Flash fiction – Shauna Gilligan Writer

Writer Interview, Writers Chat, Writers Read, Writing Life

Writers Chat 56: Tara Masih on “How We Disappear” (Press 53: North Carolina, 2022)

Tara, How lovely to feature your work again on my Writers Chat series. We last chatted in 2020, about The Bitter Kind, a flash novelette and today we’re talking about your latest publication, How We Disappear (Press 53: North Carolina, 2022), a novella and stories – a Millions Most Anticipated book!

Cover of *How We Disappear* showing a painting of a woman disappearing or emerging against a light turquoise background

SG: I had the sense that How We Disappear is as much about appearance, judgement and expectation as it is about how we disappear and are disappeared. I was particularly moved by the last story in the collection, “Notes to the World” where the protagonist, Grigori finds that the notes he is reading speak not just of the woman’s life but also of his own. I loved the effect of the stories mirroring – literally timeless – but also how you show the repetition of human behaviour in relationships, who lives/survives, who hunts/is hunted and that haunting last line, “let me hear your voice”. Can you explain your intentions with the collection and the title (and the beautiful cover)?

TM: The stories were written over a period of time (“Those Who Have Gone” was actually written decades ago), and there was no intent in any of them to link up. It wasn’t until I realized I had enough for a collection and started looking at the stories to order them that I saw the connection of disappearance.

I think the various ways disappearance can be examined or experienced is only partially shown in this collection, but I do think my personal relationship history together with my upbringing in the sixties as a mixed child in a very white community allows me to understand both the feeling of having been left and the feeling of not being seen. Of disappearing into the background. What most allows us to be seen? I don’t think it’s all through the visual (though there is visual judgment) as much as through auditory (I include sign language as “auditory”). I think we have a greater need to be “heard” than seen, though both are powerful, often interchangeable needs. I want readers who have always had the benefit of being seen and heard to understand what it’s like to fight to be recognized, and I want those who can relate to the themes to find themselves or find ways to make better decisions so they can function at their best. We’ve also been collectively traumatized by the covid pandemic and many have lost loved ones. I hope some of the stories allow readers to work through the grief process.

The cover image is gorgeous and designer Claire V. Foxx did a beautiful job of making the type reflect the theme. She is the one who noted that the woman could be viewed as either disappearing or emerging.

SG: I love how you bring in the senses and all types of language and communication here, Tara. In “Fleeing Gravity” you tell a story that feels like an epic fairytale, yet it is grounded in history and colonisation. Ghosts flit in and out of reality – physically and psychologically – and it seemed to me that it was their story as much as Brandy’s story of displacement, creation and destruction. He says of the female ghost Miz Annabelle Fourier, “It’s easy to love a ghost who asks nothing of you”. I also found that this story had echoes – in terms of the relationships – of “In A Sulfate Mist”. What was your thinking behind these two stories?

TM: There is no conscious connection between those two stories outside of the fact that I’m drawn to stories set in the natural world. I love placing characters into landscapes and allowing those exterior settings to influence story and behavior. “Fleeing Gravity” began with my wanting to set a character in a ghost town. What would it be like to live among ghosts on a daily basis? To be a caretaker and be the only one left there at the end of the day? I also wanted to highlight the plight of the Montana “Landless Indians,” as they called themselves, who fought for recognition from our government for decades. They were basically told they were not worthy to exist and should disappear into the landscape. I’m thrilled to report that before this book got published the Little Shell Tribe members finally achieved their goal and are now federally recognized. They have essentially become “visible.”

Which brings up other issues such as power. Who holds it, and how it’s wielded to make others powerless by making them invisible.

SG: I think you’ve done a great job of highlighting the plight of the Little Shell Tribe members and here is hoping that in now being officially “visible”, the needs and rights are upheld and the Tribe treasured. A number of the stories in the collection explore connections between environment, emotion and story. I’m thinking here, for example, of “Delight” and “Billy Said This Really Happened to Lucy.” Desire is by the sea, Lucy is by the marsh and they both have ambiguous relationships with their surrounds. I really enjoyed the characters’ realisation about themselves and the land/sea around them and the powerful role that parental stories play in forming impressions, teaching social norms, particularly in relation to gender, the body and control. Can you talk about this?

TM: While I love the natural world, I recognize its disinterest in us. And its destructive power. Nature is beautiful and restorative. Nature is full of fury and can obliterate anything in its path in seconds. There are many writers now exploring the genre of cli-fi fiction. My writing doesn’t go that far into what we are facing now, but perhaps as someone who is bicultural, I try to present the reality of both sides. The same for people. In “Delight,” we first see the father as a typical abusive parent. In the last scene, I hope readers catch something else. In the Lucy story, her mother returns in the guise of a poisonous snake. Lucy both welcomes this new interaction but is also wary of it.

