Kirsty Logan Biography, Books, and Similar Authors

Interview

A Conversation with Kirsty Logan, author of The Gracekeepers which, inspired in part by Scottish myths and fairytales, tells a modern story of an irreparably changed world.

Your short story collection, The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales, has won a number of awards and was the recipient of much critical acclaim. What made you decide to tackle a novel next?
I've always loved to write both short stories and longer pieces, just as I love to read both. They provide such different experiences for the reader and the writer.

A novel is like a dollhouse: you open the front and all the tiny rooms are displayed, each populated with different characters doing different things, each totally engrossed in their worlds. I've always loved miniature scenes in museums: of battles or farms or villages. Even better are the full-size re-creations: the People's Palace museum in Glasgow has a re-created ?single end," a one-room tenement home from the 1930s, complete with kitchen implements, furniture, textiles, and everything that a family would need. I'm obsessed with it. I could look at it for hours, imagining the lives of the people who lived there.

A short story is different: it's a short, sharp shock of story. I think of a short story as a keyhole; a glimpse into a single room rather than a view of the whole dollhouse. A short story should hint at a larger picture and allow the reader ...