ART CHOOSES YOU Wena POON

What does it mean to be an artist in the modern cities of Asia today? Singaporean author WENA POON, whose first short-story collection, Lions in Winter, was longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and shortlisted for the 2008 Singapore Literature Prize, reflects

THE STRUGGLE OF AN ARTIST is an age-old theme in literature. The struggle of an artist in the gleaming concrete jungles of New Asia, however, may be more extraordinary than that faced by his or her Western counterpart.

Singapore only became independent in the decade before I was born. The first instinct of newly-independent nations is economic survival. I was born into a family of traders, shopkeepers, labourers, the people that the British founders of Singapore brought in to help this port prosper. Almost all of my ancestors were illiterate. I was the first in my entire extended family to go to university. And what a university it was: Harvard, a glorious old pile of Georgian bricks on the banks of the Charles River in Massachusetts.

How did I get in? At age sixteen, living in Yio Chu Kang, I was as far away from Harvard as you can imagine. I still remember typing my college application essays on an electronic typewriter. (Those were the days.) I just sat down and typed it all out—no corrections, no cut and paste—it was done in one single take. I explained very carefully that I had been a writer since I was young, that I wrote my first novel when I was fourteen, and that I had been struggling to have publishers and adults take me seriously. I said that I had no role models and nobody could help me. I explained that I had a simple dream: I wanted to see the world and write about it.

Even at that age, I was aware of the odds. I was a Chinese writer, raised on a diet of British literature, and writing only in English. I was an accident of history. I scrounged around for mentors. My schoolteachers were discouraging, my parents worse. Books were meant for studying: they were not meant as an end in themselves. Publishers in Singapore ignored me when I knocked on their doors. I was naïve: I failed to realise that the major publishers located in Singapore were distribution offices. They did not publish original work. As a teenager, I read with chagrin of France, of America, where the latest hot novel came from someone barely older than myself.

In the end, after graduating with honours in English Literature from Harvard, I went on to Harvard Law School. To please my parents, I got a law degree. I worked for ten years as a corporate lawyer in financial capitals all over the world, running with the Wall Street banker boys, leading an expat life. I still wrote voluminously: in waiting rooms, on airplanes, late at night after long conference calls with Beijing or New York, when I couldn’t sleep.

I never wrote about my business life. I wrote about the interior life of people that I had met, or people whom I had only observed. Because—underneath all this hustle and bustle, the trials and tribulations of the Dow, the banker boys running hither and dither executing deals in New York and Hong Kong and Beijing—that is what we are living for, isn’t it?

I published my stories, but kept a low profile on my writing. I felt that being a writer was a childish dream, unsuitable in the business world where I was making a reputation for myself. Back in college, there were guys with long hair that played in garage bands. One day, they cut off their ponytails, shaved, stopped being penniless artists, donned suits and went to work on Wall Street. They “grew up.”

I skipped the garage musician phase. By age 24, I was already a lawyer in New York City working with European banks. But I never stopped writing. Writing was like breathing. Only later did I realise, when people took notice, that it was a gift. That it will never, ever go away. That despite being a responsible adult with a real job, I will never truly grow up and mature, unless and until I began to behave like a real writer and allow the world to view me as one.

In late 2007, at the suggestion of a British Malaysian teacher called Sharon Bakar, the editors at MPH Group Publishing in Kuala Lumpur contacted me. The gathered all my published stories from the last five years and put it in one beautiful volume. It was titled Lions in Winter—my love letter to my country, the Lion City. In September 2008, I found myself in Ireland reading a story—the story of a struggling artist—to an Irish and British audience at a literary festival in Cork, Ireland. People came up afterwards to talk to me. They had never heard from a Singaporean before. Perhaps they never ever thought we had stories to tell, in their language. It was a galvanising experience; they wanted to hear more from us.

So, to all of you writers and dreamers out there, whether published or unpublished, whether employed or not: remember, Kafka was an insurance salesman. The odds may be stacked against you, and you may have to run away from your gift in order to survive. Your friends, parents, and society may only define success as having a career as a lawyer, a banker, an engineer, a doctor.

But take heart.

Because in the end, you don’t choose Art. Art chooses you. And Instinct always wins, in the end.

Reproduced from the December 2008 Malaysian edition of Marie Claire

ON THE COUCH WITH ... Witi IHIMAERA

WITI IHIMAERA is a Maori novelist and short-story writer. He is also a Professor of English and Distinguished Creative Fellow in Maori Literature at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His latest book is Ask the Posts of the House (Raupo Publishing, 2007), recently shortlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He has edited nine anthologies of contemporary Maori literature, including Get On the Waka (2007) and recently completed a screenplay adaptation of his novel, The Matriarch (1986). His novel, The Whale Rider (1987), one of his best-loved novels amongst adults and younger readers alike, was made into a movie and released in 2003. Filmed on the breathtaking east coast of New Zealand, the film has been widely acclaimed. Born in Gisborne in 1944, he now lives in Auckland.

Ihimaera spoke to Eric Forbes and Tan May Lee in an e-mail interview from his home in Auckland, New Zealand.

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How did you find out about the longlist?
Life is insane at the moment with teaching, grrrr, but I managed to open my e-mails between one class and another, and found that one of my students had sent me the news about being on the longlist even before my publishers informed me. Perhaps the student wants an A and this was her version of giving an apple to the teacher!

What was the first thing you did when you found out you were longlisted?
The first thing I did was to check with my publishers and then to laugh out loud—with excitement, I might add. Then I telephoned a couple of friends and we went to a bar for a drink. Even if I don’t get any further I am ahead as they paid. I had vodka.

What do you think of the other titles on the longlist? Are you familiar with any of them? Have you read any of them?
Man, oh man, there are 39 of us. I have just met Anne Enright in Hong Kong at the Man Hong Kong Writers Festival and I have her book—it’s fascinating. I also know Roddy Doyle’s work, so Ireland is well represented with a couple of frontrunners. As a Dr Who fan (don’t tell anybody!), I’m really interested in Robert Shearman and I’ve ordered Niki Aguirre (any publishing company called Flipped Eye has gotta be looked at) and Padrika Tarrant who is one of eight writers from Britain whose books are published by Salt Publishing. Nam Le’s The Boat, from Australia, interests me, as does Jhumpa Lahiri with Unaccustomed Earth, from the U.S., as she’s a raging hot favourite. From our part of the world I have to say that it’s absolutely a pride-bursting pleasure to see Wena Poon from Singapore, Egoyan Zheng from Taiwan and Tubal R. Cain from Nigeria (yeah, yeah, not exactly our region but New Zealand Maori have a strong affinity with Black Africa), and I’ve ordered them all. Writers from Asia don’t often appear on literary lists, and I congratulate Wena Poon and Egoyan Zheng. And, of course, I have great colleagues from Aotearoa with me on the list, Tim Jones, Sue Orr and Elizabeth Smither, all paddling the waka.

