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by Fictionable
Interviews, book chat and everything about the short stories and graphic fiction from all around the world appearing in Fictionable. "Storytellers, readers and creatives alike will love" – The Independent
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- 1 weeks ago20 min
Will Boast: 'You almost have to make your characters feel interestingly doomed'
The heat is on in London, so it's time for another set of exclusive short stories and another series of podcasts. Over the next few weeks we'll be hearing from Elaine Vilar Madruga, EC Osondu, Zhenya Oliinyk and Robin Munby, but we launch into Summer with Will Boast and his story The Line.Boast explains that this story came out of his own family's struggles with the US immigration system in the 1990s, after they moved from the UK when he was a child."We would get to the Federal Building in downtown," he says, "and literally if you didn't get in line by a certain hour you were not getting in the building."The Line started off with a family much like his own, Boast continues, but as he thought about the "hierarchy of immigrants" he started making his characters "less comfortable in the English language"."Polish immigrants are not thought about as much, I guess," he says, "and they are often more politically conservative than some groups. So I thought it would be interesting to take a character who has more conservative, right-leaning views on migration than I do and put that character in this scenario."The long line stretching around the Federal Building is just the visible end of a figurative line stretching all around the world, Boast adds. "Behind the line of people actually there physically waiting to get their papers, their green cards, eventually their citizenship, of course, there's a huge line of people applying for visas, hoping and dreaming to get that chance to be in that physical line."Even if his characters find a way through the bureaucratic nightmare, the west's ever-increasing hostility towards migrants is sure to exact some cost. But according to Boast, there's something about short fiction that makes them doomed from the start."Because of its formal rigour and its un-open-endedness as opposed to novels, which can stretch," he says, "a short story really won't work unless its ending is satisfying and feels fated in some way,"We'll be tempting fate next time with EC Osondu and his short story Uber Chat. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- May 16, 202619 min
Takiguchi Yūshō: 'When I’m writing fiction, I have very little sense I’m the one inventing the story'
We've already heard from Diana Evans, Bruna Martini, Joel Cox and Holly Edwards in this Spring series of podcasts. Now we bring it to a close with Takiguchi Yūshō and the translator Jesse Kirkwood.Takiguchi tells us that the wandering narrator in Peppermint is following the same method as his author."It's when things start heading somewhere unexpected and when unexpected things begin to happen that it really starts to feel like the novel is working properly," he says.Just as in life, Takiguchi continues, "even if you don't want to go off track, you end up doing so. Things never quite unfold the way you intended, and you still have to keep moving forward in some way."And it's no good looking back. Memory may be "always with us", he explains, but it's also "profoundly unstable". So whether we reach for prose or images, it's impossible to capture the past."No matter how many photographs we have, no matter how much we try to preserve something in words, it's never the same as the thing itself."That gap between words and the things they represent is familiar territory for the translator, Kirkwood adds. But you can start to solve the puzzle when you focus on the voice."Once you have that voice," Kirkwood says, "a lot of your other decisions become very easy, because you just listen to the voice."It's an echo of the way Takiguchi writes his fiction. Instead of coming up with his stories, it's a question of paying attention to what his characters are telling him."What matters more," he says, "is whether I'm able to listen well to someone's story."That's the last of these Spring podcasts. We'll be back with another season of stories for Summer. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- May 9, 202617 min
Holly Edwards: 'There's obviously something political about presenting trans characters'
