Sherry Chandler

Crystal Wilkinson

During my enforced period of non-reading I received several magazines, including the Summer 2006 issue of Appalachian Heritage. Its receipt reminded me that I have been meaning for some time to mention that Crystal Wilkinson is the featured writer in the Spring issue of that magazine and to share some passages from Morris Grubbs’s interview with her (link is to a PDF file):

Reading is balm, especially reading stories. A good story, for me, is one that touches me somewhere that I haven’t been touched before. One that sparks something that was dormant. One that gives chills. And it’s not the same for everyone. I’m haunted by stories, even students’ stories that did that for me. I have a horrible memory, so I can’t even rattle off a long list of stories that do that for me. But the feelings they stir up or the haunting they leave is a staying one. Gayl Jones’ work does that for me. That’s one that I can call up very quickly. The emotional truth in her stories is chilling. To be able to capture some aspect of the human spirit that causes somebody to think about just how beautiful or ugly or vulnerable or funny–any number of descriptors—the human spirit is, I think, is what writing is all about, and of course that all moves you toward healing within yourself. A good story lofts you to another level of understanding of what it means to be human. Novels do this too, but I think stories have the ability to transcend more purely. Stories are what get many of us through heartache, be it personal, cultural, or universal. All cultures have storytelling traditions and they are much more than just literature, much more than art; they are restorative.

…

I agree with Mary Gordon’s definition of the story. She says that the short story is like a wagon wheel: that all the spokes must be connected; otherwise graceful movement isn’t possible. As a writer, if my stories are indeed graceful–as some would argue (smile)–then my novels are definitely not as graceful as far as feeling the need for something so wonderfully whole as a short story. In a novel there is more room to be messy, to wander and to return. …To create a world or a particular window in a world and have that finish up in 20-25 pages and be a whole, complete thing is phenomenal to me–something greater than sex or chocolate (smile). The novel is such a long, long journey–that meanders and climbs and descends and dips and churns. I’m queasy even writing this–car sick (chuckle). I love to read novels, but writing them so far doesn’t have the payoff that writing stories has for me.

— Crystal Wilkinson, from an interview with Morris Grubb in Appalachian Heritage, Spring 2006

Possibly related posts:

Midway Writer’s Workshop with Crystal Wilkinson

Tess Gallagher

For those prose writers among you

The nature of the short story revisited

Nothing Like an Ocean?

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