How familiar are you with the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award?
Well, of course, I have read Frank O’Connor. His stories are very reflective of New Zealand Pakeha experiences and, at the same time, they are perceptive, powerful, fearless. I wasn’t aware of the Prize, however, until Haruki Murukami won it for Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman in 2006.

What is the difference between writing short stories and full-length novels?
I believe that writing short stories requires the same commitment as writing a full-length novel. When I write a short story I put the same amount of thought, intensity and commitment into it as I do into a novel. So in Ask the Posts of the House you are getting seven “novels” as it were. One of the stories in my collection, “Ask the Posts of the House,” for instance, took five months to write. Others have been in my head for years, so the thinking process has actually taken as long as any novel I have written. On another level, I also think short stories are harder to write. They have to work so precisely at the micro level where all one’s faults and weaknesses can be exposed. With novels, I am able to obscure my faults with technical trickery and, I think, I can forgive myself a little easier for letting things pass that I wouldn’t pass in a short story.

Short stories appear to be getting more popular. Writers tend to publish their short-story collections after publishing their novels. Jhumpa Lahiri continues to publish great collections. Anne Enright published a short-story collection after her Man Booker Prize-winning The Gathering. What are your thoughts on this?
I began my career with a short-story collection, and then I published novels. Although novel-writing has subsequently been something that I have managed through hard work to crack, I think I am basically a short-story writer at heart. I think this is because I am an indigenous writer and the short-story form is more akin to our traditional literary forms—poetry is closer, but I can’t write poetry—whereas the novel is a very alien, European, form.

What is your personal favourite short story or short-story collection?
Any of the collections by Samoan writer Albert Wendt or Maori writer Patricia Grace. We, like many other Maori and Pacific writers, are trying to write Pacific culture into existence. Writing for us is both a political as well as an aesthetic act.

Publishers find short-story collections hard to sell? Why do you think this is so? What can we do to make people buy or read more of such collections?
I’ll answer this question as a Maori writer. When I began my career, three publishers refused to publish my work; one of them said it was because Maori people don’t read books. Today, although I am now an established writer in New Zealand, I am able to have my work published without difficulty. But younger writers still have problems and so one of the things I do is to edit anthologies of stories by Maori authors. I’ve done nine so far. These anthologies are commercially produced and they’ve been very successful. I like to think that their major success has been in encouraging Maori writers to keep persevering within a very difficult climate. It’s important for this to happen, especially in New Zealand, where the Maori identity must assist to determine the shape of a future in which we are a minority. Yes, well, you’d think that in these days when television is reducing us to bytes of information that they’d be easier to sell rather than harder. Perhaps publishers need to change their priorities and begin to market short stories in a stronger, more positive way. I know that the trend seems to be to publish bigger and longer books. But as far as Pacific and Maori writing is concerned, I would like to think that we will find our own way of getting to the books that will sell to the tribe—and that won’t be commercially driven but, rather, culturally driven.

The six-book shortlist for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award will be announced in mid-July 2008

ON THE COUCH WITH ... Adam MAREK

ADAM MAREK was born in 1974, and has been writing fiction since his teenage years. After leaving film school he worked in the music video industry for a few years, but is now part of the editorial team at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. His first collection of stories, Instruction Manual for Swallowing (Comma Press, 2007), which was recently longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, draws us down into the subconscious engine room of modern man, conjuring a bestiary of animals, mythical creatures and unlikely hybrids from the distant future/ancient past all deployed to explore and celebrate the most human of truths. Adam lives in Bedfordshire with his wife and sons.

Marek spoke to Eric Forbes and Tan May Lee in an e-mail interview from his home in Potton, Bedfordshire in the U.K.

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How did you find out about the longlist?
Alison MacLeod, who is also on the longlist, e-mailed me to say congratulations. Alison and I shared a slot at the recent London Short Story Festival and we kept in touch.

What was the first thing you did when you found out you were longlisted?
I got this big stupid grin on my face that lasted the rest of the day. I ran downstairs (I work in the attic) to tell my wife, and then I e-mailed Rob Shearman, who I saw was also on the list—Rob and I did a couple of readings together to launch our books with Comma Press.

What do you think of the other titles on the longlist? Are you familiar with any of them? Have you read any of them?
I’ve read Rob Shearman’s Tiny Deaths, which is awesome. Rob has got a wicked imagination and his sense of humour is spot on. I’m reading—and loving—Alison MacLeod’s Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction at the moment. I look forward to reading some of the other books on the longlist soon.

How familiar are you with the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award?
I first heard about the award when Haruki Murakami won it a couple of years ago for Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman—he’s my favourite writer.

Where do you find the time to do your writing?
I write fiction in my spare time. I get up at six every morning and write for an hour before I go to work, and in the evenings and weekends. I work as an editor for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, so I still get to write all day (mainly advertising copy), and help save the planet too, which is always a good thing.

What is the difference between writing short stories and full-length novels?
There are so many analogies to draw between short stories and novels. How about this one: a short story is like a first date with someone you’re crazy about—you’ve only got their attention for a night; you can strive to be the perfect you, well-groomed, wearing your coolest outfit, smelling of something expensive. You can go out somewhere incredible and unexpected. You can reel off all your best anecdotes and make your date feel like the most magnificent creature on earth. And the kiss at the end of the night will be like no other kiss and you’ll always remember it. Writing a novel is like the relationship that comes after—you spend a long time with this person; your understanding of them is deep and rich; you get to know where all their moles are. But you can’t be perfect all the time. One foggy morning they walk in on you taking a shit and all your illusions fall away. I don’t think it’s possible to have a perfect novel, any more than it’s possible to have a perfect relationship. You can, however, have a perfect night.

Short stories appear to be getting more popular. Writers tend to publish their short-story collections after publishing their novels. Jhumpa Lahiri continues to publish great collections. Anne Enright published a short-story collection after her Man Booker Prize-winning The Gathering. What are your thoughts on this?
I hope shorts are getting more popular. Short stories are where the really exciting stuff happens. The guy who started IBM said, “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate”; I think that because short stories only need a small investment in time for the writer (and the reader), we are more willing to take risks, to make mistakes, to try something that might suck big time, or might be amazing. The fiction I like best is the stuff that makes me see something familiar as if I’ve never seen it before, or that shows me something completely original. For me, that happens most often when I’m reading short stories.

What is your personal favourite short story or short-story collection?
My favourite story has to be Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. I read it during one really long bath when I was about 17, and I think parts of me are still wrinkled. I love Haruki Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, which won the Frank O’Connor Award two years ago. There’s also a great collection edited by Haruki Murakami which features one of his stories, but all the stories in it are great and are about birthdays—it’s called Birthday Stories. I love Will Self’s stories, but he makes me feel like such an idiot because his vocab is so ... big. I bought J.G. Ballard’s complete short stories a couple of years ago—it’s the weight of a brick with tiny print, and I dip into it every now and then and always come out dazzled. Etgar Keret’s Missing Kissinger is great—his shorts are really short; they make mine look like trousers. Karen Russell has an imagination that could burn holes through a buffalo—her collection St Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is fantastic. Also, do you remember the little Penguin 60 books of short stories that Penguin released on their sixtieth anniversary?—I loved those. I’m always looking for them when I’m in secondhand bookshops. There was one with four Patrick McGrath stories—one in particular, “The Angel,” has stuck in my head since I read it.

