This is part three of a series of interviews conducted with three acclaimed short storywriters: Rebecca Rosenblum, Nam Le, and Anne Enright. In each case we riff off those qualities which Flannery O’Connor thought best constituted a good short story. I’ve listed some of them here.

 Anne Enright was born in Dublin in 1962, studied English and Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin, and went on to study for an MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She is a former RTE television producer. Her short story collection, The Portable Virgin was published in 1991, and won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature. Two collections of stories, Taking Pictures and Yesterday’s Weather were published in 2008. Her novels are The Wig My Father Wore (1995); What Are You Like? winner of the 2001 Encore Award; The Pleasure of Eliza Lynch (2002); and The Gathering (2007) which won the 2007 Man Booker Prize for Fiction.

We met at the IFOA in Toronto to talk about the short story, and, in so doing , about Beckett’s Happy Days, housewives with problems,  ideology, awakenings, characters’ voices, self deception, just doing it, James Joyce and women writers.

Photo Credit Hpshaefer