Short Stories, Big Ideas: Crafting Short Fiction with Megan Giddings

In this episode of The Loft Lit Podcast, host Chris Jones sits down with University of Minnesota assistant professor Megan Giddings (and author of the new short story collection Black Arts). Ahead of the upcoming Short Story Summit (Sep 30), we dive into the craft of short fiction, building compelling narrative arcs in short form, and what it takes to publish a story collection compared to her three novels.

Plus, we share some collective voices of inspiration and encouragement from Youth Pride Night, along with some upcoming community highlights.

Show Notes & Links

SHORT STORY SUMMIT

The Fire is Here: University of Minnesota x the Loft Short-Story Summit featuring Aamina Ahmad, Megan Giddings, and Julie Schumacher: https://loft.org/events/fire-here-university-minnesota-x-loft-short-story-summit

BOOKS TO PICK UP

July Sun by Aamina Ahmad: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/783240/july-sun-by-aamina-ahmad/

Black Arts by Megan Giddings: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/black-arts-megan-giddings?variant=44717895221282

Patient Female by Julie Schumacher: https://julieschumacher.com/writing/novels/patient-female/

CHILDREN AND FAMILY WEEKEND

House of Hope Children and Family Weekend Featuring Kwame Alexander (Sep 19-20): https://www.hohchurch.org/hope-arts-center/

Helena Ku Rhee Author Talk (Sep 19): https://loft.org/events/helena-ku-rhee-author-talk-reading-conversation-2026-mcknight-judge-childrens-literature

For the Love of the Game: Dynamic Poetry About Your Favorite Activities with Keenan Jones (ages 7-12)-Sep 19: https://loft.org/classes/love-game-dynamic-poetry-about-your-favorite-activities-keenan-jones

For the Love of the Game: Dynamic Poetry About Your Favorite Activities with Dralandra Larkins (ages 13-17)-Sep 19: https://loft.org/classes/love-game-dynamic-poetry-about-your-favorite-activities-dralandra-larkins

FILM FESTIVAL

Twin Cities Arab Film Festival (use code LOFTCAFF26 for $2 off): https://tcaff26.eventive.org/welcome

Support the Loft

Support Our Community: Become a Friend of the Loft: https://loft.org/join-support

Join the Loft's free Digital Community, the Loft Writing Network: https://loft-lit.circle.so/Loft-Writing-Network

Transcript

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SPEAKER_04 0:06

Welcome to the Loft Lip Pod, where words catch fire. I'm Chris Jones, Director of Community Engagement at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Whether you're a longtime friend or tuning in for the first time, we're glad you're gathering around this fire. The Loft advances the power of writers and readers to craft and share stories, to create and celebrate connections, and to build just life-sustaining communities. Before we get to today's features interview, here are a few upcoming community highlights I wanted to point out. First of all, Mizna's Twin Cities Arab Film Festival is coming this way in September. Part of that festival is a screening of the film Arab on Friday, September 25th at 9 p.m. This is an adaptation of Kamel Dued's The MARESOT investigation, which is a compelling response to Albert Camus The Stranger that gives a voice to a long-erased story. You can grab your tickets at MISNA.org and use the promo code LoftCAF26. That's L-O-F-T-C-A-F-26 for a $2 discount. The second highlight I wanted to point out is that Hope Art Center, our partner, is hosting and the House of Hope Presbyterian Church is hosting a two-day celebration focused on creativity and resilience for youth. It features guest speakers, including Keynote Kwame Alexander, hands-on workshops with Heart of the Beast Puppet Theater, Young Dance, and the Loft, and book sales from Red Balloon. As part of the weekend, the Loft is hosting two youth writing workshops titled For the Love of the Game, Dynamic Poetry About Your Favorite Activities. One of these is for ages 7 to 12, taught by Keenan Jones, and another is for 13 to 17 year olds, taught by Drenalonda Larkins. You can see the show notes for registration details, and we hope you join us for that. A really fabulous weekend that's centered around both families and children at the Hope Arts Center in St. Paul. Speaking of youth, before we get into our main interview, I wanted to turn our attention to a poem by a former Loft teaching artist. In fact, it was my first teaching artist at the Loft many moons ago. And I actually, you know, before I started working at the Loft, I got my start uh as a student at the Loft. Um I was a student at, in fact, my first class, uh, this will date me a bit, but was at the previous uh play at the previous building at the Pratt Community Center. Uh I then um that was in the last year there, and then I then took some classes at Open Book once it opened in that space, which uh if you've never been, please come. It's a gorgeous space. But this is um my first ever Loft uh teaching artist. Uh his name is Glenn Freeman. He taught a uh class on poetry, and this is from his collection, Traveling Light, and I thought it was a nice thematic uh poem to read in this sort of back to school time frame that we're finding ourselves in. This is called Composition 101. Today we discussed semicolons, that end stop turns subtle, more forgiving, like the last light of October slipping melancholy across the panes. I thought these kids are too young to know what such punctuation means, individual thoughts bound into one. Of course, for them, life's all exclamation and question mark, every fragment complete if you look at it right. I started to describe the squirrels that twist in pairs around the trunk of my cottonwood, a single fluid movement between them, or the flocks of pigeons that turn as one above the rooftops, but no, good punctuation should be metaphor enough. We're all fragments without it, without the mind's insistent grammar that must always turn the stars into constellations. I think of the man in my alley, his bike overloaded with recycling, garbage bags wrapped with bungee cords and string, like the gravity of whoever we are, whatever it is that keeps us from drifting away, the self's detritus circling, old scars and post-it notes, cigarette butts and newspapers, matted to the macadam like paper mache masks. It is, after all, what keeps the self from twisting and unfolding. Comma by comma, into a world of its own making, until we find ourselves unhoused, sitting slack-eyed at the back of the bus, strangers staring as we mutter and rant far beyond whatever stop it was we'd intended to take. Now on to our feature conversation. Today we're joined by University of Minnesota Assistant Professor Megan Giddings, ahead of the Short Story Summit, taking place at the Loft on September 30th in partnership with the University of Minnesota. Megan is the author of the just released collection of short stories, Black Arts. Let's dive into the conversation here. All right, well, welcome everyone. Uh, I am joined by Megan Giddings. Megan is an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota. She's the author of three award-winning novels, and her first short story collection, Black Arts, is just out a couple days ago, I think. Is that right, Megan?

