David Sedaris once said: “A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit.” A good short story can have all the impact of a doorstopper novel (and sometimes more) – but what makes the form work? How can some authors achieve so much in so few pages?
Chris Power has been puzzling over this question in various capacities, notably for the Guardian, where we have been running his series, A brief survey of the short story, since 2007. There’s a joke in the title – his pieces are never brief – with Chris writing comprehensive accounts of the form’s great exponents and why their stories work (and sometimes don’t).
This expertise makes the publication of his own first collection of stories all the more daunting. He came into the studio to talk about his debut collection, Mothers, and to chat about his favourite stories.
Transcultural Knowledges 