Publishers find short-story collections hard to sell? Why do you think this is so? What can we do to make people buy or read more of such collections?
Hmmm, I don’t know. I guess the market is controlled by the readers—publishers will respond to whatever people are buying. To get more people reading short stories, we need to write stories that are so damn good they can’t help but recommend them to everyone they know. Independent publishers, like Comma Press, should get more support so they can publish more books and promote them better. Maybe short stories need a make-over, a rebranding. They’ve been mistaken for the runty cousins of the novel for too long; bring on the champions of the short story and show everyone what they’re missing.

The six-book shortlist for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award will be announced in mid-July 2008

ON THE COUCH WITH ... Tim JONES

TIM JONES was born in Grimsby, Lincolnshire, United Kingdom, in 1960. His family emigrated to New Zealand when he was two, and, not having much choice in the matter, he accompanied them. He grew up in southern South Island, where he still has many friends and fond memories. He now lives in Wellington, where he is a writer, editor, part-time marketing manager for a web company, husband, father, activist on sustainable energy issues, and lover of cricket, music, and many other fine things. He has published two collections of poetry, Boat People and All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens, a previous short fiction collection, Extreme Weather Events, and a fantasy novel, Anarya’s Secret. His second short-story collection, Transported, published in June 2008 by Random House New Zealand, was recently longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. He is currently working on a novel and is gradually accumulating enough poems for a third collection. He sees more short stories in his future.

Jones spoke to Eric Forbes and Tan May Lee in an e-mail interview from his home in Wellington, New Zealand.

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How did you find out about the longlist?
I found out about the longlist first from Tania Hershman’s blog; then I confirmed it by reading the story in the Guardian online; then my publisher, Harriet Allan of Random House New Zealand, got in touch to tell me the good news. After that, I was ready to believe it.

What was the first thing you did when you found out you were longlisted?
I thanked my publisher for submitting the book, and congratulated Sue Orr, the other Random House New Zealand author on the longlist. Then I called my wife, and then I got back to work on the short story I was writing at the time. (That last part sounds good, but to tell you the truth, I don’t really remember what I did after that—it’s equally likely I fired up some Metallica and performed air guitar solos in the living room for a while!)

What do you think of the other titles on the longlist? Are you familiar with any of them? Have you read any of them?
I think that it’s a very extensive longlist, and that there are some very fine writers included on it. I expect every writer included on the list is a fine writer, but I’m not familiar with many of them and their work. I haven’t read any of the other collections on the longlist, but I have read fiction by a number of the authors. The longlisting has prompted me to seek out work by the authors listed—I’ve been reading and enjoying some of Vanessa Gebbie’s stories, for example.

How familiar are you with the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award?
I had heard of it, and recall hearing of Haruki Murakami’s success with Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman in 2006, but I wasn’t very familiar with it—and I didn’t know Random House New Zealand had submitted the manuscript of my collection.

What is the difference between writing short stories and full-length novels?
Writing ideas either come to me while I’m walking, or are sparked off by something I’ve read: for instance, the story “Filling the Isles” in Transported was sparked off by a misprint of the phrase “filling the aisles” in a newspaper report. Usually the idea is for a setting, a plot, or a “what if?”—the characters come along later.

The next question is, “what sort of idea is this—poem, story, novel?” I can’t really explain how I decide this; it’s a matter of instinct rather than analysis, and the boundaries are often blurred. In my most recent poetry collection, All Blacks’ Kitchen Gardens, there’s a poem inspired by the same idea that generated a story in my first short-story collection, Extreme Weather Events. The first story in Transported, “Rat Up a Drainpipe,” about a New Zealander trying to make a go of it in Australia, has also spawned a poem on the same theme called “Accountant.”

Most of my poems have some narrative element, so the difference between poems and short stories isn’t very large. But to merit consideration as a novel, an idea has to call up a network of associations, settings, potential characters, plot points and themes that feel as though they have enough potential to be developed over 300 or so pages.

As for the actual writing process, a short story (if it’s going well) is a pleasure to write, whereas a novel—even a novel that’s going well—is a slog. Turn on computer, write the day’s quota of words, turn off computer. Repeat until finished. I’ve written two novels so far, and one of them—my fantasy novel Anarya’s Secret—has been published. I’m glad to have written them, but I’d be lying if I said it had been fun all the way.

Short stories appear to be gaining more popularity. Jhumpa Lahiri continues to publish great collections. Anne Enright published a short-story collection after her Man Booker Prize-winning The Gathering. What are your thoughts on this?
My interest in reading and in writing started with a field, science fiction, in which the short story was for a long time the dominant literary form—it’s really only the past thirty years or so that the novel has come to dominate the field in terms of both sales success and critical acclaim. In the last ten years, however, the circulation figures of print science-fiction magazines have been dropping steadily, and excellent web-based magazines like Strange Horizons have only proved a partial replacement.

So that’s not somewhere that short stories are getting more popular. But perhaps the picture is better for literary fiction: the length of the Frank O’Connor Award longlist is a sign that publishers are still willing to publish short-story collections, and the award provides welcome recognition of the form. On a purely commercial level, awards sell books, and simply being longlisted for the Frank O’Connor Award has brought Transported attention it wouldn’t otherwise have received. I hope that the establishment of this award has served, or will serve, as a turning point in the fortunes of the short story.

What is your personal favourite short story or short-story collection?
My favourite individual short story is Mikhail Lermontov’s “Taman.” It’s one of the five linked short stories and novellas in Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time: that’s usually described as a novel, but to my mind, it’s more like a linked collection. The stories are about the misadventures of a young Russian officer in the Caucasus in the early 1800s. In “Taman,” he gets in too deep, figuratively and literally, in a seashore town. What I love about the story is that character is revealed primarily through action rather than introspection. Anton Chekhov once called “Taman” the perfect short story, and I see no reason to disagree!

My second favourite, though, is probably a novella, “The Voices of Time,” an early story by J.G. Ballard.

My favourite collection is Jorge Luis Borges’s Labyrinths. Borges is the writer I turn to when I feel tired of writing. A few pages of his fiction—or his poetry—and I’m raring to go again. He’s an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

I’d also like to mention three great collections of science-fiction stories, The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories, by Gene Wolfe; Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, by James Tiptree, Jr. (the writing name of Alice Sheldon); and Expedition to Earth, by Arthur C. Clarke. It was these early stories by Clarke, full of wonder and nostalgia, that first got me interested in writing short fiction.