We rarely see women in wilderness stories, though that is changing as well. But I still can’t tell you there is a large list of women who write about nature and place, especially in short stories. Men have long had that domain almost exclusively to themselves. My female characters are either learning to be comfortable in that male-dominated wilderness, sometimes with the help of men, or have found their own ways into the wilderness and are leading the way for the men who are following.

SG: I loved how you channelled the writing process – and formation of a writer – in the cleverly constructed “Agatha: A Life in Unauthorised Fragments”. In some ways this story feels like the spine of the collection; it is almost like a reflection on the story telling process. “Every story is an escape story.”

In a way this book helps the readers escape. Did the writing help you escape and do you think this is one of the roles of writing/reading in our lives – and in Agatha’s?

TM: Thank you. I just loved writing that story. I had studied Christie’s disappearance decades ago in high school. Besides loving her mysteries, I was obsessed with trying to find out what happened when she disappeared. When I realized I needed another story to flesh out this collection I recalled that long ago research and took to it again with great glee. As someone who has a minor in sociology, human behavior totally intrigues me and I have my own theory about what happened. It’s not anything ground-breaking, but I did channel my own experiences as a female writer, as a crisis counsellor, and as a woman who has been cheated on.

The epigram is just something that came to me when I was writing the story. Kind of a voice over, if you will. I think that all stories we tell are either escape hatches from our own lives or attempts to escape from someone or something or even ourselves. I was thinking of all that rather than of readers escaping into the stories, but yes, that is happening as well on the other end of listening or reading a story.

SG: Yes, I think we are touching on the very powerful invisible connection and dialogue between writer and reader! In the novella An Aura Surrounds That Night, a family views the news of the assignation of JFK on the TV, a child who captures slugs that escape and leave silvery trails on the bedroom ceiling comes of age and she begins to notice the inside/outside-ness of life:

“But there was Grammy below me, now trapped inside herself, while outside Japanese beetles, lightning bugs, moths, mosquitoes, gnats were flying into the window screens, banging and buzzing.”

Like other characters in the stories, she has the gift of second sight (hence the title) yet the gift cannot stop what is going to happen to her sister. I loved this novella and I think the placement in the book worked very well – the narrative carried much of the sensibility of the early stories and was one which I found really poignant. Have you any plans to write more of this story…?

TM: Ha! You are not the first to want more. I’m afraid at this point that story is as fully told as I can make it. It did begin as a novel and I just could not take it where it needed to go. But I kept tinkering with it, not wanting to lose the sisters entirely. When I finally recast it as a flash novella, it all fell into place. The writing flowed, the scenes congealed, and so I have to say it’s in the form it’s meant to be in, no more, no less. But never say never, right?

Thanks again for noticing and appreciating what I was trying to do not only with the story but the full collection. It warms my heart and helps keep me writing!

SG: Oh so wonderful to chat with you, Tara, and your writing warms many hearts. Now lastly, some fun questions:

Beach or mountains? Beach for sure. Love the ocean and all things watery.
Silence or noise when writing? Silence. Noise stresses me out.
Kindle, paperback or hardback? Hardback or paperback. Nothing beats the tactile feeling of a book in hand.
Dogs or cats? Love cats.
I love cats, too! So, what is the most surprising read you’ve had this year? I found a book in a remainder bin and loved it. The Australia Stories by Todd James Pierce. I don’t know why I never heard of it. A hybrid novel that was likely ahead of its time.

Tara Masih, Photograph courtesy of Tara Masih

Connect with Tara via her website.

Thank you to Press 53 and Tara for the advance copy of How We Disappear.

Collaboration, Exhibitions, Writers with Artists, Writing Life

Imagining History: New writing in Exhibition Pamphlet Oriel y Bont, University of South Wales.

Black and White Cover of Exhibition Pamphlet – Imagining History

I thoroughly enjoyed both the process of responding to the art and reading the resulting writing in the Imagining History Exhibition Pamphlet. The exhibition was held in Oriel y Bont, University of South Wales, from 1 November to 17 December 2021.

In the words of Barrie Llewelyn (editor of the pamphlet), “the exhibition, pamphlet and conference focussed on the complex relationship between fiction and fact” and drew attention to the “partial, fragmentary or even distorted nature of the narratives which often shape our national histories.”

For me, the themes of landscape and memory appealed, especially in the work of John Elwyn. In my short piece, “Mama Daly” I hoped to imagine the life of a woman looking at – and also longing for – what lies in and beyond her immediate town-and-land-scapes. With thanks to Barrie for including my flash fiction piece in the publication and exhibition.

