Clara Sherley-Appel (CSA): This Story Behind the Story. I’m your host, Clara Sherley-Appel, and my guest today is Ethel Rohan. Born and raised in Ireland, Ethel now lives in San Francisco. Her 2017 debut novel, The Weight of Him, was a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book, and it won a Plumeri Fellowship, a Silver Nautilus Award, and a Northern California Publishers and Authors’ Award. Her first short story collection, Cut Through the Bone, was longlisted for The Story Prize, and her second, Goodnight Nobody, was longlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. Today, we’re going to talk about her third collection, In the Event of Contact, which came out last month and won the 2019 Dzanc Short Story Collection Prize. Bitch Media describes it as a “timely read about the importance of connecting with other people on our own terms,” and BUSTLE calls it “one of 2021’s must-read collections.”


Ethel Rohan, welcome to Story Behind the Story!


Ethel Rohan (ER): Thank you so much, Clara! I'm delighted to be here. 


(CSA): It's really wonderful to have you and this was such a fantastic and rich collection! So thank you so much for writing it and for sharing it. 
 
(ER): Thank you. 


(CSA): The title story in this collection is about a young girl who develops a phobia of human contact, and the tension between her need to forego touch and the desires of those closest to her to be able to touch her and have some connection. I think it's something that a lot of us can relate to right now, as coronavirus vaccines become more widely available and we start having to figure out how we're going to make our way back into the public sphere after more than a year in isolation without a lot of physical touch.


(ER): Right.


(CSA): So I wanted to ask you about the inspiration for the story, and what you were hoping to explore through it. And then I guess also… yeah, we'll start there. What inspired the story?
 
(ER): That's great. I would say that it's origins go back many years, so obviously I had no idea of the pandemic or the coincidence of the timing of this book coming out right now with themes and a title that do conjure everything pandemic related. So that's coincidental, and I'm happy to go back to that again. But to directly respond to your question, this story came about... We always write about what fascinates us, what compels our imagination, what sticks; And now that I've written — this my fourth full-length book — and so there's enough work there now that I can see the patterns and the repeating themes, the obsessions. I'm really obsessed with this idea of boundaries and trespass, and the main character having this phobia — haphephobia, which is extreme fear of human touch. I think that origins goes back, like much of what I fixate on, and that goes back to my childhood. 
I was raised in Dublin, Ireland, and my parents (my dad in particular) was quite eccentric. They had several quirks and it was never talked about. It was just normalized. Like for example, my dad would cut the cuffs of his socks. He cut off the sleeves of his shirts and cardigans. He always, regardless of the brutal Irish weather, he always drove with the car window rolled down! Not fully, but in freezing Irish rain storms. And that, I think, was linked to claustrophobia, which again was never discussed. My mother had something similar in that she could never bear anything around her throat, so she always wore v-necks; She would never wear a necklace, she would break out in rashes if jewelry was anything but gold or silver. And we're from a Dublin north side working class family so she didn't get to wear a lot of jewelry. 
So those types of things, those oddities stick with me, and I have my own phobias. I actually also am claustrophobic, and I'm terrified of driving on the freeway. So much of my fear (I suffer from anxiety), it's about control: what I can and can't control. And obviously in life there's so much that we can't. And this idea of triplets — you know, I have twin sisters. 


(CSA): Yes! I wanted to ask you about the triplets, because so so many books do explore twin relationships — but triplets is is not that common in stories.


(ER): That's right, and I think I identified, or I gravitated, toward the triplets because I am the older sister; My twin sisters are 3 years younger, and we were very much — from a family of six children (so three boys, three girls), and the three girls very much forged this triangular relationship. In some ways there was a split, gender wise, between the siblings, and we very much aligned by basically being the girls of the family and we bonded together. So I'm fascinated by three — by the number three, and in storytelling it's a great trope.


(CSA): Right, the rule of three.
 
(ER): Absolutely, and also with three in a relationship (which I’m fascinated by people, characters, and relationships), there tends to be tension. We're programmed to pair, and so this idea of twins having this cemented bond, that we're all quite familiar with… I just have a lot of… fun might sound odd because it's a story that deals with dark themes, but I enjoyed exploring the Dynamics between the three sisters, and the various tensions, and the shifting of the power dynamics between them, and the alliances. Shows like like Survivor that are so popular, it is this idea of forming alliances and that alone, it’s so difficult alone to succeed, and connection and all of that. So in many ways it's the perfect story to kick off the collection in that it really the umbrella theme for the entire 14 stories. 