SPEAKER_01 5:27

That's correct. Just Tuesday.

SPEAKER_04 5:30

Just Tuesday. Well, congrats on that. It's really exciting.

SPEAKER_01 5:33

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04 5:35

So let's start with the collection. I'd I'd like uh that's kind of the subject of um this conversation and sort of the event that we have coming up between that's our partnership between the U and uh and the Loft. Um, can you for people maybe who aren't familiar with your work or um or maybe not familiar with this collection, can you introduce your our listeners to Black Arts? What can they expect out of this uh collection?

SPEAKER_01 6:03

Yeah. So it is a 13-story short story collection that my publisher, and I think some people in general would call it literary speculative. And what I mean by that is in terms of literary, I'm deeply interested in character and what it means to be alive. And I use the term speculative, and I think more and more people seem to be using this way is fiction that's thinking about the ways that reality does and doesn't work, so that there are unreal or surprising elements, and sometimes they might feel a little more horror or science fiction inflected, but often there's an element of unreality in the book. And then the other thing that binds it all together is it's a story a lot about writers and artists who are thinking about the ways that they represent race and gender and class in their work, and what does that even mean?

SPEAKER_04 6:58

Right, right. You know, I I kind of want to jump into that, and I'm gonna actually get deeper into my my uh questions here because you you've introduced the idea of speculative fiction. I think um looking at your work and looking at reviews of your work, um, it's often described as genre bending or boundary breaking. Um, it's often um involved around women facing sort of forces larger than themselves, but also that have a like a bit of a fantastical element to them or something unusual. Um and to me, that really uh that really is a something that grounds itself in the novel form. It's something that it takes some time to build that setting, to build that sort of expectation of your reader, and then and maybe pull the rug out from under them uh and and kind of establish these sort of unusual circumstances. I'm curious about the challenge of putting that kind of work into the shorter form and what you found different in terms of building this collection versus the the three novels you've written in the past.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Yeah, I I think you summed up one of the ways I write novels that are speculative really well, which is for me, it is that the deeper you go and the more you understand about the world and the novel, yeah, something is wrong. Well, maybe wrong is the wrong word, but you know what I mean. Yeah. And then in the short story, I'm also kind of laughing because I just taught workshop the other night. And this is one of the things my students was arguing about about when you actually should establish the speculative in a short story, and whether or not a short story is speculative, if you don't find out until halfway through that actually you're in a different reality. And it's kind of the interesting thing of being a professor, sometimes you have to get just listen and see where your students land up and then find a way to interject. But I I think for me, because you're you're taught so often as a short story writer in academia to really let the reader know what they're getting into, especially because the short story as a form is so often lately, either about kind of a character study or emotion if you're writing in literary rather than the overarching plots of horror or science fiction. And I was thinking as someone who bends genre a lot, that when I was going through my collection after hearing their conversation, I do kind of a mix still, where sometimes there is that erosion of reality that I find so exciting. And then there are a few words like, let me tell you within the first page that there are ghosts here and we're going to figure this situation out together. And when I was assembling the collection, I did purposely try to juxtapose those two styles of introducing the speculative because I think it gets really boring to read story after story where it's like, hello, reality is weird. Instead of thinking about the ways that I can keep a reader thinking deeply about the way things work.

