Spineless Wonders Asks Jennifer Mills
Jennifer Mills
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
There are too many. I’ll restrict myself to the living: Cate Kennedy, Paddy O’Reilly, Steven Amsterdam, Gillian Mears, Yiyun Li, Etgar Keret, Karen Russell, and I know he’s won too many awards to be fashionable now but I loved Peter Carey’s Fat Man in History.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
I would have to cite Flannery O’Connor’s masterful story ‘A Good Man is Hard to Find’ for its humour, brutality, incredible tension, brilliant dialogue and character development. I still get shivers thinking about The Misfit. She was really a genius.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
It’s very flexible. I love its capture of pivot points, its nearly mathematical tidiness, and its risk. I can pull off imaginative feats in short stories which I would struggle to hold together in a novel. I like the adaptability of short fiction to different delivery modes, like podcasting. As a novelist, I like the gratification: the end of the job is in sight.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
I like to think of myself as a versatile writer, rather than a consistent one. I tend to buck a little at categorisation.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
The newest ones, of course. At the moment, that’s three that I wrote after being Asialink writer in residence in Beijing last year: ‘Aperture,’ ‘Architecture,’ and ‘Demolition.’
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Conversation, observation, speculation. Eavesdropping. My story ‘Plain Indians’ resulted from a conversation with a friend about land management in which we wondered why no-one had made a Western about bush regeneration. I ended up daring myself to do it.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I’ll jot down an idea and pretend to forget about it for a while, then one day I’ll start writing, usually when I am putting off some other unpleasant work. First draft often happens in a single sitting, but I will craft and carve away for months afterwards. I work alone until I think I am finished, then I like to put my stories to bed for a month or so and come back to them for a second or third finishing.
Very occasionally I will share work at a late draft stage with someone who was there for the story’s genesis. But usually I am on my own until it reaches an editor, with whom I hope I am gracious. I certainly appreciate good editors.
Many of my stories end up in zines or as podcasts on my website, so i am often involved in the publication too.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
By readers, definitely. As an online medium, it’s much more adaptable to new technologies and to the demands of our widening scopes of attention. I don’t have an ebook reader but I am a podcast addict. I think publishers are still catching up to the fact that short stories are the form of the future.
At the same time I think we have always valued a good story. I once had a stranger tell me Henry Lawson’s ‘The Drover’s Wife’ as though it had happened to one of his relatives. He seemed to really believe it was his own personal history and I hadn’t the heart to break it to the man that he had stolen it. The yarn-spinners of the NT are incorrigible plagiarists. But good stories can get inside you in a powerful way, become part of you, and I can’t see that changing.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Love it. My enthusiasm for the DIY potential sometimes clashes with my respectable published life. I wish I had the time and cash to investigate all the possibilities of the various technologies. Hoping 2011 will see some new developments at jenjen.com.au. Meanwhile, I will keep podcasting every month or two.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
I can only repeat the best advice I ever received as a writer, which applies equally to small publishing ventures: Persist.
Jennifer Mills is the author of the novels Gone (UQP, 2011) and The Diamond Anchor (UQP, 2009) and a chapbook of poems, Treading Earth (Press Press, 2009). She was the winner of the 2008 Marian Eldridge Award for Young Emerging Women Writers, the Pacific Region of the 2008-9 Commonwealth Short Story Competition, and the 2008 Northern Territory Literary Awards: Best Short Story. Her work has appeared in Meanjin, Hecate, Overland, Heat, the Griffith Review, Best Australian Stories, and New Australian Stories, and she is a regular contributor to New Matilda and Overland. She lives in Alice Springs.
Her second novel, Gone, will be out through UQP at the end of February 2011.
To find out more about Jennifer Mills, and to listen to podcasts of her stories, visit her website www.jenjen.au
Spineless Wonders Asks Louise Swinn
1.Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Salinger is the biggest cliché but aside from authors I’ve published – too numerous to mention – he still stands out, as does Amy Witting, Dorothy Parker, Michael Chabon. Emmett Stinson’s Known Unknowns has been the most recent to make me stop breathing momentarily. I really dug it.These lists really are difficult, aren’t they. I’d have a different list tomorrow.
2.What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
Again, aside from ones I’ve published and some of Salinger’s Nine Stories, Alistair Macleod’s ‘The Boat’ would be one of them (one of the many).
3. What do you like about the short story form?
There’s that not having to explain thing that I love so much about short stories. They don’t go over the top and have to all match up neatly in the way that novels so often do, to feel well rounded. They are also short, which is good on a tight time budget.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
I’d try to avoid describing my own writing, I guess. People seem to get their own writing wrong, don’t they? I don’t know – carrying on some kind of mundane realist tradition? Interested more in interiors and things not really happening than things actually happening. Interested in the way things don’t really change and sometimes, very occasionally, surprisingly, do.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
Usually always the most recent story, which right now is one I’ve just finished called “It’s Been Going on For a While”. Why – probably because I haven’t spent as long loathing it, because it’s still fresh.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Ideas come from anywhere. Seeing someone do something, hearing an anecdote, looking through a window, imagining what would have happened if there had been a slight shift, something a tiny bit different, to the way things actually worked out. Mainly imagining what it would be like to be the person I’m looking at at the time.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I pretty much go it alone on my stories. I don’t know – I think of something and start mapping out an idea and then start writing it and when I get to the end, if I’m not physically revolted by it, I’ll re-read it and perhaps send it somewhere.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Yes and no. See the past seven years of my life for examples.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I feel excited. For people driving in their car to be able to hear a story – awesome! For those of us who read online all the time nowadays – I like knowing I’m there too.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Advice on starting a press, is that what you mean? I don’t know: if you’re not pissing people off, you’re probably not doing it right? That’s always good advice. Publish what you love. Or if you don’t love it, it should make you wildly rich so that you can publish millions of what you love. Know that if you like it, it has value. I don’t know – all advice is rubbish, isn’t it. Just do it, really.
Louise Swinn is a critic, writer and the editorial director of Sleepers, publishers of The Sleepers Almanac, and of award-winning fiction including Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming. Her most recent story ‘A Clean Kind of Dirt’ is in the current Kill Your Darlings.
Twitter: @Louise_Swinn @sleeperspublish
Websites: sleeperspublishing.com
Spineless Wonders Asks Tiggy Johnson
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Assuming you don’t want a crazy-long list, I’ll list just three: Paddy O’Reilly, Zenda Vecchio, Ryan O’Neill. Make that four: David McLaren.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
There are quite a few, but I’ll choose one, semi-randomly. A story I published in page seventeen Issue 3: ‘The vast expanses of Antarctica’ by David McLaren. The story is funny, real in an unreal kind of way, offers vivid images and McLaren’s writing style is a delight to read with an easy flow.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
It’s compact. You can experience a new world, a new character and their situation, in such a short time.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
I like to write about ordinary people, with ordinary lives, particularly if I’m exposing a reality that many of us often don’t consider, or an issue usually not talked about. There are so many things screwed up in our society that are swept under the carpet. They’re the things I want to write about (although probably not all of them).
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
I’ll go with 2. One is a story in my collection called ‘A dash of milk’. It was one of those pieces that just worked, even as it grew from about 1800 words to 3500. I spent a lot of time trying to get it right, enjoyed the editing process more than I have with other stories, and the feedback I get tells me it was worth the effort. It has also acted as a springboard for other works, in terms of the themes and type/s of characters I want to work with.
The other is a story that is not yet published, called ‘Waiting’. At a prompt from an editor, I tried something completely different when writing this story. Well, a few things different I think. It’s a dark story (darker than usual) with a bit of an experimental form, for me, blending a bit of the real with the unreal. It’s a confronting story and I most like how it stretched me as a writer to achieve something I wouldn’t have guessed I could do.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
With the story I mentioned above, ‘Waiting‘, it was initially sparked by the editor suggesting he was looking for stories that ‘would make his readers feel uncomfortable’. I was keen to accept his challenge, although my initial ideas weren’t working when I tried to put them down. On my way out one night, the news came on the car radio and one of the stories gave me the idea. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but it had something to do with a rapist having had his case heard that day in court, and I instantly thought, imagine being a fly on the wall when that happened. I shared the idea with a friend later, as I didn’t have anything to write it down with, and a brief discussion helped me cement a few extra details, although most details formed themselves when I sat down to write.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I go through phases where my process changes, but my current preferred method is this, and suits me being able to write in shorter chunks of time than to necessarily sit down and do it all in one go. I make notes about an idea as it forms. I write as much as comes to mind at the time, especially if it’s come in dialogue form, or an actual image. Often, I get an idea of what might come next, and if so, I note that down too. When I have some writing time, even an hour, I like to make a rough plan. I do this scene by scene and include any information that applies to that scene. After doing the last scene, I return to earlier scenes and change details as necessary and/or include extras that will help me reach the conclusion (foreshadowing).
Next I write the actual story, from beginning to end.
I was part of a writers’ group last year (but have now moved) and I would get feedback from other members before redrafting. I love this process as it helps me see things I wouldn’t necessarily be able to see, certainly not without letting it sit untouched for a while. I also often have to just let a story sit untouched for a while before coming back to redraft. How many redrafts I do depends on the story and how I felt about it working as I wrote the first draft, although this kind of confidence has come with time as I’ve got to know my writing over the years.
Then I stress a lot about trying to decide where to send it and often take weeks to make a decision. Imminent deadlines help.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Yes and no. In some circles it is and it’s difficult to see outside your own experience. I think the short story has a growing audience, although I suspect this might be more about my hopes for the future than reality.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I’m still not sure how I feel about digital form. It probably has more to do with the publication for me than just a basic consideration of print versus digital. If it’s a publication I respect, the digital form wouldn’t necessarily bother me, although I have withdrawn an accepted story from a publisher after they decided to do a digital print run instead of a paper one. In that instance, I was partly concerned about me not being able to access a copy at all for myself because I don’t have the appropriate technology, but I also didn’t have much time to make a decision and possibly made the wrong one. Who knows.
The same goes for an audio publication, it has more to do with my thoughts on the publisher/producer, although I have the necessary equipment to listen to an audio piece.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
When it comes to selections, listen to your heart; when it comes to all the rest, listen to your head.
Tiggy Johnson co-founded the publication, page seventeen, in 2004. Her stories and poems have been published in various literary magazines and she won 2nd prize in the Herald-Sun Short Story Competition in 2004. Her short story collection ‘Svetlana or otherwise’ (Ginninderra Press) was released in 2008 and her poetry collection ‘First taste’ in 2010. She recently moved from the outskirts of Melbourne to Brisbane and blogs at tiggyjohnson.blogspot.com
Spineless Wonders Asks Julie Chevalier
1.Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Tillie Olsen, Ernest Hemingway,Alice Munro, Pam Houston, Lorrie Moore, Jhumpa Lahiri, Tina Lupton, Katie Chase, Elizabeth Strout. From Australia, Ryan O’Neill and Sue Taylor.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
My current favourite is Sue Taylor’s ‘A Picture is Built’ from her relatively unknown collection, Large Nudes with Small Parrots. Fellow writer, Linda Godfrey gave it to me a year and a half ago and I still think, I want to write like that. When the narrator shows the absurdity of the defences she is constructing, it is as though she is without defences. What remains is a woman listening to a radio broadcast in a self-obsessed paranoid and very funny way. Well, I can identify with that. Lots of humour and an unusual depth of understanding of motivation.
2.What do you like about the short story form?
The invitation to experiment and play. I can write a story from one POV or tense or voice and change it into another on the same day. Radically changing a short story is a 50-yard dash rather than an international marathon.
3. How would you describe your own writing?
I have changed my approach to writing poetry in the last few years and I want to make similar changes in my prose, to loosen up, take more risks.
4. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
‘Cherry Pie’ has always been a favourite. How many stories write themselves on the kitchen table over a cup of coffee? Muse, wherever you are, please send me another one of them! As well, I like ‘The Executioner’, in which the coming of age theme is played out on political as well as domestic levels.
4. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Usually stories start from a few words I overhear, probably incorrectly, or a tiny incident among strangers I think I glimpse and then fantasise about. The story ‘Skim Flat White’ is full of tiny real and imagined interactions on the 470 bus line that runs from Lilyfield to Circular Quay in Sydney. I can’t remember which incident hooked me first.
From the bus I used to stare at a sign on a wooden door in Booth Street which still intrigues me. On the sign is a Greek word for a hierarchy of taxi drivers. I looked it up. I interviewed the sister of the man in the vegetable store. I borrowed a camera and stood in the street to take photographs. I scanned one into the story. I wrote thousands of words imagining what happened up the stairs behind that door. No evidence of that remains in the story.
5. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I write organically. I am not interested in slick script writing solutions or stories that show a character who wants something and has obstacles placed in her way. I like ideas leaping around, plenty of shifts and surprises.
I keep adding and crossing out fragments, hand writing on the backs of printouts, on a clipboard, preferably using a 0.3 pen. I repeatedly copy over and rip up. This annoys anyone around me. An idea starts to flash, look here. I respond to the pressure of workshopping deadlines. Eventually some scraps get selected and arranged and I can see that they might relate to each other. Maybe I do some hasty research in a few areas and more things slot into place. I roughly type this mess into my laptop, save in the latest drafts folder.
Eventually I take the infant story to workshopping with two peers. I rewrite and edit for months or years. The same story gets patiently workshopped maybe three or four times. Suddenly I know what it’s about and can delete what’s unnecessary. I put it aside. Every six weeks or couple of months I meet with my mentor, joanne burns who comments before I send something out, usually poetry. I am so lucky to be surrounded by enthusiastic and inspiring writers.
6. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Increasing interest in the past few years, thanks mostly to publications like Sleepers Almanac, but there is no centre, no clearing house.
I’d like to see an Australian body of short story writers, editors, publishers, even mentors and agents to support writers of short fiction. A national body could make a database that would be helpful to organisers of writers’ festivals, to organisations wanting to run workshops, to groups needing a judge for a competition, or needing a short story writer to teach a class or do a reading. A national organisation could provide a venue for passing information and opportunities around. Maybe they could host a festival or conference occasionally. Perhaps if editors had access to such a clearing house, they would acknowledge that a chapter of a friend’s novel is not the same as a great short story.
7. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
A wonderful opportunity to reach a wider audience.
8. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Buckets full of the best wishes. If you want advice you will ask.
Julie Chevalier writes quirky poetry and short stories in Sydney’s inner west. Remembered phrases, writing exercises, and eavesdropping provide her inspiration. Permission to lie, a collection of her short stories, will be released by Spineless Wonders in May 2011. A poetry collection, linen tough as history, is forthcoming from Puncher & Wattmann. She has completed a book-length series of poems about the life of the artist Henry Darger with the working title, Darger: his girls.
Find out more from Julie’s website http:juliechevalier.net
Interview with Carmel Bird
Most literary awards (Hal Porter, Josephine Ulrick, Elizabeth Jolley) are named after writers who are now dead. How do you feel about the Spineless Wonders short story competition being named after you?
Dead or alive, it is flattering to have my work in short fiction recognised in this way. I never actually think that Elizabeth Jolley, for example, is really no longer living. I suppose that’s the thing about books, maybe, they have a life of their own anyway. And it’s nice to think that I, in a way, am giving new writers the opportunity to see their work recognised and showcased. I do like to be involved in encouraging young and new writers. This is a small way of doing it.
How important do you think such competitions are for writers?
Short story competitions have always been very important to new writers. They help writers to focus their work as it progresses. They give a time-frame. They provide a kind of excitement and hope. They give the story a destination, and even a validation, although only one story will win.
As well as being a writer of short fiction, you have been on the other side of the coin – as fiction editor of Meanjin, for instance and as a competition judge. What can make a short story stand out for you? And what can turn you off?
I like to feel immediately invited into the story, offered the chance to open something up with the writer as the story goes along. Reading is a conversation between the reader and the story, and by implication, the writer. I like to sense the writer’s excitement as the story unfolds. I also like to feel that I as the reader am doing some of the work – this is a courtesy that the writer extends to the reader. A good short story gives me a thrill.
What turns me off is if I find the story dull and boring, I reveal a very personal approach, but I can’t really think of a more specific way of explaining it.
You were editor of The Penguin Century of Australian Stories published back in 2000. It’s a fat book stretching from Barbara Baynton and Henry Lawson to Marele Day and James Bradley. What was that experience like and how might it differ from that of the editors of this current century’s crop of stories?
Well the editor of the 21st Century of Australian Stories will have millions more stories to read. It was an exciting book to do. I had the idea and put it to Penguin, so I feel very personally attached to it. One nice thing was that among the writers I approached for permission to published their stories, only one refused. So I felt the project was really supported by the (living) writers involved. All the stories are works I had read before, and it was really wonderful to bring them all together, and see how they related to each other in various ways. One of the criteria was length. They had to be quite short because of the size of the book.
You are one of the few Australian writers who have published multiple short fiction collections (Birth, Deaths and Marriages, 1983; The Woodpecker Toy Fact and Other Stories, 1987, The Common Rat, 1993 and Automatic Teller, 1996 and The Essential Bird, 2004). How difficult was it to get short fiction published and how did you go about it?
To tell you the truth, I have never had any difficulty having my collections published. I actually just work away at various projects, discussing things with the publisher, and sometimes what appears is a collection of stories. I am always writing something. I love writing short stories, and they build up, and then I put the idea to my publisher. It seems to me that lots of collections of stories are published, although I don’t know the statistics. I realise that publishers often tell writers that the writers need to have novels before the publishers will consider collections – and that seems to me to be fairly logical. Of course these days writers can publish their stories very easily online.
As well as publishing single author collections and short story anthologies, Spineless Wonders will be looking to publish novellas. You were instrumental in the 2006 Novella Competition jointly run by Meanjin and Readings Books. What was that experience like and what observations would you make about the form?
As a judge of the novella competition, I put aside a whole room in my house where I set out the manuscripts on a very long table. I worked my way along the table, and shifted manuscripts back and forth until the short list developed at the far right hand end.
I think the novella is a lovely form. It has the possibility to give that thrill that belongs to the short story, while offering the reader a broader scope for the imagination, while not demanding the commitment demanded by a novel. I look forward to the Spineless Wonders novellas.
About Carmel Bird
In 1981 there was no such thing as a course in writing short stories in Melbourne. Carmel proposed teaching such a course at the Council of Adult Education but was told nobody would be interested. However she persuaded the supervisor to let her run an advertisement and see what happened. The course was fully subscribed and ran for several years.
Subsequently, Carmel ran courses at RMIT where she designed their first course in writing novels. Also courses at Deakin, Holmsglen, Victorian College of the Arts, and at Monash and Latrobe Universities.
Carmel has edited the literary journals Syllable and Fine Line, and was fiction editor at Meanjin from 2003 to 2007. She took part in The Fictitious Woman performance at the 2010 Newstead Short Story Tattoo.
The titles of her collections of short fiction are:
The Essential Bird
Automatic Teller
The Common Rat
The Woodpecker Toy Fact
Births, Deaths and Marriages
The titles of her novels are:
Child of the Twilight
Cape Grimm
Red Shoes
The White Garden
The Bluebird Café
Crisis
Unholy Writ
Open For Inspection
Cherry Ripe
She has edited collections of essays and short fiction:
Home Truth
The Penguin Century of Australian Stories
The Stolen Children – Their Stories
Red Hot Notes
Fathers and Daughters
Her books on how to write are:
Writing the Story of Your Life
Not Now Jack – I’m Writing a Novel
Dear Writer
Carmel grew up in Tasmania and her attachment to that state runs through much of her work. She now lives in Castlemaine, Victoria. Her website www.carmelbird.com first went up in 1996. She is also on twitter, and has a blog at www.carmel-bird.blogspot.com
For details about The Carmel Bird Short Fiction Award see the Submissions page on the Spineless Wonders website.
Spineless Wonders asks Michael Giacometti
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Jorge Luis Borges – Fictions
Nam Le – The boat
Steven Amsterdam – Things we didn’t see coming
Jennifer Mills – her own zines (www.jenjen.com.au); look out for a collection later this year or next
Samuel Beckett – First Love and other novellas
Michael Ondaatje – The collected works of Billy the Kid
Cyril Wong – Let me tell you something about that night
I read Meanjin and Island to keep abreast of contemporary Australian short fiction.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? Why does it stand out for you?
‘The Circular Ruins’ by Borges (published in his Fictions). The opening is sublime, yet it is not until the final sentences that you realise what the opening, and the title, really mean. Repeated readings bring new insights.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
The immediacy. At their best they are gut-grabbing exposes from another world.
I put myself in the Borges camp (as he outlined in the foreword to The Garden of Forking Paths: ‘It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books – setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes … A more reasonable, more inept, and more lazy man, I have chosen to write notes on imaginary books.’
4. How would you describe your own writing?
Decidedly unprolific. Often the stories have a consciously unconscious underlying Buddhist theme, either of being stuck in the never-ending repetitive cycle of samsara, of suffering, or escaping the trap.
‘The uncoupling of Eduardo Martinez’ in the collection Bruno’s Song and other stories from the Northern Territory (NTWC 2011) is an escape story, hidden behind the veneer of Eduardo Martinez, the same-named first-born son of the same-named first-born son, of the … who is, who all have been, the signalman at the local railyard.’ When his father Eduardo suddenly dies, young Eduardo is set to take his place.
‘Just like the Phantom,’ his father used to joke. ‘Same name, same job, but a different person behind the mask.’
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
The ones I am currently composing (mostly in my mind): one, a blind translator visits a remote outback town with a strange, un-nameable curse; another, a story of addiction told in the round, with no beginning or ending, the reader chooses where to start observing and where to break off.
I will always have a fond place for ‘Elijah Upjohn, public hangman’ (although ‘fond’ is probably not the right term for a story that chills me every time I read it) and ‘Encounter at Kalayakapi, circa 1880’ (which Sophie Cunningham asked to publish in Meanjin).
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
If I knew I would drink from that soak more often.
‘West from Failure Creek’, a story recently completed, is an exploration of ego and vainglory, told from the perspective of Captain Sturt at the threshold of failure in his quest to discover and sail upon the inland sea. It grew from a joke about the proposed web domain name for my solo walk across the Simpson Desert in 2008: Sturt’s Hell, or sturtshell, which reads more like ‘sturt shell’. The shell became the metaphor for his grandiose ego. The rest springs from the well of my own adventures, and the vicarious reading of Sturt and others who dared to confront the fearsome interior.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Alone or involve others)
Years go by …
The idea and first draft of what has become ‘Elijah Upjon, public hangman’ was written in 2000; ten years later it won the Trudy Graham Biennial Literary Award (Prose). I am not a flowing writer, allowing any words to come out so that a first rough draft emerges. I edit – I know I should not – as I write. The writing for me is very visual. Often I write notes for scenes, so a story is sketched in pencil; layers and textures are slowly added over time.
I do request, on occasion, feedback from others, but generally I allow large chunks of downtime between drafts. In this way stories evolve slowly, often taking years. They are essentially complete when published, although I cannot resist the red pen when I re-read them.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Hmm. Not financially. $300 for 2000 words in Meanjin. Arnold Zable shook his head when I told him that. How can you survive? 80 cents-a-word in The Age, $1 for The Monthly. I make less than pocket money. It is a sickness … a love job.
Artistically, it seems to be making a comeback thanks to daring publishers (such as Sleepers), excellent writing (Nam Le, Steven Amsterdam), and the critical and public praise for Le’s The Boat. Because of the brevity of the short story, it is a form of writing that should appeal to the now-generation. Maybe as texts, or tweets.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I like the idea of bringing life to words with audio. With the right readers and character interpretation it can be transcending.
The printed book will never die – just look at the comeback vinyl has made – but the demand for digital content will grow. Especially if you can underline passages and write notes in pencil in the margins and procure second-hand digital copies with the ephemera of previous readers.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Avoid the green crystals in the garden. Don’t feel that you are a lesser evolved being because you don’t have (or need) a backbone.
Break a leg. Or somebody else’s (since you have not).
Michael Giacometti is an award-winning writer and adventurer based in Alice Springs. His poetry, fictions and essays have been published in Meanjin, Island, Wild, Fishtails in the dust: writing from the Centre (Ptilotus Press, 2009), How to look after your poet in the event of a cyclone (NTWC, 2009), Adrift: poems inspired by the raft journey of artist Ian Fairweather (NTWC, 2010) and Bruno’s Song and other stories from the Northern Territory (NTWC 2011).
This year, he is the recipient of an NT Writers Fiction Mentorship to work with Melanie Ostell on his manuscript, ‘This Landscape of Failure.’
He is currently an Australian Poetry resident Café Poet at Café Gonzo in Alice Springs.
Spineless Wonders Asks Josephine Rowe
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Australian: Dorothy Hewett
Otherwise: Janet Frame
Living: Sam Shepard
Dead: Richard Brautigan
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
Difficult question, but perhaps ‘Cathedral’ by Raymond Carver. Though it’s the actual drawing of the Cathedral that sticks in my mind, more so than the lead up to that moment. It’s one of the most beautiful happenings in literature. The ending of ‘A Small Good Thing’ is also of that calibre. For all the raving people do about Lish’s involvement in Carver’s writing, I think his shortening ‘A Small Good Thing’ to ‘The Bath’ was criminal.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
Please see question four. It’s buried in there somewhere.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
I am terrible at answering this question. I always mean to come up with a decent answer, and instead wind up talking about how terrible I am at answering this question. But I’ll try again here.
Say a novel is a house you are invited into, and you are able to move around the house from room to room, to open its cupboards and sit at its table and drink from its coffee cups.
By comparison, the short story is a room you are invited into, and from everything contained in that one room you are expected to perceive the house.
Most of my short stories are like a corner of that room, in which there is only a chair or an empty birdcage or a record caught in the runout groove, and I hope that readers are still able to imagine the house.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
At the moment it’s a tie between ‘Love’, the first story in How a Moth Becomes a Boat (you can read it here: http://josephinerowe.com/books/) and a little piece called ‘The Taxidermist’s Wife’, which hasn’t been published yet. ‘Love’ is a favourite simply because it turned out exactly as I meant it to, which doesn’t happen all that often, and ‘The Taxidermist’s Wife’ I like because it’s a little more playful than other recent works.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Writers are essentially of the rag and bone trade. Ideas for stories come from anywhere and everywhere; an overheard conversation or a newspaper article, a souvenir somebody brings back from a place you’ve never thought about visiting, the inscriptions inside the covers of second-hand books. A while back I bought a copy of Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses, with an inscription that reads
Peter – Hope you enjoy this account of ‘A Bear Hunt’ while reflecting on our hunts for ‘The Deer’! I look forward to our future hunts – Billy Hillestad. Athens GA USA, 15 Oct 1984. *
That will probably turn up in a story. About a year ago I was staying with a friend in the country. She’s an op-shopper extraordinaire, and had found a great old book on crocheting for a friend’s birthday. I was reading through the chapter headings, one of which was ‘Suitable For a Lampshade’. I thought that would be a wonderful title, so it stayed in my notebook for a while and eventually I wrote towards it. The result can be read here
* After answering this question I decided to look up Billy Hillestad. This is him
Stand by for a new story entitled ‘How Much Pressure Can a Buck Stand’ or ‘Facts & Myths About Antlers.’
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
My stories mostly start as images or brief exchanges – or, as with ‘Suitable For a Lampshade’, simply as titles – and grow from there in a somewhat fragmented, non-linear manner. They accumulate, is perhaps a better way of putting it. I edit as I go, which means certain paragraphs or sections have gone through numerous edits before I’ve even finished a complete draft. During this process I dance back and forth between longhand and the laptop, and the finished version has usually been hacked down to its bare bones from something much longer.
Ideally I like to let stories sit for a while – a few weeks or a month – then go back and harass them, typically with more omitting. In these final stages I’ll often ask my fiancé, Patrick, to read over them and let me know what’s working and what isn’t. He’s a brilliant writer and a very savvy editor, and usually knows what I’m trying to achieve within any particular story.
I save submission mail-outs for days when I’m having a lousy writing day, then at least I can feel like I’ve achieved something. Even if it’s just writing a cover letter and licking an envelope.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Yes and no. By literary journals and anthologies, they’re definitely valued, at least as valued as they ever were. But to the non-lit journal reading public, they’re often not, and to Australian publishers they are still largely considered to be ‘publishing poison.’ I find that saddening, as US and UK short fiction writers seem to be better off in that regard.
