Emerging Writers Network

NSSM 2018: Mini-interview with Casey Pycior (The Spoils)

Casey Pycior with some answers for us about stories and his collection, The Spoils.

 

EWN:  Your short story collection, The Spoils, was published in 2017. What story within the collection had the earliest publication history outside of being in the collection, and what was that history?

CASEY: The two oldest stories in The Spoils, “Home Shopping” and “Chasing a Leak” have an interesting publishing history. “Home Shopping,” was published by REAL in 2011, and it was my first print publication. “Chasing a Leak,” which I begin working on in 2009, was one of the last stories in the manuscript to be published (after 80+ rejections!). It appeared in The MacGuffin in 2016.

 

EWN:  How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?

CASEY: I sent versions of the manuscript to contests and small presses for a little over two years. The book was a finalist for the Iowa/John Simmons Short Fiction Award two years in a row. It was ultimately accepted by Switchgrass Books / NIU Press in fall of 2015.

 

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 …?

CASEY: I see myself as primarily a short story writer. I love the all that the form can do. It’s the form I started with, and though I’m not opposed to trying to tackle a novel one day, I don’t ever see myself abandoning the short story form.

 

EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?

CASEY: I read far more short story collections every year than novels. Don’t get me wrong, I love the way you can be absorbed in the world of a long novel for a few weeks at a time. Novels are kind of like vacations in that way. I usually have a great time, but I’m always glad to get back home to short stories.

Also, as a creative writing professor and Fiction Editor of Southern Indiana Review, I read hundreds and hundreds of stories in manuscript every year.

 

EWN:  How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?

CASEY: Honestly, now that the semester is over, probably catching up on reading stories for SIR! I’m sure I’ll make time for a few collections as well.

 

EWN:  Thank you very much for your time!

CASEY: It was my pleasure, Dan! Thanks for all you do for writers!

 

Casey Pycior was born and raised in Kansas City, and earned his MFA in fiction writing at Wichita State University and his PhD in Creative Writing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He was awarded the 2015 Charles Johnson Fiction Prize at Crab Orchard Review, and his work has appeared in Beloit Fiction Journal, Midwestern Gothic, Harpur Palate, BULL, Wigleaf, and Yalobusha Review, among many other places. Casey’s debut short story collection, The Spoils, was published in early 2017 with Switchgrass Books. He’s an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Southern Indiana, and the Fiction Editor of Southern Indiana Review. He lives in Evansville, Indiana with his wife and son.

NSSM 2018: Mini-interview with Peg Alford Pursell (Show her a Flower, a Bird, a Shadow)

Peg Alford Pursell is the author of Show Her a Flower, a Bird, a Shadow from 2017, and the 2019 forthcoming The Girl Goes Into the Forest. Here she answers some questions for we here at the EWN.

 

EWN:  Your short story collection, SHOW HER A FLOWER, A BIRD, A SHADOW, was published in 2017. What story within the collection had the earliest publication history outside of being in the collection, and what was that history?

PEG: “Celestial Bodies,” published in Newfound Journal, Fall 2010. https://newfound.org/archives/volume-1/issue-3/fiction-pursell/

I saw a call for submissions for the journal, which went by a different name then (one I don’t remember), and sent the story. I was very happy to have it published in the journal, and since to watch the journal grow and publish such wonderful work.

 

EWN:  How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?

PEG: I sent the manuscript in to the publisher when I saw a call for submissions. I’d been following the publisher because I liked the books she published, and I’d asked a few of the authors of those books—a couple of whom were friends—about their experiences publishing with this publisher, so I believed then that this publisher was a good fit for my book. I was pleased when it was accepted for publication.

 

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 …?

PEG: Though they’re not the only form I work with, short stories are my primary form.

 

EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?

PEG: I love to read short stories; I love short stories that necessitate that I stop after reading one to take it in before I can go on to the next one. Lately, I’m on a Christine Schutt binge.

 

EWN:  How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?

