Carver Contest Q&A with Jia Tolentino (2012 1st Place Prizewinner)

What better way to end our Carver Contest Q&A series than with last year’s first placer, Jia Tolentino. She had the great fortune of having her first ever published story also be a contest winner. She shares her reaction to winning, and tells us a bit about her other current writing endeavors.

Carve: Describe your reaction when you found out “The Odyssey” won top honors in the fall 2012 Carver contest.

Jia Tolentino: I was totally surprised! At that point, I had only been writing fiction “seriously” for a few months, and I’d only ever sent out “The Odyssey,” and only to a half-dozen contests. Actually, even though a year has passed and I’m playing a more directed long game with my writing, that’s still true—I haven’t submitted any other stories anywhere. So I truly got lucky, and winning this contest was a lovely and encouraging introduction to the world of lit mags.

C: Has the contest affected your writing in any way, and if so, how? Did you get contacted by the agency?

JT: I did get contacted by the agency, and by several unaffiliated agents besides who had just happened to come across the story in Carve. Those occasions have been important ones in terms of having to articulate a plan for the book that I’m working on, which has evolved a lot over the last year, both plot-wise and formally—it’s now reading much more like a novel than a collection of stories. 

C: Can you give us an update on your writing since the contest? Any forthcoming publications/projects we should be on the lookout for?

JT: I’ve been writing pretty regularly for The Billfold, The Hairpin and a music website called All Things Go. I’ve been absolutely loving the freedom and space that the Michigan fiction program gives its writers, and I’m halfway through a first draft of a novel that I’ve been shopping around a bit, as well as laying groundwork for long-form nonfiction pieces that I plan to investigate and write this summer.

About the Author: Jia Tolentino is a writer in Michigan.

The 14th annual Raymond Carver Contest is now open until May 15th.

Carver Contest Q&A with Amber Krieger (2010 Editor's Choice Prizewinner)

We recently featured Amber Krieger’s “It Was So Long Ago” for a Story Spotlight, and this time it’s the author’s turn to talk about her work, which was named “Editor’s Choice” back in 2010.

Carve: Can you tell us what inspired “It Was So Long Ago?”

Amber Krieger: This story came together over a number of years. It started with the image of Henry, newly retired, sitting in front of his computer, looking at a news site and hitting refresh, hoping for a break in a local tragedy. That eventually became a different story, with a much different character, but Henry and his wife Helen stayed in my mind. In recent years, I’ve become very interested in the idea of culpability and individual responsibility. For a little while there as a lot of news about a young woman jogger who was killed in a hit and run in the Columbia River Gorge. The driver was at fault and he fled the scene but I started to think about what would happen if it were an accident. It turns out that sober drivers are rarely charged for pedestrian deaths, at least in Oregon. If you’re following the rules and someone steps out in front of you—it’s not your fault. There’s something even more terrible at the heart of that, having to hold that guilt inside you, or within your family. I’m not sure when I realized that this was the background that Henry needed, but once I did, the story took off from there.

C: What was your reaction like to your story winning Editor’s Choice for the 2010 Carver contest?

AK: I was thrilled! I’m a big fan of Carve and had been submitting stories to the magazine and contest for a few years. It was such an honor to receive the award. Also, the year before, I’d had to withdraw another story from the contest, and Matthew had responded with a nice note, saying he liked the story. So having him select another of my stories as Editor’s Choice felt like, wow, here’s an editor who likes my work! I’d heard about that happening from other writers, but hadn’t experienced it myself. It was a great feeling.

C: Has the contest affected your writing or the direction of your writing career in any way? If so, how?

AK: When you’re doing a lot of submitting and getting a lot of rejections, you start wondering if that story you thought was done really isn’t. I do, at least! People talk a lot about carrying on in the face of rejection, but I think part of getting tough is also learning to trust your instincts about your work and not keep retooling something based on every little reaction from your writing group or your mood that day. At the same time, sometimes a story isn’t done—and you need to be able to figure that out, too. Getting the Editor’s Choice award was a great confidence boost for me and helped me set that internal bar for my stories.