It seems for a short story collection to sell well – as well as a novel – it almost has to be marketed as a novel (or more generically, a ‘book’) rather than what it is: a collection of unrelated stories.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I feel great about audio – three or four years ago most of what I was writing was for performance, or with performance in mind. Possibly one of the reasons dialogue has been overlooked until recent years; it generally doesn’t work all that well when read aloud.
As for digital, I am unabashedly a technophobe. I appreciate the idea of literature in a digital format – affordability and accessibility being major factors – and I can definitely understand the practicalities of a digital library (especially considering my house, which is lined with teetering piles of books due to a lack in shelving). But even if they developed an e-book reader that smelled like a book and felt like a book, one that was safe to read in the bath, I would still prefer the real thing.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
I’m not sure I have helpful advice, but it’s heartening to see publishers who are devoted to short fiction.
You can find out more about Josephine and her publications from her blog, Everything But Snow. Click here.
Spineless Wonders Asks Claire Aman
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
My favourite short fiction authors include Gillian Mears, Patrick White, Elizabeth Jolley, E Annie Proulx.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
The most memorable short story I’ve read was an American story called ‘Berceuse’. I don’t remember who wrote it. I was about nine or ten and it was in a short story anthology from my father’s bookshelf. The narrator was the writer, and it was all misspelt. ‘Berceuse’ meant ‘Because.’ It was a love letter from a young girl, a poor girl, to an older and more powerful man who had abused her. I remember it because it was so heartfelt, and I liked the bad spelling.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
The short story form is fun. Writing one is like going for a gallop. You can pretend to be someone else for a while, very intensely but not for very long. You don’t have to explain too much, and you don’t even need to fully understand the characters or the plot yourself– I like this.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
My writing can tend to be a bit obscure. Feedback is always good, to see if I need to make things clearer. My stories are about the human condition – mostly love and death. They’re often sad but can have funny moments. They’re never about me, always about more interesting people.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
I’m always in love with the latest story I’ve written. Then it’s replaced by the next. It’s probably because I love the work of writing more than the finished article.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Ideas for stories come from my short preoccupations, images that stay in my mind and stored notions. They somehow become synthesised in my mind after rattling around together for a while, and a story forms. There’s usually an image I can’t stop thinking about, and other images and notions gravitate towards it and they all stick together as if it’s magnetic. I know an idea has taken hold when things happening around me refer to the story. It’s not magic but there seems to be a strange subconscious interest at work at those times. I’ve just finished a story that found its expression from a chocolate box, but it fitted with a thought from years ago about pearls, and those images let me tell a story about getting old and dying. I’d wanted to tell the aging story for a long time but I couldn’t do it until those images – the chocolate box and the pearl – had come together. Even then, it couldn’t go anywhere without me reading up on geology. The mind seems to grope around and find the right elements and make them into something new. I trust it, including when it feels like nothing is happening.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
Short stories take only a month or so to write. But I think about them for a long time before I compose anything. I keep a notebook for images and ideas. When I’m happy with a story I show my husband and my son. They’re pretty good for feedback. I send short stories to competitions for feedback. It’s encouraging to be commended or even win something. I submit stories to literary journals and any publishers who are inviting submissions for anthologies. There’s nothing to lose.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Short stories are becoming more popular and there are more collections appearing. Some people say they don’t like short stories because they are always cryptic, but I think this is changing.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Earlier this year, my short story, Jap Floral, was read on ABC radio as part of their Sunday Story series. This was wonderful, and the actor who did the reading was perfect. It’s good to listen to a story. I wish radio would do this more.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Maybe Spineless Wonders could publish some short stories as audio. [Great idea, Claire. We're onto it. Ed.]
Claire Aman grew up in Melbourne and has lived in Grafton for the last 23 years. She works as a town planner and writes in her spare time. Gillian Mears has long been an encouraging presence and Varuna, The Writers’ House has also helped cultivate her writing life. Her short stories have been published in Scribe’s New Australian Stories 1 & 2, Black Inc.’s Best Australian Stories 2008 and in Southerly, Island and Heat.
Her stories have received honourable mentions, commendations and have been shortlisted in the Tasmanian Wildcare Nature Writing Prize 2007, Federation of Australian Writers Angelo B Natoli Award 2007 & winner, 2010, EJ Brady Award 2008, Alan Marshall Award 2008/9/10, Hal Porter Short Story Award 2009, Southern Cross Literary Award 2010.
Spineless Wonders presents … Interview with Caroline Reid
What is Spineless Wonders presents … and why are you so excited about it?
It’s a night of short story readings, in a local pub, by professional actors. I’m calling it Spineless Wonders presents … a short evening of tall stories.
The pub is a city pub (in Hindmarsh, Adelaide) with a country feel, there’s not many of them left. The Jolly Miller is a place where community clubs and groups have meetings. The manager is right into supporting the community and local talent.
I’m uber excited because it’s the ideas and enthusiasm of many different people coming together: Writers, actors, director, publisher and a pub audience. It’s about telling new, quality Australian stories in a relaxed environment. We’re reading six stories by published Australian writers followed by some music by an original Adelaide singer/song-writer. Short, sharp, entertaining.
What is a short story reading and how does it differ from a playreading or theatrical performance?
A short story reading is all about the words, about storytelling, no bells and whistles. There’s no lighting or costume, no sound effects. Just one actor telling a single story. It’s a good challenge for actors to keep their audience entertained and engaged for ten minutes telling someone else’s story. You’ve still got to pay attention to structure, changes in thought and pace, how you’re going to deliver dialogue, accent and diction – all the stuff that you need to consider in a play reading or stage performance.
Tell us about your own background in theatre.
After finishing an Arts degree in theatre and creative writing in the early nineties I was commissioned by Black Swan Theatre to write a play but it didn’t really go anywhere. It’s still in my bottom drawer. In my twenties I knew I wanted to say something but I didn’t know what. So I shut up. Then, in 1999 I was appalled after reading about the incredibly high rate of youth suicide in Australia. A friend, theatre director, encouraged me to write about it. Ten years and three productions later (in WA and SA) that play, Prayer to an Iron God, was published by Currency Press. Sadly, the rate of youth suicide is on the rise again.
I’ve written for youth and community theatre. The Proper Shoes was developed in conjunction with the women at DADAA (Disability in the Arts, Disadvantaged in the Arts WA), broadcast on Radio National and performed as part of an inclusive Festival in Kilkenny, Ireland. Working in theatre is a lot of fun. It’s such a fantastic process of building, layer upon layer. It’s wonderful watching it all come together. Theatre has taught me how to listen, it’s taught me patience and creative problem solving. And it’s allowed me to meet some wonderful people.
You are a short fiction writer as well as a playwright. Tell us about the kind of writing you do. Is your short fiction influenced by your experience in theatre?
I’ve been described as a narrative, lyrical writer. But I like terse writing too and putting humor into stories. Make em laugh, make em cry. I like a sense of the ridiculous, but not too much. I’m still making discoveries about my writing, I hope this doesn’t stop. In the past, my best writing has been character based, I often start with character when writing plays. I’ve got a thing about dogs and vodka in my stories at the moment, so there’s a collection waiting to happen.
Right now I’m concentrating on narrative and that’s a lot of fun, trying to relinquish control of where a story is going. I find it quite liberating. I’m definitely more focused on short story writing now. Playwriting takes me such a long time. I find it exhausting. It’s strange, I got sort of stuck in one form (plays) and had to give myself permission to move away from that. Ah, but there’s another reason why I’m so excited about Spineless Wonders presents … a short evening of tall stories – it’s a way of combining elements of both the short story form and theatre.
As well as offering short story readings, you will be running workshops and masterclasses next year. Have you some tips today for writers who want to do public readings of their stories?
- Practise what you’re going to read. Out loud. Read it to your Mum, your dog, your friend. If you have none of these, record it on your mp3 player or your computer, leave it for a day or two then listen back – be critical – do you have an annoying upward inflection at the end of every sentence? Can you understand every word? How’s your pace, are you reading too fast? Try varying the pace, take pauses, change the dynamics.
- Be choosy about what you’re going to read. Some pieces are magnificent on the page, but may not be so good read aloud. Don’t be afraid to edit your work if you feel it’s too long. It’s not sacrosanct (even though you might think it is). And if you feel it’s too long, so will your audience. Leave them wanting more.
- Warm up your voice before a reading. Take a deep breath through your nose and hum the breath out; do this at different pitches. Do it in the car on the way to the gig. Hell, do it on the bus. Try a few tongue twisters (‘I’m not the pheasant plucker, I’m the pheasant plucker’s son and I’m only plucking pheasants til the pheasant plucker comes’ – that’s always been a favourite of mine). There are books written on this stuff, find them. Not only will a few voice warm-ups make you heard and stop you from tripping over your tongue, they will also calm your nerves.
- If you’re really really nervous, try Dutch courage. Works wonders.
- Look at your audience occasionally.
Your first gig is coming up in September. Tell us a bit about the process you are going through – eg choosing the stories, working with the actors.
Okay. The stories are already chosen for the first gig. They’re all by published writers. The emphasis is on quality. We want to provide a platform for writers who are serious about their craft. Most of the writers we will showcase have a connection with Spineless Wonders in some way, such as Julie Chevalier and Alec Patric whose collection will be out in October.
For the September gig I’ve chosen stories that are quite short. Most of them are about 1000 words, the longest being 1300 – that’s Jennifer Mills’ Look Down With Me that was published in Bruno’s Song and other stories from the Northern Territory.
I’m hoping the September gig will be the first of many. My wish would be to perform every second Tuesday night of the month. So it’s a bit of a trial, this first one. I’m very interested to see how an audience will react. Maybe down the track we’ll include an open mic section, if the demand is there.
Most of the actors I know from living in Adelaide three years ago. They’re all professionals, they know how to read a script, so we’re not being heavy handed with rehearsals. They’ve already honed their performance skills. We’ll meet a couple of times before the performance to make sure we’re on track and clear up any grey areas. I trust them. And I trust the material they’ve got to work with. The stories are excellent and diverse. It will be an entertaining and unusual night, I promise.
And finally, what else is planned for Spineless Wonders presents… ?
I’ve had discussions with writer, Jen Mills, who lives in country South Australia, and is keen to get something like this on the road, touring country towns. I believe it’s very possible, 3 actors in a van.
Into the future, I’d like to see us taking part in writers festivals. We are looking at performing readings and offering Writers Reading workshops at next year’s Emerging Writers Festival. That all means finding money to pay our actors and their expenses. But I’m hopeful. People have been really enthusiastic about what we are doing. It’s fantastic.
SPINELESSWONDERS presents…
at THE JOLLY MILLER TAVERN, Hindmarsh
Tuesday, September 13th
at 7pm for a 7.30 start
Spineless Wonders Asks Kim Westwood
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
I’m currently being impressed by Laura van den Berg. Some others for today (tomorrow I’ll think of more I wish I’d said) would be Janette Turner Hospital (‘The Prince of Darkness is a Gentleman’ was very powerful), Margo Lanagan’s anthology Black Juice, and Nalo Hopkinson’s stories in Skin Folk. A long-time favourite is Italo Calvino’s beautiful vignette style in Invisible Cities.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
What sprang to mind first when I saw this question was a story by Helen Garner about a magician. In fact, it’s an article about going to see a magician perform. ‘The man with the pearl-white cord’ is a thing of beauty about a thing of beauty: evocative and spare, everything limned to perfection. Then I thought of a story called ‘The boy who could lay eggs’. I searched for it in my bookshelves, and discovered it was a poem. The poet, Caroline Price, had created such a powerful moment in time that I’d incorporated it into my memory as a short story. Genres of things have a peculiar way of merging in my head.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
As a reader: the enjoyment of a compact story arc. As a writer: the challenge of a compact story arc. To me, the short story is about creating a world that fits perfectly in a teacup. It’s a good balancer to novel writing, which is like heading into the labyrinth to find the Minotaur, and which takes me years—and an awful lot of string—to work my way out again.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
Personal. Political. Poetic. Ooh—alliteration!
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
Probably ‘Nightship’, a grungy industrial dystopia set on Australia’s eastern seaboard. It rattles hard at the cage of sex-and-gender power structures, and was launched in equal part by documentary footage I once saw of a woman being stoned to death, and the sight of fox pelts strewn across a bed in Harrods, London. I’ve always known there’s a much bigger story hiding in there, so I’m turning it into a novel. Out of the teacup into the labyrinth…
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
It can be from an image that sticks in my mind, or a phrase or poetic line that feels really full, like a grape wanting to burst. To explore it, I have to write. No other medium will do. It’s my version of an archeological dig. But it’s as much internal as external. I dig the inside and the outside concurrently and never know where I’m going to end up. I’m not a writer who constructs the skeleton of the story then fleshes in the details. This is moot for ‘Nightship’. Unstitching all its seams and laying it out raw again, who knows where it will go?
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
Private. Very private. I keep the story in the brain bubble for as long as possible, because I’ve learnt that’s how my imagination works best. It’s important to find your process and honour it. When I think I’m done and the story has been worked to a shine, I let it out for appraisal. But I choose those people very carefully. I’m not into group discussion. The last—the only—time I did that partway through a story, it destroyed my ability to finish it. To return to an earlier analogy, it’s like opening a piece of fruit before it’s ripe. It oxidises too early.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
I’m not sure how to answer this, because I don’t feel like I have my finger on the public pulse. But I’m reminded of a quote I saw recently by Simon Prosser, the publishing director of Hamish Hamilton. He said ‘the short story form is better suited to the demands of modern life than the novel.’ These days everything seems to need to be faster and in smaller bites, which points to Simon Prosser being on the right track. As far as choice, there are quite a few competitions and plenty of publications that accept short stories; but is the form valued generally, or by just a few? I honestly don’t know who’s out there reading those stories.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Great idea. The wider the range of media the better. I signed the permission for The Daughters of Moab, my first novel, to be made into an ebook because my friend Brenda said how much she likes reading her Kindle. And I got a thrill hearing ‘Tripping over the Light Fantastic’ (a dance tragic goes to a dance studio audition) being read on ABC Radio. It was fun—not to mention challenging—to record ‘Nightship’ for Terra Incognita, the Australian speculative fiction podcast site. More recently I’ve discovered the excitement of going to word performances and poetry slams.