PEG: Great question! I hadn’t considered before now, but when I read from my book at Why There Are Words in Portland on May 20, I will certainly let the audience know I’m celebrating National Short Story Month. The manner in which I will I’ll determine in the coming days.

 

EWN:  Thank you very much for your time!

PEG: Thank you!

 

Peg Alford Pursell is the author of is the author of Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow, a collection of hybrid with praise from Peter Orner, Joan Silber, Antonya Nelson, Glen David Gold, and others, and featured by Poets & Writers magazine’s second annual 5 over 50, December 2017. Her work has appeared in Permafrost, the Los Angeles Review, Joyland Magazine, and other journals and anthologies. She is the founder and director of the national reading series Why There Are Words and of WTAW Press. She lives in Northern California.

NSSM 2018: Mini-interview with Tim O'Leary (Dick Cheney Shot Me in the Face)

Tim O’Leary wrote the collection with the title that probably caught our eye a bit more than the rest. Here he replies to some questions for the EWN.

 

EWN:  Your short story collection, DICK CHENEY SHOT ME IN THE FACE, AND OTHER TALES OF MEN IN PAIN, was published in February 2017. What story within the collection had the earliest publication history outside of being in the collection, and what was that history?

TIM:  Fake Girlfriend, which I wrote as a kind of comedy / tragedy / indictment of technology (long before Facebook let us all down) was the first. It was published in the 2015 Mississippi Review Prize Issue. I wrote that story, and almost all the stories in the collection, while I was studying for my MFA in 2013/14. The great writer Claire Davis was my first professor in the program, and she worked with me on the story, and encouraged me to submit it. I was just learning about the whole submission process, and starting to receive the inevitable stream of rejections, when I received a wonderful note from the editor Andrew Milward, informing me it was a finalist for the prize. It was wonderful to have something accepted that early—especially from such a great magazine—and it really enhanced my confidence.

I’ve found that stories become like your children, and can take on a life of their own. Fake Girlfriend has been particularly very good to me. It’s been published in several other magazines and anthologies, and is currently being developed as a motion picture in Europe, so it’s one of my “favorite children”.

 

EWN:  How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?

TIM: The collection of eighteen stories was essentially my MFA thesis. By the time I finished it, fifteen of the stories had been published in literary magazines or anthologies, or were pending publication, so I decided to add a few new pieces, and send it out to small publishers.  I was cautioned that “nobody is interested in story collections from unknown authors,” but I was proud of the work and figured I had nothing to lose. I received a couple rejections, then made finalist for a book prize, when it was accepted by the publisher.

 

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 …?

TIM:  I’ve been primarily working on a novel since the collection was published (although I always have a story or two in the works), and I have to say….if I had to choose between stories and a novel, I would absolutely choose stories. I tend to live in a bit of a dream world anyway. In any given week I will be struck with two or three story ideas, which I transfer to a log for later consideration. I love the idea of multiple stories colliding in my head, and it is really my favorite format.

 

EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?

TIM: I read them all the time, though I do keep a balance with novels and non-fiction. Sometimes I will be inspired by a character, or even a setting in a longer work the helps me construct a story.

 

EWN:  How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?

TIM: I think I will write a short story. Maybe something a bit uplifting. Seems like the right time.

 

EWN: Thank you very much!

 

Born in Billings, Montana, Tim O’Leary enjoyed a long career as an entrepreneur in the advertising and television industries, and as a non-fiction writer, before embarking on a full time literary career in 2015.  Since then his award-winning stories have been published in a wide variety of magazines, journals, and anthologies.  His non-fiction book, Warriors, Workers, Whiners, & Weasels was published in 2006, and his short story collection, Dick Cheney Shot Me in the Face, And Other Tales of Men in Pain, will be released in early 2017.  He graduated from the University of Montana, and received his MFA from Pacific University.  Tim and his wife Michelle and their yellow lab Lemon split their time between homes in The Columbia Gorge, and Santa Ynez, CA. www.timothyolearylit.com

 

NSSM 2018: Mini-interview with Jerry Mathes (Shipwrecks and Other Stories)

Mini-interview responses from Jerry Mathes, author of Shipwrecks and Other Stories.

