what is your name?
Digby Beaumont
how would you describe what you do?
Making things up. Small things—1,000 words, 500 words, 100, 50. About big things—love, death, loneliness, loss, redemption. Short fiction. Though my nonfiction writing pays the bills.
what are you currently working on?
More stories. Always stories. Two in particular right now. One about a man sleeping in his car after his wife asked him to move out, who wakes late at night to find Karen Carpenter serenading him outside. The other in which the narrator discovers his neighbour dead and struggles to know what to do while he waits in the old man’s apartment for the ambulance to arrive.
what has had the greatest influence on your work?
Stories I was told when I was a kid, their emotional impact on me. The work of great writers: Grace Paley, Tobias Wolff, Harold Pinter, Hemingway, Carver, people like that; and others less well-known, but nonetheless brilliant, such as Kathy Fish, Sherrie Flick and Randall Brown. That, and trying to lose some of the fear of facing what I might find if I dig deeper.
what is the greatest misconception about you or your work?
That short fiction is a lesser form, I suppose. Tell some people you write short stories and flash fiction, and they ask right away if you’ve ever thought about doing a novel.
what do you see as the main strengths and weaknesses of the medium you work in?
The best flash fiction is characterised by intensity. And, if you’re lucky, when you finish reading the last line, you’ll experience that “Wow” moment where the breath catches in your throat.
how has technology impacted upon the work you do?
The internet has removed some old boundaries of space and time. And it’s spawned some great places to publish short fiction and read other writers’ work.
what’s the greatest piece of advice you would like to pass on?
Never trust a smiling seagull, would be the main one, I guess. That or, Be yourself.
where can we find you online?
You can find some of my online published writing here: http://editred.com/digs
what are you reading at the moment?
Alice Munro “Too Much Happiness”
Stefanie Freele “Feeding Strays”
Hovis Presley “Poetic off License”
what are you listening to at the moment?
Miles Davis, Morrissey, Cesaria Evora, Keith Jarrett, Gershwin.
anything else we should know?
My recent stories appear or are upcoming in Monkeybicycle, The Rose & Thorn, Pindeldyboz, Slow Trains, 34th Parallel, The Linnet’s Wings, Insolent Rudder, Opium Magazine and others, as well as in the anthologies “Small Voices, Big Confessions”, “Late-Night River Lights” and “City Smells”.