{"id":1324,"date":"2007-09-08T23:34:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-09T06:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/?p=1324"},"modified":"2025-02-25T09:50:23","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T17:50:23","slug":"aurelie-sheehan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inside.ewu.edu\/willowspringsmagazine\/aurelie-sheehan\/","title":{"rendered":"Issue 60: Aurelie Sheehan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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About Aurelie Sheehan<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Aurelie Sheehan is the author of two novels and two short story collections, most recently, Jewelry Box: A Collection of Histories (BOA Editions, Ltd.). Earlier pieces from this project were published in Willow Springs 60. Her work has also appeared in Alaska Quarterly, Conjunctions, Epoch, Fairy Tale Review, Fence, New England Review, The New York Times, Ploughshares, and The Southern Review. She has received a Pushcart Prize, a Camargo Fellowship, and the Jack Kerouac Literary Award. Sheehan teaches fiction at the University of Arizona in Tucson.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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A Profile of the Author<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Notes on \u201c5 Stories\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In these pieces (as well as in my new book, Jewelry Box: A Collection of Histories), I\u2019m looking at story and history and autobiography and invention in a lot of different ways. I started this project with the idea of writing one hundred histories (also the original title). I\u2019ve always been a chancy and bad student of history\u2014can\u2019t remember dates, presidents, etc.\u2014and yet I\u2019m also obsessed with history and how it plays out in our daily lives. These pieces are part of that inquiry. What is underneath a tube of suntan lotion or a T-shirt, or a strange profusion of plastic bits on the road? To me, these items explode with history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So it\u2019s not textbook history, of course, but a kind of subjective history. The place fiction and nonfiction really intersect here is in perspective. I think of these as \u201chistories,\u201d knowing full well there are just as many other histories to refute or echo or elaborate on them. A T-shirt means one thing to you, one thing to me, and another thing to me yesterday. Therefore, my history is fiction of a kind. It\u2019s one perspective: it\u2019s not reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But still, it matters to me that many of these pieces have origins in autobiography. As a fiction writer, I found it exciting to more boldly use my own experience as material. I think I\u2019m realizing how many ways memory and imagination intersect, with or without my say-so. Here, I use my own life freely, but I also use third person, or imagined situations, when it feels necessary. (Luckily, we\u2019re calling this fiction overall, so I\u2019m not pulling the wool over anyone\u2019s eyes in that less-than-pleasing way.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Notes on Reading<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It would definitely be the case that reading Lydia Davis\u2019s short work gave me, years ago, a sense of new possibility. But the awesome joy of reading a book of fiction that I love is what transforms me and fuels me, no matter how removed the aesthetic or form is from my own current project. In fact, usually I read stuff that is far from what I\u2019m trying to do at that particular moment, so I don\u2019t get distracted by other writers\u2019 voices and ideas. Sometimes I do go for something with a healthy antidote effect. For instance, Haruki Murakami\u2019s prose can help me get over a case of the Adjectives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m excited by some of the other short short work out there in this world\u2014whether it is called fiction or nonfiction or poetry. Mary Ruefle, Maggie Nelson, Julio Cort\u00e1zar, and Anne Carson come to mind. Some other favorite writers are Katherine Mansfield, Deborah Eisenberg, Frederic Tuten, Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith, George Saunders, and Edward P. Jones.<\/p>\n\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n

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5 Stories by Aurelie Sheehan<\/a><\/h2>\n\n

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