 

EWN:  Your short story collection, Shipwrecks and Other Stories, was published in 2017. What story within the collection had the earliest publication history outside of being in the collection, and what was that history?

JM: “Where the Grass Meets the Dirt” was published earlier than the rest. It appeared in the Talking River Review in 2003.

 

EWN:  How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?

JM: The publisher, Kimberly Verhines, at SFA University Press, had published my collection of essays, so when the story collection was ready I queried her and she took it.

 

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 …?

JM: I write short stories in tandem with other genres. I guess it depends on the questions or the situations I want to explore. In some stories, fiction allows me to stand off to the side of an event in my life I want to suss out, but don’t want to be constrained by fact or fidelity to history. For instance, the title story, “Shipwrecks,” is an amalgam of true events and fiction, populated with characters that are composites of people I knew and characters completely fabricated because the story couldn’t be contained in an essay. On the other hand, “Birth of the Hippo” is completely imagined.

 

EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?

JM: I read a lot: novels, nonfiction (histories, biographies, art, science et al.), essays, scripts, poems, and I follow certain book reviewers. Short stories add the perfect texture to my reading life, much like varied spices add complexity and richness to one’s eating life.

 

EWN:  How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?

JM: I plan on reading a story a day from all the stacks of lit journals I’ve just unpacked that I haven’t had a chance to read. I was surprised at how many I’d collected along the way. I’ll pick a journal at random and see what it offers. I’ll also be working on a short story, but that’s not because it’s May, but because it’s what I do.

 

EWN:  Thank you very much for your time!

 

From Jerry Mathes:

I am a writer. I am a filmmaker. I am an artist. I am a dad. I am a Jack Kent Cooke Scholar. I was named the Outstanding Humanities Graduate at Lewis-Clark State College and the Outstanding Graduate Writer at East Carolina University. I have been a Helicopter Rappeller and fought wildfire for too long. I have worked as a martial arts instructor, an armor crewman, a construction worker, hotel auditor, car salesman, repo-man, delivery guy, cable guy, went logging, worked in forestry, crewed on several types of fishing vessels, and even haunted the oil fields as a minion of Mordor.

NSSM 2018: Mini-interview with Annette Lapointe (You Are Not Needed Now)

Annette Lapointe has published a couple of novels and in 2017, the story collection You Are Not Needed Now. She replied to our NSSM survey of questions.

 

EWN:  Your short story collection, You Are Not Needed Now, was published in 2017. What story within the collection had the earliest publication history outside of being in the collection, and what was that history?

AL: The earliest-published story was the title story, “You Are Not Needed Now,” which appeared in Prairie Fire magazine in 2012.  I was living in Winnipeg at the time, and it was the first story I successfully set in Winnipeg – the one that let me develop a sense of the city and what living in it meant.  It’s a story very much outside my experience – about a girl doing sex work out of the race track – but it overlaps with my childhood history with horses and horse people, and my awareness of how easily one’s life can become precarious.  I took the title from a Townes Van Zandt song, and it became the theme for stories that followed, about being precarious or unwanted.

 

EWN:  How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?

AL:  I’d published two novels with Anvil Press, and editor Brian Kaufman heard I was working on some short stories and asked if I had a collection in mind.  It was then that I started thinking about the work I’d been doing as a potential book rather than as individual stories, and I began shaping them with a theme in mind.

 

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 …?

AL: My first two books were novels, but like most young writers, I began with short stories.  In 1999, I entered a short story, “Texarkana,” in the subTERRAIN short story contest, and won!  It was my first published story, and I was enormously encouraged by that.  At the time, the magazine (also edited by Brian Kaufman) sent me a note saying that if I had other work, or if I ever had a book, I should send it along.  I think, when you’re a young writer, not sure of your work, it’s a surprise to get that kind of support and encouragement, and I clearly took Brian at his word, because six years later, when I had a novel manuscript, that’s where I sent it.  And I did keep writing short stories, but a writing mentor told me early on that a book of short stories should have a unity to it, not be just all the stories I’d written so far, and I tried to keep that in mind.

