Rusty Barnes
Breaking it
Down
"I
write to be read, yes — I love to be read above all things
now — but I write only to please myself. I mean, I have my
obsessions, my concerns, and a good sense of what's out
there in the
world being written, and I think what I write has a place in that
world, and it's up to me to figure out ways to get it out there, to get
it to readers."
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here for the
rest of the interview. |
Kevin Barry
There
Are Little
Kingdoms
"And
I’m afraid I have to make a confession. (This is all turning
out to be very therapeutic, actually.) I’ve
been haunting bookshops and hiding behind display signs of
TV chefs
(Nigella is excellent to hide behind as she has a huge arse) as I spy
on the short fiction section and see if anyone’s tempted by
my sweet bait"
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here for the
rest of the interview. |
Rebecca Barry
Later,
At the Bar
"I
guess when I was writing these stories
I really wanted to
reach people who, like me, see the beauty in small towns and bars and
reckless behavior. I grew up in a small town, close to the place where
I did all my "research" (drinking), so I think for a while
I was just
writing for people I drank with."
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here for the
rest of the interview.
|
Heather Beck
10 Journeys Through the Unknown
"I
love to write in multiple genres but I always pay attention to my readership.
When I am writing for children I make sure that all the included
material is appropriate. I do not, however, belittle a younger reader
by using simple sentences and even simpler words."
Click
here for the
rest of the interview. |
Jason Brown
Why
the Devil Chose New England
for His Work
"The
nice thing about the short story (and the reason I was able to finish
Why the Devil Chose New England For His Work) is that, from my point of
view, there are no
ulterior motives for writing a short story
or a collection
of stories. You write a short story to write a short story."
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here for the
rest of the interview. |
Nona Caspers
Heavier Than
Air
"I
read a lot of story
collections, I love them, the intensity of the form, the way stories
suggest more than they reveal, how in a collection we move from world
to world. I love how
stories use MA space, MA being a Japanese word for
the space between things that seems empty but is actually full and
creates harmony."
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here
for the rest of the interview. |
Patrick Chapman
The Wow
Signal
"Burning the Bed
came pretty quickly, over a weekend in 1998, and it was published in
2001 in the Irish Times... It
was filmed, from my script,
in 2003, with Gina McKee and Aidan Gillen. That was an interesting
experience, seeing how the story became something else in another
medium."
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here
for the rest of the interview. |
Carys Davies
Some New
Ambush
"Perhaps
it’s the same for all writers, but for me, writing short
stories
feels like panning for gold; I have to do an awful lot of
writing
before I have something worth keeping."
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here
for the rest of the interview. |
Susan DiPlacido
American Cool
"Writing
is a form of
communicating,
even though it can seem isolated and one-way,
like one person doing all the talking. But if someone buys a book and
then reads it, they've kept that communication going. It's crazy, and
wonderful."
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here
for the rest of the interview. |
Kelley Eskridge
Dangerous
Space
"I've also learned that impatience is not my friend
– writing faster wouldn't have made any of these stories better. I
could have written more quickly and less deeply during those years, and
probably published more.... But the work would not have been as good. I
had to make a choice a
long time ago between volume and quality. "
Click
here
for the rest of the interview. |
David Gaffney
Aromabingo
& Sawn-Off
Tales
"The
reader I have in mind is kind of a
general reader, but maybe young
and with an eye for
things that are a bit weird. I think he wears a hat
and hums softly under his breath, which could be irritating. I think of
the pleasure I get when I read Magnus Mills for example and aim for
that…."
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here
for the rest of the interview. |
Brian George
Walking the
Labyrinth
As
more stories came along, I
was aware that there were certain
settings, themes, obsessions, which
kept cropping up in different guises, but this certainly
wasn’t something I consciously tried to achieve. After a
certain number of the stories had been published in half-decent
magazines I began to think it might be worth putting a collection
together.
Click here
for the rest of the interview. |
Chrissie Gittins
Family
Connections
The
collection is made up of stories
written over
16 years. I wasn't only writing stories over that time - I also write
poetry, poetry for children and radio drama... I wrote to
entertain
myself, first and foremost.
Click here for the rest of the interview. |
Sophie Hannah
The
Fantastic Book of Everybody's Secrets
I write what I would like to read,
the stories I wish someone else had written and think ought to exist!
Click here for the rest of the interview. |
Cristina Henriquez
Come
Together, Fall Apart
I just finished writing a novel called The World in Half, which will be published next year. But almost the day after I turned it in, I started a new story. I can't help myself. Short stories are my true, true love.
Click here for the rest of the interview.
|
Roy Kesey
All
Over
All
the energy I had went into whatever story I was working on at the
moment, as I tried to make sure that I was paying sufficient attention
to voice and pace, to keeping the energy high, to getting
the right
words to speak to whatever formal concern interested me in that
particular piece.
Click here for the rest of the interview. |
Alison MacLeod
Fifteen
Modern Tales of Attraction
A
‘debut’ collection makes the author sound so new,
almost virginal, but the truth is the stories in the collection were
written over a period of twenty years. I wrote three of
the fifteen
while doing the M.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Lancaster
in 1988. I went on to write and publish my first novel, The Changeling,
though I never stopped writing stories.
Click here for the rest of the interview. |
Kim Newman
The Secret
Files of the Diogenes Club
I
have always been aware of the links between my stories and that I tend
to pick up characters and threads from piece to piece.
Secret Files
collects a loose series of linked stories, and Cold Snap was written
partially to tie all the stories together by suggesting that there have
been plotlines boiling all along between all the stories.
Click here for the rest of the interview. |
Nuala Ní Chonchúir
The Wind
Across the Grass
I’m
not thinking of anything but the story as I write it, or as
it’s
stewing around in my brain. I’m
sure people who generally
like my
work read some of my stories and think they are stinkers.
I do that a
lot; I mean, I read a book by an author I love, and don’t
quite
love everything. If I had one reader in mind, he or she might be as
fickle as that. It’s hard enough pleasing myself, why bring
anyone else into the equation?
Click here for the rest of the interview. |
Sylvia Petter
Back Burning
I’m
always happy when people buy my books. But I’m happier when I
hear that they have
found something in them that has touched them
in some way. Once the book is out there, it’s a part of
yourself
that you’re sharing – what you believe in, in a way.
Click here for the rest of the interview. |
Sarah Salway
Leading the
Dance
I
went through a stage of feeling
sick when I knew someone had read my
work in case they didn’t like it, or thought I
was
‘odd’. But now I’ve come to terms with
the fact that there will always be some people who won’t like
my stuff and also that I am definitely ‘odd’ !
There’s not much I can do about it, so am just happy when
people tell me they’ve enjoyed and/or got something out of
reading my stories.
Click here for the rest of the interview. |
Claudia Smith
The Sky is A
Well
When
I grouped them, I
wasn't thinking of the order in which I wrote them. I wasn't thinking
of time in a linear way when it came to the stories,
either. I strove
to link them thematically; the stories are not about one single
character, and they are not linked by common characters, or places. But
I do think they are takes on similar situations, and themes.
Click here for the rest of the interview. |
Neil Smith
Bang Crunch
I could never picture people
reading my book until I started getting emails from readers through my
website. I’m so touched
when people take time to send me encouragement.
I think all writers, particularly younger writers, need these little
pats on the back. Otherwise you spend your days isolated, making up
things in your head, and you wonder why you don’t have a real job
like your mailman, your barber or your vet.
Click here for the rest of the interview. |
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