Click here to listen to ‘Nightship’.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Advice? Don’t think you need advice—just a big thumbs up for what you’re doing!
KIM WESTWOOD realised she might be a bit speculative when her story ‘The Oracle’ won a 2002 Aurealis Award. Since then there’s been more speculation, much of it with an apocalyptic air. Her stories have been chosen for Year’s Best anthologies in Australia and the US, and for ABC radio broadcast. She is the recipient of a prestigious Varuna Writer’s Fellowship for her first novel, The Daughters of Moab. Her second novel, The Courier’s New Bicycle, will be released in August by Voyager, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Set in Melbourne just a few years and political changes from now, it’s twenty days in the adrenaline-fuelled life of Salisbury Forth: bike courier, Animal Protection Vigilante and gender transgressive.
For more details and Kim’s full bio, go to www.kimwestwood.com
Spineless Wonders Asks Irma Gold
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Some of my favourite contemporary Australian short fiction writers are Cate Kennedy, Nam Le, Helen Garner, Marion Halligan, Gillian Mears and John Clanchy. For the ‘otherwise’ who can possibly go past Alice Munro? And then there are the greats of the past, Chekov and Carver being two I admire most.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
At the moment it’s Chris Womersley’s ‘Theories of Relativity’ which I first read back in March last year. It’s the unsettling and haunting tale of a dysfunctional and deeply troubled family. The story is beautifully constructed and written, with an arresting opening line: ‘You learn things in this life, don’t you, whether you like it or not.’ Every time I read ‘Theories of Relativity’ I am transfixed, compelled to read on to the brutal conclusion even though I now know what is coming.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
As a reader I like that I can finish a story in one sitting. On the bus, over a cup of tea, lying on the beach. There is a particular pleasure in that complete slice of time, and the best stories linger in the mind long after the last word has been read.
As a writer I like that I can complete a story quite quickly and that, unlike a novel, I can easily hold the whole thing in my head. I also like that the story is a glimpse into a larger world. The characters must be authentic, fully-formed, and the reader must be able to imagine that they have a life outside the brevity of the pages. A single word or sentence has the potential to suggest so much. There’s nowhere to hide in a short story. Every word counts. And a passage that doesn’t work will stand out, everything’s exposed. I enjoy that challenge. I recently heard Kate Grenville describe the short story as a bikini compared to the novel as a baggy overcoat. A wonderful analogy.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
My stories explore the challenges and difficulties ordinary people face and their struggle towards some kind of happiness. Sometimes they get there, sometimes they don’t, and sometimes they discover an unexpected kind of happiness in the smaller things. Dean Gorissen, who illustrated and designed the cover of my new short fiction collection, Two Steps Forward, described my stories as being about the real Australia, the one ‘not in the tourist brochures’, which I think is true. There has been much debate since the announcement of this year’s Miles Franklin Award on how we define ‘Australianness’ in literature. The shortlisted books were all written by men that engage with the past in rural settings. All great books I might add, yet most of us live in cities. We seem to have got stuck with this rather antiquated and romantic idea of what represents Australian life. Yet so many writers are producing award-worthy stories that engage with our contemporary city-based lives. I, too, am interested in engaging and reflecting this world, focussing on people who manage to find light among the shadows.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
It’s difficult to choose, and my favourites are always changing. I think I have three that I’m equally fond of right now for different reasons, all from my collection Two Steps Forward. Creating ‘The Art of Courting’ was an immensely enjoyable experience. It’s written in second person and this allowed me to play with language in a particular way. It’s about a single woman in her forties who plays a series of flirtatious games with a man who moves into the neighbourhood. So the story itself has a sense of play and the language does too. It’s a joyous story, and I hope people share that feeling as they read.
In contrast ‘The Third Child’ is about a woman who loses a child to miscarriage. I wanted to write about miscarriage because as a society it’s something we fail to talk about, both at a public and personal level. It’s also an experience that is not represented well in literature or movies where we are mainly offered clichéd images of a woman clutching her stomach, a bit of blood, and then it’s all over. It’s rarely like that, so I wanted to write something that was authentic. I’ve had a lot of people – both men and women – tell me this is their favourite story in the collection.
And then there’s ‘Sounds of Friendship’, set in a caravan park. When I met Dean Gorrissen for the first time he told me that this story made him cry, and also that he thought I would look different to what I actually did, because he felt I must have direct experience of that world to write about it. This was really heartening for me. That I created a world that was so believable for him that he felt it must be autobiographical.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
In truth, I mostly have no idea where my stories come from. Sometimes it can be sparked by a snatch of dialogue I overhear (I think most writers are terrible eavesdroppers), or by a ‘character’ I come across, or a situation I encounter. An idea comes to me and I mull it over before consciously sitting down to write it. But mostly a story seemingly comes out of nowhere. I begin writing having no idea where it is going to take me. I feel like I am just following it, allowing it to unravel. And I love that process, that sense of discovery. For instance with my story ‘Tangerine’ an image came to me of a man and a young girl standing together on a platform in the middle of the night. They were ill at ease with each other, and I wanted to know why this was, and what they were doing on that platform. The story unfurled from there.
These kind of stories usually come in fits and spurts over a few days, often when I’m in spaces where my mind can freefall. I can be drifting into sleep or out walking or driving the car, when I have to suddenly switch on the bedside lamp or pull over the car and begin scribbling furiously.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I work very much in isolation to begin with. I don’t even talk about the story to anyone. It feels too fragile. As if a comment (even a positive one) could prevent the story from emerging in the right way. I work in both longhand and straight onto my laptop. Each story tends to be a mix of the two processes. As I write I’m always going back and editing. I suppose this is one of the perils of also being an editor. But while many writers see this as a negative (if you’re permanently editing you’re not getting on with the story), I find doing this kind of revision allows me to be suspended in the space of the story, thinking deeply – in both conscious and unconscious ways – about what will come next. Once I have a polished first draft I like to get editorial feedback, either from the short story group I am part of, or from other editors whose advice I value. I enjoy this refining process, working hard to make the story as good as it can be. Once I have completed several drafts I usually put the story aside for a few weeks. This allows me to come back to it fresh and see what else needs to be done. I know a story is finished when I go through it changing a word here, a comma there, and then on the next reading change them back again.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
It’s certainly valued by writers but readers don’t seem as taken with the form. And yet it seems to me that the short story is perfect for our time-poor modern existence. Then again they demand a great deal from their readers. Short stories are dense, they are closer to poetry than they are to the novel. Publishers don’t like them either because they think they’re economically unviable. Yet it does seem that the form is slowly regaining some favour, inch by inch. The success of books like Nam Le’s The Boat and Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad and Steven Amsterdam’s Things We Didn’t See Coming have demonstrated that a collection can attract a large readership. Let’s hope this gentle trend continues.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
There are now so many different ways for readers to access stories. I’m all for any medium that gets stories out there.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Well done for supporting the fabulous but underappreciated short form. Continue to be bold and brave!
Irma Gold is an editor and award-winning writer. She was born in England, grew up in Melbourne and now lives in Canberra. Her short stories have been widely published in Australian journals like Meanjin, Island and Going Down Swinging, and her debut collection of short fiction, Two Steps Forward, was released by Affirm Press as the final book in its Long Story Shorts series this month. She is also the author of two children’s books, and is currently working on a novel. Read her blog here at Overland literary journal.
You can watch the trailer for Two Steps Forward by clicking here.
Spineless Wonders asks A.S.Patric
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Lydia Davis comes to mind first. That term, short story, sometimes gets redefined. What it means. What’s still possible. Lydia Davis cracks open words and out spills new DNA. Everything is changed. I am no longer who I was. I’m part of something more interesting, more unknown yet better understood. These are the kinds of writers I love best. Then there’s that Hemingway bravado of the sentence, Wells Tower and that elusive electric connectivity of his stories. There’s my splendid personal troika, Updike, Cheever and Paul Bowles. The humour and humanity of Keret. That Russian combination of grit & grace in writers like Gogol, Chekhov and Tolstoy. Lahiri has such a lovely kind of pathos and sense of family and place. There’s Philip O’Ceallaigh, Joe Meno, Andre Debus, that have all thrilled me again and again. There’s the tragically ignored genius of Ivo Andric. There are glorious women like Flannery O’Connor, Grace Paley, Lorrie Moore and Deborah Eisenberg. All of these writers and others have broken me open and tampered with my DNA.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
Tolstoy’s Death of Ivan Ilych killed me. Which is to say, gave me the experience of death–> relentless and certain. That sense Tolstoy had of meaning coming from tragedy, and his incomparable spirit, which breathed life through words and made my entire skeleton glow like coals in a fire. The Damned Yard by Ivo Andric, How to be the Other Woman by Lorrie Moore, Some Other, Better Otto by Deborah Eisenberg, Sir Fleeting by Lauren Groff, The Overcoat, by Gogol, all force themselves into this answer. More want to come through but I’m going to skip to the next question.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
Virtuosity.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
I hope my writing has a balance of qualities. Readability and experimentation. Diversity and coherence. Humour and insight. Lightness and weight. Density and clarity. Sincerity and bravery. Modesty and audacity. More than anything, I hope it’s just good, solid storytelling.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
Movement & Noise. Of course there’s that feeling of choosing your favourite child, but I’ve had about 60 such children and the truth is that some of them come out bright and strong, robust with a kind of life you yourself don’t own. There’s the occasional story that feels wayward, even troubled, though I can’t think of any I’d actually disown. Movement & Noise is a piece that fills me with a sense of fatherly pride every time I look at it. It’s the sense that it is as well made as your love and luck can manage.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Ideas comes from genius. That’s not something anyone can be. It’s not somewhere you can live but it’s within us all and we recognise it as something within ourselves when it’s reflected in another person. So a writer pulls a rabbit out of a hat–> one that we’ve been wearing.
I recently wrote a novella called The Action. It started as a conversation, at work, with a friend. Since we spend hours in that bookstore we’re both employed in, we’re always talking about writers. We started chatting about Kafka and I thought about that famous scene where Joseph K wakes up one morning in The Trial. I asked my colleague, wouldn’t it be cool to write a story from the perspective of one of the men that comes to arrest Joseph K. I wasn’t serious. It was almost a joke, but his face lit up, and at that point I knew I had to write it. I was surprised that it kept opening up the way it did, especially since it was set within Kafka’s geography and generation, and most of my stories are proudly Melbournian. If I think about it, I suppose the reason is that while The Action isn’t Kafkaesque at all, it was a response to the immense influence he had on me when I was in my early twenties. I spent a year or two in his company, day and night. It wasn’t always pleasant but it woke me up to a deeper sense of humanity. The Action is something that came from the genius that Franz Kafka really did seem to make all his own.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I could write books on Process. I think it’s the big question of any kind of creator’s life. Because how we get beyond our own blah-blah, our mediocrity, isn’t easy. I like that Nietzsche quote, ‘Truth is a mobile army of metaphors’. I feel like I need to keep coming up with new metaphors for every new project so I’m not just repeating the same kind of shit again and again.
For example, I used to think about traffic lights in writing. We begin with a green light but soon come to a red. While we work out the direction of the piece, familiarise ourselves with the landscape, deal with road rage, cats darting across the road, we negotiate greens, ambers and reds. I threw away all that allegorical junk and thought about how I could get to a place where it’s green lights from start to finish. I got to a point where I could write a 5000 word story in a day but then there are stories that dwell in those red lights for a year or more, and they’ve got value as well.
Recently I started thinking about stories like they are bubbles in the no-space of (un)consciousness. We can leave a story for months or years and if we’re careful, we can re-enter the space of that story and continue as though nothing has changed at all. Or if we think about something like Chekhov’s Lady With a Little Dog, I think what we love about it, is that it’s such a pristine, perfect little bubble.
And yes, people are always part of the process for me. Everyone at work is constantly getting pestered by me and my stories. What we are doing is communicating so I’m always eager to transmit. Since you become very annoying very quickly, doing that, it’s best if you can find people who actually want to tune into your station. Being attentive and respectful of any and all responses is of course vital.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
No, I don’t think it is. Whenever I encourage customers to read short stories in the bookstore, there’s the usual prejudice of ‘Oh, no, I don’t read short stories.’ All you can do is light a candle and not curse the darkness but I’m still trying to work out how to build a nuclear bomb in that respect.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Well, they say we’re seeing the end of print media. How do I feel about it? For some reason the Kubrick film pops into my mind–> Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Learn how to meditate.
(That’s a joke even though I’m totally serious. It’s the best advice I can give any writer.)
A. S. Patric writes in Melbourne and is a St Kilda bookseller. Alec is featured in Best Australian Stories 2010 and has also found publication in literary journals like Overland, Wet Ink, Quadrant, Etchings, Going Down Swinging, Page Seventeen, The Victorian Writer, The Diamond & the Thief, Blue Dog, (untitled) #2, Blue Crow, Miscellaneous Voices, Dot Dot Dash, The Lifted Brow, Blue Giraffe, Stop Drop and Roll and the Australian Poetry Centre’s publication, Dear Dad. His novella, The Rattler, was shortlisted for the Lord Mayor’s Creative Writing Award and received a High Commendation. His crime story, Hemisphere Travel Guides: Las Vegas For Vegans, won the 2011 Ned Kelly/S.D. Harvey Award. Music For Broken Instruments, his first collection of poetry, was published in June 2010 by Black Rider Press. He has taught Creative Writing at RMIT and is co-editor of Verity La, an online journal that is archived by the National Library of Australia. Alec was a judge in the Essence of St Kilda Word Prize 2010.
Alec’s short fiction collection, The Rattler & other stories is published by Spineless Wonders and will be launched in Melbourne on Friday, 21st October.