C: Can you give us an update on your writing since the contest? Any recent or forthcoming publications/projects we should be on the lookout for?

AK: For the last couple of years most of my creative energy has gone into mothering, but I have a flash essay in Brave on the Page: Oregon Writers on Craft and the Creative Life, which is a really great collection of interviews and essays on craft from Oregon writers—including other Carve authors like Yuvi Zalkow, Gina Oschner and Stevan Allred! And my story “Night” just received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s Very Short Fiction contest. No home for that one yet, but I’m hoping to find a place for it soon!

About the Author: Amber Krieger’s award-winning writing has appeared in Carve Magazine, cream city review, The Adirondack Review, elimae and in Brave on the Page: Oregon Writers on Craft and the Creative Life. She lives and writes in Portland, Oregon.

The 14th annual Raymond Carver Contest is now open until May 15th.

Carver Contest Q&A with Jodi Paloni (2012 2nd Place Prizewinner)

 With just one week to go until the Carver Contest closes, next up for our Q&A series is fall 2012 2nd place prize winner Jodi Paloni. She talks about the making of her story, “screaming silently” about the news of her win, and a fun, new project she’s currently undertaking involving reading one online mag/journal short story a day.

Carve: What inspired “The Third Element?”

Jodi Paloni: I’m working on a collection of stories linked by place. Every now and again, characters walk in and out of each other’s stories and either start trouble or help out. In two other stories I wrote, a secondary character, an art teacher new to town named Meredith, showed up to serve as a “fulcrum character.” Since she popped in twice, I became curious about her. But I didn’t sit down and say, now let’s see, what could Meredith get up to today. Instead, I thought about where she would be hanging out in her free time and she appeared in my imagination, sad, lonely, surrounded by art supplies in her garden shed. Then the neighbor boy arrived in the yard and started up a mower. I was bummed because my plan was to write a story in the quiet of the afternoon. I decided to go with how I felt about the “intrusion” and Sky Ryan arrived on Meredith’s porch.

Carve: What was your reaction like when the story won 2nd place in the fall 2012 Carver contest?

JP: August 13^th, 2012. I remember being alone in the house, a summer evening, when I casually scanned e-mails and saw “RE: [Carve Magazine] in my inbox. On behalf of everyone at Carve Magazine, please accept our congratulations!” I freaked. Quietly. I don’t know about you, but when I’m alone, I’m more likely to feel self-conscious about skipping around the house and yelling swears, so that’s why I screamed silently, although I had a writing teacher once tell me not to write stuff like that. How can you scream silently? The dog barked. I think I sent an e-mail or two to close writing pals. Then I talked with Carve editor-in-chief Matthew Limpede about an interview, and what a treat that was.

C: Has the contest affected your writing or the direction of your writing career in any way? If so, how?

JP: A year ago, I wasn’t submitting much. In fact, I was terrified about submitting. I’d sent out one story to a dozen places and not until nine months later was it accepted by upstreet. I had almost forgotten about it! Then on the afternoon of the deadline for the Raymond Carver Short Story Prize, a friend who swaps stories with me for edits sent me an e-mail reminding me to submit to June 30 deadlines. Again, I was alone in the house, cleaning my kitchen and everything was all over the tables, counters, and floor: half empty jam jars, pickles, bags of stale grains, shriveled fruit, pots and pans; you get the picture. For some reason, I told myself to drop what I was doing and get a story out. “The Third Element” was a favorite of mine. I polished it up and pushed “Submit.” It was easy. A month and a half later, I got the news that I won.

