Tyrone Jaeger's short story collection, So Many True Believers, was published by Queens Ferry Press in February 2016. He's got a novel forthcoming from them this year. If you visit his website, there is a trailer for his story collection.
EWN: Your short story collection, So Many True Believers, 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?
Tyrone: The first story I ever had published, “The Mermaid,” was the first story that I ever had published. It appeared in The Beloit Fiction Journal (thanks BLF!) in 2003 and is about a dog food executive and his relationship with a prostitute who is also an amputee. The story was inspired by an essay by Carl Elliot, “A New Way to be Mad”, that appeared in the Atlantic Monthly about people who desire the amputation of otherwise healthy limbs because they identify as amputees.
EWN: How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?
Tyrone: For years, I had been submitting to contests versions of So Many True Believers. It had been a finalist or semi-finalist for about fifteen contests. When I began a sabbatical in fall of 2014, I promised myself I would send the collection out to small presses. It was picked up in a couple of weeks by Queen’s Ferry Press. I sent out the manuscript without an agent.
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 …?
Tyrone: I write both long form and short form fiction. The short story allows me more room to play and to stretch myself formally. I like the form for the risks it allows me to take as a writer.
EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?
Tyrone: I consume short stories for pleasure to be certain, but as a creative writing teacher, much of my short story reading occurs in connection with the classroom. I teach short stories to my undergraduate fiction writers because it’s what they are writing (given the constraints of a semester), but also because when I assign short stories students can see the breadth of what writers are doing with the form. Short stories push students toward experimentation and allow them to hone craft and technique.
EWN: How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?
Tyrone: Since you ask, maybe I’ll just go and write a story a day. Thanks for prompting me to challenge myself!
EWN: Thank you very much for your time!
Tyrone Jaeger is the author of the story collection So Many True Believers and the cross-genre novella The Runaway Note. His first novel, Radio Eldorado, is forthcoming with Queen’s Ferry Press in 2017. His work has appeared in theOxford American, Southern Humanities Review, The Literary Review, descant, and elsewhere. He is the recipient of the Frank O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award. As an undergraduate, he attended Rollins College, and he received his PhD from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is an Associate Professor of English/Creative Writing at Hendrix College. Born and raised in the Catskill Mountains, Tyrone lives in Conway, Arkansas, with his wife and daughter.
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