The exhibition included work by Susan Adams, Iwan Bala, Judith Beecher, Elizabeth Bridge, Jack Crabtree, Morag Colquhoun, Ivor Davies, Ken Elias, Geraint Evans, Tom Goddard, Clive Hicks-Jenkins, Rachel Jones, Naomi Leake, Kate Milsom, Radha Patel, Paul Reas, André Stitt, Daniel Trevidy, Dawn Woolley and others.

The pamphlet included writing by Tony Curtis, Frank Dullaghan, Kate Noakes, Maria Donovan, Judith Goldsmith, Derwen Morfayel, Christopher Meredith and many others, including myself.

Read more about the University of South Wales gallery, exhibition, conference and pamphlet here.

Imagining History Images with thanks to USW website https://gallery.southwales.ac.uk/current-exhibition/

Writer Interview, Writers Chat, Writers Read, Writing Life

Writers Chat 43: Catherine McNamara on “Love Stories for Hectic People” (Oxfordshire: Reflex Press, 2021)

Catherine, Welcome back to my WRITERS CHAT series. Today we’re discussing Love Stories for Hectic People, a slim volume of thirty-three charged flash fictions which recently won the Saboteur Award for Best Short Story Collection (congratulations!)

Cover image of *Love Stories for Hectic People*

SG: Firstly, let’s discuss the title and cover. It seems that these stories are not just for hectic people, they are about hectic people though much of what is explored in this collection is reflected by the cover image of a woman in a yellow dress pausing in her reading with the sense that she is full of feeling.

CMN: To be honest this title came about for another collection that outgrew its intention and vibe. I knew with the very first story – ‘As Simple as Water’ written first and barely edited – that I would be addressing the many shapes of love, so that would involve an array of people immersed in different lives. So Love Stories for Hectic People very quickly glued itself to the story series, which was written over the course of six months, until I reached the final piece – ‘Love Is an Infinite Victory’ – when I knew it was complete.

The cover image came afterwards, once the book had been accepted by Reflex Press. Before the pandemic I was in Venice for an opening, where I met an old friend who is a painter in Florence. I told him about the book of short fiction I’d had accepted, and he said why don’t you have a look at some of my works? This image spoke to me from the start and I can’t say how happy I am with it.

SG: What a lovely story about obtaining the image – so full of artistic synchronicity!

I love your use of brackets to bring the reader into the other side of the narrative. In “As Simple As Water” we meet Vasilis K and Marj B in Athens train station after the moment when Marj has fainted. As a woman – a stranger – helps Marj, Vasilis stands apart, watching:

Vasilis who has been making love to Marj most of the night (except when she wept in a corner of the bed and he waited) wonders about the pelvic cavern of all women which is filled with jostling organs and squelching tubes and lengthy orifices like vivid botanical sections drawn into slithering life.

So much is captured here – the stretch of time, of physicality, of distance and the point in which Vasilis removes himself from Marj. Can you talk about how you capture the depths of character and narrative in these short tales?

CMN: It’s going to sound very crazy but when I am in the zone and writing cleanly, it’s almost as though I am hearing a voice dictating the scene in my head, and I have to get it down quickly, and then halt before it turns to jibberish. Half of the time I am trying to slow and clarify what comes to mind, and make sure I am being faithful to the tract of the story, with some sort of carrot dangling ahead. Maybe it is madness. But I prefer to think of it as magical composition. Almost musical. Of course the downside is that sometimes it is irrelevant and nonsensical, or doesn’t piece together, but for me, this sort of freestyle writing sometimes brings me to the brink of lucid swimming ideas directly from the subconscious, which can be surprising and powerful. I do think writing is very much a practice, so one needs to find out what works best to produce some sort of truth or an honest portrait of some aspect of humanity. The brilliance of flash fiction is that you have zero time to get to the point, so you have to know the core of your story from the outset – and deliver! It’s a great, risky form.

All of the above said, I know that with this story I wanted to include the reader in the events leading up to Marj’s dramatic fainting at the train station, through the lens of Vasilis’s recollection. I don’t think the use of bracketed, almost-overview inserts works for every piece of work but in this case it seemed to fit with the raconteur style of voice. I think it helps us feel Vasilis’s discomfort and detachment within the fluid rush of action as it occurs, showing how the lover with whom he had been intimate is now a collapsed woman on a metro station floor and, later, a patient in a hospital, away from whom he walks back into his own life.

I think that to capture any sort of depth or truth you have be the character and be wholly faithful to how this person might act and react – even if this means changing the course of the story or using a certain voice or language style. Flash is brilliant for the shifting and intensity that it both allows and demands.