I guess winning and publishing shouldn’t be an important aspect to writing, because submitting with success is a complex endeavor. It takes guts to get stuff out and a tough skin to field rejections. Eight months later, I’ve submitted a dozen more stories to three or five or seven places per story, depending on the story. I’ve gotten a few stories accepted, some encouraging rejections at journals I greatly admire, and some flat-out no’s from a few of the “tough boys” as we call them in our writing group. This is my long way of saying that the editors and readers and the guest judge at Carve helped me feel like my work was worthy, which boosted my confidence. Success is 95% confidence, I’d say, after you’ve done writing you can be proud of.

C: Can you give us an update on your writing since the contest? Any recent or forthcoming publications or projects we should be on the lookout for?

JP: You couldn’t tell from the length of my interview answers, but I am enjoying writing flash these days. Since Carve, I’ve had three short shorts published in online journals:  Monkeybicycle, Spartan, and The Lascaux Review. I did a couple of really fun readings at the AWP Conference in Boston, where I also got to have lunch with Matthew Limpede. That was a bunch of fun. We talked and talked. Meeting writers and giving readings is maybe more interesting to me than publishing. I don’t know, though. I’m ready for another acceptance or two soon and I hope the editors are as wonderful as Matthew. I have a lot of stuff out there right now. It’s been a long cold winter in Vermont. I’m also working on a project called 365 Short Stories in 2013, which is a forum where I read and give a brief review of an online short story every day of the year. I’m almost to 100! Curating the project has introduced me to more magazines and writers than I ever imagined. One link always leads me to another. I needed the discipline to get out of my “print only” mindset. Anyone can join. Search for the group “365 Short Stories in 2013” on Facebook to find me.

About the Author: Jodi Paloni lives and writes in southern Vermont. Her short stories appear in Carve, upstreet, Monkeybicycle, Spartan, and The Lascaux Review. She earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She curates the forum365 Short Stories in 2013, in which she reads and comments on one short story a day. She blogs at Rigmarole.

The 14th annual Raymond Carver Contest is now open until May 15th.

Story Spotlight: "It Was So Long Ago" by Amber Krieger

“It Was So Long Ago” appeared in the winter 2010 issue of Carve.

When he was twenty-five, Henry Skinner killed a man. 

It was an accident. Driving in the dark, Henry couldn’t make out the figure on the road until the last minute. Not charged with any wrongdoing (it was technically the pedestrian’s fault), he was able to walk away. 

But as we learn in Amber Krieger’s winter 2010 Carve offering, walking away does not necessarily equate to moving on. Now at seventy-five, Henry remains haunted by the spectre of that pedestrian about whom he knows very little, other than that his name (whether it is his first or last, he is unsure) is Parker.

Krieger’s story gingerly explores the idea of legal versus moral culpability. In essence, just because Henry had no intent to kill Parker and is legally able to get off scot-free, at the end of the day the fact that he killed a man lingers on. How does someone live with himself, carrying that on his shoulder on a daily basis? Henry serves as a pathos-inducing exhibit of how such a life-changing event still echoes after fifty long years.

The story offers an interesting array of supporting characters, from Henry’s solicitous wife Helen (whom we only come to know of through snippets of phone conversation), his elusive daughter Jeannie, as well as, in the story’s climax, two Jehovah’s witnesses he encounters at the park offering promises of saving people’s souls.

By story’s end we are left to ask: “But can Henry’s soul actually be saved?”

Read “It Was So Long Ago” to find out.

Carver Contest Q&A with Susan Finch (2011 3rd Place Prizewinner)

Susan Finch (photo by Third Muse Portraits).

In this installment of the Carver Contest Q&A series, we touch base with Susan Finch, the 3rd place prizewinner from 2011. Soon to be an assistant professor at Belmont University, she recently talked with us about helicopters and life after the Carver Contest.

Carve: Can you tell us what inspired “Promises, Promises?”