 

EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?

AL: I began reading short fiction as a young adult, partly because I wanted to know more about what a short story is, what its shape is and how to create one, and in the process, I discovered writers that would be enormously influential on me (Alice Munro, obviously, but also SF and dark fantasy writers, and later fun and experimental authors like George Saunders and Kelly Link).  I love short story collections because I can pick them up and sit with them for a while, and if I get distracted, they’re still present when I come back to them later – I can step in and out as I need to.

 

EWN:  How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?

AL: I teach at a college, so I’ll celebrate May with the freedom to read, and I have four books of short stories waiting for me!  If it snows, I’ll read inside.  If it’s hot, I’ll read outside!  I’ll also be publishing a couple of great new short stories in my role as managing editor of The Waggle magazine (www.thewaggle.ca) – our next issue is out in May!

 

EWN:  Thank you very much for your time!

 

 

www.annettelapointe.com

NSSM 2018: Mini-interview with Henry Hoke (Genevieves)

Henry Hoke’s Genevieves was an SPD best-seller! He was able to carve out some of his time to respond to some EWN questions for National Short Story Month.

 

EWN:  Your short story collection, Genevieves, was published in 2017. What story within the collection had the earliest publication history outside of being in the collection, and what was that history?

HH: The first piece published was Genevieve Exists. The writer and cook Saehee Cho selected it for Entropy magazine in Spring 2015, and then Javier Taboada translated it into Spanish for publication in a New American Writing issue of the Mexico City magazine Tierra Adentro, curated by Janice Lee. Genevieve Exists is a ghost story about my time working in independent film, and was also the first of the nine stories that I wrote. It served as a guiding light when I assembled the collection that summer.

 

EWN:  How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?

HH: I love independent presses, especially those that elevate genre-defying hybrid work, and so I submitted to a handful of my favorites. One of those was Subito Press at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Elisabeth Sheffield chose Genevieves as the winner of their 2015 prose book contest.

 

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 …?

HH: My writing practice is hopelessly fragmented, so the short form is definitely my primary form. I weave larger webs out of the distilled pieces, trying to keep each one’s solo flair intact.

 

EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?

HH: I read lots of short stories online, from friends and favorites, and I buy a couple short story collections in print a year. I like that collections feel like albums, various concentrated expressions placed in a larger sequence. Themed issues of literary magazines hold a similar pleasure. My father has had a subscription to GRANTA for my entire life, so there were always shelves full of short stories. The book I just began writing is a tribute to Dad’s particular literary weirdness. It’s a novel but it’s also a bunch of short stories, because fuck dividing lines.

 

EWN:  How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?

HH: I’ll be anticipating the imminent release of Lincoln Michel and Nadxieli Nieto’s Tiny Crimes anthology from Catapult. It contains 40 flash noir stories and it’s a sharp reminder of the vibrancy of the short form. Otherwise I’ll be writing and submitting, reading and weeping. The usual.

 

EWN:  Thank you very much for your time!

 

Henry Hoke is the author of The Book of Endless Sleepovers and the story collection Genevieves, which won the Subito Press book prize. His writing appears in Electric Literature, Hobart, The Collagist, Carve and the Catapult anthology Tiny Crimes. He co-created and directs Enter>text: a living literary journal.

Born to Alabamians, Henry grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia and currently lives in Los Angeles. He has curated events at the &Now Festival, Machine Project, the Neutra VDL House and the Poetic Research Bureau. His play At Sundown premiered at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and his short film Taking Shape screened on HBO. He holds a BFA from New York University and an MFA from California Institute of the Arts, where he now teaches. For a decade of summers he has been screen and playwriting instructor at the UVA Young Writers Workshop. www.henry-hoke.com

NSSM 2018: Mini-interview with Chip Duncan (Half a Reason to Die)

Chip Duncan saw his second book and first story collection published in 2017. Here he takes some time to respond to some EWN National Short Story Month questions.

