From Joslyn
You probably get this question all the time, but I couldn’t find the answer anywhere online, and the ardent fangirl within demands satisfaction: how would you say Aud identifies? On a lesbian/homogrown spectrum, I mean. My girlfriend insists that she doesn’t identify, but in the book there’s one (juuuust one) reference to “the big bad butch club” and…that got me curious. Also, she’s described in the clubbing/billiards scene as wearing a waistcoat, which is something lovely. Help?
Aud? She identifies as human, which means she wears whatever she likes: sometimes the tiny dress, sometimes the waistcoat and boots. But, yeah, I’d say she leans on the whole towards the utilitarian, the sharp-but-stripped-down look: always ready. The dresses etc. are more chameleon-wear, not baseline behaviour. But in her head, especially in The Blue Place, she’s often playing a role, being a legend in her own living room, performing. Particularly at times when she is (as they used to say where I grew up) ‘out on the pull’.
If she had to identify as any one thing, I’d say ‘sleek’.
And here’s a clue: she never, ever carries a purse. Read Stay and Always for more insight into Aud’s clothing choices.
Nicola Griffith 
No purse? No keys, money, ID, secret hidden swiss army knife?
That's what jacket pockets are for.
If you've got more stuff than you can carry in your pockets, you need a knapsack. Or a briefcase, if you're being upscale.
Aud has every kind of bag one can imagine, all the kind of quality I can only dream about.
Aud appears to be self-confident and at home in her own body. She gets pleasure from it as a fine tuned instrument. With the advent of Julia, that changes. I don't think that has much to do with being “butch”.
I don't think it changes when she meets Julia–though grief does make her a bit crazy and careless of herself briefly.
Doesn't Aud refer to herself as a dyke? A word that runs the gamut from pejorative to celebratory, from simple synonym for lesbian to something with cultural implications around leadership and competence?
'Out on the pull'? I looked it up, but still not clear…
Yep, she's a dyke :)
It means 'out on the prowl, out for sex'.
The urban dictionary says it's French kissing. I'm guessing they don't call kissing that in the UK.
Ah, but she has a wallet that she keeps in her jacket pocket… And a key chain. And when she needs it, a gun.
Who needs a purse?
Nope :)
I think purses are a vile conspiracy…
I started out carrying a big purse (or handbag) that held everything — make-up, brush, mirror, et al. Then I went to a small purse that would hold keys, lipstick, credit card and ID. (About this time the woman at Home Depot asked me, “Your purse is so small! Where do you keep your pads?”) And then I became a businesswoman, and carried everything in a small black portfolio. And then I said f*** it, and went back to carrying everything in my jean pockets. The only time I carry a purse now is when I go ballroom dancing.
I last carried one when I was eighteen. It was a good place to put an illegally-sized knife…
You write “But in her head, especially in The Blue Place, she's often playing a role, being a legend in her own living room, performing. “
For me, one of the (many) wondrous things in TBP was how well you pulled that off. Why I always return to that novel….
(ok admittedly like everyone else, until Hild comes out, reliving past loves)
It was pretty astonishing to get into the novel and figure out I was essentially writing an unreliable narrator. My other protagonists had always been so…earnest. It was eyebrow-raising for me, but a blast.
Hild, of course, absolutely is a legend: an astonishing figure, venerated, feared, admired, etc. And also, of course, being very much subject not object. The biggest challenge of my writing life, and the most satisfying. So far.