Alexander MacLeod: 'It’s not the story’s job to give you a middle-class life'

The Canadian writer has been living in Cork as part of his project with the upcoming International Short Story Festival

Mon, 09 Oct, 2023 - 02:00

Colette Sheridan

Canadian writer Alexander MacLeod is in Cork for three months as this year’s Frank O’Connor International Short Story Fellow. As well as reading from his work and being interviewed by writer Billy O’Callaghan at the Cork International Short Story Festival (October 11-14), MacLeod is mentoring four Cork-based writers “whose submissions jumped out at me". They are Fiona Ennis, Neil Tully, Patrick Holloway and Deirdre Crowley.

MacLeod, in his early fifties, first visited Cork in 2011 as a finalist in the short story award which was won that year by Edna O’Brien. Last year, his most recent collection, Animal Person, won widespread praise. A son of the late acclaimed writer, Alastair MacLeod, he teaches at St Mary’s University in Nova Scotia.

He's also a former national track and field runner, and is getting to know Cork through running along the main routes in and around the city.

Initially, the solitude of living alone in an apartment in Nano Nagle Place as part of his fellowship bothered him. But now, Macleod says that it is proving to be of great benefit to his writing. He comes from a big family of seven children (one of whom died in infancy) and is married with three children aged 21, 18 and 16.

“I’ve never been alone like this in my life, so it took a little time to adjust. But it is absolutely a treat. When I was trying to get my bearings, I was lonesome I think. My family was worried about how we would swing this. But the phones are great,” says Macleod.

Having published two short story collections, MacLeod is currently working on his debut novel. It’s a contemporary story about the nature of intimacy, family and work. “It has a bit to do with the oil sands of Alberta which is a great employer in Canada. It’s precarious employment. You fly out to the site, work and then come home. I’m interested in the idea of home and away, and money.”

MacLeod says that moving from short stories to a novel is a different experience. “The intensity of poetry is there in the short story. There was some idea before that reading the big Victorian novel or a beach book had duration as part of the experience. Short stories don’t have better powers, just different powers like poems.”

As Patrick Cotter of the Munster Literature Centre and director of the Cork International Short Story Festival, writes in the programme of this year’s Cork International Short story Festival: “The short story is back in vogue. Today publishers more easily take on short story collections, even if they occasionally, venally, try to hide the fact that they are not novels.”

MacLeod heaps praise on his Cork hosts. “The short story writers of the world owe Patrick Cotter a debt. I myself am benefiting. The Munster Literature Centre is doing something that nobody else is doing,” says Macleod.

At one stage, the Frank O’Connor International Short story Award for best short story collection offered the biggest prize in the world at €50,000. That prize is no longer in existence but the Munster Literature Centre continues to encourage and celebrate short story writing through its festival.

The economics of short story writing are challenging, says MacLeod. “I would not be alive but for my job.”

He says that his father, who also taught at a university, imparted the lesson to his creative children that art is not necessarily going to give you a living.

“If I look at one of my short stories and talk to it, I might say ‘you better pay the mortgage. And you need to do this and this.’ It’s nine pages of prose – and it’s supposed to keep us all alive! That has always been impossible throughout history. This is what Sophocles was facing down. And it’s what faced Chekov. It’s not the story’s job to give you a middle-class life.”

The day before we met, MacLeod had taken the bus to Dungarvan library because he spotted a poster advertising Irish writer Claire Keegan reading her latest short story there, entitled 'So Late in the Day'.

“We talked about an editor we both have at the New Yorker and the challenges of making language do tricky intellectual work. You have only one instrument and it’s the same instrument we use to order our chips,” says MacLeod.

As part of Cork International Short Story Festival, Alexander MacLeod will read from and discuss his work on Wednesday, October 11, at the Cork Arts Theatre. See www.corkshortstory.net

Cork International Short Story Festival programme