, you know now: a fountain pen. Something beautiful, pretty.
PM: Yeah.
SW: Something lovely. So am I right in thinking that pen companies and ink companies are not usually the same?
PM: Some of them are not, that’s correct.
SW: Okay
PM: So, for instance, the one I just showed you, that’s Jacques Herbin. I’m probably butchering that. So that is, that is a French ink company that’s been in existence since 1798.
SW: Oh, wow.
PM: And, you know, because they put it on the bottle.
SW: Yes. Of course.
PM: So I had a few of their inks. I think the inks are really, really lovely. As far as I knew, though, they did not make pens. They were strictly an ink company. And then. Yeah, when I was in France, I like to buy a souvenir pen if I can. Like if I have enough time in a city where I’m traveling, I like to buy a souvenir fountain pen because it makes, you know, a nice thing to bring back. And it’s quite small, so it fits in your luggage. So I spotted this in the display and was like, is this like a, like a ripoff or like a counterfeiter? Or something? No. It turns out to be official. They collaborated with another fountain pen company. And this is the official Jacques Herbin fountain pen. And they only made the one pen. They only, I guess, did it once. So there were a couple of these pens left, and the lady at the stationery shop was like, I only actually—like these are floor models as well—I only actually have one box and one dropper to fill the pen with. Do you just want both of them like for the price of one? And I was like, Merci beaucoup. You know, thank you so much. That is so nice of you.
SW: Yeah.
PM: Yeah. Like Diamine, for example, which is another really big ink company, and they do one of the inkvent calendars, they don’t make pens.
SW: Right.
PM: Some of them do. Some of them just really focus on the ink and they’re like, we are ink guys. We’re never, we’re never going to make a pen. Just put our ink in something. We don’t care, anything. So and, you know, with things like notebooks, so like Colorverse, which is a South Korean brand. They make ink and they also make notebooks with, like, the special Colorverse paper. So I always thought that was really interesting, like, Hey, are you guys going to make pens? And they’re like.
SW: No.
PM: No. No, just use our ink on this paper. I’m like, okay.
SW: You figure out the, the middle part.
PM: Yeah. Like, we will we’ll do the logistics. Thanks, though, yeah, so.
SW: That’s so funny. Okay, you did mention that your budget is usually very low. So…I just kind of assumed that fountain pens are always going to be expensive. Are you here to tell us that maybe they’re not?
PM: Yeah, I think that’s an assumption a lot of people have
SW: Yeah.
PM: Is, Oh, I can’t get into fountain pens. Fountain pens are for fancy people.
SW: Yeah.
PM: I saw an ad for this Montblanc pen, and it cost more than an SUV. Those pens are out there
SW: Right.
PM: So the aforementioned newsletters that you sometimes get from the pen companies will sometimes include things like, the brand new Namiki, which is a Japanese brand. And my friend Mur Lafferty emailed me about one of those a while back and said, did you open this email? There’s a pen in there that costs $14,000. I’m like,
SW: Oh…wow.
PM: So…I guess I will not be buying that pen..? Which was so interesting. It blew my mind that a single writing instrument could cost that much. And it was beautiful, don’t get me wrong. But was it $14,000-worth-it beautiful? I don’t know.
SW: Yes
PM: You know, one of my favorite pens, actually, is the, platinum preppy. This costs about $8. You can get a converter, or you can use cartridges.
SW: Okay.
PM: They have a ton of these at the Artworks downtown.
SW: Right. In beautiful downtown Edmonton, friends.
PM: Beautiful downtown Edmonton. The Artworks is one of my favorite stores. Very cute. You know, this comes in different nib sizes. It comes with a bunch of different ink colours and cartridges. It writes like a dream. It’s very comfortable.
SW: Yeah.
PM: The lid screws on and off, so you never get that hard start. It always writes the first time you put it down.
SW: Yeah.
PM: I have a lot of “twisbies.” “Twisby” is a, I believe, German brand, and I think it stands for something, like T-W-S-B-I, but I actually don’t know what.
SW: Right.
PM: I am guessing it is one of those incredibly long German compound words. Everyone just says “twisby.” These will run you about $30.
SW: Oh, okay.
PM: I have several of these. They are incredible. The best starter pen you could ever buy. They come in like, every nib size, every nib type. This one happens to be an italic nib. So it gives you that kind of, thick/thin line that makes it look a little bit like calligraphy. It’s a piston fill. It holds a ton of ink. It comes in a bunch of pretty colors. This is a transparent cream. You know, on the other kind of end of things, when I got my first book deal and that first chunk of the advanced check dropped, I was very excited and I thought, let me spend that on something kind of unusual and special. So I got this Pineider, with a broad quill nib, which was about $400. That’s my most expensive pen.
