Catherine Harris is an award winning fiction and script writer whose essays and short stories have been published in Australia, Canada, England and the USA. Last week Stephanie Crawford attended the launch of Catherine’s collection of short stories, Like Being A Wife at Readings Hawthorn, in Melbourne.
Here Catherine Harris introduces herself to us and tells us a little about herself and her collection of short stories, Like Being A Wife – loosely linked around the theme of commitment.
- Who is Catherine Harris? I’m primarily a fiction writer though I have also written articles and film scripts, as well as scripts for radio and audio documentaries. My short stories and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies in Australia, Canada, England and the United States. In 2009 I won the Josephine Ulrick Literature Prize and I am the recipient of the 2010 Alan Marshall Scholarship for Emerging Writers. Like Being A Wife is my first book and was shortlisted for the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for an unpublished manuscript.
- When did you first realise you wanted to be a writer? I’m still not sure that I want to be a writer. Though I very clearly remember writing my first short story at the age of five. It was about astronauts.
- Can you describe your writing style? My style has been described as spare and sardonic. I don’t think of it as particularly minimal or droll, but I do know that I get impatient reading too much description and I gravitate towards people with a naughty sense of humour. I suspect I write like I read, skipping anything too flowery and trying to leave out the boring bits.
- What inspired you to write Like Being A Wife? I didn’t set out to write a book. The collection really formed itself as I returned to several themes and characters, giving the stories a unity over time.
- Can you tell us about Like Being A Wife? Sure. It’s a collection of short stories loosely linked around the theme of commitment. Each of the stories takes a key moment and examines the lengths the characters are prepared to go to maintain or change their situation. I love taking seemingly ordinary people or situations and highlighting their absurdities. Aside from it being entertaining, absurdity is something we all experience and understand. Of course, that lack of control is also the core of tragedy and can be enormously distressing. So it’s often a fine line. But humour can be a great device for treading that line.
- Can you tell us a little about the process you undertook to write Like Being A Wife? What was your schedule like while you were writing? My writing schedule is usually the same. If I have a whole day, then I write in the morning, do something else in the afternoon, then get back to the desk for another stint in the early evening. If I don’t have that kind of flexibility then I write when I can. Occasionally I’ll wake up in the middle of the night with an idea and will have to take myself off to the desk to get it down while it’s fresh. But that doesn’t happen too often as I love my sleep.
- Like Being A Wife was shortlisted for the 2009 Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards for an unpublished manuscript. What was that like? It was wonderful and completely unexpected. What it meant was that people were suddenly prepared to read my work and as a writer there’s nothing better than finding readers, so that was very satisfying.
- What was one of the most surprising things you learnt while creating Like Being A Wife? That people generally do have more in common than not. I also came to believe that finding that commonality or acknowledging it can be next to impossible.
- What’s the biggest challenge you face as a writer? Sometimes I wish I was working in an enormous office complex surrounded by hundreds of people all talking too much and taking turns buying overpriced junk food from vending machines. Luckily for me, Melbourne has many excellent cafes so it’s not too hard to get out of the house when I’m in the mood for human proximity.
- What’s the best thing about being a writer? Being able to play God. A great thing for a control freak. I get to choose my characters, to decide where they’ll live, what’ll happen to them and when. If any of them start to annoy me I can delete them or send them to bed. And of course they all think I’m fabulous.
- Are you writing at the moment? Yes, I’m working on a longer story at present and am really enjoying getting back to some quiet time at the desk.
- What do you like to do when you’re not writing? I like to read, to go to the cinema, to take long walks. I love contemporary art and visit a lot of galleries.
- What are you reading at the moment? I’m reading Known Unknowns by Emmett Stinson and re-reading My Brother Jack by George Johnson. I have just finished The Grand Hotel by Gregory Day, Otherland by Maria Tumarkin, and Offsider, a beautiful memoir by Patrick Mangan.
Like Being A Wife (Vintage Australia, RRP $24.95) is available at all good bookstores now.