Susan Finch: “Promises, Promises” is a story that I wrote for Mark Winegardner’s workshop while I was in the Ph.D. program at Florida State University. That semester, I’d also been teaching a class that required students to do research for a short story, and I thought it might be a good challenge for me as well. At the time, my mother’s girlfriend was working as a nurse for Air Evac, an air ambulance provider, and she had recently taken my mother up in the helicopter for a tour of the city. I’m always looking for interesting professions for my characters and I couldn’t think of another story that featured a main character who was an Air Evac nurse. I love thinking about how what my characters do for a living defines them and shapes their worlds. The research I did for that story added a certain texture to the plot that I wouldn’t have been able to provide without it. Actually, when I met Matthew, Carve’s fabulous editor, in Boston at AWP recently, I was delighted to discover he thought I had a lot more experience with helicopters than I actually do. I’ve never even been up in one!

C: Please describe your reaction to “Promises, Promises” being the 3rd place prizewinner for the 2011 Carver contest.

SF: I was thrilled when I found out that I was a prizewinner for Carve! The contest and the magazine are both fantastic. After “Promises, Promises” was published, I was contacted by Irene Goodman’s Agency as well as Nat Sobel’s, and both asked for a synopsis and excerpt of my novel. Ultimately, both of them passed on the manuscript I’m working on, but despite the initial disappointments, it’s always nice to have some outside feedback.

C: Has the contest affected your writing or the direction of your writing career in any way? If so, how?

SF: Hmmm, that’s a tough question. It’s always wonderful to be recognized, and I love the fact that my story is online in a great magazine available for anyone to read. I’m not sure who might come across the story, but I feel lucky that it’s out there on the airwaves.

C: Can you give us an update on your writing since the contest? Any recent or forthcoming publications/projects we should be on the lookout for?

SF: Most recently, I was published in Pembroke Magazine, a great literary magazine out of University of North Carolina at Pembroke. I’ve been working on a manuscript for a novel that I plan to start sending out again this month. But, perhaps, the most exciting change in the last few months is that I’ve just accepted a position as an Assistant Professor at Belmont University. I can’t wait to join the faculty in the fall!

The 14th annual Raymond Carver Contest is now open until May 15th.

Meet the Externs

Carve is expanding rapidly and we’ve recruited some externs to help us out. Our externs will be assisting in everything from graphic design to blogging, and we’re so excited to have them join the Carve family. Now it’s time for you to get to know more about them and what they’ll be doing to help Carve grow. 

Marketing Manager: Michael Smith

Michael is a true cosmopolite, having studied or worked in England, France, South Korea and China. These days he works in B2C & B2B sales in Hartford, CT. He holds a BA in psychology from the University of Connecticut and an MA in international business with a focus in marketing from Hult International Business School.

As Marketing Manager, he’ll be helping build Carve’s literary brand, with a focus on helping the magazine gain greater recognition and build stronger ties with our fans, followers, and Premium Edition subscribers.

Education Programs: T.M. De Voss

T.M. De Vos is the author of The Dimestore World, a poetry collection from Patasola Press, and co-editor-in-chief of Gloom Cupboard. She is the recipient of a Summer Literary Seminars fellowship for the 2012 session in Vilnius, Lithuania, and a Cullman Center fellowship at the New York Public Library and was a semifinalist for both the 2012 Sozopol Fiction Seminars and the Paumanok Poetry Award. She is huge in Transnistria. 

As Education Programs Coordinator, T.M. will be instrumental in developing lesson plans for our Carve in the Classroom series and helping spread the word about the new program.

Blogger/Social Media: Ryan James

 Ryan James is a recent graduate of Ohio University’s College of Arts and Sciences, where he studied English and literary history. His work has appeared in Sphere Magazine, the university’s undergraduate journal of fiction and poetry. Franz Kafka, Haruki Murakami, and James Salter are amongst his favorite authors. In his spare time, he plays guitar in a loud rock band, and enjoys walks with his Brittany Spaniel, Jack.

As a Guest Blogger, he’ll become a regular fixture over the next few months right here on the blog, writing about literature, publishing, poetry, and more.

