Author Interviews
Interview: from short stories to a first novel
DprimeLit Editorial Desk · 18 February 2026 · 5 min read
This conversation is drawn from a festival live session. Answers are lightly edited for length.
On the transition: "A short story forgives you nothing and a novel forgives you almost everything, which is its own danger. I had to learn to build tension that holds for three hundred pages rather than fifteen."
On structure: "I plan in chapters the way I used to plan in scenes. Each chapter has to change something, or it goes."
On the hardest part: "The middle. Every novelist says this because it is true. I wrote through it by giving myself a small, finishable target each morning."
On readers: "Short story readers are patient with strangeness. Novel readers are patient with slowness. Knowing which patience you are asking for helps."
On festival participation: "Speaking about the book out loud, to people who have not read it, told me what it was actually about."
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