(CSA): It's interesting, I mean those two things in combination: this obsession with boundaries, or this interest in boundaries, and the shifting power dynamics in this triplet relationship. So much of that has to do with one sister's ability or inability to respect the boundaries of the other.


(ER): Absolutely, and that shifts. I think for the protagonist,, who is really obsessed with the sister that she cannot touch, and it's gone beyond yearning to touch her; it's at a point of where she's trying to force control of that situation and insert herself in a physical way with her sister that her sister does not want. So it's about consent as well. I was just really fascinated to journey along with the protagonist and see: would she come to that realization? And she does. She realizes at a point late in the story that she's not going to get her way, and shouldn't get her way, and the split is irredeemable, it's not going to be resolved, and she has that realization. It's the idea that she's forever changed by that epiphany, if you will. And there's a fracture there, that's heartbreaking, but it is true, and real, and I imagine those sisters going on. They still have so much growth, they still have so much to learn about boundaries and control. 


(CSA): And I mean, I think that's a common thing that you see in a lot of the twin fiction, right? This difficulty of separating yourself from the other. And because this one sister, Ruth, has this extreme phobia of touch, it forces that separation at a point I think well earlier in the triplets development than is typical.
 
(ER): Right, and as you said, the issue of dominance with twins, they had done all sorts of studies and it's the fact that one twin will dominate, and that's just something I think that happens, and that's why the separation of the self is so important; To have your own agency and to become a fully realized person, and to then negotiate the contract between both of you with issues of dominance. I think there is a real issue among twins with boundaries and among siblings with boundaries. Within families, I think we do and say things to each other that we would not do in other relationships, particularly friendships and partner relationships we would not get away with this! So I'm really fascinated as families…there are sort of nuclear relationships, there are primary relationships circling for the most important formative years of our life. And yet, there are so many crossed boundaries and so many trespasses, and I just find it fascinating. And I find it really interesting, the families that can go on to resolve a lot of that, but far more interesting to me (particularly as a storyteller), are the families that keep perpetuating those childhood patterns, and just keep breaking boundaries, and hurting each other, and going too far. 


(CSA): One thing that I kept coming back to while I was reading this is a recent essay by Melissa Febos in New York Times magazine called, “I Spent My Life Consenting to Touch I Didn't Want.” Did you get a chance to read that?
 
(ER): Yes, yeah. Brilliant!


(CSA): So just for the listeners who may have not, it describes all the myriad ways that she's given in to bodily experiences and touches that she didn't want, either out of fear for her own safety, to feel control in a situation where she doesn't have any, or or maybe to make somebody else happy. I was curious if you thought of that, and if you have looked back at the story through that lens at all?
 
(ER): Absolutely, because I think another point is this idea of being “the good girl”, “the nice girl”; That we're so conditioned as girls and women — this facade of politeness. You know, “kiss your uncle”, “hug your aunt.” This kind of thing, and that we allow no agency for the child, no choice for the child, and we're very (as a society, and it’s true of my Irish culture — I think it's fair to say it's quite universal): This idea that girls must be pleasing. We don't like children that aren't warm and fuzzy. We don't like children that don't smile, you know, this type of thing: the smiling, obliging. And of course those prescriptions are very, very helpful to patriarchy because they allow it to persist, and allow it to persist at the levels of power that they do. I was raised to be a “good girl.” I was raised to be a “nice girl.” I was raised to smile, to be polite. And I have suffered so many trespasses in my youth that I would not had I been even exposed to the idea that I could say no, that I could say, “F you!” And that just…they were ideas that I wasn't even exposed to: that I had that agency, that I had the power, that I had that right to say, ‘This my body, and this is what I do and don't want you to do to it, and this is what I do and don't want to do with this.’ So I hope that's something that comes through in my work, because I feel it deeply I feel the rights and the beauty of the female body, of womans body. But I also feel so much grief and anger as regards trauma, and you mentioned male power and male violence… Yeah. They touch me deeply, both personally and as a storyteller, and just as a citizen, a woman.
(CSA): …And you dedicated this book to survivors. 
 
(ER): Yeah, well I myself am a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by —


(CSA): I’m sorry.
 
