462: Organize a Short Story Collection as a Full Experience - Interview

DIY MFA Radio

Today, Lori is interviewing Jolene Mcilwain. They’ll be talking about Sidle Creek and centering a short story collection around a place.

Jolene McIlwain’s fiction has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and appears in West Branch, Florida Review, Cincinnati Review, New Orleans Review, Northern Appalachia Review, and 2019's Best Small Fictions Anthology. Her work was named finalist for 2018’s Best of the Net, Glimmer Train’s and River Styx’s contests, and semifinalist in Nimrod’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize and two American Short Fiction's contests. She’s received a Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council grant, the Georgia Court Chautauqua faculty scholarship, and Tinker Mountain’s merit scholarship. She taught literary theory/analysis at Duquesne and Chatham Universities and she worked as a radiologic technologist before attending college (BS English, minor in sculpture, MA Literature). She was born, raised, and currently lives in a small town in the Appalachian plateau of Western Pennsylvania.

You can find her on her website or follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

In this episode Jolene Mcilwain and Lori discuss:

• Why the length of a story doesn’t equate its emotional impact.

• How to center a collection around a place and add enough grounding details.

• Taking on stereotypes and going deeper in your writing.

Plus, her #1 tip for writers.

For more info and show notes: diymfa.com/462