Finally, I will read anything by Alice Munro with great delight.

What’s the publishing scene in New Zealand like? Is it easy to get your stories published in New Zealand?
Yes and no. New Zealand has a proud tradition of short-story writing—with Katherine Mansfield and Frank Sargeson among the founders of that tradition, and Owen Marshall its best-known current proponent—but that writing is very much in the realist tradition. Some of what I write fits within that, but not all: as well as the realist stories, Transported contains metafiction, satire, and various flavours of speculative fiction. In terms of publishing individual stories, I’ve been able to get the more realist stories published within New Zealand, but have often had to go offshore to find homes for the others. I’m grateful to Random House New Zealand for publishing such a diverse collection.

Publishers find short-story collections hard to sell. Why do you think this is so? What can we do to make people buy or read more of such collections?
My answer at this point—I’m responding two days after Transported was officially released—is that bookstores are reluctant to order large numbers of copies, because they perceive, rightly or wrongly, that the public prefers novels. I have friends who’ve told me personally that they don’t read short stories, so perhaps the booksellers are right. I think there’s still a perception out there that short stories are like trainer wheels for people who are practising to become novelists.

What to do about it? I’m not sure. Write more vividly, use all the channels to reach readers we can, and console ourselves with the hope that, in an attention-challenged world, readers who consider themselves too busy to read novels will alight on short stories instead.

Information about Tim Jones’s books is available on his blog. Transported is available to international readers via New Zealand Books Abroad.

The six-book shortlist for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award will be announced in mid-July 2008

ON THE COUCH WITH ... Elizabeth SMITHER

ELIZABETH SMITHER was born in New Plymouth, New Zealand, in 1941. Although best known as a poet, she is also a novelist and short-story writer. She has spent much of her life in New Plymouth where she still lives. She recently retired as a librarian but still work as a book reviewer and journalist. She has two sons and a daughter. She is the author of four other collections of short stories, Nights at the Embassy (1990), Mr Fish (1994), The Mathematics of Jane Austen (1997) and Listening to the Everly Brothers and Other Stories (2002). Her latest collection of short stories, The Girl Who Proposed (Cape Catley, 2008) is on the longlist for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She is also the author of four novels: First Blood (1983), Brother-love Sister-love (1986), The Sea Between Us (2003) and Different Kinds of Pleasure (2006). She has published 15 collections of poetry.

Smither spoke to Eric Forbes and Tan May Lee in an e-mail interview from her home in New Plymouth, New Zealand.

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How did you find out about the longlist?
I found out about the longlist from a writer who sent me an e-mail.

What was the first thing you did when you found out you were longlisted?
The first thing I did was to go on Google and check for myself.

What do you think of the other titles on the longlist? Are you familiar with any of them? Have you read any of them?
I’ve just reviewed Anne Enright’s Taking Pictures for the New Zealand Listener and I’m hoping to read as many other finalists as soon as possible.

How familiar are you with the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award?
I had heard about the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, especially since a New Zealand writer, Charlotte Grimshaw, made the shortlist last year with her first collection of stories. It is not only a prestigious award but it seems very open in its judgements.

What is the difference between writing short stories and full-length novels?
The short story, I think, is more intense and perhaps it more resembles the way we imagine our lives to be. Incidents that change us, pivotal events or conclusions, or even something like the beginning of doubt. The short story is a marvellously inventive form. It can not only range from very short to very long, it can also be highly experimental, much more so, I think, than the novel. If a short story is like us looking back on the highlights of our lives, the novel is the whole life, into which highs and lows seem to disappear and dissipate. I was thinking recently that the sharp emotions we have when we are young, even if they are mistaken, may be more valuable than the blander wisdom when we are old. The short story is on the side of the sharp emotion.

Short stories appear to be getting more popular. Jhumpa Lahiri continues to publish acclaimed collections. Anne Enright published a short-story collection after her Man Booker Prize-winning The Gathering. What are your thoughts on this?
I’m delighted short stories are enjoying a renaissance since they are so suitable for our modern lives. Far better to read a riveting short story before you fall asleep than a few pages of a novel. I think the short story needs a big advertising campaign to help it on its way. I think young people particularly are finding they enjoy them.

What is your personal favourite short story or short-story collection?
So many to choose from: most recent favourite is Tim Winton’s The Turning. I also deeply love Mavis Gallant’s Paris stories. Mary Lavin’s Irish ones.

What’s the publishing scene in New Zealand like? Is it easy to get your stories published in New Zealand?
The New Zealand publishing scene, perhaps because it is outside the mainstream, is peculiarly vibrant. Quite a few publishers are publishing short-story collections—not in the same quantity as novels but they are not saying no either.

Publishers find short-story collections hard to sell. Why do you think this is so? What can we do to make people buy or read more of such collections?
I think we need to think laterally. Show the history of the short story and its wonderful practitioners. Televise them, read them on the radio. Put big advertisements on the tube. Leave the collection you’ve just read at a bus stop. Above all have faith in them because they so wonderfully reflect human life.

The six-book shortlist for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award will be announced in mid-July 2008

ON THE COUCH WITH ... Marianne HERRMANN

MARIANNE HERRMANN is the author of Signaling for Rescue (New Rivers Press, 2007) which was recently longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Signaling for Rescue also received the 2006 New Rivers Press Many Voices Project Award. Herrmann grew up in Winnetka, Illinois, U.S. She received a BA in Art History and English from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Minnesota. She is the recipient of a Bush Artist Fellowship in Literature and a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Fellowship for her fiction. Her writing has garnered awards from various literary journals, including Hunger Mountain, The Journal, The Ledge, Inkwell and Speakeasy. She has served as an editor of Northern Lit Quarterly, taught creative writing at the University of Minnesota, and lectured in art history at the American School in Florence, Italy.

Hermann spoke to Eric Forbes and Tan May Lee in an e-mail interview from her home in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, U.S.

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How did you find out about the longlist?
I was checking to see if my collection had received any new press and the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award popped up on the screen. It was pure chance. I was stunned and grateful to be included on the list with such gifted writers.

What was the first thing you did when you found out you were longlisted?
My daughter had just arrived home from school and was checking in when I saw the news pop up on the computer screen. I screamed and she ran over and we read about the longlist. I called my husband and e-mailed close friends. I recall that evening as a blur of joy.

What do you think of the other titles on the longlist? Have you heard about or read any of them?
The list itself is a gift. I have read much of Jhumpa Lahiri’s beautiful new book, Unaccustomed Earth, and am deeply impressed by the work of writers such as Anne Enright and Roddy Doyle. What is equally wonderful is the opportunity to discover the work of writers with whom I am not familiar. Avenues to books such as these are missing from the literary landscape, and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award provides such a path to remarkable writing from around the world.

How familiar are you with the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award?
I became acquainted with the award when I discovered the work of Yiyun Li, who was the first writer to win. After that, I kept track of the winners.

