GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2023/24

An interview with GBP Short Story Prize author Rabia Kapoor

Hello Rabia! Your longlisted story, ‘The Perils of Sleeping on Your Back’, has a wonderfully unmooring opening: ‘I SLEPT WITH MY MOUTH OPEN. I know I did because 1. My throat was always dry and aching in the morning. 2. There was a ghost that lived on my tongue.’ Can you tell our readers a bit more about your story, and what it’s about.

(tell us some more too about the inspiration for the ‘The Perils of Sleeping on Your Back’: How and when did it come to you, and how did you set about writing it?) 

I find it very hard to describe my stories. Every time someone asks me what I’m writing and what it’s about, I go blank, and while I’m trying to explain it to them I can see their eyes glaze over because I’m doing such a bad job. That being established, ‘The Perils of Sleeping on Your Back’ is a story about a girl who is convinced that there is a ghost that lives in her mouth, haunting her every night in her sleep, by dying. I suppose she thinks that she’s meant to save him but she never can. It’s about her relationship with this ghost that is a stranger to her but that she knows so intimately because she has watched him drown hundreds of times. I was interested in the relationship, the idea of missing someone you don’t know, someone who has caused you so much pain anyway.  

There are a few ideas, images, and phrases that came together all at once one day when I was still living in Norwich. I was walking into town to go sit in a coffee shop and pretend to write for a few hours. I was listening to Florence & the Machine which is not a band I really listen to. There was a song that came on, ‘Bird Song’, which is about a bird that sees the speaker in the song do something bad and keeps singing about it. In a desperate attempt to quiet the bird, the speaker kills it, and then suffers in her dreams where the bird song keeps coming out of her mouth. I think I misheard a lyric or something, but latched on to the idea of only in a small part of you being possessed, like your mouth, your throat.

It added up nicely with a very real experience I’ve struggled with for many years, which is my deviated septum. I finally had a surgery last year and got it fixed but for years and years I slept terribly because I couldn’t breathe, and would wake up incredibly tired and with a dry, painful throat.  

Finally, what pulled it all together for me was a recurring dream that I have had since I was about ten years old. In that dream, my younger brother is about four or five years old, and he drowns, and I can never save him. It’s not a difficult dream to analyse: I was six when he was born and it was the first time in my life I had ever felt responsible for anybody other than myself, and the idea of someone being dependent on me and me not being able to protect them became my biggest fear.

Recently I had a dream which was similar, I was on a crowded beach, but I couldn’t find my brother. A part of me knew what was going to happen and a part of me didn’t. I panicked, in the dream, and looked for him frantically. The dream ended with him coming up to me, very calmly, with a lot of understanding. I don’t remember the details but I remember both us knowing that this relationship, of him drowning and me not saving him, was forever. He would always be on that beach, waiting for me to arrive so that he could sink.

I got to the coffee shop that day and the whole story just fell out of me. Which happens sometimes, and makes you feel invincible for a short time… Until the next day, usually, when you’re banging your head against a wall again, just trying to get one good word out on the page.

‘The Perils of Sleeping on Your Back’ feels like a wonderful lesson in keeping things oblique. It’s a story that feels heavy, replete, with a sense of loss and (possibly) longing – but you are also incredibly deft when it comes to detail. For example, there’s enough about the protagonist’s life for the reader to grab hold of (and make certain judgements about) – but never too much. (I never felt like I was being steered.) That’s quite a balancing act! How did you manage it?

I love the short story format because of how packed each word and sentence can be. You really have to pick and choose your information, your details. Everything you convey to your reader has to be succinct, to the point, and yet offer hints to a larger world. I love writing short stories because I love practicing brevity. At the same time, I’m a big fan of specificity. Being specific is what makes an image come alive, and what makes a story or a character, at least, stick. How much feeling and meaning can I pack into just a few words? Which words? It’s a lot of fun. So with ‘Perils’, I enjoyed picking up small facts and presenting them to the reader: the shoe shop in the mall, the nephew’s small eyes, the sun cream that doesn’t absorb into the sister’s skin. Does the rest matter? Are their names, the length of their hair, the colour of their clothes important? Sometimes, but not for this story.