Blogger/Social Media: Jocelyn Sears

Jocelyn Sears is a northern California native currently residing in Charlottesville, Virginia. She is pursuing her MFA in poetry at the University of Virginia, where she teaches writing to undergraduates and edits Meridian.

As a Guest Blogger, she’ll become a regular fixture over the next few months right here on the blog, writing about literature, publishing, poetry, and more.

Jr. Graphic Designer: Christina Trester

Christina Trester is a senior Magazine Design student at the University of Missouri. She will graduate in May and move back to Dallas. She has had a passion for literary work her whole life.

As our Jr. Graphic Designer, she’s going to help keep Carve looking pretty! She’ll be designing various graphics for promotions, including contests, and she’ll help us design new features for our Premium Edition.

Jr. Anthology Editor: Suzanne Barnecut

Suzanne is a freelance writer living in San Francisco with her husband and daughter. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from California College of the Arts and is at work on a collection of short stories and a novel.

As our Jr. Anthology Editor, Suzanne is working with us on our top-secret project to launch in 2014. Shhhh!

We’re happy to have everyone on board and look forward to working with them to help Carve grow! We’re still in the process of hiring a Podcast Coordinator and Event Planner, so check out our Careers page if you’re interested in joining our team.

Carver Contest Q&A with Maire Cooney (2010 1st Place Prizewinner)

Winning the 2010 Carver Contest led Maire Cooney to expand her prizewinning story “The White Rabbit” into novel form. We recently asked her about the genesis of her Carve story as well as begged for a sampling of her new novel, which she has graciously provided for us below.

Carve: What inspired “The White Rabbit?”

Maire Cooney: The White Rabbit wasn’t inspired by any one thing—several ideas and thoughts running about in my mind during a ‘sleeper’ journey between London and Edinburgh gave me one section of the story. I was also reading Through the Looking Glass with one of my boys around that time. It grew from there. I like to write about people perplexed and baffled by the chaos of everyday life.

C: How did you react when you found out your story took top honors in the 2010 Carver contest?

MC: I was delighted to hear I’d won; really chuffed. I had an email letting me know—which I’ve kept. It’s encouraging having that sort of response and recognition.

C: Has the contest affected your writing in any way?

MC: The main effect of winning was to take the main character and write her into a family and situation. I liked the character and wanted to give her more time and troubles. The novel is Nobody Said Anything. It’s a family drama, told through the eyes of several inter-linked characters, during the 1984-5 UK Miner’s strike. I couldn’t have written it without the success of “The White Rabbit.” It was hard work but I’m proud of it. 

The novel was asked for by a few agents but it’s still up grabs! Extracts can be requested from me and I’d love to see it get a place in print.

C: What have you been up to since winning?

MC: I completed an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia in 2011. My novel was started there. Work and family keep me pretty busy, but I’m making time and space for writing. 

Below is an excerpt from Maire’s novel:

MICHAEL                  

It was something to do with stillness. That was what I was looking for. Something inside me is wrong; nothing hurt but a friction, an abrasion, something of that sort, inside my chest. And so here I am, ten to five in the morning, eating a bread and butter sandwich, drinking a mug of sweet tea. I didn’t make toast, the smell of toast would wake them, perhaps, so I dressed quietly, came down and buttered bread, made tea.

I butter another two slices and then I get up, look in the cupboard and find some jam. That makes me smile; a piece and jam. I eat happily for a moment and then I get up and walk through, push the living room door carefully.

The TV is on; white and grey dots spinning silently, and Jan is on the sofa, lying on her side, her head on one arm. She looks uncomfortable lying that way but I know she will be sleeping too heavily to register any discomfort, or to change position. I do not know how to help her. She won’t talk about this, about any of it. I pull the door over and stand there, my forehead on the door, my eyes closed, the friction burning, grinding my ribcage, and then open the door again, go quickly across and bend and kiss her. She frowns, shakes her head slightly. The smell of vodka is not a surprise but it’s shocking just the same. I smooth her hair down, put a hand on her cheek and leave it there, just for a minute.

