Growing her own stories
Each generation passes so much on to the next: fears, resilience, the ability to adapt, the kindnesses
Yorkshire woman Joyce Russell moved to Cork in the 1970s, and now lives in the mountains near Gougane Barra. Her debut collection, Bloodlines and Other Stories, will launch the Cork International Short Story Festival (Sept 19-23).
Russell was born and raised in the Yorkshire Dales and comes from a strong farming background. Since moving to Co Cork, she and her husband, Ben, have built their own home, raised three children and fed their passion for gardening. Now, she says, she cannot imagine living anywhere else.
A founder member of Friends of the Earth Ireland, she is able to combine her talents with the soil and the pen and makes her living as a journalist, writing columns for several magazines and newspapers in the UK and Ireland. Early last year she published a very successful gardening book: The Polytunnel Book: Fruit and Vegetables All Year Round.
In recent years, though, it is Russell’s fiction which has begun to flower. “I wrote when I was young,” she says, “but that somehow got lost between a science degree and raising a family. I only returned to it in the last decade or so.”
Since then, Russell has steadily built a name for herself in literary circles and has won or been short-listed for a slew of honours, including the RTÉ Radio 1 Short Story Competition in Memory of Francis Mac Manus. This sort of success can dazzle a casual onlooker, and make the whole business of writing seem easy. It’s not; in fact, it requires significant discipline and dedication to develop talent to its fullest potential. Russell’s routine, which tends to ebb and flow somewhat with the seasons, nevertheless retains an unwavering sense of commitment.
“I am an early riser and do my best writing in the first half of the day,” she explains. “If deadlines aren’t too pressing I like to immerse myself in writing stories while the house is quiet and before the phone starts to ring. Mid-morning to mid-day is journalism time. Organisation is vital to each day.
“The language is tremendously important, as are all the small links that many readers don’t even notice, but they are there for me. And if I am too busy to write, then stories have to live in my head for a while before I get the chance to type them out. By the time they arrive, they can be almost complete. The rhythm and voice have already set themselves at that point and they can ‘sing themselves’ onto the page.”
Bloodlines represents a selection of 17 stories drawn from those 10 years’ worth of material. Aside from reflecting her love of all things rural, the stories resonate with certain important themes and, according to the book’s jacket, “explore the ties that bind the generations together”.
“Family has always been really important to me,” Russell explains, “but I don’t think I appreciated all the subtleties of the links until I got older. Each generation passes so much on to the next, but it’s all the subconscious things that fascinate me: the hidden fears, the resilience, the ability to adapt, the small kindnesses.”
In an era when publishers are reluctant to take on short story collections, especially from writers whose careers are essentially just beginning, the publication of Bloodlines is in itself a considerable achievement. This reluctance on the part of publishers is, of course, market driven, and yet the short story form should be an ideal fit for these current climes, when life proceeds at a hectic pace and attention spans are shorter.
“Short stories are lovely small gems that impose little commitment. The reader can read one, think about it if they want, dip in and out of other ones and move on. Even the thought of reading or writing a new story gives my spine a tingle. It’s the opportunity to enjoy a piece where every word counts; where a complete idea falls out in a few pages. It’s something that anyone can read or that can be read aloud of an evening by the fire. But short story collections are notoriously hard to get published, so I didn’t really think about a collection until relatively recently.”
For any writer, their first published book naturally represents a dream come true. And it was Mercier Press who offered the big break. “I was in the garden and my husband answered the phone. He told me who was calling but didn’t give any hint of the news. I’m sure I wasn’t very articulate in my response, but I can’t think of a better publisher than Mercier Press for this collection.”
What really matters though, what always matters, is the next story. Beyond product lies the art, and Russell is already looking forward. “There’s a new short story that excites me. I can hardly keep my heart and mind steady as my fingers flit across the computer keys. It’s a long short story and getting longer, so maybe it’s really a novel, or novella, but I haven’t quite acknowledged that reality yet.”
* Bloodlines will be launched at Cork Central Library at 2.30pm next Wednesday
In 2000, to honour one of the city’s most famous sons and in an effort to raise the profile of a literary form that had fallen somewhat from the grace of its heyday, the Munster Literature Centre organised the first Frank O’Connor International Short Story Festival.
Since then, the festival has grown and blossomed, in no small part due to the introduction in 2005 of the Cork City — Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award of €25,000, the world’s biggest cash prize for a single collection. Because of its intent to recognise mastery of the form without discriminating between exciting new voices and more established and successful names, the Frank O’Connor Award has steadily increased in prestige to the point where it now ranks as the short story equivalent of the Booker Prize.
In a departure from the usual routine of revealing the winner on the final night of the festival, this year’s victor has been announced in advance. Nathan Englander, recognised for his collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, joins a list of laureates that include Haruki Murakami, Simon Van Booy, and Edna O’Brien.
But if the award has brought welcome attention, then it is still the festival itself which remains the real joy. Each year, for a week in late September, Cork becomes the world capital of the short story as writers from across the globe descend on the city to present readings, workshops, interviews, etc.
The event has now been re-branded as the Cork International Short Story Festival, and this year it boasts such heavyweights as John Banville, Lydia Davis, Kevin Barry, Sarah Hall and Witi Ihimaera. It promises to be a lucky 13th year for the festival, and perhaps also one of its best yet.
* Further information: www.corkshortstory.net