SW: Yeah.
PM: By far.
SW: Wow.
PM: And I was like, but this is never going to happen again, you know? So now when I use this pen, I will always remember, this was my debut novel that got me this pen.
SW: That’s lovely and it’s beautiful. So I did want to say, for anyone listening, I will have some links in the show notes. If you too would like to start exploring the world of fountain pen collecting and using. So one of the things I, I really appreciate, is you talking about…is you just casually mentioning you use these pens.
PM: Oh yeah.
SW: They’re not just for show. And it really matters to you how they write. And so for me
PM: Yes.
SW: I am a nerd like that. It really matters to me how my pens, how the ink looks on the page, how it feels on the page as I’m writing. It’s so important to me. So I love that, you know, maybe I could also perhaps get into—no, no, no, no, I won’t do it, I shouldn’t do it, I shan’t, I shan’t.
PM: You could buy one and see if you like it. This is the voice of like the little devil on Sandra’s shoulder.
SW: Yes, you are. So. Okay.
PM: You could buy one…
SW: So you have mentioned a number, but for anyone who’s just like, okay, I just want to try it, I don’t want to spend too much money, what would be your recommendation for, like, the starter?
PM: Buy a TWSBI Eco with a medium nib.
SW: Oh, I love this.
PM: They come in any colour and they all cost about $30. And the reason they’re great is they just, they’re very comfortable. They’re very balanced. You can post the cap, which some people like to do and some people don’t. So posting it is when you put the cap on the end and it stays put.
SW: On the end, yes.
PM: And that changes the weights balance of the pen. It has a comfy little place to rest your knuckle, which is important for some people. The cap screws on, so the nib always stays wet. It’s very, very easy to fill. It’s very easy to clean. It’s easy to maintain. You can see the ink inside it, so you always know when you need to refill.
SW: Right.
PM: I have some wonderful pens that do not do that and you eventually lose your mind. Like, because you’re writing, you’re writing, you’re writing, you’re in the groove and then your pen runs dry
SW: Oh no
PM: Right? So I enjoy when you can see it. And that’s why TWSBI is so great. And I think it’s just a wonderful starter pen. But I keep buying them because they’re very, very practical. And then you can have one filled in like several colours as, as the mood strikes you.
SW: Yeah. Okay. So you said practical. So practically speaking, I know this may be a very silly question, but when you buy a fountain pen, no matter how expensive or how inexpensive, the expectation is, it’s already filled with ink, correct?
PM: No.
SW: No? A-ha.
PM: No, no, you’re not really supposed to let the ink sit in the pen if it’s not being used, because then it’ll crystallize. It’ll gunk up. If you’re using the pen, that’s fine, because the ink is flowing, but the pens that you will buy are always empty. But if you’re in something like a stationery store, like if you’re in Stylus, for example, it’s kind of down by Whyte Ave, one of Edmonton’s wonderful stationery stores. They may have demonstrator pens that are inked up.
SW: Yes?
PM: But those will not just be sitting there.
SW: Yeah yeah.
PM: If you say, oh, I love this pen, can I buy it? They will go to the back and they’ll get you a new one in a box.
SW: Yeah, yeah. Okay. That’s great to know. So, I mean, anyone who’s interested in starting, just, you know, ask at your stationery store
PM: Yeah
SW: and/or your pen specialty store, and they, they will help you. They know that you don’t know anything, and that’s okay.
PM: They will be super excited to help you. And if you go to Stylus, they also have like the big wall of inks. So you can look at all the different ink brands, what they look like. And they also have ink swatch books so you can flip through and be like, oh, I’m looking for a dark purple with a gold shimmer
SW: Right.
PM: and you can just flip through til you find one and then you can buy it.
SW: Okay.
PM: I actually have one like that.
SW: Do you have, do you have a favorite, you know, ink colour?
PM: Oh my god…No, there are too many out there. I do really like my, my most recent favourite. I do really like Diamine Tempest, which is a dark kind of slaty blue-gray with a gold shimmer
SW: Ohh
PM: And it’s very, very subtle, but it kind of gives that effect, you know, when it’s like storming or about to storm, but all the sunlight is coming from one side and all the buildings kind of turn gold and yellow. That is exactly what that ink looks like. I don’t know how they did it.