Diana Evans, Bruna Martini and Joel Cox have already joined us on this Spring series of podcasts, and next time we'll be hearing from Takiguchi Yūshō and the translator Jesse Kirkwood. But this time we welcome Holly Edwards.The country comes calling in her short story Little Lamb, Who Made Thee? But Edwards has always lived in the city, so she doesn't have a store of memories to draw on."What I have is – from very much an urbanite's perspective – an obsession with what it must be like to live in the countryside," she says, "ever since I was a child. And as part of that I have watched hours of shows like This Farming Life and River Cottage."The story follows Rose as she reconnects with her roots, the author continues, with much of the detail taken from those sessions. "I'm often eating my dinner while watching people lambing on telly."For Edwards, the comfortable rural life portrayed in TV documentaries is altered by viewing it through the queer lens."I don't consciously set out to queer a story," she says, "but that's how I perceive the world and so I'll often have queer characters or queer perspectives in my stories."Queerness is inherent in Little Lamb, Who Made Thee? with the tension between Rose and her father coming from his discomfort with her transition, Edwards explains, but she didn't want to write a "battle cry"."There's obviously something political about presenting trans characters and trans lives," she says, "I think that's inescapable." There's something inherently political about presenting all sorts of queer lives, she adds, "but it wasn't my intention when writing it".Rose's father may have started out as the bad guy, Edwards says, but she knew from the start that it wasn't that simple."As a queer writer, I do feel a responsibility to portray the complexities and the intricacies and the beauty of queer lives. Fiction definitely has an important role in helping people across the spectrum understand each other."We'll be exploring the convolutions of memory next time with Takiguchi Yūshō and the translator Jesse Kirkwood. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- May 3, 202624 min
Joel Cox: 'It's fine to have jerks in stories, but you have to have something that makes the reader keep reading'
We've heard from Diana Evans and Bruna Martini already in this Spring series of podcasts, and we'll be welcoming Takiguchi Yūshō and the translator Jesse Kirkwood, and Holly Edwards over the next couple of weeks. But this podcast is devoted to Joel Cox and Variable Rewards.Cox explains that this short story came out of his own move to the suburbs and his love for Richard Yates's novel Revolutionary Road."A few months into living in the suburbs," he recalls, "I was thinking this story sounds really familiar."But while Yates's characters were all members of the Rotary club and hanging out at cocktail parties, in the 21st century the suburbs have become far more fragmented."I couldn't tell you the name of our neighbours, probably for the last ten years," Cox admits. "So you're living in this strange world where you're in a village, or the simulation of a New York village, that's in the middle of nowhere, where you don't know anyone."This sense of disconnection is amplified by social media, he continues, which allows people to "project the image of the life you want to live, even if you're not really living it". And it's intensified by the wave of redundancies, as companies pivot to AI."There's a lot of scrambling right now for everyone to figure out what their role will be in this new AI world," Cox explains, "and how they can leverage AI to survive, to hide out while this transition takes place."When people are jostling for position on a sinking ship, there's always room for fiction, he adds, but even if your characters are behaving like jerks you have to keep your sense of humour."I like to have fun while I write," Cox says. "If my characters are having a laugh at themselves, I think it balances out their jerkiness."We'll be striking a balance with Holly Edwards next time, and her short story Little Lamb, Who Made Thee? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Apr 24, 202625 min
Bruna Martini: 'I have spent too many months without drawing'
This Spring series of podcasts began with Diana Evans, who took us back to the 1990s. We'll be hearing from Takiguchi Yūshō and the translator Jesse Kirkwood, Holly Edwards and Joel Cox over the next few weeks. But for this episode we welcome Bruna Martini and her graphic short story One Day at at Time.Martini says that this story of looking after a young child was drawn from her own experiences – but she had to go back to the notes she took at the time to remember it properly."There are some moments that are really beautiful and full of joy," she explains, "and they tend to replace the moments where you're angry or bored, or simply don't know what to do. So there is a really helpful trick that the brain does, where it only gives space to good memories."Parents may tell themselves that their children will be perfect, Martini says, but even the perfect child will have to go through the necessary steps of development, and those steps "bring a lot of problems".It wasn't that she wanted to focus on the negatives, she continues, she just "wanted to take a step back and look at the situations and maybe laugh, because laughing is the perfect solution".Looking at what was happening like she was reading a comic or watching a film helped her feel "a little bit in control", Martini says. But it wasn't long before she wanted to get back to her work, declaring "I have spent too many months without drawing, I do not feel myself."We'll be looking at another kind of work next time with Joel Cox and his story Variable Rewards. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Apr 16, 202619 min