There’s a draught blowing on the landing and I remember now leaving the loft door open to remind me to put the box up. I had time when Janice was out yesterday, plenty of time and I had forgotten to do it. Forgotten because I did not want to do it and because it is necessary and final. I do not want to think about it.

There’s a square of dark where the loft door should be. Ewan will have been frightened of the loft being open, of ghosts and monsters up there. He will have run from the bedroom to the bathroom with his hands on top of his head. I should close it over. I should do what I failed to do yesterday, and then shut the loft door over.

The box is behind the door in the boy’s room. I lift it up and glance round. It is freezing in here, the coldest room in the house but colder than it should be. The curtain is blowing, the bottom of it sucking in and out. I go over and pull the window down, my fingertips burning with the black cold. I can’t imagine why they’ve left it open.

Ewan is at the bottom of his bed, the blankets half off, curled tight under the sheet, his hands up under his chin, legs tucked into his belly. I pull the blankets back onto the bed and tuck them round him. He is holding something in his fist; a hanky, with dark spots on it and I remember his tooth, another one loose, and I smile. He has been trying to pull it out.  

About the Author: Maire Cooney lives in Glasgow with her partner and two children. She works as a consultant psychiatrist in the NHS. Her short stories have been published with Asham, Leaf, Chroma, Carve, and Apis Books. Her first novel Nobody Said Anything was completed this year. Extracts are available on request.

The 14th annual Raymond Carver Contest is now open until May 15th.

Introducing Carve in the Classroom

Carve is continuing to expand with the introduction of its new Carve in the Classroom series. We are currently seeking pilot teachers to try out the program for the fall 2013 semester.

Carve in the Classroom is a new initiative designed to get modern fiction in the classrooms. Teachers can use our vast collection of published stories as teaching tools, and we’ll provide the accompanying lesson plans to spark discussion, critical thinking, and writing tasks.

Our goal with Carve in the Classroom is to foster a love for literature and help students appreciate the contemporary form of short stories. We’ll also be developing the lesson plans with the new Common Core standards in mind, so that materials align with the objectives and tasks needed to enhance and strengthen students’ skills.

While our initial launch is designed for high school English (including pre-AP/AP courses) and entry-level college Composition/Rhetoric/English classes, all who are interested are welcome to try out the materials. We hope to expand in the future to include Creative Writing classes at the high school and college level as part of our program.

If you are an educator and would like to help us test drive the new series, you can sign up now. We’ll be accepting volunteers until May 31 or until we feel we’ve reached a healthy number of pilot volunteers. All materials will be provided for free and all we ask in return is for teachers to give us detailed feedback at the conclusion of each lesson plan or plans that they utilize.

At the conclusion of the pilot phase we will update our materials and launch the full series for all in Spring 2014.

Sign up to become a pilot teacher today for Carve in the Classroom.

Please Welcome Our Newest Reading Committee Members

Here at Carve, we like to think of ourselves as a little community. We all have different roles and devote our time and efforts to the things we do best. Today our community is expanding with the addition of two new “resident” readers on our reading committee: Dana Gerard and Mason Hickman.

Both have been reading for us as guest readers since the fall last year and we’ve been so impressed with their comments and insight that we’ve offered them a permanent place on the reading team. This means they get a fancy picture and bio to go on our staff page!

You, dear readers, are a part of our community too, which is why we like to take the time to introduce you to them. Below you can get to know a little more about them and the kind of fiction they like. There’s a good chance that if you received comments on your story when hearing back from us, they came from either Mason or Dana.

Mason Hickman

Mason earned his B.A. in German Studies at University of North Texas and his M.A. in German Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s a fan of dystopian themes and magical realism. He likes stories that challenge form, genre, and identity.