SW: That’s amazing.
PM: But they did it. Yeah.
SW: That’s amazing. Because like, earlier this morning, I looked out the window and that’s when, that’s exactly what I saw. Because it is cloudy here today.
PM: Yeah.
SW: Wow. Well, oh Premee, okay, is there anything else that you think someone should know who wants to get into it? Or maybe they’ve been doing it for a while… How about this? Maybe someone who’s been collecting for a while. What do you, what’s like one pen other than the TWSBI, that you would just, like, tell everyone to try if they haven’t already?
PM: I would probably tell them to try a Benu. Benu makes their own nibs. The nibs are wonderful. And they, they’re really… The pens themselves tend to be really visually interesting as well. This one, for example, which has shimmer in it, also glows in the dark.
SW: Oh…Oh, I like it.
PM: And I have… I really like the nibs too. And I have this one which is actually a custom painted one and is an octopus.
SW: Fancy
PM: Yeah, but like, I think people disregard Benu a little bit because they think the pens are all flash. The nibs are really nice.
SW: Yeah.
PM: So I would say give them a chance. And also for people just getting into it, if there is a particular nib or pen that you actually find irritating, consider changing the paper you’re using. Fountain pens aren’t meant to be used on things like regular loose leaf or notebook paper or printer paper. They’re meant to be used on paper that is friendly to fountain pens, and if you use it on paper that it’s not meant for, you will either have issues with your writing or paper fibers will get up into the nib and clog it, and you’ll have to go clean it. So my whole experience changed when I started buying better notebooks
SW: Right
PM: And that’s all I buy now is, so that my pens work with my ink work with my paper, and that helps my brain get my ideas out onto the page much more easily.
SW: I love that you’ve worked out that system. I also want one more thing before we move toward the end of our little chat, which is, I would love if you could uncap that, I think it was the TWSBI. Because the sound of that, I think I will not be the only person who enjoys it. Okay…
[soft clicking, clackety sound]SW: That was so great. Because
PM: Yeah, but these are great because they screw on.
SW: Well, I love
PM: That’s really important.
SW: I love that, that I don’t know what we would call it…like, the gear factor. I love things that have some of that gear factor that are, like, very, tangible.
PM: Yeah.
SW: You know.
PM: Me too. That’s what I like about fountain pens. See, and then you have ones like, again, my expensive, beautiful Pineider, which is made out of like, you know, this, this turned Italian resin. This is a magnet cap
SW: Ah
PM: which is honestly kind of a pain in the ass because it’s not airtight
SW: Right
PM: It doesn’t screw on like the TWSBI.
SW: Yeah
PM: or like the Benu. It does. [soft click sound] It does magnetize on.
SW: Yeah.
PM: Which is nice, and it seems fancy…but it’s not airtight.
SW: This is the inside, the inside baseball you didn’t know you were going to get.
PM: This is inside baseball…is every wonderful pen has one drawback
SW: Oh, I love that
PM: somewhere.
SW: Really?
PM: Yeah. Except for TWSBI, I don’t know. Theirs are just great and incredibly reliable. Like I said, the reason, part of the reason that they’re a good beginner pen is because they are very, very easy to fill and to clean. And I think part of the reason people don’t want to use fountain pens is that they think both of those things are difficult or messy?
SW: Right
PM: They’re not. I never get ink on my hands anymore and it takes you two minutes to clean out a TWSBI because they’re designed for you to clean them very, very easily and to get squeaky clean and not get any of your previous ink into your next ink.
SW: Yeah, because that would be very important.
PM: Yeah.
SW: Yes. Well, I just wanna just be clear, friends, we are not sponsored by TWSBI.
PM: No we’re not.
SW: We’re just discussing
PM: Although if they’re interested, call me.
SW: Yeah, exactly. Okay. Thank you so much, Premee, for sharing about fountain pens. I actually learned so much. I hope other people did, too. Let’s move
PM: Yay!
SW: Let’s move into Small Joys time. Okay. So what’s something that you do or that you have that lifts your spirits when you need it?
PM: Short stories, I would say. I have a lot of anthologies of short fiction.
SW: Yeah
PM: And I’m not deliberately saving them for when I need them, but if I feel kind of bored or down
SW: Yeah
PM: or kind of, like, dull or, like, I’ve lost my sparkle? It’s always amazing to see how much world and creativity someone can pack into short fiction. So I just, I pull out one of my short fiction anthologies and I read a story at random.
