I had the pleasure of being introduced to Desiree Cooper about a decade ago by Vievee Francis (yes, another on the chain I described yesterday). If I remember, at the time she was a columnist for the Detroit Free Press and was working on fiction in her "spare" time. Fortunately for us, she found enough of that time to concentrate on her stories which led to one of my favorites from 2016, Know the Mother via Wayne State University Press. Also, that she found some time to answer a few questions!
EWN: Your short story collection, Know the Mother, was published in 2016. What story within the collection had the earliest publication history outside of being in the collection, and what was that history?
DC: I guess that would be “Night Falling.” It was first published in Detroit Noir (Akashic 2007) as part of a great collection of noir stories that had clear, specific settings in Detroit. “Night Falling” was set in Detroit’s Palmer Woods, a neighborhood that I lived in for more than 20 years. Much to my surprise, it was selected by the amazing Nikki Giovanni to be included in Best African American Fiction 2010. To this day, I have no idea how that story came to her attention, but that honor came just at a moment when I was in extreme despair about my future as a fiction writer. When I was preparing the manuscript for Know the Mother, I knew I had to include it, even though it’s longer than most of the other stories in the collection. (For the most part, the collection is flash fiction.)
EWN: How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?
DC: I was solicited by M.L. Liebler, an editor for Wayne State University Press’s Made in Michigan Series. We were at a Made In Michigan showcase and in the parking lot he hollered at me, “Where’s your book? Send it to me!” Huh? It was much later that I found out that he’d heard me at a local reading and thought that I might be sitting on some poetry or fiction. It was that prompt that got me to start looking at my little hoard of stories as a real body of work. I feel so grateful that he gave me that kick in the pants and that the WSU Press acquisitions editor, Annie Martin, wholeheartedly embraced the flash fiction genre.
EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as an author? Primary form to work with, or something you write when an idea hits, or …?
DC: All of my life, I’ve wanted to be a novelist. But somehow, when I start to write long, I lose my way, or get bored. After writing newspaper columns for more than a decade, I discovered that I had developed a muscle for compressing narratives. My fiction would only come in bite-sized chunks. I always say that if flash fiction wasn’t already a genre, I would have had to invent it.
Now I almost never have an idea that can’t be resolved within twenty pages or much less. I’m never writing and think, “This should be a book.” My ideas and inspiration just come through that lens. Maybe the stories really could be a novel, but my brain says “It doesn’t have to be.”
EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?
DC: Ironically, I still read novels for the most part. I think it’s because I’m in such awe of the form. But when I’m on a writing spurt, I switch to flash or short stories because they are much more instructive in terms of control, compression and language. And I always keep a short story collection close by.
EWN: How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?
DC: I’ll be reading Insurrections, by a talented short story and flash fiction writer, Rion Amilcar Scott. I’ve been saving it for some real down time when I could enjoy it. It just won the PEN America/Robert W. Bingham Award for Debut Fiction!
EWN: Thank you very much for your time!
DC: Thanks for all you do to connect writers and readers.
A 2015 Kresge Artist Fellow, Desiree Cooper is a former attorney, Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and Detroit community activist whose fiction dives unflinchingly into the intersection of racism and sexism. Using the compressed medium of flash fiction, she explores intimate spaces to reveal what it means to be human. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Callaloo, Detroit Noir, Best African American Fiction 2010, and Tidal Basin Review, among other online and print publications. Her first collection of flash fiction, Know the Mother, was published by Wayne State University Press in March 2016. Cooper was a founding board member of Cave Canem, a national residency for emerging black poets. She is currently a Kimbilio fellow, a national residency for African American fiction writers. She can be found online at www.descooper.com
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