 

EWN:  Your short story collection HALF A REASON TO DIE was published in 2017. What story within the collection had the earliest publication history outside of being in the collection, and what was that history?

CD:  The book is the first publication for all of the stories.

 

EWN:  How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?

CD:  The publisher had released my previous non-fiction book, ENOUGH TO GO AROUND – Searching for Hope in Afghanistan, Pakistan & Darfur (2009).  I submitted my fiction collection and they said yes.

 

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 …?

CD:  The upcoming release of INSPIRING CHANGE – The Photographic Journey of Chip Duncan (Book 1) is my fourth book.  It is, as the title mentions, a book of photography and is similar to Enough To Go Around in its focus on global issues related to poverty and photography of people living in poverty and crisis zones.  I am currently working on a new fiction collection of 3 novellas that should be released in 2019.

 

EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?

CD:  I grew up on Hemingway and love reading fiction of all kinds – domestic and international. Somewhere along the line, I became a huge fan of Jim Harrison’s novellas and short stories. 

 

EWN:  How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?

CD:  I had never heard about it before your email. Now I’ll celebrate by raising a glass in your honor.

 

EWN:  Thank you very much for your time!

CD: I appreciate your support of literature and wish you the best.

 

NSSM 2018: Mini-interview with Jacqueline Doyle (The Missing Girl)

Jacqueline Doyle published The Missing Girl last year (2017) and also found some time to answer a question or five for us!

 

EWN:  Your short story collection The Missing Girl was published in 2017. What story within the collection had the earliest publication history outside of being in the collection, and what was that history?

Jacqueline: The stories in the chapbook aren’t arranged in the order they were written, but it happens that the first story, “The Missing Girl,” was also the first one I published, in Vestal Review. At the time, I had no intention of putting together a collection. It was five years before I realized that missing girls, abused girls and the men who preyed on them had become recurrent themes in my work. They continue to haunt me.

 

EWN:  How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?

Jacqueline: One of the stories, “Nola,” drew some attention when it was written up on the Ploughshares blog as “The Best Short Story I Read in a Lit Mag This Week” and then J.T. Hill, the editor at Monkeybicycle, nominated it for some awards, so I decided to put a chapbook together. I was lucky enough to win the Black River Chapbook Competition at Black Lawrence Press. They’ve been great. I’ve done a lot of readings, including one with other BLP authors at AWP18 in Tampa. The chapbook has garnered more reviews than I ever expected, and made two “best indie short story collection of 2017” lists (at Paper Darts and The Coil). The Missing Girl has just gone into a second printing. I attribute a lot of my success to editors Kit Frick and Diane Goettel at Black Lawrence Press.

 

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 …?

Jacqueline: I started as a creative nonfiction writer, moving from personal essays to narrative nonfiction, and for a long time that was my primary form. I’ve published a number of short stories too, but lots and lots of flash, both flash fiction and flash nonfiction. Flash started as something fun, a break from the intensity of my nonfiction, and then became a more serious endeavor. I write flash partly because it’s easier to fit into my schedule than longer fiction and nonfiction. But I also love the form: its compression, unpredictability, variety—and the opportunity it affords me to inhabit the lives of characters I don’t know, characters who frequently take me in surprising directions.

 

EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?

Jacqueline: Hearing from you was such a coincidence, since I’d just finished reading Emily Geminder’s powerful story collection from Dzanc Books, Dead Girls and Other Stories. I loved Carmen Maria Machado’s Her Body and Other Parties, and I’ve just started The Collected Stories of Leonora Carrington. The short story may be my favorite genre, and I also read flash fiction online every day. I teach classes in American literature and women’s literature, and frequently teach story collections because I think they’re an underrated genre (don’t get me started on the “Great American Novel”) —most recently, Bharati Mukherjee, Sandra Cisneros, Tim O’Brien, Gish Jen, Sherwood Anderson (as well as Poe, Hawthorne, and Melville in my nineteenth-century surveys). I always find something new to appreciate when I reread the story collections that I teach.

