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| Photo by Angela Lewis |
Alison Gadsby is the author of the new story collection Breathing Is How Some People Stay Alive. She is the founder and host of the reading series Junction Reads, and she lives in Toronto.
Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in your new collection?
A: I have found this such a difficult question to answer, but it’s a good one. As an emerging writer I am always interested in knowing about other writers’ processes.
A couple of the stories were written in my undergrad, so 20 years ago. They looked nothing like they do in the collection, but the germ of the idea was born in a workshop at York. Many were written in the months my dad was dying and the years after, when the strange grief (relief) tried to swallow me up.
What I can say about each, and every, story is that they were written, revised, and reborn dozens of times, over more than a year. Only one of them exists as it is in its third-draft form (Irreplaceable).
Q: How was the book’s title--also the title of one of the stories--chosen, and what does it signify for you?
A: About three drafts before the final, it was still short story collection. When I made the decision to send it to an editor before pitching publishers, I read it again, searching for a title.
In the moment when a character Darren deep-sighs in the car and his wife Kristina loses her cool and tells him to stop doing that, he says, what, breathe? Breathing is how some people stay alive.
And it’s in the moments after that, Kristina contemplates just how easy it is for some people to live, to get up in the morning and choose to live, all they have to do is breathe.
But for her, and for many other characters in the book, it’s not that easy. How can one just breathe, when we’re choking to death on trauma, on grief, on all the losses in lives we’ve barely survived.
Q: The author Damian Tarnopolsky said of the book, “Searingly sharp, intricately constructed, and hugely original, these stories take you down into the viscera of life while showing you just what the world is today.” What do you think of that description?
A: I have known Damian for over 20 years, so having his words attached to my book is both an honour and an obligation…haha.
When he joined a writers’ workshop I started in 2004, Bloor West Writers, he already had a collection of stories that he was sending out to publishers (I think). He was working on his novel, Goya’s Dog, and I remember thinking, I can’t believe I get to read and critique this incredible book by such an impressive writer.
When he writes “viscera of life,” I know that he means the absolute gut-punch style of writing he is so great at, and so I have to say that I love that he thinks my words do the same thing. “Hugely original” is the real honour because to have my weird and wild imagination called original instead of plain strange, well, that’s a gift.
Q: How did you decide on the order in which the stories would appear in the collection?
A: This is all (independent editor) Jane Warren, who is the absolute best editor/human being and to whom I owe a huge debt for so much of how this collection came to life. I mean I paid her, so maybe I don’t owe her, owe her, but I am eternally grateful for the gift she gave me working on this collection.
That we chatted for hours, cursing and struggling through this, that she connected the child characters to their adult counterparts, that she found the ways in which they’re all barely surviving, that she came up with the ways in which the stories connected, and of course the ways the stories needed to reveal themselves in the collection, to her, and to her genius, I do owe so much!
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am working on a final version of a novel that is going to be published by Palimpsest Press in 2028 (or 2027). Dreams of the Weary is a dual-timeline novel that takes place in the middle of the last century in the last days of the carnival sideshow. Told from the perspectives of a mother and her daughter, born with a facial difference.
I wrote the story for my son, who asked, at a young age, about famous people, celebrities or characters, who looked like him. There are plenty of villains, but not many heroes, with facial differences. This novel is a dedication of all my love for him, and for everyone with a visible difference.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: If anyone out there wants to join me in in my short story revolution, I believe we are at the beginning of a renaissance. I have another collection in the works, and another novel, but if I could spend the rest of my life writing short stories, all my dreams would come true. So, put down that novel, and start writing stories. Let’s do this thing!!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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