SPEAKER_04 10:23

Well, let's talk about the way things work because I think that's a a really interesting segue. I think the question, I mean, the way I understand the idea of speculative fiction is the idea, it's the idea of asking the question, what if? And um I'm curious. I mean, you you often take a lens of trying to explore things in our world that maybe aren't working, or where there's injustice, or where there's um opportunities for shining a light on things that are broken, maybe. And I'm curious about what draws you to that question of if and what question how how that how the speculative nature of your work like helps you draw attention to to things that are very real in the world.

SPEAKER_01 11:20

I think some of it is that it can be really easy when you're having a conversation with someone about something uncomfortable, that they'll find a way to nitpick or be like, this doesn't feel exactly true. Or a lot of looking away from the problem because of discomfort. And I think one of the things that I'm drawn to with speculative fiction is it's it can be a little bit of a trick when you're writing about social issues or things that are uncomfortable to other people. Here's this imaginative, interesting world that might draw you in and appeal to maybe your inner child or the imagination you still have. And then you don't have as much room to nitpick because you know this isn't actually reality. You have to sit with the question. You have to think deeply about what's going on if you're reading, well, if you're reading and not skimming, or if you're purposely trying to avoid discomfort, then you've probably set the story aside by now. But I think what speculative does do well is getting a reader to drop their guard a little bit and to have to sit with more questions.

SPEAKER_04 12:33

I love that. I love that idea. That's that's a really uh uh cool description of why speculative fiction can be such a powerful read. You know, it's one of those that really opens your eyes to things that are very real, but but are um you're exploring, you're you're just kind of brought around the corner from something. So it's it's I I love that description of it.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 12:58

Yeah. Um so one of the things that I know is often, you know, I talk to a lot of kind of aspiring writers, and the idea of short collect short story collections is a hard sell. It's a hard, it's a harder sell in the publishing world. Um, and it's one of those that you know is is it takes it takes a lot to to get one out in the world. I'm curious about um your your experience and process in publishing this work versus your experience publishing your novels. Uh was it a harder process? Was it a harder sell for you? And if so, how did you sort of overcome that?

SPEAKER_01 13:47

So it was it was harder in every way than the novel where um my most recent novel, it took me about three and a half years to write. And I've if I trace this short story collection back to the first time I wrote a draft of one of these stories, that was 15 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 14:08

And it's it is that interesting mix of hero stories I wrote as a professional writer. Well, whatever that means. And here stories I wrote when I never even thought I would have a book, that I was just writing to please myself, and then doing the process of revising to make them all sound more coherent, where there are times where I would I would see transitions or things that I found clunky that I would change, and I would do that work of, oh, you used to be so young, and now here's what you actually know about writing stories. So it's also kind of emotionally difficult in a way to because I felt such tenderness for who I used to be, and also sometimes I would be like, you know better now. And then it was a harder road. I'm always interested just here when people have their first short story, their first book be a short story collection or their second. Because one of the things that my agent was really straightforward with me about is that he really he really wanted me to wait to publish a short story collection because he was like, it's really hard. Like there's a huge gap between your first there are many, many people who publish a first book. And then there's I think it was in what was it in Publishers Weekly. I think it was something like 60% of people who publish one book don't publish again. And then it's uh lately become a harder gap in the industry to go from one book to six books. I'm curious to see what even the gap is between you've published to do you keep going. Because so many books get published, so few actually get coverage, and it it really does come up to luck and who will tell people about your work and admire it and think deeply about it. And so when I'd been with my editor in in print long enough, I was like, I'm a short story writer, I love writing short stories, and it still took a lot of talking about what that means, what it looks like, how that might impact my career if no one buys this book, because again, the short story market is so much smaller, and it's been interesting to see that there has been much less mainstream press coverage of this compared to writing a novel, and also though, the people who actually read it like I'm used to writing a novel where someone will read some of it and then write me a mean message sometimes, and it's the difference of the people who have actually read this. It's not always been like, oh, I loved it, it means so much to me, but there's a lot more of a someone reaches out to me with a thoughtful question about why I chose to do a construction or what I was thinking about, and it's been such a pleasure to actually see the ways that short story readers might be much more attentive to the decisions I make than someone who picks up a nav on a whim for entertainment.

SPEAKER_04 17:20

Right, right. Yeah, I think I think short story readers are people who r really take a lot of care and attention in their. I mean, that they're people who have curated reading lists and really, I mean, you to read a short story collection is is as it's an it's a special kind of reader, I think. So um I can see that. I can see that that interaction with them being sort of more meaningful.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Yeah, it it makes me want to keep writing. And sometimes when you write a novel and someone's like, I got so bored after 50 pages, I didn't read it and felt the need to like send me a Squarespace message about it. It's it feels like I want to keep writing when usually around this time I'm like, I could use a break.