What is the difference between writing short stories and full-length novels?
I’ve been working on a novel for the past few years and the process of writing novels and stories is quite different. Writing a novel feels slippery and uncontrolled, even precarious. One wrong move and things can veer off course. Characters are more likely to take an unexpected turn, as they have more time to develop and get into trouble, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Keeping the scope of a novel in one’s mind is also a challenge, particularly when you must focus on the details and inner life of each character within the greater scheme of this vast landscape of events. In writing a story, I am drawn to an incident in the life of a character, derived from a compelling image or painful event that has haunted me for some time. I build on those events and images, pulling from seemingly disparate elements that I sense are in some way related. When such elements come together in a manner that illuminates and underscores the essence of the story, I feel deeply gratified. There is great mystery involved in short-story and novel writing, but with stories, there is an increased feeling of control.

Short stories appear to be getting more popular. Jhumpa Lahiri continues to publish great collections. Anne Enright published a short-story collection after her Man Booker Prize-winning The Gathering. What are your thoughts on this?
I have always found, on the whole, that some of the best writing is done in the short-story form. This isn’t to say there aren’t brilliant novels, but there are so many superb stories of limitless variety to be found in magazines, collections, anthologies and journals. In twenty minutes, a reader can be inspired, even changed and transformed, in heartrending, unimaginable ways. I can only hope that stories continue to grow in popularity, as a wealth of glorious work exists to be discovered and read.

What is your personal favourite short story or short-story collection? Do you favour the darker themes, or will you also enjoy the light-hearted, exotic ones?
My list of favourite stories is endless. The Stories of John Cheever knocked me out in college. The book is a powerful evocation of American life in the mid-twentieth century, so dark and poignant. I am always fascinated by work that explores darker themes, but I also admire a writer who leads his or her characters to an epiphany with elements of hope and redemption. I adore the work of Lorrie Moore, William Trevor and Alice Munro. James Joyce’s story “The Dead” in Dubliners is a masterpiece. I love finding a Tessa Hadley story in The New Yorker; there is such richness and variety in her work. Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies is a revelation, and Tobias Wolff is so versatile, yet controlled in his writing. When I first entertained the idea of writing stories back in high school, I was drawn to the stories of Ernest Hemingway for their emotional impact and deceptively simple style.

How much did your MA in Creative Writing help you in becoming a better writer?
Earning an MA in Creative Writing gave me the confidence to pursue writing fiction. The encouragement I received from various professors was crucial to my development. The graduate program was also a marvellous place to meet other young writers, people who have become some of my closest friends and provided great support. These are the people who have kept me going through the dark times of rejection. My MA program taught me important fundamentals, yet my real education occurred as I did the hard work of writing and revising and, most importantly, as I studied the work of the finest writers.

Publishers find short-story collections hard to sell? Why do you think this is so? What can we do to make people buy or read more of such collections?
Excellent questions that we as a culture must address. For those of us who love literary fiction, short stories appear to be a splendid fit for our fast-paced life. When we have so little time, a story is perfect for reading during a train or car ride, while waiting for a child to finish a lesson, or just before bed. Considering all of the marketing savvy out there, it would seem that opportunities exist for marketing stories more effectively. At book clubs, readers discuss the difficulty of finding terrific new work. One of the best things about the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award is that it recognises the work of those independent publishers who do not possess powerful publicity machines. For these publishers, it is difficult, sometimes impossible, to get their story collections into widespread distribution. It is heartbreaking to realise that countless astonishing books will disappear before they are ever known. Possibly it will require a troop of maverick publishers working with gifted marketers to come up with a plan to help readers take notice, to provide the essential information regarding what is available. A deep desire exists on the part of the reader to discover beautiful literature, and what a fine thing it would be if the business end of the literary world acknowledged and acted on that desire.

The six-book shortlist for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award will be announced in mid-July 2008

ON THE COUCH WITH ... Robert SHEARMAN

ROBERT SHEARMAN was born in London in 1970. He was the youngest ever playwright to be recognised by the Arts Council of England and has won several awards, including the Sunday Times Playwriting Award. He is a dramatist who has also written for radio and television. He is the writer responsible for re-introducing the Daleks to Doctor Who. Tiny Deaths (Comma Press, 2007) is his first collection of stories. The stories are comic and surreal, featuring a conversation with Hitler’s pet and a child who is reincarnated as her parent’s ashtray. Based in Manchester, Comma Press is a small but influential company with a reputation for innovative short fiction.

Shearman was shortlisted for the 2008 Edge Hill Short Story Prize along with Christopher Fowler, Jane Gardam, Claire Keegan and Simon Robson. (The Edge Hill Short Story Prize is awarded annually by Edge Hill University for excellence in a published single-author short-story collection. The first award was bestowed on Colm Tóibín for Mothers and Sons in 2007. The other shortlisted authors were Neil Gaiman, Jackie Kay, Nicholas Royle and Tamar Yellin.)

He was recently longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Shearman recently spoke to Eric Forbes and Tan May Lee in an e-mail interview from his home in London, England.

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How did you find out about the longlist?
I’m rather ashamed to admit it—but I have a Google Alert set up, so if ever my book is mentioned on a blog, I get told via email! I can make excuses for this. Before I wrote Tiny Deaths, I wrote exclusively as a dramatist, for TV, radio or the stage. And so everything I produced was very specific to a fixed time of broadcast, and it was relatively easy to gauge people’s reactions. One of the things that still startles me about having written a book is that it can be read at any time! It may have been released last year, but it’s still in the shops, and there’s always a potential new audience out there for it. So if I want to find out how it’s going down, Google Alert is a lifeline! It’s not just self-obsession. It really isn’t. ... Well, it is, a bit.

What was the first thing you did when you found out you were longlisted?
I rushed downstairs and told my wife. She was outside gardening. I think the neighbours heard how excited I was. Then I phoned everyone I could think of. I phoned rather too many people, actually—even those who hadn’t known I’d written a book to get longlisted in the first place. Those phone calls took a little more time than the others.

What do you think of the other titles on the longlist? There are themes ranging from diasporas to Chuck Palahniuk-type explicitness in the longlist. What are your thoughts? Are you familiar with any of them?
I think that’s the wonder of the short-story form. It’s such an urgent way of writing. If you want to write something lyrical, then you can get closer to a prose poem than you ever can try in longer media. If something on the news, say, inspires you to write in a red-hot passion, there’s an immediacy the short story offers that I think can get drowned within a novel. It’s absolutely right and apt that the longlist covers such a range of styles and approaches. I hear people too often moan about the short story, that it’s more uncommercial or cerebral as a storytelling means—but it’s nonsense. I think there’s more versatility to be found here than anywhere else—sometimes even within the same collection by the same author.