It's one of the shortest stories on the longlist, too. Tell us a bit more about the length. (Are most of your short stories short, or does that very much depend on the story?)

Oh, yes, I’m a SHORT short story writer… They’re so short they’re, like, small. Not exactly flash fiction, but close. Before doing the UEA prose fiction MA, all my stories were about 1200 words. I didn’t have anything to say that took any longer than that. During the MA, we had to submit approximately 5000 words to be workshopped every few weeks and I really struggled to reach the lower limit of that word count. It was a good challenge, to try and imagine bigger stories, that required more plot, perhaps, or spanned more than just a night. But ‘Perils’ was one of the first stories I wrote after graduating and it felt really, really good to return to the very small story. I think it might be because I’m so interested in incredibly simple things, or maybe a better way to say it is that I like to say things simply. Brevity, again. I’m a big fan. Raymond Carver is one of my favourite short story writers (perhaps my favourite, actually) and has been a huge influence. The way he manages to show you entire lives over just a few pages, use dialogue and description so sparingly and still move me to tears… That’s the dream.

OK! On to  your writing more generally. How long have you been writing? Do you have a daily routine? Are you working on something at the moment?  

I’ve been writing since I was about nine or ten years old. The first poem I wrote was during a poetry workshop for kids, and it was a Twinkle Twinkle Little Star parody… about farts. And the first story I wrote was about my friend, when she moved away in the fifth grade. We were about eleven.

My mum told me about this quote she’d read somewhere, I don’t know whose it is, which says something about how a good writer can make even the description of a chair interesting. That really stuck with me and made me a little obsessive. My goal is to write a story with an interesting chair.

I don’t really have a writing routine. I try to write every day. When I’m working on a specific project I can be fairly disciplined, and sit with it every day, even I don’t write any actual words, which still counts. All the famous successful writers constantly talk about how they wake up at four in the morning and write 3000 words before the sun rises and I hate that, because I just don’t think that’ll ever be me. At my best, I’m an afternoon writer. But I also have long periods where I don’t write at all. I like to miss it, the act of writing. Remind myself that it’s a passion, not a chore.

Since the MA, I’ve been working on a short novel about a girl who’s convinced that a child she meets is the reincarnation of her dead sister. It’s also about a house party. And birthdays. I’m so bad at talking about my writing. But it’s going… I finish a draft, take a lot of distance from it, think about changing everything, and then eventually reach a point where I decide that what I have isn’t so bad, and start writing again. Some days I’m incredibly proud of what I have, other days I want to hide in a hole. I’ve been told that’s normal for writers.

What’s the best writing tip you’ve ever received, and what’s the worst?

My high school literature teacher told me to always re-write a draft. She said that even if you’re using the same sentence from the previous draft, re-write every word, don’t copy-paste anything. She believed, I think, that just the act of that would make your next draft cleaner, tighter. So, even with my stories, even with my novel-in-progress, I start second drafts from scratch, so they’re more second first drafts. I find it to be a really rewarding practice, because you give yourself permission to take your stories in very different directions, and you’re not limited by the plot or details of your own first draft. I really want to avoid being the kind of writer that gets attached to their first ideas. It’s a little lazy, in my opinion. 

The worst advice I ever got was to wake up at 4 am to write. I’m just not doing that.

Habits, too. What’s a bad writing habit you have – and give us one that’s proved fairly useful, too.

I’m not very good at proofreading, and it gets me into a lot of trouble. A good habit I have, I think, is setting a writing goal for myself and being fairly good about meeting it every day, when I’m working on a project. I don’t know if that counts… I’m pretty sure everyone does that.

I was reminded of writers like Karen Russell and (especially) Kelly Link when I first read ‘The Perils of Sleeping on Your Back’. (Two wonderful writers, which made me wonder more generally about your influences….) Can you tell us about some authors you admire, as well as some that you are influenced by?

Jerry Pinto has this novel called Em and the Big Hoom and it’s such a shame that it isn’t better known in the West, because it’s such a refreshing voice from South Asia. It’s set in the catholic community of Mumbai, and the characters are so vivid and dynamic and funny. I love how his prose is incredibly colloquial and casual and then suddenly, two hundred pages into the book, there will be a single line that just devastates you. It’s wonderful, one of my favourite books.

Vivek Shanbag writes in Kannada, and his novel Ghacchar Ghocchar is a short, clean, remarkable work of fiction that dissects power dynamics in changing, urban India so beautifully and so quietly. Both Shanbag and Pinto are both writers that I admire so much, and talk about sections of India with so much honesty. As someone who has studied literature in the UK, who has studied South Asian authors in the UK, I really see the way the West craves an exotic narrative. These writers don’t give into that demand, and offer much more complicated and dynamic South Asian narratives.

Manto, of course, is a national treasure for both India and Pakistan. His short stories are perverse and chaste in equal measure. I don’t know how else to say it. He wrote with so much love about Mumbai, then Bombay, and then was forced to flee to Pakistan because of the partition. His stories hold that hurt, his personal hurt, the hurt of his people who were then scattered across two countries, both his countries. He’s one of the most sophisticated writers I’ve read, and again, just not talked about enough outside of India and Pakistan, I think.

Raymond Carver is a huge, huge influence, as I’ve said already. The minimalism of his prose is addictive. I just can’t get enough of him. Joan Didion just makes me ugly cry and I find her ability to hurt me very cool.

I also read my first Tolstoy last year, Anna Karenina and was, of course, blown away. First of all, it is such a long book where not much happens but SO MUCH happens! My dad told me that when Tolstoy set out to write the book, he meant to condemn Anna’s character, but as he wrote he couldn’t help but sympathise with her position. This made me respect Tolstoy a lot ha ha. What I admired so much about this novel was how each character was so rich and real, to the extent that they interacted with different characters differently, had unique relationships with everyone, which meant each character had a number of different plots attached to them. It was just so real, so human, and still so full of drama and stakes. It was the first time I thought, ‘Wow, I understand what the word “master” means.’

And what are you reading at the moment? 

One of my new year’s resolutions was to read more non-fiction in 2024. I just finished I Am Not Your Negro by James Baldwin, imagined (?) by Raoul Peck, and am currently making my way through Romila Thapar’s book of essays, The Future in the Past, that ponders and debunks Hindu nationalistic jargon and narratives while making a case for history as a discipline, especially in the political climate of India today.

I also finished reading Dept. of Speculation, a novel by Jenny Offil the other night and it was really lovely, incredibly poetic and simple and painful.

And here’s a spot to namecheck any other favourite things: artists, arts, films, cinemas, TV, music… whatever you like.

Poets: Frank O’Hara, Raymond Carver.

Films: Petite Maman, Aftersun, Eighth Grade, Hit the Road, Singin’ in the Rain, Grease, In the Mood for Love, and slightly embarrassingly, two of my father’s films: Ankhon Dekhi and Raghu Romeo.

TV: Fleabag, Bojack Horseman, Flowers, The Bear.

Songs: ‘My Love Mine All Mine’ by Mitski, ‘Mohabbat’ by Arooj Aftab, ‘Lauren Lorraine’ by Summer Fiction, ‘Absolutely Cuckoo’ by The Magnetic Fields.

“The horror of the blank page” is something that has – by pure chance – popped up in our social media timeline two or three times over the past week. So we want end by asking all of our longlisted authors: Do you feel that horror? And how would you advise other writers to get beyond it?

I feel it often. I don’t have any advice to offer other writers to get beyond it. Everybody keeps telling me the only way out is through. ‘Oh just write one word and then the next’ which makes me want to cry. It’s the same feeling as when I used to tell my mum I was hungry and she’d tell me to eat an apple. If you know, you know.

Read rabia’s GBP Short Story Prize nominated story, ‘The Perils of Sleeping on your back’, here.

RABIA KAPOOR is a writer from Mumbai, India. Her stories and ‘non-poems’, which often dwell on themes of insecurity, belonging, and hope, have been featured on platforms such as Buzzfeed India, The Quint, and Homegrown. Having completed the prose fiction MA from the University of East Anglia, she’s now working on a novel that’s deeply rooted in the geography and vivid characteristics of Mumbai. She is primarily interested in the quiet intimacy and tenderness of female relationships with their surroundings, with each other, and with themselves. Through her work she is looking for the generous potential of the world.