His interest in German began when he was an exchange student for a year in Berlin when he was 16 years old. He’s recently left academia to embark on a career in the healing arts and business. He co-manages a spa in downtown Austin and has a private massage practice. He greatly enjoys reading for Carve and his work as a massuese. As he puts it, “I want to fill my days with literature, massage, music, water, and nature.”

Dana Gerard 

Dana indulges in reading and cooking with her husband in Dallas, Texas. She earned a BA in English and French Literature from Tulane University and most recently became a chef. She loves stories that take her on a journey, real or imagined. Most days she is working on a collection of short stories infused with recipes or baking banana bread in the kitchen.

She has served on the committee of the Highland Park Literary Festival and also founded the Zale-Kimmerling Writer-In-Residence program in 1985. Her passion and love for literature cannot be understated!

Please join us in welcoming Dana and Mason, our newest residents of our Reading Committee!

Carver Contest Q&A with Mark Farrington (2011 Editor's Choice Winner)

Mark Farrington at a Johns Hopkins faculty reading, where he read “Motherlove.” You can watch the reading on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jNkXn3eC8w.

Mark Farrington’s “Motherlove” won Editor’s Choice in the 2011 Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. It is also one of this blogger’s most favoriteCarve stories. We recently caught up with him to learn more about “Motherlove,” and what he’s been up to since the 2011 contest.

Carve: What inspired “Motherlove?” And can you also tell us a little about your novel, Manion in Darkness (which “Motherlove” was adapted from)?

Mark Farrington: I had been working on telling Gerald Manion’s story for quite some time. My main focus was always on him as an adult, and the story of the novel is built around Manion and three other characters during one summer when he is in his twenties. “Motherlove” was actually Manion’s backstory, and the chapter from which “Motherlove” comes is the only section in the novel that deals with him as a child.

In getting to know Manion as an adult, I realized that he had certain peculiarities that were more than simple personality quirks. Something had happened to him as a child. When I began to explore that, an image came into my mind of this young blond woman jumping up and down out in a muddy yard in front of a trailer surrounded by woods. She was bundled up in a winter coat but I could clearly see her long legs in neon pink tights. She was excited, and she was calling to someone – and when I followed her gaze down the dirt road, I came upon young Gerald Manion scrambling to get up the muddy hill to her.

I knew right away there was a sexual undertone to all this, but I held off pursuing that and instead began to explore some of the men this woman (who I now knew was his mother) might have had relationships with. I began to sense her as having two sorts of lives – the life she led when there was a man living with her, and the life she led when it was just her and her son. It seemed to me these two lives would cause some conflicts for Manion, who needed his mother but also wanted her to be happy, and didn’t see those two things necessarily going hand in hand.

The scene where they have sex wasn’t in the earliest drafts. Manion seemed to me like someone who had been sexually abused, but it took a while for me to move from the metaphor (“like a victim of abuse”) to the literal (“was a victim of abuse”). And, too, it’s a weird kind of abuse because Manion never thinks of it as abuse, and he remains devoted to his mother even after the abuse ends.

Once I knew I had to go there, the question was how: how to tell enough without being excessive; how to make it detailed enough without being too graphic. I wrote and rewrote those paragraphs many times. I will say that one thing that helped keep me going here was how much I liked the bit where he’s watching the game shows on TV. And Mr. Worthington as a character, and Manion’s relationship to him, popped up out of nowhere as I was struggling with that scene. Though he never comes up again anywhere in the novel, Mr. Worthington is one of my favorite characters.

I’m very close to finishing the novel, Manion in Darkness. Actually, I’ve finished it three or four times over the past year, but each time I’ve realized (with the help of my agent, who is a terrific reader), that there’s still just a bit more that needs to be done. The whole novel has been written and revised and revised again, and what I’m doing now is targeted revision: have I really dug deeply enough into that scene, into that moment? I generally write blindly forward to see where the story takes me, but in this novel I found myself arriving at an ending in which one particular character must perform one particular act – the act has to happen, and no one else can do it except this one character. So now I’ve had to go back into that character’s earlier sections, to make a few adjustments so that when we get to the end, her doing what she has to do will seem convincing.