How familiar are you with the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award?
It was something I’d heard of, of course, and to be honest, not paid very much attention to. Tiny Deaths is my very first stab at short-story writing. Embarking on the book and looking at the biggest award for it in the world, would have been a bit like dipping my toe into producing a novel and setting my sights on the Man Booker or the Pulitzer. I’m staggered I’ve been longlisted. I’m staggered to see my name amongst so many writers I admire. For the first few days after the announcement, I kept returning to the website—partly to gloat, and partly to check there hadn’t been some awful mistake made and my name removed accordingly!

What is the difference between writing short stories and full-length novels? In your experience, what is the difference between scriptwriting and creating short stories?
I’ve never written a novel. I love reading novels, but I somehow doubt I could sustain writing one. When I write short stories it’s out of a sudden rush of enthusiasm for a premise or concept—and part of the joy is setting it up to surprise the reader with what little tricks I may have up my sleeve! But I can’t wait too long, I want to share what’s exciting me so much, and a few thousand words in I can’t resist it any longer and have to let the reader into my confidence. A novel can’t work like that. For the most part, I think, it has to rely less upon one startling image or conceit, and more upon an unfolding story. I enjoy the shock of the short story, I love the way you can play with a reader’s expectations—and, if you’re very careful, you can do that for the duration. To try that with a novel would look calculated and mean, somehow. You have to deal with your readership more directly, maybe, play around less with the style, shut up, and tell your tale. Playwriting and screenwriting are very similar to the novel in that way. They need to be a collision of ideas, a developing storyline. The joy of the short story is that it can be as complex as you like, some can play out like a little novel—and then in others you can sharpen the focus suddenly, present a tale which is more like a snapshot, something which is suggestive. The great power of a good collection is that shifting of styles, that you’re constantly asking the reader to readjust to long or near vision each time they turn a chapter! With novels, and with drama, I think it pays to be more consistent. And drama relies upon the here and now. When you watch a play, you’re necessarily seeing something in real time—even if it’s really a flashback, even if you play around with structure, the characters are still talking to each other in dialogue at that moment, and responding at that moment. There’s a great pleasure you can take in writing that, there’s something very clean about taking a conversation and making every word count. But in a short story you’re free to emphasise or deemphasise the conversation as you wish; you can dip into reported speech, you can miss bits out, you can elongate the dialogue by having the characters dwell upon what’s being said. In theatre and TV, of necessity, all the words spoken assume an equal importance—it’s up to the actor or the lighting engineer to shade them. In a short story, the writer takes on all the roles at once. It’s exhilarating.

Short stories appear to be getting more popular. Jhumpa Lahiri has just published her second collection of stories, Unaccustomed Earth. Anne Enright published her short-story collection, Taking Pictures, after the Man Booker Prize-winning The Gathering. What are your thoughts on this?
Whenever I go to the U.S., I can’t resist packing my suitcase home with as many short-story collections as I can find. It’s the same in Canada, or in Europe, or in Australia. There appears to be a real appetite for the form overseas, it’s not simply seen as the poor relation to the novel. And writers can make a career specialising in that form. Here in the U.K. it’s not quite so straightforward. There are the collections out there, but they’re usually published on the back of more successful novels—they’re presented as something more literary, more uncommercial. And the usual response I’ve had to having produced a short-story collection is that people are expecting I’m touting for a novel commission, as the next step up. I see signs of change, though. It’s been said often that the short story is the right length for many people today, travelling to and from work, coping with full lives. I think there are many reasons to celebrate the short story, and not just the fact you can squeeze a complete and self-contained adventure in between Green Park and Acton Town on the Piccadilly Line tube! But anything which popularises the short story, and gets readers used to it, is fine by me!

What is your personal favourite short story or short-story collection?
When I was a teenager, I was taken on holiday to New York by my parents. To shut me up, they bought me a collection of the Complete Saki. I absolutely fell in love with those stories—they were so sharp and witty, they never wasted a single word. I went back to school and tried to write like Saki—and got away with it for longer than I should have—I think it was the constant allusions to Edwardian society which probably gave me away in the end! A couple of years later I discovered Guy de Maupassant, who is just sublime—he has the power to move or frighten you with such apparent simplicity. And he has such range—from mad horror stories like “Le Horla,” to detailed social commentary like “Boule de Suif,” to a story like “Deux Amis” which is so touching I still find it hard to read without tearing up. From him I went on to Anton Chekhov and Katherine Mansfield and Raymond Carver, who are just masters. Nowadays I snap up collections by Lorrie Moore, Scott Bradfield, Kelly Link, Mary Gaitskill and Kevin Brockmeier—writers who play with the short story, squeeze as much out of it as they can. Clare Wigfall’s The Loudest Sound and Nothing (Faber and Faber, 2007) is on the longlist for the Frank O’Connor Award as well, and it’s just beautiful. I've had the pleasure of doing a couple of book launches alongside Adam Marek, whose Instructional Manual for Swallowing (Comma Press, 2007) is also a nominee. It’s at once deeply galling and deeply wonderful to sit through your own launch and find yourself preferring another writer’s stories to your own!

Digressing from Tiny Deaths (and for random knowledge of your other works), what was the weirdest thing you did in the name of research for Doctor Who? (I’m curious because I heard so much about its cult following when I was studying in the U.K.—Tan May Lee)
The shameful thing about Doctor Who is that I never did enough research! I’m very bad at researching things. I only want to know so much about a subject that it doesn’t get in the way of what I want to write—the more I poke at the truth, the more I discover obstacles to my story! I’d written a number of Doctor Who dramas for audio release, and for them I’d dabbled my toe in topics as diverse as Edwardian servant arrangements, the layout of the Tower of London, and the evolutionary history of music … and never well enough that I got a single one of them right! For my television episode I worked upon the (incredibly silly) idea that our heroine could pass on her DNA by touching a Dalek monster, who’d change his character as a result. Last year I was invited to give a talk at the Museum of Science and Technology in Manchester, which was basically an excuse to say sorry to everyone—because the furthest I’d got into researching DNA was by googling it to see what the acronym stood for. Doctor Who is such a huge juggernaut over here in Britain, and its fans are legion. If you skimp on your homework, as I did, years later it’ll come back and bite you!

Publishers find short-story collections hard to sell? Why do you think this is so? What can we do to make people buy or read more of such collections?
If I’m honest, I don’t have any answers to those questions. I only wish I did! I think it’s probably impossible to persuade an audience to follow a less commercial form—any more than you can usher people into opera houses or art galleries if they don’t want to go. I suppose the only solutions are that writers themselves should stop treating short-story writing as nothing more than a stepping stone to longer fiction, and give the form the dignity it deserves. (Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting to write novels, of course, but I’m a bit bemused by certain writers I know who see it as calling cards for bigger commissions!) And if we just write them better, maybe more will get published, and maybe if more collections are out there, more people will buy them!

