Following on from the longlist announcement of the 2016/17 GBP Short Story Prize, we asked each of the thirteen writers three questions about themselves, their story, and their inspirations. Here's Joanna Walsh, whose longlisted short story Hasard Objectif will soon be available to read as a digital single. You'll also find a short biography of Joanna after her answers. 

 

 

I began writing seriously, in a fuck-it-I-might-as-well-do-this way in 2012. I’ve published four books, Hotel, Vertigo, Grow a Pair, and Fractals. Three of these are short story collections, but I also like writing personal essay/autofiction/whatever-you-like-to-call-it. 

 

 

I’ve started writing stories that I call ‘creative/critical,’ which segue my interest in writing stories with my interest in writing essays. It wasn't a conscious experiment, but it's something that has taken on a form, and a set of rules, which I develop, or break, as I write each new story. These stories deal with immediate experience but also examine the work of other writers and thinkers. Traditionally, stories fight shy of showing ‘influence’ and writers seem to be expected to sublimate it. There may be a degree of self-policing here, an anxiety about reproducing an ‘authentic’ unmediated experience, but we're all mediated: why not deal with influence openly and directly? My first of these stories was Shklovsky’s Zoo, a disappearing book published by Tony White’s Piece of Paper Press, which is no longer available, but which you can read about here. The second story, Homage to Homage to Switzerland, was published last autumn in Kevin Barry & Olivia Smith’s Winter Papers anthology. Hazard Objectif is the third. The title comes from Breton’s writing about creativity and chance. It’s an idea I’m always coming back to. 

   

 

Much as I admire them, I think I’ll eschew MansfieldKafkaWalserBarthelmeHemingway etc in favour of people who are alive and kicking, some of whose whose work you may not know - yet. I’m only allowed three? I’ll click on any link to short fiction written by Eley Williams, Owen Booth, Lindsay Hunter, Claire-Louise Bennett, Diane Cook, Gavin Corbett, Kelly Luce, Rob Doyle (oh, you said only 3?), not to mention any and all of the writers I published when I edited short fiction at 3:AM Magazine.