Born and raised in Ottawa, Shannon Robinson is author of The Ill-Fitting Skin, winner of the Press 53 Award for Short Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Joyland, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from Washington University in St. Louis, and in 2011 she was the Writer-in-Residence at Interlochen Center for the Arts. Other honours include Nimrod's Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, grants from the Elizabeth George Foundation and the Canada Council for the Arts, a Hedgebrook Fellowship, a Sewanee Scholarship, and an Independent Artist Award from the Maryland Arts Council. She teaches creative writing at Johns Hopkins University.
1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?
The publication of The Ill-Fitting Skin, my debut short story collection, comes at a time in my life when I already have significant milestones behind me, so it does not feel “life-changing” ... but it does give me a great sense of accomplishment. My most recent work feels like a continuation of my older stuff in that it’s concerned with similar themes (notably, female experience and nurturing). I think my newer work is more confident, although my older stories have benefited from recent revisions.
2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I’d always loved fiction, but I never tried writing it: I admired it at a safe distance. As a teenager, I wrote the obligatory terrible poems—I was very preoccupied with the prospect of nuclear Armageddon. (Those fears have now been displaced by fears of climate disaster.) At university, I wrote comedy revue sketches and feminist/cultural commentary/humour pieces for the student newspaper and later for community radio. I started writing fiction after I moved to the United States and wasn’t legally entitled to work in the country; my husband, a poet, suggested that I take a creative writing class. I wrote my first story, and that was it: I knew I wanted to keep doing this for the rest of my life. It was like one of those dreams where you discover a room in your house that you never knew existed.
3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
How long does it take? Forever. Whenever I read interviews with authors who say “I wrote this all over the course of one, intense evening …” I am filled with wonder and envy. Sometimes certain images or ideas will be gestating in my head for years before I push them onto paper. An initial draft may take weeks or months; I do several drafts and will make substantial edits. I’ve gone back to stories years later to make changes—to adjust some emotional turn or stretch of dialogue that never quite felt right, or no longer feels right.
4 - Where does a work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
For me, a work of fiction begins with some preoccupation—some point of fascination, something that has a buzz of ambiguity and ambivalence. I press on that tender spot; I go into that cave for narrative and characters. As I was writing these stories, I wasn’t initially working toward a book—but eventually I could see that they presented a thematic coherence that would make for a good short story collection.
5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I absolutely love doing readings! I’m an ex-theatre kid, and I’ve always enjoyed performance. My favourite events are ones with multiple readers: these have great energy. I tend to read finished pieces rather than work in progress, so I wouldn’t say readings are part of my creative process … but I do think readings help authors build readership. I have some events set up for the upcoming months, and I’m looking to add more.
6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?
I try not to be too “theory forward,” because I think initial certainty can be the death of good fiction-writing. That said, I think fiction is an excellent place to explore fraught territory, be it emotional, social, philosophical, political … and I definitely have opinions … which I am always willing to unsettle. I am interested in maternity; I’m interested in women’s anger; I’m interested in shame and forgiveness and emotional hunger. A phrase that echoed through my head as I was writing the stories for The Ill-Fitting Skin was a line from Margaret Atwood’s The Edible Woman: one character declares “Florence Nightingale was a cannibal.” If women are synonymous with nurturing, who are we if we botch the job of caring for others? How do we care for ourselves if we are socialized against our own interests?
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Sometimes I feel like the Russell Crowe character at the beginning of Gladiator: “Hold the line! Hold the line!” he shouts, standing with his troops while the Germanic army thunders towards them. (In this metaphor, the approaching army stands for AI, corporate capitalist forces, conservative-driven censorship, or any entity hostile to creative endeavours.) Or maybe writers are better cast as the “Barbarians,” charging wildly against the establishment and received ideas …?
I think a writer’s role should be to entertain, to provoke thought, and to imaginatively engage our empathy. I’m not going to tell anyone what their art should be, but maybe let’s not encourage people to lean into their pettiest, cruelest, and most selfish inclinations.
8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I think it’s important to have an outside reader for work in progress. That may be an editor, but it also might be friend or a fellow writer (or both) who cares enough about you and your writing to tell you what’s working and what isn’t. I’ve relied on the feedback of my husband (James Arthur, the aforementioned poet) and on my writing workshop, who are all women I did my MFA with, years ago: Katya Apekina, Emily Robbins, and Lia Silver. They have all cheered me on and helped me sort out problems. For my short story collection, I worked with fiction editor Claire Foxx, who provided invaluable line edits, particularly on my older stories. I have a graduate degree in English, but Shannon of the Past clearly did not understand comma splices. I am humbled by and grateful for each and every correction.