Spineless Wonders Asks Andy Kissane
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
My favourites include Jhumpa Lahiri, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore and A.L. Kennedy. This year I read the best short story cycle I’ve ever read, Elizabeth Strout’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, Olive Kitteridge. It’s a portrait of the inhabitants of a small town in Maine as much as it is of the central character, Olive Kitteridge, who stars in some stories, while in others she is just talked about and in one story all that she does is wave to the jazz pianist. I loved it. As far as Australians go, I’m a big fan of John Murray’s A Few Short Notes on Tropical Butterflies (Penguin, 2004). I don’t know if John is still writing short stories, but I hope he is. David Malouf’s Dream Stuff is a very strong collection.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
There’s no way I can narrow it down to one. I love Jhumpa Lahiri’s “A Temporary Matter” in Interpreter of Maladies for the beauty of its prose, its heart-rending story of the end of a relationship and for its sophisticated use of one character’s point of view that effectively illuminates two people. James Baldwin’s “Going to Meet the Man” in the collection of the same name is probably the most powerful story I’ve ever read, but it’s also remarkable for its clever manipulation of time, Baldwin’s compassion for the story’s racist policeman and his gripping, visceral narration of violence. I love Raymond Carver’s “A Small, Good Thing” for the way the story of a baker and a family’s tragedy intersect. It captures both the sense of crippling alienation that living in a city has for many people, as well as delivering a way out of it. Although Gordon Lish did improve Carver at times, he certainly butchered much that was very fine and which is now available to us again. There’s no way that “The Bath”, Lish’s truncated version, is better than the emotional punch that “A Small, Good Thing” delivers. The first short story writer I fell in love with was Peter Carey, buying a hardback copy of War Crimes from the Ivanhoe newsagency when I was twenty. I can’t forget “Exotic Pleasures” with its addictive, evil birds or “American Dreams” with its scathing critique of tourism and the surprising twist at the end. Carey remains a giant of the Australian short story.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
What’s not to like. It’s a kick to the guts, an electric shock, a pure pulse of adrenalin. So much can be done within a short story, from uproarious comedy to captivating suspense. The short story can deal with multiple narratives as Lorrie Moore does in “Real Estate”, it can present one character in rich detail as Chekhov does in “A Boring Story”, it can mime the richness of a central metaphor as Tony Birch does in “The Sea of Tranquillity”. You can read it in an evening and if the story is top notch, then re-read it and still be hooked. Then there’s the strangeness that runs right through the form, from Herman Melville’s “Bartelby” to T.C. Boyle’s “Tooth and Claw”. I’m not sure why I love stories so much, it’s just something that’s happened gradually over the years as I’ve continued to read and write. One of the advantages of a short story is the way you can hold it all in your mind, which is not something I can do with most novels.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
Initially I wanted to write poetic prose like Michael Ondaatje and Toni Morrison and there are elements of that impulse in Under the Same Sun and in some of my early stories. But gradually I became much more impressed by writers who aren’t obviously show ponies, writers like Colm Tóibín, Pat Barker and J.M. Coetzee who write beautiful unadorned rhythmical prose that tells a story and sings in a quieter, less obvious manner. That’s what I now aspire for, but whether I achieve it or not is really for a reader to say. The other shift for me was from writing historically researched novels to a book of short stories that is largely contemporary, except for one story that cuts between a nineteenth century frontier Queensland narrative and a contemporary university setting.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
Probably “Old Friends” which was first published in The Sleepers Almanac No 4 http://sleeperspublishing.com/and will be in The Swarm (forthcoming from Puncher and Wattmann around July 2012). A friend of mine calls it the barbeque story, because the central character decides that in response to the dreaded question people ask, ‘So what do you do?’ he will just respond, ‘I barbeque, I’m a barbeque man.’ It’s partly about male identity, but it’s also about unrequited love, death and catching up with friends years later, when life hasn’t quite worked out as you thought it might when you were twenty. I tried to capture that sense of living in a contemporary world, when nothing much is resolved, when the protagonist is struggling rather than being hugely successful and just making the best fist of it he can. It’s a hopeful story, but the hope comes from the struggle, from just living.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Probably different for every story. “Old Friends” came from the time I worked with actors producing audio books at Royal Blind Society and is partly inspired by hearing about their lives, but much of it is made up. I wrote “In my Arms” after hearing about people who lost their daughter in a swimming pool accident, but I never met them. Sometimes my stories are inspired by stories written by other writers, Jhumpa Lahiri for example. “The Fibbing Bird” came partly from the time I spent chopping and carting wood from two fallen trees in what was a jungle below our house, but the rest of it I made up. The first line of “Vanilla Malted”, ‘It’s the happiest day of my life when Tony brings this girl home’ I heard someone say at a wedding reception and that was enough to kick-start the story. Recently I’ve been playing around in poetry with bringing authors and fictional characters back to life, such as Raskolnikov, Captain Ahab and John Keats, and “The Elusive Tenant”* is driven by a similar impulse. It’s a surreal exploration of what might happen if you put Marc Chagall in St. Peters, Sydney, rather than St. Petersburg, in the late twentieth century. Chagall’s paintings were a central inspiration for that story.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
Writing is a very solitary activity and you have to go it alone initially. But I’ve recently become very motivated when I showed work to people and I’ve decided to try to do that more often. After umpteen drafts you lose the capacity to experience the thing as a reader does, for the first time. Apart from that, my process involves starting somewhere and hoping that the thing will work and that I’ll end up with a story that hangs together. Trusting my instincts and my intelligence and just working at the thing. I used to have a lot of trouble finishing stories, but I’m slowly getting better at endings. I’m a big believer in the Alistair MacLeod method of putting the thing away for 6 months and then having another go at it. When it feels as if another person wrote the thing, then you’re in a good position to work on it and see it as a reader might. And MacLeod is another giant of the short story, so he must have been doing something right. Is there a better ending in contemporary fiction than the beautiful last paragraph of “The Boat?”
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
I’d like to see more value given to the substantial, twenty page story. What is it with 3000 words? Why limit Australian short fiction to these abbreviated disappointments? The Americans provide places for writers to publish longer short stories and the results are there for all to see. The yearly Best American collections are almost always stronger than the Best Australian collections. This is partly due to population, but it’s also because more can be done in a longer short story and if done well, then they’re more satisfying to read. There’s more space for the writer to develop a story with emotional heft and more scope for a reader to become fully engaged with the story’s concerns. The length of a story should not be a major factor in whether it gets published and read; often stories need to be longer than a postcard to work effectively. In Henry James’s day, when writers made a living from short fiction, the average story length was 8,000 words. It would be good to move back in that direction. I realise there are sometimes constraints because of space, but thankfully even that seems to be changing with Australian Book Review’s Elizabeth Jolley competition now taking stories up to 5,000 words. Be great to see Spineless Wonders embrace the longer short story.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Audio is great, I used to produce audio books so I’m a big fan of them. If people want to read from a screen then that’s fine by me, but I like to hold a book in my hands and smell the paper.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Cultivate rich patrons and friends who can cook. Dream big. Just do it. I doubt that you really need any advice. Good luck! 
Andy Kissane lives in Sydney and writes fiction and poetry. His first novel, Under the Same Sun (Sceptre, 2000) was shortlisted for the Vision Australia Audio Book of the Year. A book of short stories The Swarm will be published by Puncher & Wattmann in mid 2012. He has published three books of poetry, Facing the Moon, Every Night They Dance and Out to Lunch (Puncher & Wattmann, 2009), which was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Prize for Poetry. He has taught Creative Writing at four universities and runs writing workshops for schools and the community. He coaches basketball, barracks for the Brisbane Lions, and is busy regenerating a bush garden. http://andykissane.com
*Andy’s story, The Elusive Tenant, appears in Escape, the latest release from Spineless Wonders. Available for $24.99 from our website or ask your local bookstore for a copy.
Spineless Wonders Asks Susan McCreery
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Amy Hempel, Miranda July, Raymond Carver, Alice Munro, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Peters, Wells Tower, Etgar Keret, Karen Hitchcock.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
Tricky, since I have a few faves. So I’ll cheat and narrow it down to two: ‘Feathers’ by Raymond Carver and ‘Something That Needs Nothing’ by Miranda July. With ‘Feathers’ I was out-loud laughing at the teeth on top of the TV and the ugly baby. He’s a master at making the ordinary into a page-turner. ‘Something That Needs Nothing’– well, Miranda July just breaks your heart. Funny, too. Can I mention another one? ‘Day of the Butterfly’ by Alice Munro.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
The craft of small things. Honing language. The fact that it’s so hard to get right, keeps you trying.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
I know how I’d like to be writing – like Amy Hempel, Miranda July, Raymond Carver… I’ve had more attempts at answering this question than any other. I guess my style is still evolving. I firmly believe you have to find your own truths, whether they’re hip or not. Otherwise it’s pointless. I’m also trying to make my stories denser, less thin. Becoming more confident with complexities. I’ve written plenty of domestic, relationship/children stories, and I’d like to try to extend myself into a wider landscape. But then again, if that’s my truth…
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
I’ve always been fond of a story I wrote when I was about 19 (sooo long ago). It’s a delicate little 800-worder, about a lonely girl and a cleaning woman. I don’t think I can ever do that again. No point in looking back, though.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
I’m learning to trust my subconscious. I’ve wasted too many years thinking ‘if I don’t have the most brilliant idea it’s not worth starting’. Wrong. You only have to start for the ideas to come. And you’ll never improve if you don’t start. I’ve actually found that planning kills it for me. One method that can unearth surprises is to write to the sound of a loudly ticking timer – no stopping till the bell rings. This seems to quell distractions and editor-think. I handwrite first and only transfer to computer after I’ve scrawled enough pages to look like a story. Some of the stories I’m happiest with have started with a simple freewrite, to limber up. It’s almost as though I uncover the story as I write. Sometimes, when I’m flagging, I’ll break off and read someone I admire to reinvigorate me. I go through all the usual procrastinating rituals before starting, it’s awful! Yet I’m dispirited if I have nothing on the go.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
Until a couple of years ago, I’ve always gone it alone. But these days only the early and final drafts are done alone. The middle stage is presented to my lovely writing group. These five women are brilliant at brainstorming through dilemmas, pointing out ‘I don’t get it’ moments, telling me I have too many characters, and so on. I adore a good critique. I come home and know what I have to do. This is the fun part. I’m finally inhabiting the story. It’s such a relief after the struggle to get something workable down. And the longer I let it lie after the first of ‘final’ drafts, the better chance it has of being any good.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
I value it! You value it! Hooray for us. I wouldn’t call it undervalued, it just doesn’t attract as much attention. Like most small, good things (thanks Raymond), apart from diamonds.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Great! Spread the word. Let everyone grab a tasty bite in whatever medium suits. I do love a fine, handheld volume of stories, though.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Keep it up. Please.
Susan McCreery’s stories have been published in Award Winning Australian Writing 2010, Island, Islet, Page Seventeen and Sleepers Almanac 7. She has been shortlisted for The Age and Hal Porter short story competitions and won first prize in the 2009 Julie Lewis Literary Competition. She is also a widely published poet (Best Australian Poems 2009, Hecate, Poetrix, Blue Dog, Five Bells, Going Down Swinging, among others) and her first poetry collection, Waiting for the Southerly, will be out in 2012 (Ginninderra Press).
Susan McCreery’s ‘The Gardener’ was the inaugural winner of the Carmel Bird Short Fiction Award 2011 and is published in Escape.
Spineless Wonders asks Mark Vender
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Most of the short fiction I’ve read has been in getting to know the writers’ marketplace, so more than authors, I take note of journals and ezines. Places where I’ve enjoyed the stories include Overland and Meanjin (in Australia), as well as Small Spiral Notebook, Failbetter, The Summerset Review, The Barcelona Review and Narrative (on the internet). Having said that, the short fiction of Julio Cortázar and Annie Proulx blows me away.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
Sylvia Plath’s Ocean 1212-W. It’s the way she toed the line between poetry and prose. So rich. Also the way she captured the essence of the sea. And it’s got a bit about listening to the poetry of Matthew Arnold as a child, which sums up what good writing can do:
“I saw the gooseflesh on my skin. I did not know what made it. I was not cold. Had a ghost passed over? No, it was the poetry. A spark flew off Arnold and shook me, like a chill. I wanted to cry; I felt very odd. I had fallen into a new way of being happy.”
3. What do you like about the short story form?
I like its punch, and the opportunity it affords for unusual settings and tones. Sometimes a distinctive voice which would become unbearable over an entire novel is very effective and memorable for a few pages. And for the reader and writer, it’s a relatively quick hit in terms of gratification.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
It’s an outlet for things I love or that really bug me, so I guess it reflects real-life issues. I try to depict life as honestly as possible, quite often “sweating the small stuff”.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
I have one set in a nightclub called “Rules of the Dancefloor”. I’m fond of it because it needs the love! It’s been rejected a couple of times, and I think it deserves a home.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Usually the idea occurs to me and I just get a feeling that it is the right size and shape for a short story – that it fits the form. But the inspiration comes in lots of different ways. For my story “Cross words”, it was an aggressive email that we received at work. It’s very frustrating when someone throws a whole lot of negative energy at you, and you can’t respond. Instead, I used the email (with details changed, of course) as a jumping off point, fantasising about what it would be like to write back. The story emerged from there.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I write a couple of drafts, so that it isn’t embarrassingly raw, then workshop it. If I can do that face to face with a group, great. If not, I call on critique partners via email. After incorporating the comments, I let it sit for a while (a month or so) and come back to it with fresh eyes. If it’s ready at that point I’ll start trying to find a home for it, if not I’ll take it back for more critique.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
I don’t see it in terms of “valued” or “not valued” – the form is simply better suited to some things than others. And a lot of people are in the habit of picking up a novel or a non-fiction book rather than an anthology of short stories or a literary journal. Maybe it’s a case of fostering new reading habits – the short story form seems perfectly suited to commuters with e-readers, for example.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I think it’s great. Whatever way the stories reach people is fine by me.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming… It’s a huge thing for emerging authors to get a short story published and reach an audience. It’s also great for them to have the experience of working with editors. And it’s an exciting time for publishing with the digital revolution – there could be some great opportunities for the short story form. So keep at it!
Mark Vender is a freelance writer, sub-editor and translator. His short stories have appeared in various ezines including The Summerset Review, Word Riot, Eclectica and Slow Trains. He is currently living in Colombia and working on a novel.
*Mark’s story, Cross Words, is published in Escape, Spineless Wonders’ anthology of short stories.
Escape an anthology of short Australian stories
“Quality short fiction. Packed with surprises. Prepare to be transported.” Marion Halligan
Escapist reading is usually light and inconsequential – ideal for those times when your body is relaxing on the beach, lounging in bed with a breakfast tray or slumping its way to work on public transport. The twenty-eight stories collected here, in Escape, Spineless Wonders’ first anthology, offer escapist reading which will excite as a well as entertain.