SW: That is so lovely. I mean, and not for nothing. Friends, Premee is an exceptional short story writer. My goodness. And I don’t even know if you know this Premee, but the first time I ever read anything of yours was, oh my gosh, and I’ve forgotten the name of the story, but it was the semi-sentient icebergs story.
PM: Oh! The Last. Yeah.
SW: Yeah
PM: Oh, thank you.
SW: It blew me away. I loved that story so much. And our mutual friend Rhonda Parrish, had introduced me to it, and I was just like, Excuse me, who is this person? Who is this person writing this amazing story? And I think I sort of hate them..?
PM: Ah! [laughing] Thank you for the hate..!
SW: It was so good! I’m glad that we’re friends now. Just going to say that
PM: Yeah
SW: just so everyone knows. Okay, so, that is really lovely. Thanks for sharing that. We are going to move into our final fun thing, which is the Speed Round. So this is where I give you a choice of two options and you just answer off the top of your head. There’s no judgments, there’s no second guessing. There’s no right or wrong. There’s just silliness. Okay. Are you ready?
PM: I’m ready for silliness.
SW: Okay. Popcorn or potato chips?
PM: Popcorn.
SW: Jelly beans or jujubes?
PM: [pause] Jujubes.
SW: Mmm-mm. Okay. Sweet or savory?
PM: Savoury.
SW: Night owl or early bird?
PM: Night owl.
SW: [laughing] The look on your face. Okay. Socks or bare feet?
PM: Socks.
SW: Oh. Ocean voyage or mountain cabin?
PM: Mountain cabin. I don’t trust the ocean.
SW: Oh, I like that. There’s a story there. Fine dining or a drive-thru?
PM: Fine dining.
SW: I like that. Okay, friends. Buy…buy Premee fountain pens, or take her out for fine dining. And the final one. Mild or spicy?
PM: Spicy
SW: Of course. [laughing] Thank you so much.
PM: Spicy!
SW: Yes. She just
PM: Puts a little sparkle in the day.
SW: She just raised the roof on that one. Okay. Thank you so much for joining me. Premee. It was just really wonderful to chat with you and just listening to you talk about fountain pens, which I, I figured I would probably nerd out on because I love inks. When I lived in Japan, it was, I was in the stationery store, I think way too much. So I love learning more, and I may or may not consider starting something of that on my own. Okay, so where can people learn more about your, your geek-out? Like, what is one place they could go on the webs to find out more about collecting fountain pens? Or is there a fun site?
PM: The webs. And thank you so, so much for inviting me because this has been so fun getting to geek out in kind of a, you know, single session, rather than spreading my geekery out whenever people ask me a question. So thank you so much for this. I am pretty active on Bluesky, just with my website handle premeemohamed.com. And generally, if I am nerding out about fountain pens, that’ll be where it is.
SW: Great.
PM: Occasionally on my Patreon, Patreon.com/Premee. I have a free post up there about how to get started in fountain pens that probably needs updating, because that was 2 or 3 years ago, and I have some information to take out, some to put in, and yeah, also, I guess my website and very infrequently my Instagram, but I mostly use my Instagram for cat photos and travel photos.
SW: So. Right, right. Awesome. Okay, well thank you so much. And always people, relevant links, I will do my best to include everything that we’ve mentioned today in the episode show notes. I also have a dedicated We Contain Multitudes podcast web page on my website, which is sgwong.com, so you can check it out there. I’m going to try and list all the links, that I can. So thanks for joining us again, lovelies. And until next time, please create joy for yourself and others, however, works for you because—we contain multitudes!
[jazzy jumpin’ music]SW: We Contain Multitudes is on The Incomparable network of smart and funny pop culture podcasts where members can access exclusive podcasts and a wonderful community. Find out more at theincomparable.com.
Special thanks, as always, to Erika Ensign, our editrix extraordinaire of Castria Communications. Award-winning excellence in podcast production and media solutions. Check them out at wearecastria.com.
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[digital blip sound]SHOW NOTES:
Premee on Bluesky
Premee’s website
Les Utopiales
Pens mentioned:
TWSBI
Pineider
Benu
Namiki
Platinum Preppy
Inks mentioned:
J. Herbin
Diamine
Colorverse
Notebooks/paper mentioned:
Colorverse
Rhodia
Maruman Mnemosyne
Stores mentioned:
Artworks (in beautiful downtown Edmonton)
Stylus
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