C: What was your reaction like to your story winning Editor’s Choice for the 2011 Carver contest?

MF: I was thrilled for a number of reasons. I think Carve is a terrific journal, and Raymond Carver has always been one of my writing heroes. It’s always great to have your work recognized and appreciated, and if there’s a little money that comes with it, so much the better.

I was also thrilled because I didn’t know if “Motherlove” could stand alone as a story; I thought it could, but would anyone else think so too? This was a difficult story to write, and I had no idea how it would be received. Someone once called me an “emotional writer,” which I agree with in the sense that of primary importance to me is capturing the emotional truth of my characters and the story. As a writer I’m not especially clever, so my work often depends on me digging deeper and deeper, getting as close as I can to the bone. And I never know how readers will react to that, especially in such a postmodern age.

“Motherlove” winning the Editor’s Choice also helped re-energize me for the novel. Even though the material in “Motherlove” marks the only time in the novel we see Manion as a child, that material (which, altered slightly, now exists as Chapter Two) was a kind of test for the novel as a whole: if readers accept and appreciate the story of Manion’s childhood, if they aren’t turned off by feeling it’s too bleak, if they sense that there is an emotional honesty I’m getting at, and they find that emotional honesty engaging – then it makes me optimistic that the whole novel might be received in a similar way.

I’ve also used “Motherlove” as a guide for myself, in this way: I kept digging into this story; I didn’t hold back or pull back; I simply tried to show the truth of Manion’s world. In looking at the rest of the book, I’ve asked myself the same questions about other sections, other scenes. I want every chapter to work as well as “Motherlove” seems to have turned out.

C: Can you give us an update on your writing since the contest? Any recent or forthcoming publications/projects we should be on the lookout for?

MF: I hope at some time soon I can say that the novel is forthcoming. I’ve got a few stories and a novella that I’ve sent out a bit, but which I’m also not totally happy with, and would like to take another look at. I’ve also begun thinking about a new novel, although I’m holding it at bay for the most part: finishing Manion in Darkness is where I’m putting all my focus now.

I teach writing, as assistant director and fiction advisor in the Johns Hopkins M.A. in Writing Program, and I try to give as much as I can to my students. I like doing that – I tend to consider myself a “writer and teacher,” as opposed to “a writer who also teaches.” I find that teaching writing makes me a better writer, just as writing makes me a better teacher of writing; I also find teaching a great complement to writing, because in class I get the kind of interaction and immediate feedback that never comes for a writer sitting off alone at some computer typing away.

At the same time, I find myself forever struggling to find the right balance between the two activities; to give as much as I can to my teaching without having it take away time and energy from my writing. Usually I seem to do a pretty good job of finding this balance, but in the final stages of revising a novel I’ve been working on for years, I find it hard not to wish I could simply drop everything else in my life and go off to some writing retreat for a month or two. Since I can’t (in the ninth week of the semester), I’ll keep plugging along the best I can.

About the Author: Mark Farrington is Assistant Director and Fiction Advisor in the Johns Hopkins M.A. in Writing Program. He has an M.F.A. from George Mason University, where he studied with Richard Bausch and such visiting writers as Jane Smiley and Tim O’Brien. His short fiction has won a Virginia Commission on the Arts Individual Artists Fellowship, the Dan Rudy Fiction Prize, the Metroversity Fiction Award, and second place in the Dame Alice Throckmorton Prize, and has been published in The Louisville Review, The New Virginia Review, and other journals. “Motherlove,” a story excerpted from his novel-in-progress Manion in Darkness, won an editor’s choice award in the Raymond Carver Short Story Contest in fall, 2011, from Carve Magazine, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Farrington has also published numerous articles on writing and the teaching of writing. He lives in Alexandria, Virginia.

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The 14th annual Raymond Carver Contest is now open until May 15th.