Keep It Short: Faye Guenther on Outsider Characters, Moving Past Barriers, and Bryan Washington's 'Lot'

The often-unnoticed, inner lives of women occupy author Faye Guenther's short fiction collection Swimmers in Winter (Invisible Publishing).

Uniquely told through a trio of paired stories, Guenther's debut traverses past, present, and future as her female protagonists confront wide-ranging issues such as the policing of queer bodies, the ignored brutality of gentrification, and the peril of economic instability. Amid challenging circumstances, however, the women who populate Swimmers in Winter are intent on survival.

Dynamic and heartfelt, Swimmers in Winter is a viscerally beautiful portrait of struggle, love, and resilience.

We're very excited to have Faye at Open Book today to discuss the distinctive structure of her new collection, the commonality among her characters, and how she began challenging herself to write fearlessly.

Open Book:

What do the stories have in common? Do you see a link between them, either structurally or thematically?

Faye Guenther:

When I was thinking about how to form a collection, I knew there needed to be something that would give the stories cohesion. I realized one way to do this was to create pairs of stories, and links within each pair through a reoccurring character. This structure provided a kind of backbone for the collection.

I wanted to explore what temporal reality is like in our interior lives, where linearity often falls away, and we move in our hearts and our minds, back and forth, and sometimes in circles, between past and present and an imagined future. This dynamic is both a theme and a structure in Swimmers in Winter. From one story to the next there is a leap forward in time. However, in each pair, the story that takes place in a more recent time is also framed by the other story set further in the past, and the characters are living in the wake of events and relationships that occurred in the past.

OB:

Do you think your characters have anything in common with each other, from story to story?

FG:

Each of the main characters are queer women at different points in their lives. It’s not that this aspect of their identities makes the characters similar, but it does influence some of what they share in common.

Though the stories are set at various times during the 20^th and 21^st century, each character experiences a world where their safety and a sense of belonging can’t be taken for granted. They’re all outsiders in different ways, and they each pursue experiences of freedom as something physical and emotional. They do this as individuals, and in relationship to each other as friends or lovers.

OB:

What was the strangest or most memorable moment or experience during the writing process for you?

FG:

One of the experiences I remember most about this writing process happened near the beginning, before I’d submitted the manuscript for publication.

I had six unwieldy stories, which I’d been writing and revising for about seven years, without achieving a sense that any of them were really complete.

I remember that the idea of a short story collection was compelling because it represented cohesion - a way to pull together all the loose ends I’d created. If the stories felt scattered and unfinished in my mind, a collection seemed like a home I could bring them back to, a space where I’d be able to see them in a new light, or more clearly then I had before.

This task of creating a collection also gave me a reason to go back and take a hard, honest look at what I had been searching for—or evading—when I did those earlier revisions.

What I eventually realized was that I hadn’t yet been willing to let the characters be bold enough, or to take them all the way to where they needed to go. What was my reluctance about? Fear of what would happen next, probably. Fear or worry about what I might be capable of creating. I had to get through the barriers of those emotions in order to keep building the collection.

From start to finish, I spent about ten years writing the stories in Swimmers in Winter.

OB:

Do you have a favourite short story collection that you've read? Tell us why it is special to you.

FG:

A favourite short story collection I’ve read recently is Lot by Bryan Washington, published in 2019. One aspect of these stories that has stayed with me is their emotional meaning and significance, which Washington achieves in such concise, visceral ways. He uses shared silence between characters or half-spoken exchanges so powerfully, and each time their impact is completely unique. There’s a whole symphony of complex characters, including family members, neighbors, co-workers, friends, lovers, and strangers, who move in and out of these stories, so that the range and texture of Washington’s collection is both expansive and immersive in its world-building.

He was interviewed by author and journalist Adnan Khan as part of the Koffler Centre’s Books & Ideas series earlier this year in Toronto. You can listen to it here: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/bryan-washington-adnan-khan/id1047265836?i=1000465182446  In their conversation, Washington talks about his writing process, shares insights about creating character and representing place, and describes how he wrote Lot. 

OB:

What if, anything, did you learn from writing these stories?

FG:

The time I spent working with Invisible’s Publisher, Leigh Nash, and Invisible’s Editor, Bryan Ibeas, was the most productive I’ve ever had as a writer. As a creative opportunity, as a way to test myself and to focus on my fiction writing, it definitely felt like a gift. I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to work with Leigh and Bryan and to learn from them. I’m also grateful for their generosity.  

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Faye Guenther lives in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in literary magazines including Joyland and she has published a chapbook, Flood Lands, with Junction Books. Swimmers in Winter is her first collection of short fiction.