A Q&A with Eliza Clark
Image Credit: Robin Silas Christian
First, I wanted to ask about your journey towards becoming an author. Could you tell us a little bit about how you got to the point of releasing your third book?
A big part of it was that I got onto the Young Writers’ Talent Fund, which is a scheme that supports new writers aged 16 and 25 in the northeast. During that time, I got one-to-one mentorship, which made a really big difference to my writing. At around the same time, I started working for a small literary magazine called Mslexia, based in the northeast, which really taught me the business end of writing, and I used to organise a lot of subscriber events for them. I ran a couple of pitching events and, by the time I got to one of our Indie Press pitching event, in May or June of 2019, I wasn’t planning on pitching my own novel – but then, the publisher Influx posted what they were looking for, and they were basically looking for my book! So, I pitched my own book to them, and they emailed me afterwards to say that they wanted Boy Parts.
It was a slightly unconventional path, but sometimes I think you’ve just got to blag your way win a little bit. From then on, it was more conventional, I would say. I got an agent the week Boy Parts was published and he’s still my agent now.
Amazing. I’d love to talk to you about short stories – I love them and love talking to people who write them because I find them fascinating. I saw that you’d once said, when writing a collection, you’re set up to fail from the beginning and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that and more on your thoughts on the form?
I think I actually feel a little less like that now the book is actually out, as I think it has gone quite well – which is maybe unusual for a short story. But then, I also feel like we only allow one or two a year that do well. I think there’s a lot of like commercial anxiety around short stories in the UK, and I think we’re a bit obsessed with novels here and we don’t have as much of a literary tradition of short stories as they do in the States, for example.
Also, I think that because short story collections are such a mixed bag, I mean it’s rare to read a short story collection and think every single one is great. So, the more varied the collection is, I think some readers will think that the stories won’t all align with their taste, so it can feel like you are setting yourself up to write something that doesn’t sell super well because it won’t appeal to everybody and a lot of people will think, ‘Oh, I like some of it, but I didn’t like it all.
I quite like that about that about them though!
Me too, and I feel like I tend to be a lot more forgiving of short story collections – maybe that’s just because I like short stories as a form, but I also read quite broadly, so I’m not necessarily kind of going to be turned off if I get a story in a particular style.
Read full interview in nb. notes, our quarterly accompaniment to our Book Groups.
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