9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Years ago, I was talking with Jean McGarry, and I was struck by something she said: know when you’ve arrived. That is to say, don’t waste time doubting yourself, just get on with it. Doubt will always be part of the writing process. And I think it’s easy for women especially to feel like doubt and self-disparagement are the rent you pay for any current position of accomplishment. No need for that.
10 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
Am I part of the 5:00 a.m. club? Nope. I would sleep in until noon every day, but someone has to feed the cats. And drive everyone to school. I am one of those hypocritical writing instructors who tells her students that you must “write every day,” and then I fail to do so. During the academic year, my mind and time are taken over by teaching, and I get very little writing done, but during the summer, I do write every day, for at least two hours. In the evenings, we cook elaborate meals and then watch a movie.
11 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
When my writing is stalled, I turn to novels and short stories that I’ve been eager to read. I think we should all ignore that voice in the back of our heads that says we shouldn’t read others’ work when we’re trying to write, lest we be discouraged by its comparative awesomeness or find ourselves unduly influenced … I always find that good writing just stokes my own fire. If you’re reading fiction, you’re still engaging your imagination, but you’re giving your unconscious mind a chance to do some work on its own.
12 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I think of several places as “home”: Baltimore (where I live now, in a three-story pre-war house with various eccentricities); Toronto (where I lived for seventeen years, in university dorm rooms and various apartments); Ottawa—and in particular, the house that was my childhood home, which has been sold, so in a way, it no longer exists. When I think of that home, I think of the smell of simmering Bolognese sauce. Or “spaghetti sauce,” as we called it, because it was the 80s and we weren’t fancy.
13 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
I’ve always been drawn to visual art and to music that might seem, on the surface, to be whimsical, and yet contains darkness and turbulence. As a child, I was fascinated by Beatrix Potter’s illustrations, which are all delicately rendered anthropomorphized animals … engaged in acts of destruction and predation. I found the Beatles interesting, too: sure, the melodies are sweet, but you can just feel the anger rolling off those guys, particularly Lennon and McCartney. Recently, I’ve been interested in the work of Max Ernst—his surreal collage, which is full of sexy Victorian nightmarish danger. And in Bjork’s music: people think she’s cute, but her songs go through you like a crystal knife.
14 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Writers who’ve been important to me include Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, John Cheever, George Saunders, Kazuo Ishiguro, Lorrie Moore, Shirley Jackson, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez. This is by no means a complete list! I’m constantly in the process of discovering writers who inspire me. It’s always exciting come across a story and think, “Dang,” (see Ottawa author André Alexis’s tragicomic masterpiece, “Houyhnhnm”) or “Where has this been all my life?” (see Ambrose Bierce’s weird and magical “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”).
15 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I would like to publish a novel. I’m working on it.
16 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
This would involve going back in time … but I think I would be either an actor or a psychiatrist. As a younger person, both paths were appealing to me. Currently, as a writer, I sort of get to combine aspects of both those professions.
17 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
In answering this question, it was so tempting to look to see how other writers responded—whether they all said some variation of “masochism” or “stubbornness” or claimed they write because they’re “not good at anything else.” You know—jokey answers that are nonetheless truthful. Writing is the most difficult and the most frustrating thing I’ve ever done, but it’s also the most stimulating and the most satisfying. And yes, there’s a certain amount of sheer bloody-mindedness. And attention-seeking. Writing is the perfect intersection of my introversion with my extroversion.
18 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I just finished reading Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch. Incredible. The last great film I saw was Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast. Likewise.
19 - What are you currently working on?
I’m working on a novel about a Victorian baby killer, based on an historical figure. I’m writing at the same time as doing research, and I’m wrestling with the idea of form and historical fiction. I’ve just started reading Rachel Cantor’s Half-Life of a Stolen Sister, which looks at the Brontë sisters through a kaleidoscope of the past and contemporary, using (to quote the jacket copy) “diaries, letters, home movies, television and radio interviews, deathbed monologues, and fragments from the sprawling invented worlds of the siblings’ childhood.” It’s brilliant, and it’s really opening up my thoughts on what a neo-Victorian novel might look like.
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