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Alice Zorn is a Canadian writer whose short
fiction has been published in magazines, including The New Quarterly, Room of One's Own,
and Grain,
and placing first in Prairie
Fire's 2006 Fiction Contest. Ruins and Relics,
her first collection of short fiction, was shortlisted for the Quebec
Writers' Federation's McAuslan
First Book Prize.
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Interview
with Alice Zorn
The
Short Review:
How long did it take you to write all the stories in your collection?
Alice Zorn: Two
or three stories have earlier versions written almost twenty years ago.
One was added after the manuscript was already accepted by the
publisher.
TSR:
Did you
have a collection in mind when you were writing them?
AZ: Not
at all. I write a story because I'm interested in a character, context,
or dilemma that I don't foresee using in a novel. For me, the
attraction of writing stories is that they don't belong to a larger
construct.
TSR:
How did
you choose which stories to include and in what order?
AZ: When I wrote the story Ruins and Relics,
I realized I had a good umbrella theme for several stories I'd written.
Those were the stories I included in the collection, even though that
meant omitting stories I'd had published in magazines. In terms of
order, I wanted variety in mood and voice and setting. My editor
suggested opening with the title story. I wanted to end with it. We had
a few back and forth emails.
TSR:
What
does the word "story"
mean to you?
AZ:
As a rule, I would say that a story needs a character and a dilemma,
which in my case would be emotional or ethical. The story explores how
the character deals with the dilemma.
TSR:
Do you have a reader in mind when you write stories?
AZ:
While I'm writing, I try to satisfy myself and what I want from a
story. Why else would I do this? I already have a job where I have to
answer to others. My writing is for me. That being said, once I feel a
story has developed to the point where I can weigh criticism, I ask a
few close friends for comments. And of course, once a story is
published, I hope readers enjoy it.
TSR: Is
there
anything you'd like to ask someone who has read your collection,
anything at all?
AZ: Which story stands out for you? Can you tell me why?
TSR: How does
it feel knowing that people are buying your book?
AZ: Gratifying. Weird. Wonderful. Surprising.
TSR:
What are you working on now?
AZ: Last
spring—in 2009—I finished a novel I've been writing and editing since
2005. I badly wanted a change of pace, and began working on short
fiction again. With a novel, my sense of the characters, the chronology
and what is happening, who connects where and how, has to stretch
across pages and pages. With short stories the focus is more concise.
More intense. That requires a whole different set of writing muscles.
Writing a short story that's twenty pages long takes far more time than
writing the same number of pages in a novel. I had a good summer and
fall: two new long, short stories. A month ago I started working on a
new novel.
TSR:
What are
the three most recent short story collections you've read?
AZ: I went to a reading a few weeks ago where I bought a book by Amy Jones called What Boys Like.
The stories match the title precisely. The characters are obsessed by
that question. This is their world aptly captured. As well, I reread
two favourite books: Rachel Seiffert's Field Study and Amy Bloom's A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You.
I admire how Seiffert gets close to her characters while maintaining
stringent narrative restraint. Amy Bloom's collection is accomplished
and masterful. I would love to write stories like this—with several
threads and layers in a single story.
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