 

EWN:  How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?

Jacqueline:  On May 8, I’ll participate in a reading in San Francisco for Nothing Short Of: Selected  Tales from 100 Word Story, just out from the San Francisco publisher Outpost 19. I love launching the month with microflash, in an anthology edited by the wonderful Lynn Mundell, Grant Faulkner, and Beret Olsen that includes work by a lot of wonderful flash writers that I know (including my husband Steve Gutierrez). There are so many readings in the San Francisco Bay Area; I expect to celebrate the short story all month, in one way or another. Here’s a shout-out to local indie booksellers: Books on B in Hayward, Octopus Salon in Oakland, Green Apple Books and Alley Cat Books and Dogeared Books in San Francisco, and many others. I expect they have some events planned for National Short Story Month and I’ll be sure to attend.

 

EWN:  Thank you very much for your time!

Jacqueline: Thank you so much for asking me! I’ll be reading your interviews for National Short Story Month and buying some books!

 

Jacqueline Doyle is the author of the flash fiction collection The Missing Girl from Black Lawrence Press. Her flash fiction and nonfiction, essays, and stories have appeared in Wigleaf, The Gettysburg Review, Post Road, Hotel Amerika, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere., She lives with her husband and son in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she teaches at California State University, East Bay. Her work has earned numerous awards, including First Place in the 2017 Midway Journal Flash and Poetry contest, judged by Michael Martone, five Pushcart nominations, two Finalist listings in Best Small Fictions 2018, and Notable Essay listings in Best American Essays 2013, 2015, and 2017.

Links:

For my name at the beginning of interview or in the bio: www.jacquelinedoyle.com

For The Missing Girl at the beginning of interview or in the bio: https://www.blacklawrence.com/the-missing-girl/

For Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story in the second to last question: http://outpost19.com/NothingShortOf/

NSSM 2018: Mini-interview with Chauna Craig (The Widow's Guide to Edible Mushrooms)

Chauna Craig’s The Widow’s Guide to Edible Mushrooms was published by Press 53 (a great home to short fiction writers). She was kind enough to answer some questions for us.

 

EWN:  Your short story collection, The Widow’s Guide to Edible Mushrooms, was published in 2017. What story within the collection had the earliest publication history outside of being in the collection, and what was that history?

CC:  The opening story, “Thirsty,” was actually first published in Ascent in 1998, nearly twenty years before the collection was released. It worked thematically with the other, later stories and so, after a few changes, I included it.

 

EWN:  How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?

CC:  Another author recommended I send my collection to the small press where she’d published her book because she thought it was a good fit. I sent the collection, got a contract, and went through two rounds of edits. Then the publisher decided to discontinue the press. She said she would honor the contract, but my book would have been the last one with this press, and I knew it wouldn’t get the support it needed. I pulled the book (and felt quite bummed about it), but another of that press’s authors reached out and suggested I contact Press 53. Publisher Kevin Watson took on the book, and has done a wonderful job with all aspects of the process. I’ve been very lucky with the generosity of other writers.

 

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 …?

CC:  I love the intensity of the short story. I can plunge into a character’s life during some crucial experience, see what comes of it, then escape. Lately I’ve been enthralled with the possibilities of the essay, but writing short stories gives me the satisfaction of living other lives, however briefly, and I know I’ll keep going back to that.

 

EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?

CC:  I’m one of the few people I know who regularly buys and reads short story collections. I teach four classes a semester and have anywhere from two to five kids living in my blended household at one time, so I need short stories! I love that I can be transported to another world and have a “complete” adventure in one sitting. With novels, I sometimes get too busy to stay connected to the characters and developing plot, so I’m grateful for the bursts of plot and character that the short story provides.

