Giller Prize finalist Kim Fu on what makes a great short story
CBC Books | Posted: October 3, 2022 4:49 PM | Last Updated: September 21, 2023
Kim Fu is the author of Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century
Kim Fu is the Vancouver-born author of two novels, For Today I Am a Boy and The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore. She has also written a poetry collection titled How Festive the Ambulance: Poems.
Her latest work, Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, is a collection of short stories that use elements of science fiction and fantasy to explore the strange and uncanny elements of human nature, relationships and technology.
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century is on the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist. Fu, along with Norma Dunning and Steven Price, was on the jury for the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize.
The 2024 CBC Short Story Prize is open until Nov. 1, 2023. You can submit original, unpublished fiction up to 2,500 words.
The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, have the opportunity to attend a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books.
Fu spoke with On the Coast host Gloria Macarenko about Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century and what she looks for in a great short story.
Gloria Macarenko: How did you react when you found out you were on the Scotiabank Giller Prize list?
Kim Fu: I'm still in shock. I kind of can't believe it. I woke up that morning and being on the West Coast you're always a few hours behind everybody. So I woke up to dozens of emails. It's been such an incredible year of books. I knew my publisher had submitted me. But to be totally honest, I thought, 'Oh, there's no way.' I'm still just surprised more than anything else.
What can you tell us about your short story collection Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century?
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century is a collection of 12 stories, some with sci-fi and speculative elements, some with surrealist elements, some with horror elements. There are a lot of monsters, both literal ones — girl with wings, demons, ghosts and monsters. But just as many figurative monsters, imagined technologies or people behaving monstrously.
LISTEN | Km Fu discusses Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century with Shelagh Rogers:
You've written novels, but you've also tackled short stories. What's the difference from an author's perspective?
They are as different from each other as a poem or an essay and as different to write as they are to read. The thing that make a short story really exciting to write are that they're short. You have so little space to convey a whole world and characters that you connect with and a true beginning, middle and end.
You have so little space to convey a whole world and characters that you connect with and a true beginning, middle and end.
In the same way, a novel is exciting because you have all this space to go on long journeys and to go on tangents and to build meaning slowly and layer things up.
They're both very challenging and very exciting to write.
You were a juror for the the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize. What do you look for in a in a good short story?
When you're submitting to a contest like this, imagine the longlist readers and then the final jurors reading a whole bunch of short stories and then reflecting on all those short stories together. You want yours to stand out in some way.
You want yours to be memorable in some way, and that could be for a lot of different reasons.
You want yours to be memorable in some way, and that could be for a lot of different reasons. That could be because of the unique premise or setting or character, or it could be the beautiful language or even one really killer line or the opening or the ending or the form.
Obviously send your best work, your most polished work. But also send work that is really unique to you, that showcases something unique about your voice, something that's going to stand out from the pack.
If someone is an aspiring writer, what would be your advice about entering the CBC Short Story Prize?
Finding community is helpful, as is opening yourself up to sharing your work and hearing other people's responses. This kind of contest can be helpful because it's a nice deadline to work toward and a short, accessible word count.
The prize is incredible, it's an amazing accolade to have and it could snowball in all kinds of different ways.
Open yourself up to sharing your work and hearing other people's responses.
And $6,000 is a big chunk of change. But the artist residency that comes with it is the kind of thing that can be transformative, productive and memorable. It can be the kind of memory that shapes you and changes you as an artist.
Kim Fu's comments have been edited for length and clarity.