Interview with short story writer Gretchen McCullough

Short story writer Gretchen McCullough chats with me today about her new collection, Shahrazad’s Gift.

Bio:
After graduating from Brown University in 1984, Gretchen McCullough taught English in Egypt, Turkey, and Japan. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama and was awarded a teaching Fulbright to Syria from 1997–1999. Her stories, essays and reviews have appeared in The Barcelona Review, Archipelago, Story South, Guernica, The Literary Review, The LA Review of Books, and on National Public Radio. Translations into English and Arabic with Mohamed Metwalli have been published in: Nizwa, Banipal, Brooklyn Rail in Translation, World Literature Today, and Washington Square Review. Her bilingual book of short stories in English and Arabic, Three Stories from Cairo, also translated with Mohamed Metwalli, was published in July 2011 by Afaq Publishers, Cairo. A collection of short stories about expatriate life in Cairo, Shahrazad’s Tooth, was published by Afaq as well in 2013. In 2022, Laertes Press published A Song on the Aegean Sea, translated by McCullough and the book’s author, Mohamed Metwalli. Hernovel, Confessions of a Knight Errant, was published by Cune Press, in Fall 2022.Currently, she is on the faculty at the American University in Cairo.

What do you enjoy most about writing short stories/children’s books/novellas?
I feel like writing is play, especially the drafting process. Of course, you have to go back and revise very slowly so you don’t ruin your book. It is important to get a variety of feedback.

Can you give us a little insight into a few of your short stories – perhaps some of your favorites?
Most of the stories in Shahrazad’s Gift were inspired by the flamboyant characters and strange situations that I experienced in Cairo.

For example, my Japanese neighbor who was learning Arabic, couldn’t accept the vagaries and wildness of daily life in Cairo, even though her Arabic was quite good. I was interested in the fact that even though she knew the language, she didn’t understand the culture and couldn’t adjust to it. Maybe because she was depressed, she became a little paranoid. One day she told me someone was drilling a hole in the ceiling and was spying on her. In Cairo, there are plenty of uninhabited flats around, even though there is a housing shortage. Egyptians keep them for their children. Many folks may not “officially” be living in a flat, but may lend out their key. I got the idea of different people using the empty flat upstairs for sex, for illegal business activities—anything under the radar. That became “The Empty Flat Upstairs.”

What genre are you inspired to write in the most? Why?
I prefer the novel because of the space. I want to fill the room with lots and lots of characters! This isn’t possible in short stories. My novel, Confessions of a Knight Errant was published by Cune Press in 2022. The novel is a rambunctious gallop set during the Egyptian uprising 2011 and at a girls’ camp in central Texas. Both of my male characters are on the run from the authorities.

What exciting story are you working on next?
I just finished a draft of a new novel, which is set in West Texas in the nineteen-thirties during the New Deal. My grandfather went to college at Sul Ross University in Alpine. He left a number of diaries about his life. That prompted me to visit Sul Ross and spend some time in the archives. I was so interested in the building of Big Bend National Park and the swimming pool at Balmorhea; these were projects that were completed under the New Deal. Young, unemployed men in their twenties were recruited to work in these CCC camps. I was drawn to the project in Balmorhea. It is a huge swimming pool, probably as big as a football field that is completely fed by natural springs. The novel focuses on a man camp at Balmorhea, but also overlaps with the story of a medical quack. Doctor John Brinkley, a medical charlatan, who promised men greater virility with transplants of goat testicles. He was a real character and was practicing medicine in the thirties.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
Probably as early as 1980. I started university at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri. I took a Fiction Writing course with the novelist, Jaimy Gordon. She encouraged me to think of myself as a creative writer.

How do you research markets for your work, perhaps as some advice for writers?
If you are being published by a small, independent press or self-publishing, you will probably need to get help from a publicist. Big publishing houses are now also expecting writers to do a lot of promotion on their own. Promotion requires another hat, quite different from creating stories.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I am attracted to and inspired by bizarre, idiosyncratic details. For example, during the 2011 uprising, many foreigners fled and left their pets. This is something that might not appear in the regular news. The crazy, “untold” things are what inspired the story, “On the Run” in the story collection, Shahrazad’s Gift. This later became the first section of my novel, Confessions of a Knight Errant.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I thought I would become a lawyer, like my father and grandfathers. However, I was more interested in the colorful clients who sometimes would appear, more than the work. Once, some carnival people came to see my father. My Dad said they would be paying the fee, but I didn’t notice the woman carrying a purse. She reached into her rather large brassiere and fished out a one-hundred-dollar bill. This captured my imagination more than the pink time slips or the files that had to be filed in the storage unit!

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
While I explore some serious issues, I want the reader to be entertained. I want them to have fun.

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