 

EWN:  How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?

CC:  I am determined to finish all the stories in the three collections I bought most recently: Deb Olin Unferth’s Wait Till You See Me Dance, Michelle Ross’s There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You, and Carmen Miranda Machado’s Her Body and Other Stories. I’ve read at least one in each, and they’re wonderful evidence that short fiction as a genre is thriving!

 

EWN:  Thank you very much for your time!

 

Chauna Craig’s debut short story collection is available from her publisher Press 53 and on Amazon. The book is a Next Generation Indie Book Award Winner in the Short Fiction category, a Foreword/INDIES finalist for Short Stories, and a finalist for the High Plains Book Award in two categories, Short Stories and First Book. www.chaunacraig.com

 

NSSM 2018: Mini-interview with Stephanie Carpenter (Missing Persons)

Somebody from our home state of Michigan! Stephanie Carpenter’s Missing Persons was received the Press 53 Short Fiction Award. Here she answers some questions for us.

 

EWN:  Your short story collection, Missing Persons was published in 2017. What story within the collection had the earliest publication history outside of being in the collection, and what was that history?

SC: “Inheritance” was my first published piece, in The Saint Ann’s Review in 2005. That was during the era of paper submissions. After waiting quite a while for a response, I queried the journal and was told they’d never received the piece. Six months later, they accepted the story—without my resubmitting it. As it happened, I was traveling when the editor requested an electronic copy; back then, being away from home meant that I didn’t have access to my files. A staff member scanned my paper submission and I don’t think anyone proof-read the resulting .pdf. “Inheritance” appeared in the journal with many, many extra spaces between paragraphs and with wingdings and dingbats scattered throughout.

 

EWN:  How did the publication of this particular collection come about? Were you solicited by the publisher, win a contest, agent submission, etc.?

SC: I submitted my manuscript to the 2017 Press 53 Award in Short Fiction and it was selected as the winner.

 

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 …?

SC: I tend to write short stories in response to particular provocations: news items, pop culture phenomena, dreams, rumors. Usually my short stories start with my stealing some core aspect of character or plot from such a source. As I draft I figure out what the piece is really about, thematically. This is somewhat different from my process of writing longer works. I see myself primarily as a novelist/novellaist: my long-form projects so far have been historical in setting, driven by research. I don’t usually begin writing in that mode until I’ve done a lot of reading, note-taking, and planning. In contrast to these longer works, my short stories come about more spontaneously.

 

EWN: Where do short stories fit within your life as a reader?

SC: I teach short stories in my creative writing and literature classes. During the school year, I prepare notes on at least three published short stories a week, along with a varying number of student pieces. In my writing workshops, I use the Journal of the Month program as a course text; through that genius program, we receive copies of four different literary journals over the semester. I love this because we’re always reading new work, not just my favorite or most teachable stories. Outside of the classroom, I read more novels than short stories—but more short stories when I’m working in that mode, myself.

 

EWN:  How will you be celebrating National Short Story Month this May?

SC: I teach full-time at a university. All semester I’ve been thinking about but not working on an idea for a story. After my final grades are submitted on May 8^th, I’ll turn to that idea as a means of getting into a regular summer writing schedule. (Most of my summer is designated for an ongoing novella project). Last May I read a story a day for about a week—because someone was posting links on Facebook. Maybe I’ll do better this year.

 

EWN:  Thank you very much for your time!

 

A native of Traverse City, Michigan, Stephanie Carpenter holds a BA from Williams College, an MFA from Syracuse University, and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Missouri. Her first book, Missing Persons, won the 2017 Press 53 Award for Short Fiction and was released in Fall 2017. Her work has appeared in The Missouri Review, Witness, Nimrod, Big Fiction, The Crab Orchard Review and elsewhere. 

Stephanie’s current project, a pair of novellas about professional female artists in nineteenth-century New England, has received fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library. She currently teaches creative writing and literature at Michigan Tech University.