(ER): Thank you. —by a friend of my parents, who to this day is in familiar lore still hailed as this great guy, and, ‘he was lovely’ and all that stuff. And I didn't speak up then. I haven't spoken out since because he's passed away and I don't feel there's anything to be gained. I think I would just be causing pain for the family he's left behind. So it gets really complicated. I think I'm a strong, powerful woman, but I've had to work really, really hard to get to this place. And like I said, I just was not exposed as a child to the type of philosophies of female woman empowerment. It was, again, just being nice. ‘Be good, play your parts, children are seen and not heard’ — all of those type of ideologies. I’m now at a point where I identify as a survivor, but I'm a little frustrated by that in that I feel we need to have language beyond that; Because I feel like I'm more of a survivor... “Warrior” might be a step too far, but the trauma is horrific, and even as much as I spent many, many years with my mind denying that truth, my body let me know just how much I had suffered, and how much work I had to do. Particularly becoming a mother and giving breath to my first daughter and having really, really traumatic responses to her tiny, tiny body and my touch of her body. I really realized how traumatized I'd been, how wounded I still was even though I was highly functioning, and had not yet been diagnosed with severe anxiety or PTSD. I went on to have suicidal ideation, depression. At that point I was still this super achiever, looking for validation, being the Superwoman: ‘I could do it all,’ ‘I'm fine,’ ‘It wasn't really that big a deal’; Which is another message that women are taught to pontificate. It's like this idea of, ‘oh it wasn't that bad. get on with it, that was in the past.’ All of that type of thing. 
So I dedicated the book to survivors, and I tried in the stories to offer a range of the ways that we survive and the ways we are wounded because there are so many microaggressions; there's so many tiny moments of violation and violence that cumulatively are very, very damaging. It's not something as huge as my personal experience that chips away at womanhood. And I wanted to try and convey that, and I also wanted to try and represent people who are injured in ways that might seem surprising, so that people might think and talk about the subject. They might be able to access it; Because I think that is one of the big issues we have as a society and culture: we don't talk about this stuff. No, we look away from it, and as long as we keep looking away from it, it's going to persist at the levels it does. The stats are horrific, and we somehow normalize them..


(CSA): Yeah. It’s interesting to me, in part, hearing you talk about the way that your body told you that these experiences affected you. The way that Ruth’s refusal to give into these things is in her body, and I think so many of your characters in these stories (and I think in your other fiction as well) are very deeply embodied. There's a physicality to them, and their spatial relationships to other people are a big part of what drives them, and major sources of conflict. So I wanted to ask you a little bit about that, too. Where does that interest in bodies come from? How do you see it playing into your work, and how conscious of a theme is it for you?
 
(ER): Wow, that’s very nicely observed, thank you. I would say, for me… I think I write so much about being in the body because I've spent so much of my life outside of my body. So much of writing is the power to create worlds and situations and characters; almost revising history, if you will, or just being able to be in a space and place that I was denied for so long. I think our bodies are these huge sources of information for us. We're in constant conversation, and unfortunately often conflict, with our own bodies. For years my body dissociation (where I literally was outside of my body, particularly during intimacy and going back to childhood and teenhood) during abuse — I literally just went outside my body. It was so distinct that I was hovering above looking down on it all, and I don't think I ever really reclaimed my body until recent years. So I'm fascinated that the mind and body have that much power that they can split in that way. I'm living testimony to that they can, just in the way that the mind and memory can split. I blocked out so much for so many years, and there's still much, much of my childhood that I don't remember. I've tried. I don’t know if I'm still protecting myself. I try not to overthink that though. I worked a lot in recent years on mindfulness and being in the present, so I'm at a point where I'm accepting that, for whatever reasons, I can't reclaim that. 
But that's where I celebrate being a storyteller, where I can reclaim so much in story; And the body will always be my schtick, if you will, in storytelling. It's an amazing vehicle that is a rich source of information, and a rich source of deeper truths than we maybe consciously tell ourselves. I think our subconscious and our bodies are very, very closely linked, and I'm fascinated by that. And I think with each story, and in life in general, I'm a forever student. I'm always interested in how much we still don't know, how much I have yet to know and understand about the body, and the tangible, and the intangible. Yeah, I'm fascinated by it. I think that's true of all writers. Because I'm fascinated by it and because I've been so touched by it personally, it's going to keep repeating in my work.


***AD BREAK***


(CSA): There's a story in this collection that goes to the other end of things from the title story. It's about two older women and one of them is a widow three times over who is exploring, in this story, her deep desire and inability to find the intimacy and connection and physical connection that she's looking for. Can you talk about that a little?
 
(ER): I don't know why… the first short story I ever remember writing, I was a teen; I was only about 13, and I wrote about an old man. I don't remember anything more about it, except it was about an old man and swallows, and there was some — I don't know if I'd even fully realized it — but there was perhaps some subconscious theme of migration in that story. My entire life I have been fascinated by older people. I'm now bridging the gap between that generation more and more, but I just find them interesting. I don't think a lot of young people, or certainly (girls and teens), are fascinated as regards wanting to tell stories about the elderly, but I've always felt that kinship. And it could be that I lost both my grandfathers before I was born, so I never met them. My godfather (I'm an Irish Catholic — baptized!) and my godfather disappeared shortly after I was born, or baptized, and never reappeared again. And so this idea of the missing, and particularly male presences being missing, I see repeating in my work. But first and foremost I love women. I had these two elderly characters in “Collisions,” and she just has this really surprising encounter with this American tourist who comes into a space that's very familiar and very routine. These two women have been doing this for a long, long, long time, and the same things happen over and over again, and there’s great comfort in that…


(CSA): — The same people saying the same things.
 
(ER): Yes! And they’re sitting on the same barstools, and they each have their space, and they each have their roles. So in a way, that scene inside that bar, they're a family of their own and I'm fascinated by families. So, you have this everyday-ness dynamic and you have the comfort for them in the routine and in the known, and then there's this disruption, right? Stories are all about disruptions and disturbances. So there's this disruption to the everyday and the expected when this young American tourist enters, and he has lost his leg. And this encounter has a profound effect on her. It's also that backdrop of the news reports of the two moons, and the moons had collided, and we now have our lone Moon. So this is sort of the perfect storm, if you will, of these tiny moments that all came together to have profound effect on her. I just love that story cuz I felt like I knew them intimately. I just felt like I knew that place and that space and those dynamics. I wanted to gift all of them with this surprise guest who brings in something unexpected, and I believe… I think about the characters after story ends, and the protagonist will be forever imprinted by that encounter, in the best possible way. That she was saluted, and she was recognized as a survivor when he raises his glass to her. And this idea that he says, ‘It's extraordinary that the two moons didn't destroy each other when they collided, but in fact they solidified as one.’ And this idea of, we're also survivors, and for her to have never felt that acknowledgment… and as I'm saying it out loud now, I wasn't conscious of that, but I think there's some part of me that still both yearns and also, in a defined way, wants that acknowledgment. By whom? I'm not sure; Maybe just by society as a whole that I have survived. But I should never have been violated in that way in the first place, and I would encourage society to really think about complicity and how we don't talk about these things, and how (going back to Febos’ essay) these messages — very powerful messages we get, both outright spoken and subtly forced on us. That's all complicity, that allows these horrific traumas and violations and crimes to occur. I'm just realizing now, I think there is a part of me that identified with that character who was, ‘Nobody's ever acknowledged how much I've suffered and how much I've overcome,’ and so I was pleased for her at the end of that story. 


(CSA): Well, I think now's a good time to have you read a little bit from the book. And before you do, would you mind just sharing with us what you're going to read, and setting it up a little bit? 


(ER): Absolutely. I am going to read a story titled, “Unwanted.” I think it's set in Dublin in 1980, and it's a Northside neighborhood (that is actually my own Northside neighborhood that I grew up in). And I am going to start at the beginning of the story, so I don't need to give background, I don’t think. I'll just give you a little flavor of it.


(CSA): Alright, sounds good!


(ER): 
(reading)
Unwanted 
Every Sunday after Mass, I parted ways with my family and head straight to Bob's Bargain Bookshop, my 50 pence pocket money tight in my fist. It was 1980 in Dublin and I was a black haired, dark-eyed, 14-year-old runt of a lad. On a flush week, I'd also have my takings from refunds on the glass bottles I collected out of the bins and lanes around our neighborhoods. Empty, sharp scented treasure. Our locale was also home to Midas's Gambling Arcade, Mount Joy Prison, Cross Gun Snooker Hall, Luigi's Chipper — with its snapping, popping PacMan machine, and the reek of the Royal Canal. Occasionally, I stole money from Dad's hiding spot under the inky floral carpet beneath his bedroom window to add to my dismal funds for books, comics, sweets, cigarettes, and cider. I only ever took a pound or two at one time knowing not to get greedy or careless. Amazingly, Dah, who was skint, miserly, and forever howling about the curse of recession, never seemed to notice the missing money. I sometimes worried he was playing a game, waiting to catch me in the act and pounce. Then he would demand his pound of flesh, like Shakespeare Shylock. “If I can catch him once upon the hip, I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.” Dah was forever reciting that bit with alarming passion: fist on his heart glitter in his blue eyes, and an actor's boom to his voice. But he never seemed to be aiming The Bard's words at me. 
Each Sunday I spent hours browsing inside Bob's Bargains, rifling elbow deep through the discount bins and scanning the shelves of book spines, their jagged top lines like broken horizons. I bought as many used mysteries as I could afford, and sometimes sprang for a brand new book that I couldn't bear to delay reading. I sped through every adventure of the Famous Five, Secret Seven, and Hardy Boys, and especially love the Agatha Christie's. Her cool Poirot? Brilliant! 
What I liked most about the best mysteries is not being able to figure out how things were going to end. Too many people around me seem to think they knew exactly how everything — their lives, the world — was going to end, and it was rarely good. I preferred to keep my options wide open. 


(CSA): Thank you for reading that. You are yourself a transplant from Ireland to the United States. Many of your stories take place in Ireland, a few of them take place in the US. Many of them involve collisions of those two cultures. Can you tell me about how that idea of setting and a place where you do or don't belong fits into your writing? 
 
(ER): It's interesting. Before I was an immigrant, right back to my earliest memories, I have felt I don't belong. At the opening you mentioned this idea of the pandemic ending, and we're all not quite sure what a post-normal, post-pandemic if you will, and I'm hearing a lot of anxiety around that. We're re-emerging from this very, very strange — hibernation is much too kind a word for it — and coming back into a world that has changed, and right now is in chaos and very tumultuous. Look at India, and Israel, and Palestine. I know I'm not alone in my feeling of not belonging, in my sense of: I'm always just a little out of sync with everybody else, and in thinking about these stories and their themes, I realize it's not even so much belonging for me personally. It goes deeper to, and for some of my characters it goes this deep, this idea of I'm not. I'm not accepted, I'm not acceptable. And as a girl, the first big issue for me with that and around that was my voice, my accent. It was questioned: “Where are you from?” And when I would say I'm from Phibsborough, which is my neighborhood, it was sound, ‘ugh, you don’t sound like you're from Phibsborough,’ cuz the accent tended to be a little hard, and I had this very soft, what they called “posh” voice, and they said, ‘You sound English.’ And so that has haunted me, chased me my whole life: that I don't sound the way I'm expected to. 
Again it gets back to these expectations on women, and on people in general. With regard to class, I don't sound the way I should. I don't sound the way I'm expected to, and when I go back to Ireland now it's, ‘oh you have such an American accent,’ ‘Oh, you don't sound that Irish!’ or ‘Oh, you've lost your Irish accent’ — this type of thing. And none of that's ever intentional, and yet I feel the perception is that it is; that I'm making an active choice to discard or take on accents. And you add to that this layer that I have, which I'm so frustrated by, but what can I do? I’m a mimic, so if I'm speaking to somebody from Scotland, in 15 minutes, I'm now adopting this, unconsciously doing it! Not wanting to do it; It's something I do.


(CSA): I think those things are related though, right? That feeling of not belonging, or being in some liminal space. It drives us to adapt more, to try to very quickly connect where, in whatever circumstance we're in, with whoever we're faced with.


(ER): Absolutely. And again, my thinking is shifting in that way that I'm now thinking more, you know, how do I embrace this? How would we be were we not compelled to connect, driven to connect? I think life would be unbearable, because if we were content to be solitary, if it was enough to be solitary, imagine what the world would be. Because now, even with this compulsion to be connected, there is so much disconnection; There is so much disharmony. There are so many fractures and utter voids — and that is even though we're programmed to connect and to be community! So I am grateful, definitely, for that need to connect, and it is something that I'm embracing more and more. And in a previous interview, one of the questions posed or an observation made, was that perhaps particularly as a storyteller, I might feel this need or this state of being on the outside of things because that's necessary for me to witness, for me to record —


(CSA): To be an observer.


(ER): Absolutely. So again, and you think well, ‘Weren't you aware of that?’ Sometimes you just need to hear things in a certain way, at a certain point in your life, and that was really, very recent but profound moment for me. I think I'm feeling more and more toward embracing what I previously considered to be flaws or failings on my behalf. I said, well what if instead of my feeling like there's something so wrong with me, I can't connect — why don't I embrace the fact that I sometimes have difficulty connecting, and not not let it be a source of anxiety but something that I can gently explore and find the joy in it, and find the opportunity for creativity in it. And that is that, yes, I get to observe, and I hope that my observations contribute toward, in my stories, generating empathy, generating perspective, and particularly around subject matter, as we've covered, that unfortunately feels almost passe, like, ‘Oh, you know, we don't want to hear anymore about child to sexual abuse.’ This type of thinking. But it's not going away. We have to address it. We can't change it until we address it.


(CSA): I'm also somebody who has felt, frequently, like I don't exactly belong, or I don't exactly fit in. And one thing that I have thought about it, recently, I think a lot about what fitting in looks like in different communities. I'm a patrilineal Jew, so in the Jewish community, there are things that I can't do anything about that cause me not to fully fit in. I am a bisexual woman who is married to a man, so I fit neither the expectations of the Straight community nor of the Queer community fully. And I think one thing that I have come to is that, this idea of belonging or of community as being one thing — it's a protective measure, not just to keep people out (I think that's more of a side effect), but to create a strong identity among the people who are inside it. And so one thing that I think is useful for, and valuable, in people who don't fit in but still exist in those spaces is that we can question the internal logic of that. ‘Is this identity everything that we want to be? Where is it excluding people? Where is it causing harm?’
 
(ER): Absolutely! Absolutely yeah, that idea of exclusion is so important. When you said, ‘I don't fit because I don't beat the expectations,’ it's the expectations [that] are the issue. It's the expectations that need to change and broaden, or maybe not exist at all. I am very optimistic about where we're going as a society despite so much horror right now, and so much recent horror; I do feel and see this enormous shift. I so much hope this younger generation coming up, they I think are blazing through these types of limited roles. This heterosexual norms, all of that: they're just blowing it wide open, and we'll all benefit from that! Issues as well, in my story collection in my world view around toxic masculinity, men suffer enormously because of toxic masculinity also. So this idea of, we will all be better off when we can embrace a more inclusive — you mentioned exclusive— a more inclusive way of being and of perceiving the world, and of allowing people to be. I get really frustrated, I don't understand all the isms. Just allow people to be. We are all human beings, and I'm actually quite excited by this shift, and the direction we're headed in, ultimately, is a very good one. I think things are being blown wide open. And yes, the expectations are going to be redefined, if not just completely blasted clear.


(CSA): Well, I want to go back to the nuts and bolts of your writing, and writing process for a bit. You've written both short form and long-form fiction. How is your process different from one to the next, or is it? Do you know what form a story is going to take when you start out?
 
(ER): Yeah, I don't plot or plan. I am very much… I start with a spark. There's some kernel that gets me to the page and I know a new work is coming, and I instinctively know whether it's a short story or a novel. I don't overthink it. I used to go word by word. Now I sit and ruminate, and I actually, almost, get into a trance-like state where I play out the scenes in my mind, and that just makes for a much more enjoyable, flowing process; When I'm less looking at the blank page and filling words, as opposed to going to the blank page to fill it with scenes.
I find the short story a really difficult beast. I mentioned earlier about being a forever student; I think I will be a forever student, in particular, of the short story form. I love it, but even the stories I love,I'm not always sure what it is exactly I love about them, and I think that's the richness of the short story form: that each time you read it, it offers something new and different. The novel I'm much more comfortable with, as a form. I just seem to know… I get less stressed about what I'm doing. I feel less intimidated by the novel, which may sound odd given its size and the commitment involved. 


(CSA): And I'm curious to have you interrogate that. You write so much short fiction, what is challenging in that? What makes it more difficult, and why do you feel more comfortable in this longer form? 
 
(ER): I think it probably gets back to the imposter syndrome. I have less of a sense of, ‘I know what I'm doing’ and more a sense, with a short story, of working through the spiritual channel. I get to a point after much, much, much, much revision where things start to click into place and I have this sense of, the story was there all along, it was just waiting for me to find it. It feels — I'm going to say it: It does feel magical! It's like, where did this come from? I think when I finish a short story, I have more of a sense of wonder than perhaps I do with the novel. And maybe that's just because I'm with the novel for a much longer time, and so it seems more organic. And I think I’m more aware of, ‘I've written this.’ Whereas… it was interesting, even right down to the final proofread with In the Event of Contact, I did have some moments where I was… ‘Did I write this? Like, who wrote this?’ Almost like, you just realized what an altered state you are in when you're writing at a really deep, deep level, where you're so inside the world and the characters, and it's surreal. It is a surreal experience. And then to get from the creating and the conjuring to that sense of, ‘Oh, I have a finished story,’ that also feels surreal. It's like, where did this come from? And like I said, maybe with a novel and that world and those characters — because I'm in it longer and it's a different work, that it's less wondrous to me, perhaps, when I get to the finished product than the short form does. Again, I am a big believer in energy and momentum in life, and if you follow the momentum, you follow what feels good, and for whatever reason, I tend to have a lot more success with my short stories, than I do the novel. You know, I just said the other night that I have, I believe, five if not six novel manuscripts, and I’m hopeful that at least some of them will enter the world as books, and that readers will get to access them, but I don't know. It's just a much slower, grueling process — novel-wise and publication — and the short story form I seem to have more success with, which again is interesting because, certainly as regards publishing, there’s this preconception that short story collections are not as popular, don't sell as well — that type of thing. So the odds are stacked against you getting a short story, and certainly a short story collection published. I'm three for one right now with me—


(CSA): Here you are, defying expectations once again!
 
(ER): Oh, I don't about that, but I'll take the lucky breaks when I can get them. Believe me.


***AD BREAK***


(CSA): Let's talk a little bit about structure in short fiction, especially if it's not planned for you. I'm interested in how you develop that structure, and especially endings. Endings are so hard. How do know what needs to happen? How do when it's ready to end? 


(ER): The endings are so, so hard. I revise a lot, and I think my early drafts I have quite a zen-like relationship with them in that I give myself permission, and I give them permission, to be awful, to be a little clueless. I don't expect even a beginning/middle/end with those early drafts. It's really, I think it's Tillie Olsen who said it, but it's really just me telling myself the story; me figuring out… I usually know character, because when I spoke earlier about the sparks that start the story, they're usually characters. Usually a phrase or an interesting detail or an image, but it's always a character. I always know who that is. I might not know anything other than its he/she/they, whatever, and what particular moment has stuck with me and driven me to the page. So it's me figuring out who the character is — the main character. Who are the supporting characters? What is the burning need? What I talked earlier about — the various disruptions and disturbances. What's the major disturbance that kicks off the story? What's the shift from the status quo? That's the catalyst for the story. And then part of my process is I'll interview my characters. When I know who they are and the world they're in, I'll then do more of a psychological, ‘So why now? Why are you coming to me now? Why am I telling your story now?’ And I’m really fascinated by why people are the way they are, why they do and say and think the things they do. So, a lot of me, in early drafts, is just answering all those questions for myself. At some point, about midway through the process, I need to know what the heart of the story is; that gets back to the ‘Why now? What's at stake?’ One of my questions I often get from students is ‘How do you know whose story you're telling?’


(CSA): That's interesting!


(ER):  Yeah, and you’re telling the story of whoever has the most at stake in this particular story structure. So, what's at stake is: what do you serve to win or lose here, and why does it matter so much to you? Things like that are all questions I pose within the story, and that the story answers for me.
And then endings, it's… there is a lot of mystery in that for me. And again, I think that's true of all writers. How do you end something? How do you know when it's finished? (I don’t think it’s ever finished, but when can you hand it off to an editor or say, ‘I think this is worthy to be read, to be published.’ It's when I've met all those beats within the story. Has the story done this? Has it conveyed what's at stake? Has it conveyed what was won or lost? Has it conveyed why it matters, and why it matters so much? And for me, there's always this emotional element. As a reader myself, my bar is: I want to be moved — in whatever way, I don't particularly care, but I want to feel something through the reading experience. I want to feel like it's an interaction, like for me as a writer and a reader, there's no better moment in the story, or moments, when I can say, ‘I know exactly what that is,’ or ‘I know exactly how that feels,’ or ‘that's so true,’ or, ‘Oh my gosh!’ All of these things that you… you have an interaction. You identify and relate and —


(CSA): You’re seeing connection with your characters.


(ER): Absolutely! Absolutely. And you're seeking representation, and you're seeking reflection of what you feel and what you care about, and what makes you angry, and what makes you suffer. All of that. And then I do this strange thing — I know most writers, again, read their work out loud, and I'm not a musical person at all, but I am very aware of rhythm, particularly in my own storytelling. For me, and again I can't quite quantify it, but for me when the story… when I feel, like as I said, process wise, craft wise I've hit all those points, then I read it aloud. And when it gets to the point where it's a rhythm for me — a certain rhythm — I feel like I can let it go. Like, ‘Okay. It's done.’ You know, I talk about it singing to me in a certain way, and then I'm like, okay. I feel like I can let this work go. 


(CSA): That's really interesting. I think that's... I haven't heard someone talk about that musical experience of their work before. That's fascinating.


(ER): What I find so peculiar about that is I am not a musical person! I love music, but I can't sing. I'm tone deaf. I mean I can't even sing Happy Birthday on key!


(CSA): Well, but rhythm is such a different part of music.
 
(ER): It is.


(CSA): It's nothing to do with pitch in a lot of ways. 
 
(ER): That's so true. That is so true. 


(CSA): So I think that raises another good question, which is what stories interest you as a reader. Like what do you look for? What makes you connect with something? I am fascinated by the strange, and the quirky. In my MFA program, one of our distinguished visitor writers was Victor LaValle and he said, ‘Just be interesting. For God's sake, please be interesting!’ And as a reader and as a writer that, again, is my goal. The stranger the better. Not quite veering into absurdism, but the quirkiness of flannery O'Connor, or Elizabeth Stroud, and the peculiarities and eccentricities of her characters. Olive Kitteridge; just the quintessential complex character who's both quirky and yet you identify with, and is wonderfully unlikable but also very relatable. Things like that, that's what I get off on, if you will, when I'm reading, and that's what I hope to do in my own writing. 
I love suspense. I love tension. I love twisting expectations. Yeah, and again, even with what I mentioned earlier with my various obsessions and fascinations, I don't read with that in mind and I don't write with that in mind. I read a lot and I'll gravitate towards whatever's recommended. I also make a particular point of supporting my fellow authors, and a goal I’ve set for myself certainly in the last… in recent years, and more and more so going forward, is to be more diverse and inclusive in my reading material. 


(CSA): Who are you reading these days? 
 
(ER): I'm reading a lot of memoirs. I'm just finishing up a memoir by author Gina Troisi called The Angle of Flickering Light, and that's beautiful, and for me that bar of being moved and just being amazed by humanity; the worst of it and the best of it, and again, what we can overcome. It's just a really moving story of surviving a very dysfunctional family, a lot of shame and guilt and really damaging messaging, and going on to lose ourselves in addiction which is another area that I identify with, and the escapism of that. A friend said, ‘Drugs are for people who can't do life or or alcohol,’ and it’s so true! You can't. You can't do the wounds of life, and this a numbing way to divert and block out. So yeah, a lot of memoirs. Jennifer Berney's The Other Mothers — also, another great read of 2021. Just about to start, which is getting rave reviews. I'm a member of the Writer’s Grotto here in San Francisco, and debut novel from Jenny Bitner, Here's A Game We Could Play, which is a bisexual love story. The tagline is just brilliant! It's a bisexual love story about librarians and poisoning. 


(CSA): That's great!
 
(ER): I know, I know! Absolutely. Recently read another great short story collection from my fellow compatriot, an Irish woman Louise Kennedy called The End of the World is a Cul-de-sac, and just great, again, women-centered stories, women-centered issues, and just that use of… like, the gritty? Finding the beauty in those wounds, finding the beauty in trauma — cuz that's the fine line I walk, too, with a lot of my characters who come to me; My women characters who come to me as wounded. It's interesting to me, one of the stories in the collection that was the most difficult and painful and really close to the bone for me was “Blue Hot,” about the teenage girl who's in two major toxic relationships, with her mother and with her boyfriend. So far nobody has raised that at all; It has not come up in any interview. I find that interesting. And, maybe again, it's that the reader… Obviously it's not such a hot story for the reader, but for me, it came from such a wounded place and was so difficult to write. And I wonder again, is it part of the… not looking at? The awkwardness of, well, that's a difficult story to talk about, so we won't go there. 


(CSA): It's easier to talk about the metaphors. 
 
(ER): Exactly, exactly. Yeah, as I say, I gravitate towards that because I… Louise Kennedy does it too. Like, just this twisting of violence, and that it exists. It exists in huge ways. And art reflects life and is representative of life and our experiences, and who has not experienced violence in one form or another? So I admire Louise Kennedy; I admire all writers who can navigate that. As I said, I have this issue with my women characters coming to be wounded, and wanting to honor their story, honor their dignity, honor their strength and resilience, while also not not representing and acknowledging their wounds; That a woman is strong, and perhaps stronger because of her wounds. I know that's true for me. It's the idea of the broken bone coming back stronger. I now feel like a very empowered woman. As I mentioned earlier, it took a lot of journeying, and as horrific as some of my experiences have been and my trauma has been, it has made me who I am today and I'm at a point in my journey now where I can embrace who I am today, and I can love who I am today. So it's how do you show all that complexity in storytelling? It's a huge task, and yet we have to try. That's something I feel very strongly about.


(CSA): Well Ethel Rohan, thank you for joining me today. 
 
(ER): Thank you so much Clara. 


(CSA): You can learn more about Ethel at her website ethelrohan.com or you can buy a copy of  In the Event of Contact at your local bookstore.  


Catch Story Behind the Story the first Friday of every month from 5 to 6 p.m. on KSQD 90.7 FM, or on KSQD.org. To share your thoughts on this or other shows, drop me a line at Clara@KSQD.org. 


The Story Behind the Story is produced for KSQD 90.7 FM by me, Clara Sherley-Appel. Our sound engineer is Lanier Sammons; He also wrote our theme.




Join me next month for a conversation with writer and game designer Stephen Granade, whose interactive fiction explores the relationship between memory, physicality, and reality.