Episode 6 --- Amina Gautier
Photo Credit: Jenni Bryant
Don't ask Amina Gautier when she's going to write a novel. She loves the short form and has no plans to abandon it for something longer.
"I like getting to the end of it," she said. "I’m a very impatient person, so when I hear that people spend seven, eight, 10, years on a novel I can’t fathom doing that."
She has a quick, easy laugh and real passion for not only her work but for promoting the work of other women of color. We sat down to talk in her office at the University of Miami where she teaches English.
Her first short story collection, At-Risk, won the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction, and her second collection, Now We Will Be Happy, was awarded the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Fiction.
Her latest collection, The Loss of All Lost Things, is full of dark stories about all kinds of loss. In the latest edition of ReadMore, we discuss what led her to write about so much despair, what she feels that a reader gets from a good short story and why she's started writing book reviews.
Interview Highlights:
Amina reveals...
- why she feels that the work of the greats has allowed her to write about things such as intra-racial prejudice
- how short stories provide more "open space" for writers
- what it's like to work with small, independent presses
- how she handles pressure from the publishing industry to alter the focus of her writing
Amina is providing us with a couple of free books to give away, which she will personalize for two lucky ReadMore listeners. One book will be given to the first listener to send us a tweet or write on our Facebook page telling us the story that Amina has "tacked up on a wall in her brain." Another book will go to the first listener to leave us a comment below telling us the influential book set in Brooklyn that Amina read in middle school.
Contest Rules:
If you have won a ReadMore giveaway in the last 90 days, you're ineligible for this contest. Also, we don't have a ReadMore friends and family plan, so if we've ever shared a meal, no free books for you.
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