Erin Pringle: The stories span about nine years, so there are stories in it from college then graduate school then a few stories a bit after that I had intended for another book.

EP: I always knew stories went in a collection, but not until I was putting them together in my thesis did I start to consider the collection as an entity with its own narrative needs. Carole Maso was my adjunct reader and once she suggested an order for the stories, I could see and hear the stories as a whole and began editing to what I heard, as I have an easy time hearing from word to word and sentence to sentence in a story, but I hadn't yet learned how to hear the rhythms of a larger work. And once I heard, I began to manipulate those sights and sounds.

TSR: What does the word "story" mean to you?

EP:  Experience and thought and explanation.

TSR: Do you have a "reader" in mind when you write stories?

EP: Yes, and the reader is my top consideration when I'm editing. I spend so much time editing and revising because I have to control not only "what happened", but also the reader's experience of the happening, and the thoughts I want the experience to spark in the reader.

TSR: Is there anything you'd like to ask someone who has read your collection, anything at all?

EP: No, because I believe in the privacy of the reading experience (during and after), and I certainly don't want to intrude on that. It's the reader's book now.

TSR: How does it feel knowing that people are buying your book?

EP: It makes me worry. I hope they think they've gotten their money's worth. I've thought far more about libraries than bookstores, as I grew up in a town where books were in the library. I know the library I grew up in has a copy, and that pleases me, as it seems sort of like a gift to the ghost of my self.

TSR: What are you working on now?

EP: A complicated book that will be complicated in the correct way when I'm done with it.

TSR: What are the three most recent short story collections you've read?