Q&A with Shannon Robinson

 

 

 

Shannon Robinson is the author of the new story collection The Ill-Fitting Skin. She teaches at Johns Hopkins University, and she lives in Baltimore.

 

Q: Over how long a period did you write the stories in your new collection?

 

A: This collection came together over the course of about 12 years, during which time I wrote and rewrote the stories.

 

The earliest stories date back to my MFA; on the whole, as you might expect, these are the ones that I revised the most. The more recent stories date from the past year or so.

 

In the interval, I placed stories in literary magazines, but at one point I began holding stories back with the idea of forming a collection. Not everybody got invited to the party: the stories had to feel thematically cohesive, as a group.

 

Fortunately, I have certain obsessions (motherhood, nurturing and failures thereof, toxic relationships between women and men, rabbits …), so I didn’t have to discard much.

 

Q: The writer Melinda Moustakis said of the book, “Clever, harrowing, bitingly funny, imaginative, absurd, anatomical, and wise, these stories expertly shift from the magical realms of werewolves and zombies to the stark realities of trying to claw out a semblance of existence one can live with.” What do you think of that description?

 

A:  Firstly, I’m very flattered by Melinda’s compliments! She’s an incredible writer, and everyone should check out her work.

 

As for Melinda’s thoughts on the stories shifting between the magical and the real—I think she captures what I’ve aimed to do. Some of the collection’s stories are straight-up fantastical, and others reference the fantastical or tilt into the uncanny, but what they all have in common is that they are rooted in the real—that is, in the deep truth of emotions.  

 

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

 

A:  In casting around for a catchy title, I read through the collection and wrote down phrases that popped into my mind and phrases that popped out of the stories.

 

“[L]ike an ill-fitting skin” are actually the last words of “Dirt,” the fourth story of the collection: the main character is shedding an outfit that’s been imposed on her (a French maid’s uniform), stuffing it into a garbage can.

I like how “ill-fitting skin” can suggest feeling trapped in other people’s ideas about who we are or should be, how those ideas can fit snug—too snug.

 

On the one hand, there can be an element of performance: this “skin” is a costume donned out of fear and desperation; donned with ambivalence and resentment.

 

But there’s also an element of the insidious, where what’s externally imposed can seem organic, and so it’s all the more difficult to pry off.

 

In terms of metaphor, all that felt right, and I liked how it sounds. “The Ill-Fitting Skin”: it has a kind of fairy-tale quality to it, creepy and a little sexy.

 

Q: How did you decide on the order in which the stories would appear in the collection?

 

A: I think ordering a manuscript of short stories is not unlike ordering the poems in a collection or the songs on an album: you want to offer a pleasing rhythm, a sense of meaningful progression; variety, but not randomness; the transition from one story to another might surprise the reader, but it should not feel jarring (I’m looking at you, “Jazz Police,” aka track 6 on Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man). It’s tricky.

 

Amy Bishop-Wycisk, my agent, had some great suggestions, as did Press 53’s fiction editor, Claire Foxx.

 

While my stories don’t have protagonists in common, you might think of the protagonists, for one story to another, as separate reincarnations. There’s a general sense of moving through the stages of a woman’s life—not exactly linear, but progressing nonetheless.

 

Stories about motherhood bookend the collection: the opening story, “Origin Story,” is melancholy, but the closing story, “Birdie,” is (I hope) uplifting.  

 

I appreciate that readers don’t always move through a collection’s stories in order—which is fine! But I think most people are inclined to start at the beginning, and if the author has managed to get that rhythm right, readers will then feel drawn from one story into the next and the next and the next …

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I’ve been writing more short stories, so there’s another collection in the works. But my main focus right now is a novel—a mix of historical and speculative fiction with parallel narratives. David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas and Lorrie Moore’s I Am Homeless if This Is Not My Home have been inspirations.     

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I’m a proselytizer for the short story collection as a genre, so I’d like to recommend two collections, one old and one new.

 

First the old: Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery and Other Stories. I have to admit that until last year, as far as Jackson’s short stories go, I was only familiar with “The Lottery”:  reading this collection was an electrifying reintroduction to Jackson.

 

Now the new: Janelle Bassett’s debut short story collection, Thanks for This Riot, due out September 2024. Bassett’s writing is funny and sharp … and delightfully weird.       

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb