GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2024/25
Ten questions with GBP Short Story Prize author C.D. Rose
(1) HELLO CHRIS AND CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR GBP SHORT STORY PRIZE LONGLISTING FOR ‘MABBICH’. CAN YOU PLEASE INTRODUCE IT TO OUR READERS, IN TWO OR THREE SENTENCES?
Hello! And thank you!
‘Mabbich’ is an everyday story of northern folk who, on occasion, transform into unidentified savage nocturnal beasts.
(2) CAN YOU TELL US A BIT MORE ABOUT WHEN ‘MABBICH’ FIRST CAME TO YOU – AND HOW YOU WENT ABOUT WRITING IT?
There’s an old song called ‘Polly Vaughan’ about a woman who turns into a swan. Like most good folk songs, it has many versions and interpretations, but the one I first heard (and still favour) is by Anne Briggs. I’d thought of using it somehow years back, but the idea merely sat there until I saw the 1952 Finnish film Valkoinen peura (‘The White Reindeer’), which tells exactly the same story (only with a reindeer instead of a swan). Some research turned up stories about swan maidens and crane wives, selkies and shapeshifters of many kinds.
Then I picked up a copy of Ted Hughes’ Crow, and saw the language in there, and it all fell into place.
(3) ‘MABBICH’ IS A STORY WITH SUPERNATURAL ELEMENTS, BUT THIS DOESN’T FEEL FORCED – RATHER, IT’S A MAGICAL STORY THAT IS ROOTED IN, AND EMERGES FROM, THE NATURAL AND EVERYDAY WORLD (POLLY’S MEMORY OF BIRTH, SHEEPSKULL FENCEPOSTS, HER AUNTY’S STORIES OF MYTHICAL CREATURES). … CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, AND IS IT SOMETHING YOU WORKED HARD FOR?
I wondered how it would be if actually, in our real world, someone regularly transformed into an animal and realised that it would be far more curse than blessing.
The natural, everyday world of the story is the one around me. The ‘sheepskull fencepost’ is something I saw one morning out walking while writing the story. As soon as I saw it, I thought that’s going in.
(4) WOULD YOU SAY THAT ‘MABBICH’ IS ALSO A STORY ABOUT FAMILIES? (AND RIGHT FROM THAT MAGNIFICENT BEGINNING…?)
I started out on it thinking I was merely going to have fun with transposing an archetypal story and adding a bit of Northern Gothic grand guignol. Happy Valley with werewolves. As I got further into it I realised it was about how abuse is passed on, and about male violence towards women. It rapidly ‘got dark’, as they say.
(5) OK! ON TO YOUR WRITING MORE GENERALLY. HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WRITING? DO YOU HAVE A DAILY ROUTINE?
I’ve been writing forever, and I try my best to have a routine, but it is often disturbed by the exigencies of everyday life and the need to earn money.
(6) AND ARE YOU WORKING ON SOMETHING AT THE MOMENT?
I am always working on something. I have a novel coming out this summer which (rather like ‘Mabbich’) is very different to everything else I’ve written. As well as that, I am writing a tiny book inspired by Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities (which I am calling a ‘paratopian gazetteer of the Upper Calder Valley’). I’m also writing my first musical.
(7) WHAT’S THE BEST WRITING TIP YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED, AND WHAT’S THE WORST?
Best: Keep your pencils sharp and always carry a notebook.
Worst: Anything beginning ‘Top ten tips’.
(8) WHAT ABOUT OTHER WRITERS? CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT SOME AUTHORS YOU ADMIRE, AS WELL AS SOME THAT YOU ARE INFLUENCED BY?
Among (many) others:
The classics: Calvino, Borges, Cortázar, Carter, Gogol, Perec, Danilo Kiš, Bruno Schulz.
The contemporaries: Eley Williams, Camilla Grudova, Olga Tokarczuk, Melissa McCarthy.
(9) AND HERE’S A SPOT TO NAMECHECK ANY OTHER FAVOURITE THINGS: ARTISTS, ARTS, FILMS, CINEMAS, TV, MUSIC… WHATEVER YOU LIKE.
Some films: Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, Guy Maddin’s The Saddest Music in the World, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life, Niki Lindroth von Bahr’s The Burden.
Some music (at the moment): Sibelius, Bartók, Birtwistle, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Fennesz, Autechre, Yara Asmar, Phillip Jeck.
(10) “THE HORROR OF THE BLANK PAGE.” DO YOU FEEL THAT HORROR? AND HOW WOULD YOU ADVISE OTHER WRITERS TO GET BEYOND IT?
The blank page is that white void which torments me, and yet – it is also filled with infinite promise: a yet-untrodden snowy field attending on my footsteps. Any writers who feel the same fear (or the same joy) would do well to read Isak Dinesen’s story ‘The Blank Page’.
C.D. ROSE has published four books, most recently a collection of stories, Walter Benjamin Stares at the Sea, which has been shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize. A novel, We Live Here Now, is forthcoming (from Melville House in the UK and North America). He lives in West Yorkshire, but is at home anywhere there are old libraries, dusty second-hand bookshops, and dark bars. He is currently working on a paratopian gazetteer of the Upper Calder Valley.