Diana Evans: 'Writing is an act of hope'
Spring is here and so is Fictionable, with another set of exclusive short stories and another series of podcasts where we meet our fantastic authors. During the next few weeks we'll be hearing from Takiguchi Yūshō and the translator Jesse Kirkwood, Bruna Martini, Holly Edwards and Joel Cox. But this Spring series marks a return to Fictionable for Diana Evans, who joined us on the Fictionable podcast way back in 2022 to talk about her short story Broth.This time she brings dessert, with Ice Cream, which catches a young woman in that awkward gap between graduation and real life.Evans says she was thinking back to her own past and comparing it with the ongoing crisis in youth unemployment."It's such a long stretch," she says. "It seems almost like climbing a mountain to actually manifest your talents and give what you have to offer to the world, and for it to be accepted."Evans takes us back to the 1990s, when she fell into a job as culture editor at Pride magazine."There was this huge Black music scene," she recalls, "that was just proliferating and I was interviewing these rappers and R&B singers. Rap music was becoming pop music and reggae was really popular. It was just a really exciting time."Our current moment feels urgent too, Evans continues, but it's still part of the same continuum."We're dealing with the same issues, the same injustices," she says. "There's just this global escalation of possible catastrophe… but it's the same energy."It can feel like capitalism is propelling us towards some kind of Armageddon, Evans continues, but writers mustn't be discouraged."I think artists are really important in this moment," she insists. "I think we have a real call now to reflect on things that are happening and to just make people feel that there is hope."We'll be considering the miracle of new life next time with Bruna Martini and her graphic short story One Day at a Time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Feb 20, 202626 min
Cynthia Banham: 'Writing is a dangerous act'
In this Winter series we've already welcomed Cynthia Zarin, Rodrigo Urquiola Flores and the translator Shaina Brassard, Tim Conley and Samuel Rigg. We bring down the curtain with Cynthia Banham and her short story Swimming With Crocodiles.Banham confesses that she shares her protagonist's passion for rewilding, but insists that her short story both is and isn't about the author: "You don't really control what finds its way into your story."After losing her legs following a plane crash in 2007, Banham says that one of the few things that gave her some measure of control was writing. "My only way to avoid the grief overwhelming me was to retreat to my computer and my notebook and to write."It took Banham seven years before she could start writing about the accident, and then another three before publishing her memoir, A Certain Light. She delves further back into her family history in Mother Shadow, due in April 2026, but says that fiction is a liberation."Writing memoir I've found to be really tricky morally, ethically," Banham explains. "There's a freedom in writing fiction."But that freedom is not without risk, she adds. "This is a whole new level of danger, where you're in constant danger of offending. And I think about that quite a lot."That's it for this Winter season. We'll be back in Spring. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Feb 12, 202614 min
Samuel Rigg: 'Often I find I'm writing about people who are not me'
After hearing from Cynthia Zarin, Rodrigo Urquiola Flores and the translator Shaina Brassard, and Tim Conley, this Winter series of podcasts enters the final stretch. We'll be rounding off with Cynthia Banham next time, but stepping out on to the ice this week is Samuel Rigg and his short story, At the Rink.Although a short story that explores parenthood and loss is far from his own life, Rigg tells us his short fiction rarely starts close to home."Often I find I'm writing about people who are not me," he says, "or are relatively far from my own experience. You obviously need to find a way in that connects."This connection with an issue that might seem remote can sometimes be fairly abstract, Rigg continues. "If the form comes to you with that subject, then you don't really question it, you just think, 'OK, I know what I'm going to do,' and you go with it."At the Rink took the author all the way to Scarsdale, a suburb north of New York City where Rigg – like his protagonist – has spent some time."Maybe there was a sense in which I wanted to write a character who was an outsider," he says, "because that's how I came to that place myself."The nuclear family and the picket fence may never have been a dream for every American, but it still holds some power."I'm not sure that the suburbs in Britain have the same significance," Rigg suggests, "or quite the same cultural resonance."We'll be listening out for echoes with Cynthia Banham next time, as we dip our toes carefully into her short story Swimming With Crocodiles. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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