Julie Hensley's short story collection, Landfall: A Ring of Stories, was published by Ohio State University Press April 2016 as the winner of The Journal Non/Fiction Collection Contest. She was kind enough to answer some questions about her collection and stories.
EWN: Your short story collection, Landfall: A Ring of Stories, 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?
Julie: The first story published was “Seeing Red.” It appeared in Indiana Review, 24.2, Fall 2002. Immediately upon graduating from Arizona State’s MFA program, I began submitting stories widely. Back then it was a tedious process, physically exhausting. The manuscripts and SASEs filled my small apartment. A few months in, I was feeling really discouraged—I started doubting the choices I had made. I worried that I had dedicated enough years to studying fiction that I could have secured a much more practical and lucrative degree. (Of course, the MFA is an inherently impractical degree, promising only a richer writing life!) When I got the acceptance letter, I felt such relief. It was a terribly-needed confidence boost.
EWN: How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?
Julie: Over the years, I was solicited by several agents who read individual stories I had published in literary journals. They all wanted to know if I had a novel, so I told them I had a novel-in-stories. When they read Landfall, they said, “That’s beautiful, but it’s not a novel. Contact me when you have a more traditional novel.” Several offered to help me reign/develop the manuscript into a real novel, but I was resisted. I wanted it to be a cycle of stories in the vein of Louise Erdrich’s Love Medicine. I sent the manuscript out to dozens of contests, and it was a finalist for many, including the Flannery O’Connor Award. An early version won the Everett Southwest Literature Award, which includes a generous monetary prize but not publication. I tried to look at each near miss as evidence that the book was worthy. I kept tinkering with the stories and their sequencing. When, in 2010, I wrote “Expecting,” the last story in the book, I felt the manuscript really come together. Characters returned as peripheral threads, and so many frayed threads came together. I knew the book was finally finished. Eventually it won OSU’s none/fiction prize. I know many other writers who have submitted short story collections over ten years. Sadly, it is not that uncommon.
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 …?
Julie: I love the short form. When Alice Munro won the Nobel Prize, I cried. She’s a woman, she’s Canadian, she works exclusively in the short form! I would just write short stories for the rest of my life if I could; however, the market clearly prefers the novel. I am working on a more traditional (though still mosaic) novel now. I’m really itching to get back to stories. I have completed a few stories for a new linked collection of Arizona stories, tentatively titled CopperState. These stories are infused with magical realism, and they refract Western genre narratives (romance, adventure, ghost). That’s the project I really want to be working on.
EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?
Julie: I read them all the time, both in journals and in collections. I always include a short story collection on my reading list for my graduate fiction workshops. I just finished Bonnie Jo Campbell’s Mothers, Tell Your Daughters and loved it.
EWN: How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?
Julie: Writing! I turn in my grades on May 15 (I teach in Eastern Kentucky University’s Bluegrass Writers Studio), and then I have two weeks of unencumbered writing time before my kids are unleashed from elementary school.
EWN: Thank you very much for your time!
Julie: Thanks for including me in this discussion!
Julie Hensley is the author of the chapbook, THE LANGUAGE OF HORSES (Finishing Line Press), and the books, VIABLE: Poems (Five Oaks Press 2015) and LANDFALL: A Ring of Stories (Ohio State University Press 2016). An Associate Professor at Eastern Kentucky University and core faculty member in the Bluegrass Writers Studio Low-Res MFA Program, she lives in Richmond with her husband, the writer R Dean Johnson, and their two children.
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