Perfect Strangeness

The fiction included in Issue 30: Summer 2015 was selected by Doretta Lau, our Guest Summer Fiction Editor for 2015. Below, she talks about the experience and the quality work represented in this issue.

When I read a short story, I hope the voice will lead me somewhere I haven't been before. Perhaps I’ll traverse a remote location or meander down an off-kilter line of thinking. Thoughts can be so very strange, which is why I am a sucker for a killer first-person voice. Through fiction I have been able to inhabit so many realities and understand perspectives beyond my own. The seven stories I have selected for The Puritan’s summer issue all have a perfect strangeness, reflecting the world in a way that disarms me. It is such a pleasure to encounter great craft and to gain insight into the lives of others, real or imagined.

I learned how to edit fiction by apprenticing with Diane Williams, the editor of the literary annual NOON. She worked on stories in a way I'd never seen before: cutting paragraphs of text, deleting words, moving entire sentences around. It was like watching a master craftsperson cut and polish a precious gem to reveal its sparkle. First, I applied this kind of vigour to my own prose and now, with the tremendous trust of the seven writers I worked with for this issue, I applied Diane's alchemy to their writing.

My first thought when soliciting stories and trawling the slush pile was I wished to feature the work of writers who had not yet published a novel or short story collection. (As I went through hundreds of submissions, I encountered so many excellent writers from Canada and around the world—I’m sorry I didn’t have space to publish more stories.) I got my big break when Event published my story "How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?". Silas White, publisher of Nightwood Editions, read this story and asked me if I was working on a book manuscript. Later, the story was nominated for the Journey Prize. I'd spent a year querying agents and sending the manuscript off to slush piles and suddenly everything was different; after all the rejection and disappointment I was going to publish a book. I hope to pass on this same magic to another writer.