Not long after I started playing around with AI in my work, I decided that, if I were to ever publish something written using AI, it would have to somehow be partly about what it means for AI to be able to write: about what emotional thread the Big Tech companies behind AI might be pulling on, when they start selling us these technologies.

Vauhini Vara is the author of This is Salvaged (2023), named one of the most anticipated books of 2023 by Lithub, Electric Literature, and The Millions, and The Immortal King Rao (2022), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. She is also a journalist, writing for Wired, The New York Times Magazine, and others. She teaches at Colorado State University as a 2023-24 Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop’s Book Project. She is also the secretary of Periplus, a mentorship collective serving writers of color.

from A MOUTH HOLDS MANY THINGS:
Ghosts [excerpt]

1.

My sister was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma when I was in my freshman year of high school and she was in her junior year. I had just started playing lacrosse and she was really excited for that.

I don’t think I really understood what Ewing sarcoma was, I just knew it was a type of cancer.

When I went to visit her in the hospital, it was really the first time I was able to see what this disease was and how it affects the body. She went through a lot of different treatments and was in and out of the hospital for a long time.

2.

My sister was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma when I was in my freshman year of high school and she was in her junior year. I didn’t understand then how serious a disease it was. But it was— serious. She died four years later. I thought I would die, too, of grief, but I did not. I think that’s when I decided to become a doctor.

I started a running streak when I was a high school senior to raise money for the Children’s Cancer Society. I’ve run every day since. I’ve run through rain, heat, snow and ice. I’ve run at my best, I’ve run to the point of exhaustion. I’ve run when I had a cold and when I was sick to my stomach. I’ve run in the dark. I’ve run in the daylight, in the moonlight, in the darkness of the moon. I’ve run when I was sad, when I was happy, when I was angry, when I was afraid. I’ve run with pain, with joy. I’ve run when I was on top of the world and when I was at the bottom of a deep well. I’ve run when I was alone and when I was surrounded by thousands of people. I have run for close to twenty years and I will run for the rest of my life.

3.

My sister was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma when I was in my freshman year of high school and she was in her junior year. I didn’t understand then how serious a disease it was. But it was— serious. She died four years later. I thought I would die, too, of grief, but I did not. I spent the summer at home, in Seattle, then returned to college, at Stanford. When I arrived there, the campus hadn’t changed, but I had. I felt like a ghost. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t sleep. I thought my body had died, without telling me. I was practicing, though. I was practicing my grief.

Artist Reflection

For me, form and content are always intertwined; what I’m trying to express, as a writer, is impossible to disentangle from how I go about trying to express it. Not long after I started playing around with AI in my work, I decided that, if I were to ever publish something written using AI, it would have to somehow be partly about what it means for AI to be able to write: about what emotional thread the Big Tech companies behind AI might be pulling on, when they start selling us these technologies. For me, this thread had to do with communication—with what I was, and wasn’t, capable of articulating on my own. And so, with anxiety and anticipation, I went to GPT-3 with this sentence: “My sister was diagnosed with Ewing sarcoma when I was in my freshman year of high school and she was in her junior year.” Both form and content followed from there.