The six-book shortlist for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award will be announced in mid-July 2008

ON THE COUCH WITH ... Donald Ray POLLOCK

DONALD RAY POLLOCK was born in 1954 and grew up in southern Ohio, in a holler named Knockemstiff, 13 miles southwest of Chillicothe, Ohio. He dropped out of high school at seventeen to work in a meat-packing plant, and then spent over thirty years employed in a paper mill in Chillicothe. Currently, he is a graduate student in the MFA program at Ohio State University and still lives in Chillicothe with his wife, Patsy, a high-school English teacher. He hopes to someday teach fiction writing. His stories have appeared in The Berkeley Fiction Review, The Journal, Third Coast, Chiron Review, River Styx, Sou’wester, Boulevard and Folio, and he has contributed essays on politics to the op-ed page of the New York Times.

Spanning a period from the mid-1960s to the late 1990s, the stories in Knockemstiff (Doubleday/Harvill Secker, 2008) feature a cast of recurring characters who are woebegone, baffled and depraved—but irresistibly, undeniably real. Rendered in the American vernacular with vivid imagery and a wry, dark sense of humour, these thwarted and sometimes violent lives jump off the page with inexorable force. Pollock presents his characters and the sordid goings-on in small-town USA with a stern intelligence and a bracing absence of value judgments. Knockemstiff was recently longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Pollock, who is currently at work on a novel set in 1965, about a serial killer named Arvin Eugene Russell, recently spoke to Eric Forbes and Tan May Lee in an e-mail interview from his hometown of Chillicothe, Ohio.

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How did you find out about the longlist?
My agent, Richard Pine, e-mailed me a link to the website. I’d heard of the award, but really didn’t know anything about it. Knockemstiff is my first book, and I’ve been awful lucky with the reviews and the press, but I never thought for a second that it would ever be considered for an award.

What was the first thing you did when you found out you were longlisted?
I have to confess that I looked to see who else had been put on the list. When I saw some of the other names, I pretty much realised that I don’t have much of a chance of winning. Still, it was an honour to be included with so many good writers.

What do you think of the other titles on the longlist? Have you heard about or read any of them?
Except for the collections by Benjamin Percy and Nam Le, which are both great books, I’m not really that familiar with the titles on the list. Because I’ve been working on a novel, I’ve been reading longer works for ideas about form, etc., and also inspiration, so I haven’t been reading many short-story collections lately.

How familiar are you with the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award?
As I mentioned earlier, I had heard of the prize, and I absolutely love Frank O’Connor’s short stories, but that was about it really. I was surprised to find out the size of the monetary award. Wow! That amount of cash would keep a guy like me going for a couple of years. (I live in a small town in southern Ohio where the cost of living is still relatively low.)

What is the difference between writing short stories and full-length novels?
Well, maybe the same as the difference between a binge and a full-blown addiction, one being exhilarating and the other seeming like such a chore to maintain at times. Just kidding! Still, I’m working on my first novel now, and one of the things I miss is the quick “payoff” that I always got when finishing a short story after only, say, three to seven weeks. A novel takes so long and that payoff seems so far away at times (though, in the end, it’s a much bigger one). Also, you have so much more time to begin to doubt the project (at least that’s the way it is for me, but maybe because I began writing so late, I’m still a bit insecure about my abilities to pull it off).

Short stories appear to be getting more popular. Jhumpa Lahiri continues to publish great collections. Anne Enright published a short-story collection after her Man Booker Prize-winning The Gathering. What are your thoughts on this?
I hope that’s the case! I love to write short stories and really prefer them over novels as far as my own reading goes. I’ve never been able to figure out why they aren’t more popular, especially because people seem to have so much less time to read in this media/tech-soaked world that we live in. They just have so many more options as far as “entertainment” goes. But you would think that the shorter form would appeal to all the workaholics out there who just don’t have time to read a 400-page novel (I’d also think they would be more appealing to people who fly a lot than they seem to be!). But then I know lots of people who don’t read a book a year, which is sad, sad, sad. With that said, it would be terrific if they regained the popularity they had, say, some sixty years ago.

What is your personal favourite short story or short-story collection? Do you favour the darker themes, or will you also enjoy the light-hearted, exotic ones?
That’s a tough question! This morning I guess I’d have to say my favourite short story is “Sea Oak” by George Saunders and my favourite collection is James Joyce’s Dubliners. I do tend to favour the darker stuff, but I also like to see the writer stick some humour in it. Without some funny lines, a lot of stuff, including my own, would just be too depressing for most people.

How much did your MFA help you in becoming a better writer?
You have to understand that I was fifty when I entered the MFA program at Ohio State University. I’d been working in a paper mill for thirty-two years by then, and I didn’t know any writers. So just being around people who loved writing was a new experience for me. I think submitting my stuff to the workshops probably cut a year off the writing of my collection because of all the feedback I received. Funny, but one of the reasons I decided to apply was that it seemed as if every new book I read was written by someone who had been through a MFA program, and I began to think that if you wanted to succeed in this racket you had to go to grad school. Now, I no longer believe that you have to do that, but I’m still glad I did it. For one thing, it provided me a way of getting out of the factory, and also afforded me much more time to write, at least for three years. I’ll finish up at the end of this year, and I’m going to miss that network of support, believe me. Oh, and it also gave me the chance to totally live the life of a writer for a while.

The six-book shortlist for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award will be announced in mid-July 2008

ON THE COUCH WITH ... Carys DAVIES

CARYS DAVIES was born and grew up in Llangollen, in north Wales, and spent ten years living in New York and Chicago. She now lives in Lancaster, in the north of England, with her husband and four children. Her stories have won prizes in national and international competitions, including the Orange/Harpers&Queen, Bridport, Fish and Asham awards, and have been published in magazines in the U.K. and the U.S. Her début collection of stories, Some New Ambush (Salt Publishing, 2007), was described by Boyd Tonkin in The Independent as “darkly funny and unsettling” and was longlisted for the 2008 Wales Book of the Year Prize. It was recently longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award.

Davies, who is currently working on a new collection of stories, recently spoke to Eric Forbes and Tan May Lee in an e-mail interview from her home in Lancaster, England.

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How did you find out about the longlist?
I had an e-mail from Tania Hershman, who edits the The Short Review, which is a new online magazine dedicated to short stories.

What was the first thing you did when you found out you were longlisted?
I went online to the Frank O’Connor website to have a look at the whole list. It certainly is long! There are 39 titles this year from all over the world—Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and Africa.

What do you think of the other titles on the longlist? Are you familiar with any of them?
It struck me that there are perhaps fewer big names on this year’s list than in previous years. Last year, for example, we saw among others, Alice Munro, David Malouf, Mary Gordon, Tessa Hadley, Claire Keegan and Miranda July—who eventually won with her collection No One Belongs Here More Than You. I’m familiar with a handful of names on this year’s list—Roddy Doyle, of course, and Anne Enright. Also Jhumpa Lahiri and Clare Wigfall, and all my fellow Salt Publishing authors, but I have yet to get to know the others.