SG: You mention risky and flash together and I think with this collection you do take risks and even as you say, in the way you experience the dictation of the story and you get it down without letting the rational critic emerge.

As with much of your writing, it is through the senses that we get to know the characters. “Genitalia” captures the lived experience of periods, the messiness of our organs and the desire – by some – to tidy it all up, and in doing so, make women neater.

I loved the recollection of the unnamed woman painting “a line of hieroglyphics …on the yellow wall” of a hotel and that by now “the piece of mortar she painted would be lying in a pile of rubble along the river. Where it gleams at night” and how, at the end of this story, by becoming pregnant, all is calm again.

Can you talk a about how many of the stories here explore the power of the female body?

CMN: I really wanted to celebrate female blood in this story – a celebration of our moon-guided, timeless cycles and our power to reproduce. For me, the guy is almost irrelevant, in that he is so poorly informed about the wonders of the female body, and he has been grafted onto this young woman’s wondrous existence. I wanted to show that he would learn from and be enriched by her. Men are sometimes a little repulsed by the force and power of our bodies, and how we have this intrinsic connection to the tides, and even the gods if you like. I wanted to take up that thread and show this woman as a wild modern goddess.

SG: Yes! Many of the stories use sensory memories – or the creation of these memories, in “Citrus”, for example – to connect the child-self with the adult-self in the way that power permeates experience. Here the narrator – suffering abuse – notes that “Everything is fury, everything is rivalry.”

In “Slaughter of the Innocents”, power and police abuse of it simmers dangerously, represented by the “insignias on their shirts”, “a stitched leather holster nursing a gun” which make the narrator realise that she hates her father more than she loves her own life.

Can you talk about this theme of power and control?

CMN: I have experienced something of the violence of men and how this can filter down as a refracted code through a family. It’s something I know I will write about more. Probably anyone who has ever lived through violence is always one step away from this terror. So I think it is something I listen for when I am fishing for ideas, or when people tell stories.

The other thing I find is that we see so much violence on-screen that we are anaesthetised, so I think that my job as a writer is to strip back domestic violence to its daily tension and core dynamic, more than an orchestrated, visual drama. I wanted to get inside of violence with words and make the reader respond in a visceral way, perhaps striking familiar cords, but certainly in a more subtle way than televised or cinematic violence.

SG: That story deftly captures the refracted code of familial violence.

Languages and travel – and the liminal spaces between understanding and comprehension – add to the sense of surreal (and humour) in these stories. Often bodies and minds experience love separately.

In “Tokyo Frieze” Tanja and Kurt “always spoke freely; he with his accent and she with hers. Perhaps because of the zigzag through languages they were emboldened when addressing each other’s eyes.” Later Tanja recalls when she was younger and “had felt porous, hyper-human, tied to a common energy or saturation. But now she knew she was confined within the body around her and went no further. Her history was a stream of dioramas like this.”

I thought your use of language and travel as a way to delve into aging and the body was interesting. What are your thoughts on this?

CMN: It’s so true and curious the way that bodies and minds experience love separately. I love this zone!

‘Tokyo Frieze’ is one of my favourite stories in the collection and was originally published in Rowan Pelling’s The Amorist magazine. My interest in language and the languages of love stems from the fact that I left Sydney at 21 and though I speak English a lot of the time, I have lived in countries where other languages are spoken, and have learnt French and Italian, and am now studying Greek. So the characters in my life have mostly been European or West African, and I am fascinated by accents and attitudes and words. Travel too, as well as living in a foreign context and feeling at home within it, also figure in my experience so these aspects have become reference points for my stories.

In this way, utilising language and travel to address aging and the body, has been a natural modus operandi, in that my reservoir of story material comes directly from these areas. As I grow older as a female, a mother, a lover, a writer, a traveller, it’s not so much about recounting experience, as using the emotions generated by certain experiences in order to give authenticity to the stories that come about.

SG: I love how you express that, Catherine.

Using emotions generated by certain experiences in order to give authenticity to the stories that come about.

In essence, writing from what you know into what you don’t know.

Let’s end with five fun questions.

Coffee or Tea? Coffee – espresso!
Sandals or runners? Sandals
Sparkling water or non-carbonated? Non-carbonated
What are you reading now? Gina Frangella – Burn Down the House
What are you writing now? Novel rewrite and some budding flash stories

CMN: Thank you for having me again Shauna!

SG: Thank you, Catherine, for the joy reading your collection brought me and for your generous answers in our Writers Chat. I wish you much continued success with the collection.

Thanks to Catherine McNamara and Reflex Press for providing me with a copy of Love Stories for Hectic People.

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