To escape into reading is to leave the mundane and to take an imaginative leap. These tales take you anywhere from the outback to outer space. Diverse in theme and form, they will tickle your fancy and open your eyes?to world events and to your own backyard.
Escapist literature is traditionally the domain of well-loved genres. In Escape, we aim to disturb expectations and to delight. Turn the page and here is experimentation, here fantasy. Here’s crime, existentialism and romance. Now an escape artist, now an escapee. Our tastes are catholic, with quality of writing the overriding criteria.
Enjoy reading Escape. And to learn more about the authors and join the conversation about their stories, go to the Escape Facebook page.
This collection features stories by the following invited contributors: Julie Chevalier, Jane Connors, Michael Giacometti, Linda Godfrey, Andy Kissane, Jennifer Mills, Ryan O’Neill, A.S. Patric, Caroline Reid, Josephine Rowe, Jon Steiner, Louise Swinn and Kim Westwood.
The winning entries from The Carmel Bird Short Fiction Award 2011 chosen by Sophie Cunningham are published in this anthology. Winner, Susan McCreery and runners up, SJ Finn and Claire Aman.
Also included are stories from The Carmel Bird Short Fiction Award longlist by Sue Booker, Allison Browning, Michelle Cahill, Meredyth Cilento, Sam Cooney, Kate Geyer, Irma Gold, Tiggy Johnson, Yin Lin, Duncan Reid, Jenny Sinclair, Doreen Sullivan and Mark Vender.
RRP $24.99
Ask for a copy at your local bookstore or buy it now from this website. Free delivery.
Spineless Wonders Asks Yin Lin
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
I’ll confess straight up and say that I actually don’t read a huge amount of short stories. Most of the short fiction I’ve read is from high school. I like Cilla McQueen, Apirana Taylor, Katherine Mansfield… Hm, my English teachers will probably notice a trend – they’re authors of the short stories we’ve been studying!
I also admire some writers who aren’t published yet. Peers at school, people on the Internet, sometimes their stories are so charged with emotion, or so authentic, or they present the story in such a creative way. These people I admire, and are wary of – they’re the next generation of short fiction authors, but they’re also my competitors.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
I am so bad at answering these types of questions, maybe because I never have a ‘most’ memorable/favourite story. They’re all so good in different ways! The title that comes to focus out of the dozens brimming in my mind is The Lottery. Like many good short stories out there, I like how the author blatantly laid out the story, not distorting the camera lenses for the reader, not even till the last moment. I love how we go in without prejudice and the author trusts that we’re intelligent enough to make up our own conclusions.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
I like reading good short stories because I find it interesting how exhaustive it is, just how intensely the writer is making the reader work. It’s almost like doing interval training in sports: I can’t read too many short stories at one time – I get burnt out! Now from the writing perspective…I used to favour the novel form more than short story but now I’m a uni student, that’s changed. An average day for me now is pretty packed. After taking out a must-have 6~8 hours of sleep, I’m left with being a full time medical student’s lectures and study and all. Plus 1~3 hours of sport. A-and, since I still want to steal time to gull my writer-self that I still care about her, short stories and poems become simply more practical. Writing short stories is also great practice. Sometimes I tell myself, okay, in this 3000 words focus on character, or a kind of style, or an emotion. Like doing drills, it helps fine-tone skills and really concentrate on the tooth-floss thin line of control over each element that makes up a good story.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
Well, since I’ve only just started writing seriously last year (as in entering competitions), my writing style still very naïve and evolving. I’d like to think that my writing style changes to suit the theme or the writing form I’m interacting with. But to describe my writing in general…I try to take something from everyday life, something mundane, and show how special it. I’d hope that my writing is simple by nature, but talking about complex issues. You’ll have to tell me if that’s a valid description or not.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
Oh, this is a hard question – I actually had to go to my folder of short stories and look through it to jog my memory. I think I’m particularly fond of Home just coz it’s won me some cash and that it’s going to be published. Home is also the short story that actually made me ‘click’ with the short story form. Um, after looking through my folder again, and, as bad as it sounds, there isn’t actually another ‘story’ that I’m fond of at the moment. There is, however, a poem that kind of brings a wry smile to my face when I think of it. It was the first (and I have a sinking suspicious feeling, also the last) poem that I will/have written this semester. I remember feeling fed up with not having enough time writing stories and wanting to write a poem because I ‘thought’ it would take less time instead. In the end it took me an hour to squeeze out the 363 words (so much for less time) and I can still recall myself being ridiculously drained but just so pleased.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Ideas. Anything and everything I suppose. Maybe a word, an action, or an event that provoked a reaction out of me – writing’s all about making the reader feel so if it made the writer feel, it must be worth it. Maybe a snippet of conversation that I overheard in the library. Or maybe I’ll steal a sentence from a favourite book.
I’ll take No More Nagging for my example. There was a girl two years below me in my high school that passed away very suddenly. In my school, everyone knew of everyone and so we were all affected. I felt compelled to do something. I only knew her by face and to put it simply, I didn’t think I would do justice if I wrote of her. But I knew I could simulate an event as close as what had happened. I knew of the girl through mutual friends – the reader hears of the character through the narrative; I saw the girl around campus – the reader sees the character in the narrative’s mind. As the story progresses, the reader becomes attached to this character even though they have never met her first hand…now, that’s enough of that story otherwise I’m going to spoil it for people.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
Like I said, I’m really busy so whereas I used to be able to just sit down and pour everything out in one go, then leave it for a few days and edit and edit and edit. Now after inspiration strikes, the first draft is written over a longer time period. The bones are frantically typed out before lectures when waiting for the lecturer to come in, or when waiting for friends to arrive at dinner. That creates a very rough idea of the story. Then again, I try to grab snippets of time to flesh the story out till there’s an extremely rough first draft. I have to determine at this stage whether or not to continue filling out the story five sentences by five sentences or actually allocate a time to sit down and pound away at the keyboard without mercy. So this is when I shoot it over to my awesome editor/friend Sophie Constable to see if she gives me the green light. If boss gives the all clear, I start on the details. The story will go through quite a few drafts, and be sent back and forth between us two and critiqued over and over again. When it seems presentable, it’ll be promoted from ghosting around on my desktop to a position in the short story folder. And it’ll live there till a suitable competition catches my eye, and then probably undergo more surgery. Ahem, I meant, changes.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
I get this feeling that the short story form is valued more by writers than by readers. People seem to know a lot more novels than short stories. I suppose for writers, the short story form provides a platform for writers to present their skills and also to enter (lots of) competitions.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I don’t think it’s much of a problem. It’s a great way to gain access to a greater audience and it’s impossible to resist change that’s washing over us like a tsunami tide. Personally, the traditional paper is still my highest goal and my most prized way of publication but I still see the different medium meaning reaching a different target audience. For example, audio and digital are often free so that would reach a wider range of people who read more for fun; hardcopy would reach readers who are more demanding because they’ve spent money to buy the piece and expect a degree of quality in the literature. There are pros and cons for each medium.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Great job in promoting the art of the short story, and thank you for creating opportunities for budding writers like myself to have a chance in the big wide world of publishing.
Yin Lin has being shortlisted by the Sunday Star Times awards, awarded a mentorship from the NZ Society of Authors, and been commended in the NZ Poetry Society’s International Poetry Competition before moving to Australia. She’s been published online for the Auslit Review competition, and in the hard copy anthologies Across the Fingerboards , The World’s Steepest Street, Escape and The Temptation of Sunlight. She is now studying medicine and is self-diagnosed with literature deficiency.
Spineless Wonders Asks Kate Geyer
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Miranda July, ZZ Packer, Alice Munro and Josephine Rowe.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
I read Helen Garner’s collection of short stories ‘My Hard Heart’ about ten years ago and I realised what it meant to be a woman and a writer and daughter. Recently I read her piece ‘While Not Writing a Book: Diaries’ in the Monthly and had a similar feeling of clarity and elation.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
I like precision and truth and tidiness and cleverness. In short stories these things matter.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
Sporadic. Gratifying. Containing liberal amounts of yearning/animal references.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
Fluffy Animals – because I actually used a good, smart mentor to help edit the story and it paid off.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Walking, I’m always walking when a little spark of a thought reaches out and joins another little spark and then if I keep tumbling the two sparks together they become words, and then a story. With Fluffy Animals I realised that a number of my recent experiences revolved around yearning for a companion – whether that be animal or human, and I was also thinking about how in the transition from child to adult you merely swap toy animals and babies for the real thing. Most of my ideas do come from my own life; I’m compulsively grouping related things together when I write a story. These little things are related to each other and these other things belong here instead. It’s a literary compulsion.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
Every piece of writing is different, but usually I’m slow and wait for an idea to hit me over the head before I commit to it. Deadlines and competitions work well as a motivating force. Sometimes too, I’ll illustrate the story – like a cartoon, or draw pictograms or a graph if I’m not quite sure what’s most important or how to express something elusive. Usually I need a good first sentence before I can move on to write the rest; sometimes everything hinges on that first sentence. I feel it has to adequately summarise the whole mood of the piece. Once the story is semi-coherent I’m happy for a handful of respected readers and writers to read my work and I appreciate when they write comments and make little ticks on it using an HB pencil.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
I think it is undervalued by most but a devoted few. And those devoted few are really very devoted. I would love to see more short fiction in mainstream magazines and even weekend newspaper supplements. But the people who seek it out and make room in their budgets and bookshelves are reason enough for me to keep writing.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Great! I love the interwebs and the radio, and think all stories should be read aloud to someone you love for maximum enjoyment.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Keep your short fiction collection in a custom made bookshelf by the toilet; it’s a fact that good stories ease bad bowels!
Kate Geyer is a reader, writer and an illustrator who flits between Melbourne and Brisbane like a migratory bird. She has been published in Voiceworks, Tango and Spook magazine. Infrequently Kate writes at: thehickamorekid.blogspot.com and publishes zines via stickyinstitute.com Her short story, Fluffy Animals appears in Escape, an anthology of short stories published by Spineless Wonders.
Spineless Wonders Asks Jon Steiner
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Well, David Foster Wallace, for one, obviously. Here are some others: ZZ Packer, Robert Drewe, Jhumpa Lahiri, Grace Paley, Sam Shepard, Richard Yates. But also, I often read a story somewhere that totally blows me away—in the New Yorker, or an anthology or something—and I resolve to remember the name of the author and track down more of his or her work, but then I forget. But I admire them too.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
It’s hard to pick just one, but “Why Don’t You Dance” by Raymond Carver had a profound effect on me when I first read it, and is probably largely responsible for my lifelong interest in short fiction. I thought, “I didn’t realise you could do this! I want to do it too!” It’s a great example of the short story form at its best. It hooks you in right away: “In the kitchen, he poured another drink and looked at the bedroom suite in his front yard.” The writing is tight and spare, mostly single lines of back-and-forth dialogue, but there’s so much going on—the man’s unusual reaction to the end of his marriage, the dynamics between him and the young couple, the way the young couple relate to each other. It’s the kind of story you think about a lot afterwards, you go back and read it again and again, savouring the words on the page, mulling over the layers. And it has a quintessential Raymond Carver ending, with the point of view shifting suddenly from the older man to the young woman trying to tell the story to her friends afterwards: “There was more to it, and she was trying to get it talked out. After a time, she quit trying.” What an ending! Goddamn. It’s a good fucking story.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
It’s so flexible. What makes a short story, really? A block of prose under, say, 9000 words? Beyond that, you can be as experimental as you want. I also love the economy of short stories; every sentence has a reason to be there. When a short story is good, when it really works, it affects you just as much as a good novel, but it’s in a highly concentrated form. It’s like freebasing literature.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
I tend to write pretty short stories, usually based around some quirky premise or character. I usually like to use dialogue and action more than exposition, so people sometimes tell me my stories read like short films. I don’t know about you, but I hear the story in my head when I read, and good writing is a pleasure to “listen” to. So I try to pay attention to the sounds and rhythms of the sentences. When I’m revising my work, I read it over and over, listening for places where it doesn’t flow quite right and fiddling around with the text until it does.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
I wrote a story about a rich guy who has a skyscraper built in the middle of the desert just because he’s interested in seeing what it would look like. I’m rather fond of it, though I’m not quite sure why. I think it has some deeper meaning, but I’m not quite sure what.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
They come from all sorts of places. Sometimes mid-conversation with someone I’ll think, Hey that could be a good story! Often they come at rather inconvenient times, like when I’m in bed almost asleep, or driving, or in a meeting at work, or in the shower. But I’ve learned the hard way that no matter how much I think I will remember a good idea later on, all I will remember is that I had the idea, not what it was, so I always try to write ideas down somewhere. I have various notebooks and scraps of paper and Word documents scattered around with random bits: plot ideas, characters, sentences, sometimes just a word I liked at the time. When I feel like doing some writing, I leaf through the notes and look for something that interests me.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I am not at all disciplined about writing. I write very sporadically. I always feel like I need to be in just the right state of mind, and then I usually just spend an hour rewriting the first sentence over and over. I know that a writer should really write every day, even if it’s total crap, just for the sake of putting words on the page, to develop the habit so that when a good idea comes along, they’ll have the chops to take it somewhere. But even though I know that, and constantly resolve to do it, I don’t do it. I had a writing teacher who said that every semester she saw two or three people in her class who had real talent, but only every few years did she see someone who had the other, more rare quality that makes a writer: the strength of character to sit down every day and do the work, to forego social events and television and Facebook and just put in the hours at the keyboard. Unfortunately, I am not known for self-discipline. But on the rare occasions when I do write something half-decent, it’s usually in one hit—I get in the zone and the story just tumbles out. I then read it over for a few days, fiddling around with the words a bit. I bring it along to a meeting of The Beak, my writing group, I get a writer friend to look it over, I get my wife to read it, and get feedback from them all, which I incorporate into the story if it seems like a good idea. Next I move the Word file to a folder on my computer called “Finished.” Every now and then I look through the stories in the “Finished” folder and think, well, yeah, I guess some of these are all right. Once in a while I submit something.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Last year I went to a talk at a conference where this e-publishing guru from California said he saw a great business opportunity for something like iTunes selling short stories for e-readers. He predicted that the digital age would bring about the renaissance of the short story, but I’m not sure I agree with that. I think short stories have a lot of competition for people’s shorter attention timeslots nowadays: television, YouTube, Facebook, Angry Birds. For the longer attention timeslots, novels only have to compete with television series and maybe those role playing video games. But there is definitely still a niche of people who enjoy reading short fiction, probably populated mostly by people who are also interested in writing it, and that niche in Australia is just as robust as anywhere else. We have a very respectable number of literary journals and Graduate Writing programs per capita.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I know digital is the future and I don’t want to be an old fuddy-duddy, but there’s still something kind of cheap and soulless about it. Reading stuff online or on a Kindle just isn’t the same experience as reading a book or magazine, and never will be. Now, audio is interesting because there you’re venturing into the territory of performance—the art of reading a story well. It would be interesting to hear something I’d written as an audio item. But I will still always hold print in the highest regard. There’s a certain honour that derives from somebody deciding your work is good enough to be printed.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Keep forging ahead. Build a short fiction empire!
