GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2024/25
Ten questions with GBP Short Story Prize author Nicole Sellew
(1) HELLO NICOLE AND CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR GBP SHORT STORY PRIZE LONGLISTING FOR ‘DANGEROUS MATERIALS’. CAN YOU INTRODUCE THE STORY TO OUR READERS, IN TWO OR THREE SENTENCES?
‘Danerous Materials’ is about a girl who goes to work for a multi-billion dollar corporation. She meets someone and develops a crush, while she’s also trying to avoid being crushed by falling pallets of paving stones and moving forklifts. So I guess you could say it’s a story about crushing, and also how bad capitalism is — among other things.
(2) AND CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT THE INSPIRATION FOR THE STORY: HOW AND WHEN DID IT COME TO YOU, AND HOW DID YOU SET ABOUT WRITING IT?
It may or may not be based on my own tenure as an employee for an unnamed multi-billion dollar corporation… and I wrote it while I was a grad student at the University of St Andrews, in Scotland. So I was very far away from the suburban American sprawl where those sorts of big box stores are common, and that distance definitely helped.
(3) PROBABLY 99% OF SHORT STORIES IN EXISTENCE RELY ON CHARACTER AND SETTING, BUT IN TERMS OF ‘DANGEROUS MATERIALS’, THE DYNAMIC BETWEEN WHO YOUR PROTAGONIST IS AND WHERE SHE FINDS HERSELF WORKING SEEM ESPECIALLY IMPORTANT (PIVOTAL). CAN YOU SAY A BIT MORE ABOUT THIS?
In ‘Dangerous Materials’, the narrator has so many frustrated desires. She’s this pathetic person, and she’s surrounded by toxic weedkiller and giant saws that cut slabs of wood into smaller slabs of wood. There’s definitely a lot about Catholicism (and of course guilt) in there, too. She’s punishing herself in this surburban purgatory, yet also yearning in a lush garden. Temptation abounds, and it is shocking to her.
(4) AND SPECIFICALLY, WHY GARDEN CENTRES?
To me there is something so erotic about a garden centre, where everything is lush and verdant and blooming, but only for a short time. If it doesn’t sell, it wilts and then gets thrown in an industrial-sized dumpster, where it molders and rots. I also love the irony of the narrator sizzling in this concrete parking lot at this industrial box-store with all these chemicals and machines, but working specifically in this little plant-filled oasis. I love the tension between the natural and the manufactured, the exquisite and the profane. Also, I worked in the garden centre.
(5) OK! WRITING IN GENERAL. TELL US ABOUT YOUR ROUTINES – OR LACK OF THEM.
I am a teacher now, so I don’t have as much time to write as when I was a student, and I would basically get to write all the time. I am also a bed writer, so I do a lot of writing from my bed. Hopefully it keeps me grounded (my mattress is on the floor right now).
(6) WRITING AND REWRITING: WHAT’S YOUR RATIO?
As I’ve spent more time writing, I’ve realised that it’s important to let a draft sit for a while before coming back to it. You almost come back to it as a new person. The person who wrote that last draft is unrecognisable to you. That makes it easier to edit the work — it’s more like editing a friend. But editing is hard work. It’s not as fun and magical as the writing. I try to keep it 75% writing, 25% editing.
(7) WHAT’S THE WORST PIECE OF WRITING ADVICE YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED – AND THE BEST?
I had a professor once who told me that if you write everyday, you can call yourself a writer. That’s definitely the best advice I’ve been given: To write everyday, because the writing is what makes you a writer. I don’t know if this counts as advice, but the worst thing anyone has ever said about my writing was that it was shallow and navel-gazey. I still think about that all the time.
(8) OTHER WRITERS. TELL US ABOUT SOME YOU ESPECIALLY ADMIRE. ALSO WHAT YOU’RE READING AT THE MOMENT.
I am a huge fan of autofiction. I love Annie Ernaux, Sheila Heti, Margeurite Duras, Constance Denbré, Olga Ravn. Right now I am reading Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again by Katherine Angel. I am also teaching Hamlet to high school sophomores — I forgot how good Hamlet is.
(9) AND HERE’S A SPOT TO NAMECHECK ANY OTHER FAVOURITE THINGS: ARTISTS, ARTS, FILMS, CINEMAS, TV, MUSIC… WHATEVER YOU LIKE.
My friend (and the best writer I know) Alessandra Thom has a book coming out this May. It’s called Summer Hours and everyone should pre-order it right now because it’s amazing. Also if you live in NYC there are some amazing independent cinemas there. I love the IFC and Film Forum. I saw a documentary at Film Forum recently — Soundtrack to a Coup D’état — and that was great.
(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 a gift! It contains every possibility. Sometimes I feel like a blank page is even better than a page full of writing. I love books with lots of white space for that reason. You can fill up blank space with your imagination and fantasies. If I am feeling particularly daunted, though, I try to watch a movie with lots of dialogue and that usually helps.
NICOLE SELLEW is a writer and English teacher based in Connecticut and New York City. In 2022, she received an MLitt in fiction from the University of St Andrews, where she is currently studying for her PhD. Her essays and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in Hobart, Ambit, and the Rose Books Reader, among other places. Her novella Lover Girl will be published by Clash Books in 2026.