I had an eBook version of Margaret Malone’s debut, People Like You, sent to me by M. Allen Cunningham of Atelier26 Books. He and I knew each other a bit from previous emails and my loving his debut novel published a while back. It was great to hear somebody with his ear and eye was starting up an indie publishing house and digging into People Like You only confirmed that for me.
EWN: Your short story collection, People Like You, 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?
Margaret: The shortest story in the collection is called “Sure Footing”, and it was also the earliest published story of the bunch, way back in 2004. It was the second short story I ever had published, on the heels of the first ever by only a week or two. The journal that published it was a teeny, tiny literary journal called Rhapsoidia that had just lost a bunch of its funding and so the issue I was in was basically just printed pages folded in half and stapled down the center. I still loved it. It's always a thrill to have a story find a home.
EWN: How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?
Margaret: After years and years of writing these stories, and several rounds of trying to sit down and "put a collection together" (which typically amounted to me making a list of the stories I'd written that should or should not be included in a collection, and then realizing it wasn't enough, or ready yet, or good enough, or ...), I felt fed up with myself. I'd just had my second child and perhaps that's why I felt a different, unfamiliar sense of necessity to finish the book: I just had to be done with it, because I knew somehow that I'd never write anything more or better or wider in scope until I'd try to put this one I'd been working on for so long out into the world.
I did research and compiled a list of small presses and contests that published story collections, specifically collections that I admired or read over the years while I was writing. As I sat down to my computer on the morning I was starting to query the editors on my list, I opened my email to find a message from a publisher who said he'd heard me read at Powell's Books (in Portland) and liked my work and had I ever considered putting a collection together and if so, could he see it down the line. It was bizarre. It was too bizarre. I was hesitant at first because I thought, am I just going to go to the prom with the first guy who asks me? But what if he's the only guy who asks me? And every question you can think of in between. And then I did a little research on the editor and his press and was totally impressed with his manner and enthusiasm and clear love of literature. It was obvious he was the real deal. I wrote him back and said I was querying presses that day with a collection I'd just finished, and did he want to see it. And then everything happened very quickly after that.
It turned out to be the best decision I could have ever made. Mark Allen Cunningham, the owner, editor and publisher at Atelier26 Books was everything he seemed to be at first and much much more. Precise, caring, and nurturing to the native voice of his authors, Mark made my first book experience into something like a dream come true. I felt like my opinions mattered when it came to everything from editing to book cover to marketing... And his belief in the book was phenomenal. It changed the way I think about my own work and how it lives in the world.
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 …?
Margaret: Short stories are my primary form and favorite form to work in, because they're are the closest in shape and freedom of language and brevity to how I see the world and prefer to live in it. I also write essays and am working on a novel now too, but the short story is where my heart and soul, I have a feeling, will always feel most at home.
EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?
Margaret: If a story passes in front of me by coincidence or on purpose or from a publication I subscribe to... whatever it is, I will almost always stop what I'm doing and read the first sentence or two. If it grabs me I will stop what I'm doing and finish it or save it for later if it's very long. I'd say about 40% of my reading time is spent with short stories, either stand alones or part of a collection I'm reading, and then 40% of my time is with novels and 20% with poetry. Sometimes when I'm deep in the writing process with a particular story of my own, I'll read more poetry because I think reading good poetry makes writers better writers.
EWN: How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?
Margaret: Reading and writing short stories (and working on the novel). The things I do anyway. I'm for sure happy to have a few more people in the world joining in to do the same things during the month of May. (I wonder if this is how Christians feel at Christmas? Or the Irish on St. Patrick's Day? Pagans on Beltane?) Whatever it is, I love the company.
Margaret Malone is the author of the story collection PEOPLE LIKE YOU from Atelier26. Her writing has appeared in The Missouri Review, Oregon Humanities, Propeller Quarterly, Coal City Review, Swink, latimes.com, and elsewhere. She is a graduate of Humboldt State University with a B.A. in Philosophy and now lives with her husband filmmaker Brian Padian and two children in Portland, Oregon. Margaret has been a volunteer facilitator with the non-profit Write Around Portland and is a co-host of the artist and literary gathering SHARE. She is the recipient of an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship, grants from the Regional Arts & Culture Council and an Oregon Literary Fellowship in Fiction. Though she’s a former tribe-member of the Dangerous Writers, in her heart she will always spend Thursday nights at the northeast corner of the table in Tom Spanbauer’s basement.
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