How familiar are you with the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award?
I think I first heard of it a couple of years ago, when it would have been in its second year. I remember reading that Haruki Murukami had won, and it was that that introduced me to his work.

What is the difference between writing short stories and full-length novels?
I’ve never written a novel but I would imagine there are enormous differences. Short stories are much closer, I think, to poetry than they are to novels in that their shape and structure are so much less forgiving. Short stories are terribly precarious things which have a tendency to collapse in a heap if some little thing in them isn’t quite right. A false note, a single distracting line, a paragraph which is too long or too short—they all have the power to kill a short story. I also think there must be a big difference in the way that they are conceived. Short stories are very difficult to plan—if I ever set out to write a story with a clear sense of what’s going to happen it’s almost guaranteed to fail; somehow it never achieves that sense of both surprise and inevitability that a short story depends on for its success.

Short stories appear to be getting more popular. Writers tend to publish their short-story collections after publishing their novels. What are your thoughts on this?
I first began writing short stories when I was living in the United States during the 1990s. It seemed a very natural thing to do there; the short story was alive and well—still championed by magazines like The New Yorker and The Paris Review and by literally hundreds of other smaller literary magazines. So it was a shock to return home to Britain to find publishers wary, if not downright hostile, to the form. There seemed to be a prevailing view that if you write short stories then you must surely just be practising for ‘the real thing’—the novel. I’m not at all sure that’s really changed very much. But I think there’s a sort of grass-roots movement going on, with more and more short-story writers performing at literary festivals, with book clubs choosing to read them, with the small independent presses supporting them and with the handful of new well-funded prizes being established—not only the Frank O’Connor but also the Edge Hill and the National Short Story Prizes.

What is your personal favourite short story or short-story collection?
The answer to both is probably The Means of Escape by the incomparable Penelope Fitzgerald. The story itself is perfect and the collection to which it gives its name contains other gems such as “The Axe” and “At Hiruharama.” I’ve read them all so many times and they never fail to delight; they are witty, moving, surprising and utterly true, which is everything I want in a short story. Leonid Dobychin’s “The Father” is another favourite. So are Bernard Malamud’s “The Magic Barrel,” John Cheever’s “The Country Husband” and Annie Proulx’s “The Half-Skinned Steer.”

Publishers find short-story collections hard to sell? Why do you think this is so? What can we do to make people buy or read more of such collections?
I think it has a lot to do with the big bookshops, where there’s very rarely a space dedicated to short-story collections. While poetry collections do tend to have their own special place in the store, story collections don’t—they’re put on the shelves with the novels, so it’s impossible for people to browse through them unless they already know an author’s name. And I can’t ever remember seeing a short-story collection on the ‘3 for 2’ tables. So perhaps the bookshops could experiment a little and see what happens.

The six-book shortlist for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award will be announced in mid-July 2008

ON THE COUCH WITH ... Gerard DONOVAN

GERARD DONOVAN was born in Wexford in 1959 and grew up in Galway, Ireland. His first novel, Schopenhauer’s Telescope (2003), longlisted for the 2003 Man Booker Prize for Fiction and shortlisted for the Irish Novel of the Year Award in 2003, won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award in 2004. He is also the author of two other novels: Doctor Salt (2004) and Julius Winsome (2006); and three collections of poems: Columbus Rides Again (1992), Kings and Bicycles (1995) and The Lighthouse (2000). His short fiction has appeared in Granta and The Faber Book of Best New Irish Short Stories. His first collection of stories, Country of the Grand (published in the U.S. as Young Irelanders) (2008), an elegiac collection of interlinked Irish stories, was recently longlisted for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Donovan now lives in a former railway station cottage in New York.

Donovan recently spoke to Eric Forbes and Tan May Lee in an e-mail interview from his home in New York.

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How did you find out about the longlist?
I was e-mailed by quite a number of people who saw it, and I followed the link.

What was the first thing you did when you found out you were on the longlist?
Not a lot as I remember—whatever I was already doing. But I remember thinking it was nice to see the company on that list.

What do you think of the other titles on the list? Are you familiar with any of them?
It looks like an awfully strong list. I’m familiar with a couple, yes. I haven’t read as much as I should in the last few years with all the writing I’m doing. Some writers are excellent readers and very informed. I’m getting better at that.

How familiar are you with the Frank O’Connor Short Story Award?
I know it is a very desirable award to get for a short-story collection. Very desirable from anyone’s viewpoint. And Frank O’Connor’s name on the award means a lot because he was and is the short story personified. His stories are illuminated with humanity and technically excellent at the same time, not to speak of his scholarly knowledge of the form. A true master.

What is the difference between writing short stories and a full-length novel?
I suppose a definition of the novel might be that it realises characters into their fullest potential over three or four hundred pages, drawing out their desires and motivations through a series of events that gradually expose a central conflict. Along the way the novelist comes up with descriptions and settings and language and point of view that somehow, and sometimes mysteriously, add up to being the voice of the novel, which may or may not reflect the writer’s psychology. I think a short story does all of the above, minus the length. All the ingredients are present, but they are compressed. So for instance, instead of ten pages of description, you get ten lines, and so on. The writer selects fewer scenes and has less space to come up with subplots. It may also be that a short story contains but one metaphor or idea, whereas a novel has time to develop many, although I believe that in the end most novels do revolve closely around a central principle of some kind. And characters have to be created quickly in the reader’s mind and with very little material at hand. Sean O’Faolain wrote that one attribute of a story is that it suggests more than it says. So the short story requires greater skill in my experience. I spent far more time writing the stories in Country of the Grand than I did writing the novel Julius Winsome.

Why do you think publishers avoid publishing short stories?
I’m not sure, I’d have to think from the point of view of a publisher. Perhaps some collections may lack a central theme and are therefore difficult to market for that reason. Or the short story as a form has tended to become shorter, relying on quick flashes of psychology, and less able to support multiple readings. To my mind, the classic short stories are so aesthetically pleasing and so humanely real that they can be read again and again, and are always new. But I’m not sure.

Do you think short stories are getting more popular?
I hope so. Maybe there’s a cycle in forms. One wanes, another waxes.

What is your personal favourite short story or short-story collection?
I have a few. I like B. Traven’s collection, The Night Visitor and Other Stories, and particularly the story called “When the Priest is Not at Home.” That man was an enigma. He wrote with great feeling on the lives and plight of the Mexican Indians, stories mostly set in Chiapas. Traven was a wandering actor and revolutionary journalist and then a sailor before settling in Mexico. The collection was published late in his life, in 1966. Mary Lavin was such a wonderful writer, her stories poised with great precision and gently paced—very difficult to do. Frank O’Connor, too: “Guests of the Nation” was an early favourite of mine. Anton Chekhov’s “The Darling” and Ivan Turgenev’s “First Love” also immediately come to mind.

The six-book shortlist for the 2008 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award will be announced in mid-July 2008