A native of Washington, D.C., Jon Steiner moved to Australia in 2000. He studied writing at the University of Technology, Sydney and has been published in the UTS Writers’ Anthology. In 2010, his short story, The Robber, was published by Parsnip Press and can be purchased from parsnippress@bettinakaiser.com
Spineless Wonders asks Michelle Cahill
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
I admire Cate Kennedy’s short stories, Maria Takolander’s psychological fragility, Nam Lee’s compelling realism and the fantasy in Tom Cho’s writing. I also like Roberto Bolaño, Sushma Joshi, Aravind Adiga, Jhumpa Lahiri. And of course I’ve loved reading Chekov, Borges, Hemingway, JD Salinger, and the autobiographical trauma in Raymond Carver’s restrained poetic shorts.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
One of my favourite stories is JD Salinger’s “For Esmé with Love and Squalor”, which tells of an American intelligence officer’s meeting with an English schoolgirl, opening to the themes of foreignness, love, war, youth, innocence and experience. An intimate cameo forms within a larger framework of human tragedy so that poignant emotions are delicately expressed through dialogue as the characters emerge. The perspective of the narrator changes half way through the story; the point of view subtle, since in telling about his encounter with the girl and the letter she sends him, the narrator is also telling us about himself.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
It’s a beautiful genre. I enjoy drafting sketches into detail, expanding the language, colouring in and segueing together its parts. The short story requires really careful attention. Unlike the novel it may be read in one go, so inconsistencies of tone or style become apparent. It’s not as indulged as poetry, which isn’t to say that it can’t be experimental, abstract or edgy. A poem might be easier to complete than a story, though I think a good poem is as challenging to write. Readers have expectations of a short story that a writer may provoke to some extent, but never entirely neglect. The poem might be dismissive or aloof, whereas the short story needs to engage the reader.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
I guess my writing reflects a sense of fragmentation caused by the movement between countries and cultures. I’m interested in reinscriptions, also in magic realism, which can playfully disrupt logic and power. Writing from, or reinventing personas can be homage. It permits me to express irreverence for traditions and history. Intertextuality is a way to share one story with many stories, to revisit the past and question its authority.
There’s an emphasis on language in my writing, but the pleasures of language are not purely aesthetic for me, not just about style. I’m interested in perception, place, nuance and how dream moves forwards and backwards in time. Language is so many things: refuge, asylum, curiosity, home, power, and exhaustion.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
My favorite story is “Chasing Nabokov” It took me an embarrassingly long time to write but I’m glad for the immediacy and intensity of the voice. I like that it writes back to Nabokov with homage and audacity and a female voice.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
I’m inspired to write by place, scene, mood, and experience. From the words I’m drawn into themes, characters and specifics. This involves lots of redrafts before the story emerges, so I can’t be in a rush. I like that fiction is so painstaking. Sometimes travel might intersect with writing a story, though the two are mostly accidental encounters. An example of this is “Duende.” I’d read about Lorca’s theory of death and art. I’d travelled to Seville myself, for another project. The brutality of the bullfight was confronting to me. Still I was intrigued by the risk and ritual, which goes back to ancient times. Slowly, the story took shape: it’s about betrayal, love and exile.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
The process is a lingering one. It begins with slowing down into words, ideas and is followed by lots of drafts. But this is also the part which I find relaxing because I enter into another world, intense and vivid. I become responsible for its symmetry and connections. I start to be fond of the characters. It can certainly be frustrating when it doesn’t all cohere and mostly my drafts start out like this. But you give them the patience and craft they deserve. I have one or two close friends, with whom I share my writing. A brief comment or hint might be a guide in the right direction. Mentorships are wonderful and so are writing retreats where you have the space to slow down into your rhythm.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
The realities of how difficult it is to publish a collection of short stories suggests that the form is not really valued in this country or, for that matter, abroad. Fiction is a tough genre in which to be published, it seems. But I think it’s true that amongst writers, the genre is appreciated, particularly as it appears in literary journals.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I’m sad about book shops closing. Digital forms of publishing are changing the status and role of books altogether. We’re witnessing a dramatic evolution of technology impacting on the way we read and write. Text, particularly in commercial forms, is becoming more accessible, virtual, abbreviated, networked. The potential readership from digital publishing far exceeds the potential from print. Still, I’m surprised by how many books sell by word of mouth, and I think small scale print publishers can be successful in expanding their readerships through their own networks and communities.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Keep talking to writers like this; and keep publishing excellent Australian short fiction!
Michelle Cahill’s fiction has appeared in Southerly, TEXT, Transnational Literature, Prosopisia, Famous Reporter, Escape and forthcoming in Antipodes, Alien Shores and Etchings. She received an Australia Council grant in fiction to undertake a residency at Sanskriti Kendra, New Delhi. Other fiction residencies have been at Varuna, the Writers Centre and the BreadLoaf Writers’ Conference. Her collections of poetry are The Accidental Cage, Vishvarupa and Night Birds. She received the Val Vallis Award and was highly commended in the Blake Poetry Prize and the Wesley Michel Wright Prize.
Spineless Wonders asks Sam Cooney
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Ryan O’Neill, Eva Hornung, Peter Carey, Jessica Au, A.G. McNeil, Amanda Lohrey, Frank Moorhouse Gerard Murnane, Denis Johnson, David Foster Wallace, Doris Lessing, Donald Barthelme, Jorge Luis Barthes, Miranda July, Michael Cunningham, Raymond Carver.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
Borges’s ‘The Garden of Forking Paths’. Like, hypertext magic alert! So many layers/tangents/literary recourses. A maze-like story about an infinite maze. Jesus Jumping Beans, did this guy sort of invent the internet or something?
The story is kind-of epistolary (a style which I really dig) and it melds philosophy with storytelling (which is why I open books). Affecting and clever!
The first time you read this (or many other of Borges’s short fictions) your brain sizzles itself a thick new synapse, one that can never be unsizzled.
Also, “Jorge Luis Borges” is fun to say in a faux-Spanish accent.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
With tongue entirely in cheek but also in utter earnestness: the shortness. A short story is by name and definition succinct/brief/fleeting. When a short story is no longer short — say over 15,000 words, to pick a number — it loses the lustre of immediacy. This is true for both reading and writing short fiction. As a reader, to step into a short story is like having a shower (opposed to lolling in a bath). You know as you enter either a short story or a shower that it’s going to be quick and warm, and that it will charge your energy levels so that chores or creative toils or making that difficult phone call are suddenly not as unfeasible as they were before. As a writer, short fiction is graspable. An idea filters down through the top of your head like coffee into a cup, and you can seize it and jot down a few seconds of notes and then punch away at the keyboard, and a day or two later, you have the chassis of a story ready to be tricked out. Even if the end result is just crap, that 48 hour period of writing writing writing is better than [insert hedonistic pursuit here].
4. How would you describe your own writing?
Try-hard. Fuelled. Noisy. Optimistically cynical. Like hugging a cactus.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
One that I haven’t written yet; pick any of the hodgepodge ‘story idea’ Word docs that stare out at me from my desktop.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
I’m not sure where ideas come from. I can’t even go as far as calling them ‘my’ ideas. Does anyone really have an answer for this question that isn’t just horseshit? An idea appears. Sure, it’s an electrochemical process in the brain, as far as our current thinking goes. And sure, it’s also explainable through personality and character and private history. But none of this is ever going to be satisfactory. Try explaining to a five-year-old the physical reasons why a group of whales kill themselves by drowning in air on a lonely beach. How much can you persuade this five-year-old with an explanation?
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
Alone alone alone, until the very end, when I reach out for friends. I don’t reckon there’s any other way to do it.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Yeah, sure it’s valued. I value the shit out of it, and I know many other Australian citizens who do also. That’s enough for me, for the moment anyhow.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
No wuckers is how I feel. Do with it what you will, it’s not mine anymore.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Um, read? No matter what else, for me everything always comes back to reading. (By ‘reading’ I mean ‘experiencing art’, like books, films, fine art, music, public transport, people, walking, sex.)
Sam Cooney has published fiction, creative nonfiction and journalism in a variety of places, both in Australia and overseas. He has also commissioned and edited writing for a few major Australian journals and magazines, and is currently the fiction editor at the Lifted Brow. His story, ‘From on high’ is published in Escape, an anthology of short Australian stories (Spineless Wonders, 2011).
Spineless Wonders asks SJ Finn
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Annie Proulx, Elizabeth Jolley and Carson McCullers are a few of the many writers I admire for their short fiction. From a closer position I’ve gained knowledge and been influenced by collections such as Anson Cameron’s, ‘Nice Shootin’ Cowboy’, Tim Winton’s ‘Minimum Of Two’ and Thea Astley’s ‘Collected Stories’.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
If I pondered this question for longer I may come up with something else, but the story that keeps pecking at my brain is Fiona McFarlane’s ‘Those Americans Falling From The Sky’. The narrative is wended beautifully into a seamless and beguiling story while at the bottom of things, like a well with stones in it, there’s something quite disturbing going on.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
I like the power the short story form holds, like a secret behind a door that begins to be revealed the moment it’s opened. It’s not that everything is seen at once but good stories take you to the heart of the matter very quickly unlike a novel which is more like being outside a house and first having to take in the garden, the path, the garage etc. before opening the front door. It’s the intensity of the short form that is attractive to me.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
My writing can be high tensile as it is in my story ‘Agapanthus’ in Sleepers Almanac No. 5, or it can be a little sinister as it is in ‘Angus’s Playground’ on line here. I do enjoy words which means employing discipline as a matter of course – while ‘matters of course’ require the same diligence as any matters, big or small. I’m drawn to the excavation of character, such as in my story ‘Flame Game’ from Going Down Swinging No. 27 and online here. And, lastly, my writing can be more emotional and interior such as ‘Paper Anniversary’ which has come runner-up in the Carmel Bird Short Story competition and appears in the anthology put out by the good people of this website, Spineless Wonders, called ‘Escape’.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
I am partial to my story ‘Flame Game’mainly because it’s the first time I’d written in the second person and realised the power of the device. While bringing the emotional territory of a character closer, it creates a certain disturbing distance at the same time, the overall effect being ephemeral and spooky. The story, despite its brevity, manages to capture the protagonist’s character and explain why he did the terrible thing he did. In so doing, I feel as if I was just the conduit through which his voice was flowing; something that makes a story wonderfully watertight.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
To stick with ‘Flame Game’ (I have written other stories from similar kernels of thought, or is that emotion) I read an article in The Age newspaper about a Canadian psychologist who was treating convicted arsonists. I have a clear memory of where I was when I read the piece, the exact time and place, indicating perhaps the significant impact the article had on me. Stirred, I wrote the first draft in one sitting soon after. And it’s wonderful when that happens, when there’s something so truthful about the voice in a story that it flows from the fingertips, uninterrupted.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I love uncovering the first draft and find that the most exciting part of the process. I also enjoy the re-working, especially when the story starts to really shine through. I’m inpatient, however, and find myself sending my work off too soon, which can only lead me to conclude I’m in need of a writing group; even a ‘reader’ would do.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
The short form’s value (relatively speaking) is, I think, on the increase in Australia. The steadiness of the growth of publications of anthologies and collections is testimony to this. However it seems we’re way behind North America in regard to the short form’s status and I have a feeling that those reading short stories are mostly those who are writing them.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Good.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Maintain standards – contemporary but top shelf. In the end, harsh as it might seem to writers struggling to get published, the process of rejection will improve their work.
SJ Finn writes poetry and fiction, opinion and commentary for the Overland Literary Magazine blog. Her short stories have appeared in Going Down Swinging, Sleepers Almanac, as a mini shot for Vignette Press. Finn’s poetry has appeared in The Age newspaper, The Green Fuse, Cordite and Snorkel. War Through The TV appeared in the Best Australian Poems 2010. Her novel This Too Shall Pass was published by Sleepers in March 2011 and was highly commended in The Barbara Jefferis Award 2012.
She has a website at: www.sjfinn.com
Spineless Wonders asks Doreen Sullivan
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
You know, and this is terrible, I tend to remember stories more than individual authors. But some names that I have gone looking for after being wowed at least once include: Maggie Alderson, Teresa Ashby, Steve Beresford, Leanne Hall, Cate Kennedy, Rose Mulready, Flannery O’Connor, Glenys Osborne, Elliott Pearlman and Diana Spelcher.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
There’ve been a few. One is ‘The Debutante’ by Leonora Carrington, first published in 1936. Woman invites a hyena to take her place at the debutante ball. Hyena behaves with impeccable hyena manners—that is, true to her species. I read it first years ago, and can still recall my amused surprise at how it unfolds.
Another is ‘In Reference to your Recent Communications’ by Tessa Brown, published in Harper’s Magazine in 2005. A very funny story that I showed to several friends and family members if they had ever expressed even the faintest interest in the short story form, and practically insisted: Read this. Now. It stood out for the character of the deluded girlfriend who did not accept her romantic break up. Very clever. The boyfriend is never on the page, and there’s creepiness to this story, just a tad. A hilarious creepiness.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
As a reader I like that it’s short, just the perfect length often, for a 30 minute tram commute, if it’s a longer short story.
I like the variety in anthologies, collections, and in magazine fiction specials.
