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Jill McCorkle
- University of Georgia Press
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231 Jill McCorkle Jill McCorkle is the author of five novels and three collections of short stories. She received her BA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina, earning highest honors. As an MFA student at Hollins College, she won the Andrew James Purdy Prize for Fiction. She was only twenty-six years old when she made publishing history in 1984, having her first two novels published simultaneously by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill. McCorkle’s fiction has been selected five times by the New York Times Book Review for its “Notable Books of the Year” list, and in 1996 she was included in Granta magazine’s celebration of the best young American novelists . In 2003 she was elected to the Fellowship of Southern Writers. She has taught writing at Duke University, Tufts University, the University of North Carolina, Harvard University, and Bennington College. She currently teaches at North Carolina State University. She lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina. The Cheerleader, 1984; July 7th, 1984; Tending to Virginia, 1987; Ferris Beach, 1990; Crash Diet, 1992 (stories); Carolina Moon, 1996; Final Vinyl Days, 1998 (stories); Creatures of Habit, 2001 (stories) There is an “ensemble” feel to a number of your novels. How does that kind of cast of characters gather for you? This is something I’ve put a lot of thought into. I have a lot of characters who begin just as a character with a very strong voice. I’m never sure if a character is leading me into a story or a novel. Denny in Carolina Moon is an example. I had a monologue that was going to be a story, but it never arrived. Some of Quee’s early parts with the Ghost Wall in Carolina Moon started as stories. I worked with the character Juanita probably a year and a half or two years before writing July 7th. These characters were much better as a part of a much bigger picture. Ferris Beach is more a linear piece. 232 the INtervIewS I had intended a straight first person about the protagonist, Kate, and her mother, but I no sooner got started than the family moved in across the street and I was much more interested in them. Amy Hempel once told me that a story needed two things happening simultaneously, so you’re not overly attached to one thing. There has to be a way to shift the weight. You do that in your third-person shifts. I do. The novels that I’m most proud of — Tending to Virginia and Carolina Moon—were made of a universe of little tiny vignettes. Both times I felt like I was quilting. I would take a character and focus on what was inside a little square, knowing that it would somehow fit into this larger piece. Usually the larger piece is not something I fully understand until I get to the end. I think, by nature, I am more a novelist for this reason. When I write short stories, I usually have ideas in batches. I always tell people, I have a litter of stories. I have to keep nursing them all together, pulling threads up a little closer to the surface until I can let them go. I don’t know. It’s the only way I’ve been able to feel good about the stories I’ve produced. I know it’s not to my advantage. Right now I’m finishing a collection and there will be very little time to place these stories before the book comes out. But it’s very hard for me to just write a story as a story. In my mind, there is something bigger holding these stories together. Right now I’m revising the collection and I have to see what the common variables are between the stories. It becomes important to me as I decide whether a story makes it into the book. Even though they seem completely unrelated to people reading them, it’s important to me to get the big sense of the big picture. You say that you’re a novelist by nature, but you clearly love writing stories. Which of the two forms do you prefer? I love stories; it’s the form I’ve always aspired to. If given the choice, I’d rather read stories. I love to read them because I pay so much attention . I read the first time for pleasure, then I read to see the structure. You...