I like how stories sometimes linger in my memory for years.
I like how stories turn up in surprising places, beyond the literary journal or general magazine. You can find stories in Cosmos, Nature, and even the medical journal The Lancet. Mind you, The Lancet fiction was from a one-off 2007 competition.
I like that most short stories are character studies.
As a writer I like that short story writers are pretty anonymous. No one has ever heard of you. There’s freedom there.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
Someone once said my old stories had their own illogical logic. I’ve always rather liked that.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
Prototype Number One, because it was a lot of fun to write.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
The stories come from fragments of conversations, fragments of lyrics, and sentence fragments. Aural-snippets. Rhythms.
Having said that, the idea for Prototype Number One originated in a 2005 magazine writing class. Our teacher gave us an in-class exercise: Your house burned down. You need to tell your best friend, boss, and parents by email. Go. For the parents, the thought of a dinged up, disgruntled robotic type of person needing to go back home for repair after fire popped into my mind. But I wasn’t brave enough to go down that route and read it out. Instead I wrote something more standard. Safer. The idea stayed with me though.
This year, at a work conference, I picked up a sample copy of Cosmos magazine, thrilled to read a witty, whimsical short story in it about a man’s computer taking over his life, co-opting his girlfriend, etc. Loved it, though when I read others, I realised that first read story was atypical for the magazine. I saw (or I wanted to see) some broad similarities with that writer’s style and content and mine. So that gave me ‘permission’ and confidence to write a more fanciful story—knowing that some magazines publish this type of fiction.
7.What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I often bring stories to my critique group. The story published in Escape by Spineless Wonder story, Unrequited was read by them. Just having them as first readers often helps—especially for picking up inconsistencies like having timelines out of whack. Or letting me know if I’m going to try a macabre twist in the tale, then I need to give inklings of that from the beginning. This is true. I remain annoyed with a novel I read a good five years ago that was a delightful domestic comedy until the car crash horror in the final chapters. Man, did I feel cheated.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
I think the form is appreciated by some, but not most. Though there seems to be a resurgence of interest over the past two years or so in literary journals, with new publishers. But I also think people not caring for the form is fine. If you don’t like something, you don’t like something. If you come to my place for dinner and you hate pumpkin I won’t force it on you, insisting you should eat it because it’s nutritious. And because I made it special. Just for you.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Great! Especially audio. Years ago I had the radio on for background noise and a play came on that so captivated me I stopped what I was doing and sat down to listen. Abandoned everything and gave it my full attention. If something I wrote ever affected anyone like that I’d be super chuffed.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
None. I’m thrilled you’re on the scene.
Doreen Sullivan wonders if it wise to crave anonymity. She is certain she has achieved it in most quarters, although her parents seem to know who she is. Sometimes she shucks her cloak of invisibility, for a nanosecond, to publish stories in Escape and Sleepers Almanac No. 7.
Spineless Wonders asks Sue Booker
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Those who spellbind me not just in a few of their stories (like Raymond Carver) but all through each collection they put out, like Amy Hempel, David Foster Wallace and Western Australia’s Chris McLeod.
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
While 26+ pp puts this at the longer end of the genre, I’d have to say ‘Brief Interviews with Hideous Men #20’ by David Foster Wallace. You can read it in one sitting if you’ve got a spare 50 minutes. First, it’s a story within a story within a story. The framing story – a gender politics discourse – contains a love story wrapped around a horror story, a harrowing psychological what-if. Second, Foster Wallace gets away with talk of the soul by hiding behind a sceptical narrator. Third, the whole package delivers several twists or reversals, including a rape that isn’t a rape, a psycho killer who loses his nerve, and a rationalist who falls in love with his one-night stand. If it sounds like there’s too much going on, a lot is still omitted. For instance, we have to infer the nature of the ‘interviewer’. And last but not least, the theme is empathy for the other, however repulsive. Yet Foster Wallace, elsewhere a brilliant ventriloquist, achieves his effects without recourse to the popular device of adopting a guise far removed from the author.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
I love dense, complex and/or enigmatic narratives that need to be read more than once to make sense, and shortness makes this more practical. Shortness also necessitates omission, allowing the reader more scope to participate.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
So far, it mostly pans out as character-driven narratives about the crossing or violation of boundaries (physical and/or psychological) or taboos (personal and societal). Before writing took over, I’d spent years painting and dancing, neither medium of which I’ve abandoned, so it’s possible those disciplines condition my use of language.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
My fondness can change allegiance on a daily or hourly basis. It’s first an index of ideas that might yield new (or radically reborn) work; that is, the fondness is less for the story alone than for the ideas that flow from it. In this sense, ‘Under the Skin’ (in the Escape anthology) feels fertile; it continues to suggest further characters and experiments in form.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
The ideas can come from anywhere, but unless they’re marked by synchronicities or entwined with strong emotions, most of them will fade and dry out like pressed flowers in notebooks. For instance, the idea for ‘Under the Skin’ grew from a shouted conversation with a woman I barely knew. Some women, on hearing what I heard, might vow never to be without a mobile, but my sole concern was, what would stop my character from using hers? At some point, the woman’s chilling account reminded me of something an ex had once told me (which also served as a warning even if he didn’t know it!) and I began the story without knowing where it was going (not my usual MO). Then halfway through writing the first draft, I got injured by a total stranger, which modified the narrative arc in unexpected ways.
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
Sometimes I’ll bounce ideas off my partner if they come up while I’m with him. Often I’ll brainstorm outdoors on scraps of paper. When there’s a draft that gels I’ll run it past random strangers (writers) online, some of whom won’t pull their punches or share my cultural assumptions etc. (good for objectivity), then I’ll rethink and rejig if necessary, edit and re-edit. It can take weeks or months but more often takes years to produce a story that satisfies me. Then comes the hard part: gauging where to send work that’s not geared to the established outlets.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
Yes. The fact that in recent years (or months) so many new venues have sprung up, e.g. literary journals and adventurous small publishers like Spineless Wonders, just confirms the growth of a short-story audience.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
Digital forms have opened doors for a renaissance of the short story. And as I always read aloud throughout the writing and editing process, my work’s inherently geared for audio. So bring it on…
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
(Ahem…) As a helplessly visual person, I can’t stress the importance of seductive, standout cover design enough.
Sue Booker’s short fiction has appeared in Meanjin and Encounters: Modern Australian Short Stories. Her long fiction has attracted mentorships from Varuna and the Australian Society of Authors. She is currently exploring in-between-length fiction. Sue’s story, ‘Under the Skin’ appears in Escape, an anthology of short Australian stories (Spineless Wonders, 2011).
Spineless Wonders asks Ryan O’Neill
1. Who are the short fiction authors you admire (Australian or otherwise, alive or dead)?
Of writers outside Australia, I love Jorge Luis Borges, Ernest Hemingway, Katherine Mansfield and Vladimir Nabokov. There are many Australian short story writers I love. In the 1970s Peter Carey and Murray Bail wrote some of the best short fiction ever produced in this country. Gillian Mears is another great writer who I wish wrote more stories. Of contemporary short fiction writers I admire A.S. Patric, Michael Sala and Patrick Cullen
2. What is the most memorable short story you have read? And why does it stand out for you?
There are probably two that tie for this. The first is “In the Penal Colony” by Kafka. The objective, everyday tone, contrasted with the horrific, nightmarish events in the story lingered in my mind for months after reading. The other is ‘The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allen Poe. It is a brilliant first person portrait of a psychopath. I re-read this years ago and it disturbed me so much I vowed I would never read it again.
3. What do you like about the short story form?
First and foremost, the variety it offers in form, style, setting, and characterisation. There is also the possibility of perfection. A short story can be perfect in a way a novel can never be.
4. How would you describe your own writing?
Traditional and/or experimental.
5. Which of your stories are you most fond of right at this moment and why?
The story I am most fond of is “The Eunuch in the Harem” a story told through a series of book reviews. I love it because it was easy to write, because it makes people laugh (something I thought I could never do) and because it opened a door for me to get my collection published by Black Inc. Also, it’s the one story I’ve written that I can reread with some pleasure.
6. Where do the ideas for your stories come from? (Take us through an example)
Sometimes from an overheard conversation, sometimes from reading a different short story, and sometimes I just want to do something that I haven’t seen before, just to see if I could do it. For example, I’ve always wanted to find a way to put a crossword into a story, and the story* itself flowed from there…
*Ryan’s story, ‘My English Homework’, which includes a crossword and many other ESL exercises such as a family tree, is published in Escape: an anthology of short Australian stories (Spineless Wonders, 2011)
7. What is your writing process – from idea to publication? (Do you go it alone or are others involved?)
I write the first draft, (which is my least favourite part of writing) and then I revise, revise, revise. I’m extremely fortunate to have a number of friends who are writers, and so I then send the story off to them to see what they think. After another draft, I usually send it off to a journal. If I’m lucky enough to be accepted, I look at the editor’s comments and fix up any other issues. And then the story is published.
8. Do you feel the short story form is valued in Australia? What makes you say this?
I think the short story form in Australia hasn’t flourished since the 1970s. I think it endures, has endured for decades and will continue to endure. It is valued artistically, but not commercially, as can be seen by the aversion of some publishers to publishing collections. Yet there are always journals, and publishers, who are willing to take a chance on short stories, and I don’t think this will change anytime soon.
9. How do you feel about your work being published in non-print forms such as digital and audio?
I think it’s exciting, but also a little scary. For me, a book has a front cover, a back cover and a few hundred pages in between. I sometimes find it hard to accept other media.
10. What advice would you like to offer Spineless Wonders?
Don’t be afraid to experiment and take risks.
Ryan O’Neill’s stories have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Meanjin, Westerly, Best Australian Stories, New Australian Stories and the Sleepers Almanac. He has had two short story collections published, Six Tenses and A Famine in Newcastle, the latter of which was shortlisted for the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. His new collection, Weight of the Human Heart, is published by Black Inc in 2012.
This entertaining collection includes a romp of a novella called The Rattler, as well as short stories and micro fictions all set in and around contemporary Melbourne. Sometimes serious, sometimes seriously playful –always written in breathtakingly beautiful prose – these stories uncover the heartbreaking tragedies, slow-burning emotions and serendipity of ordinary lives.
Cover image by Miles Allinson, illustrated by Miles Allinson & Maxine Beneba Clarke
Praise for The Rattler & other stories:
“Spare and taut, sometimes tricky, sometimes shocking, yet always deeply and satisfyingly tender. A great collection.”
Paddy O’Reilly.
“An explosive mix of muscular prose and sharp originality. In this collection, A. S. Patric proves himself to be a writer who must be taken very seriously.” Vanessa Gebbie, author of Short Circuit, A Guide to the Art of the Short Story.
“A.S. Patric is that rarest of writers- he is absolutely fearless. His stories take risks, his characters soar and his prose sings. Be careful. These stories might cut you.” Ryan O’Neill.
In Permission to Lie, Julie Chevalier casts a curious eye into many different worlds. Her characters ride the citybound bus route, spend the night in a nudist colony and wait tables. Quirky and beautifully-written, these stories provide insights that ring with integrity and compassion.
‘A new voice in Australian fiction, wry, gritty, knowing and true.’
Fiona McGregor, Indelible Ink
Read an interview with the author, here.
What makes a man?
In this collection of short stories, Pierz Newton John moves through the full range of masculine experience, with an openness not afraid to show men at their most lonely, sexual, loving, sometimes vulnerable, sometimes abusive. First touch of a woman’s body in a cold and foreign land, tender moments between father and son, the deep love of a father separated from his child, treachery and opportunism mixed up with loneliness and internet dating, the casual violence of young boys exploring the world, rites of passage from young rebels to comfortable suburbanites, and what men feel and think about women. In Pierz Newton John’s stories it always come back to emotion?tenderness with children, warmth with wives after dreams of alienation, the pain of treacherous girlfriends, the loneliness of men. Plus ça change plus c’est la même chose…….the reader is lulled by the seamless prose, undercurrents of contemporary music, the urbane writing, the suburban settings, but it is all happening behind closed doors.
Read an interview with the author, here
Purchase a copy, here.
In these seventeen stories, Melbourne writer, Mary Manning, looks at the ways people are shaped, or damaged, by their circumstances. The results may sometimes be humorous, sometimes tragic. Whether set on a tram, along a highway or on an outback road?it is the journey, the characters and the telling of the tale that will capture your attention.
Cover and illustrations by Paden Hunter
‘Mary Manning takes her stories to places few writers would dare to go. She ranges across different styles with ease in a unique voice that is tart, tight and compulsively readable.’ PADDY O’REILLY
Read our interview with the author, Mary Manning here
To purchase, click here
If you like your genres with a bit of edge, you’ll love this diverse collection of stories from Spineless Wonders.
Features award-winning writers such as Ryan O’Neill, Jen Mills, Andy Kissane, Louise Swinn, Julie Chevalier, A.S. Patric and Kim Westwood as well as stories chosen by Sophie Cunningham in the inaugural Carmel Bird Short Fiction Award.
Contains illustrations by talented young artist, Paden Hunter.
‘Quality short fiction, packed with surprises. Prepare to be transported.’ Marion Halligan
Purchase here
Read interviews with our contributors, here.
Listen to audio samples here.
An anthology of prose poems and microfiction from 30 Australian writers.
- Includes award-winning writers Michael Farrell, Keri Glastonbury, Judith Beveridge and Peter Boyle.
- Features prose poems and microfiction selected by competition judge, joanne burns.
- Cover and evocative sketches by talented artist, Paden Hunter.
- Read interviews with our contributors here
- Click here to here audio
To purchase, click here
Escape audio stories Vol. 2
Playlist
Those Gauls Must Be Crazy – Claire Aman 14:36
The End of the Beginning – Meredyth Cilento 25:50
Poioumenon – John Steiner 8:22
The Gardener – Susan McCreery 21:50
For more details about these stories and their authors and to hear audio samples from this CD click here. Also available as mp3.
Escape – audio stories Vol. 1
Playlist
Paper Anniversary – SJ Finn/JR Davidson 19:35
Under the Skin – Sue Booker 21:39
Unnameable – M. Giacometti 20:14
Home – Yin Lin 13:36
For more details about these stories and their authors and to hear audio samples from this CD, click here. Also available as mp3.
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