SPEAKER_04 18:05

You know, I actually that leads me to a question I was gonna ask you at the end, but I actually I think I want to ask it now. Um we have seen short form sort of in the last decade or two really rise, I mean, in in terms of all forms, right? When you talk audio, video, like it's just people's attention span is is getting narrower and the demands for their attention is pulled in multiple different directions. And I'm curious what you think um whether that has shaped or influenced the sh the short story form at all. Um has has the medium changed to your or even in your practice, has it changed as a result of people's sort of lowering attention spans?

SPEAKER_01 18:57

I don't think I've really changed that much. I actually found because I started off writing flash fiction that I'm I'm spending a lot more time in my short stories than when I started off as a short story writer. I actually feel like I see it more in novels where novels from the past 10 years, even the ones that people are often like, this is so highbrow, this is an intellectual work. I feel like there's such a repetition sometimes of theme, or this is where you are, or this is where you're going. And reading older literature, there was a lot more trust and that the reader is paying attention and not just flipping through the novel on a Kindle while watching Netflix while listening to a podcast at the same time.

unknown 19:45

Correct.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

And I feel like short story collections, or at least the ones I'm reading, it's one of the places that you can come to where there's still trust the reader is paying attention. And I find it really interesting to keep seeing that juxtaposition.

SPEAKER_04 20:03

I love that. Um so this collection shares uh a title with one of the stories inside. Um, and I'm curious uh what made you pick kind of Black Arts as the kind of the cornerstone or the thematic sort of piece that that pulled this collection together.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

You know, it's the interesting thing where I don't know if I think of that story as the one, even though I've set readers up to think that way because it's the title story. But it was the it was the interesting thing that when I thought about what linked together most of the themes and ideas of the collection, it was this idea of art and blackness and what that even means. And I like in some ways, I think that the last story, How to Be a a Black Writer, might summarize things a little more or work with that directly. But I think what works about black arts is taking the time, I took a lot of time in that story to think deeply about the ways that writers and artists there's kind of the fetishization of pain in terms of creation or this idea that you have to suffer to make art. And I spend most of my teaching in writing life being like I make art despite of suffering. And it's so interesting to me. Um this I I've been reading Whistler by Anne Patchett because I I need something to just smooth my brain. I don't mean that in like a negative, but like Ann Pachett's writing often exists in this world where people operate on a level of mostly wanting to be good to each other, and it's hard. Find a novelist that is taken so seriously who believes in like an inner human decency. But it feels I don't know Ann Padgett, but I feel like she believes in that. And there's this section of Whistler where it becomes clear that like almost all of the relationships in the book are built on this wanting to be decent to each other and then trying to figure out how that is and what that means for narrative conflict. And I keep trying to take that lesson to my classroom because so often I think for a lot of people that is still the actual central conflict of how do I treat you decently? And how do I even learn how to do that? And it's not like the most exciting or interesting conflict in the world in terms of like teaching people how to write characters or to think deeply about how character works. It's a conversation that kind of has to be had where you're so often taught, like, describe the character, have them move through it, and you'll figure it out. But asking someone like, how does this person actually want to treat other people tells you more about how characters work than most of the like academic text I can point someone toward. So I think, oh, I just talked myself into more of a let's talk about Aunt Patchett than answering the question.

SPEAKER_04 23:25

No, you know, I think it's I mean it's a really interesting observation. You know, you say it's not that exciting, but I think we in the world at large that we're living in, we see what the lack of decency brings out in in in our society, in our culture, in our politics, in our in and and so it is really a central question, and it is really a central theme that that needs to be explored and that writers need to find, I think, in their work.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

Yeah, I I think so often when people want to talk about like social issues in the arts, they they think it always has to be like the big protests. It always has to be a huge injustice. But this past year has beyond and patched, this past year in Minneapolis has really taught me like the power of wanting to be decent to other people. And I think it's interesting to see if maybe more fiction or at least fiction coming out of the Twin Cities, because there are so many novelists and writers here, uh, is going to keep examining and thinking deeply about what does that mean and what does that look like. Because it is a social change that people could actually do.

SPEAKER_04 24:46

Yeah, that was what I mean there was nothing kind of good that I mean, there was nothing really good that you can point to and be like, I'm so glad this happened to our city. Um but there is the side effect to me of having lived through that was seeing that decency show up and show up in large and small ways, in ways that I didn't really think were possible. Was um there was something at least consoling to me of that that that's still is alive in us somewhere and and that it was really powerful to see.

SPEAKER_01 25:26

When I get asked about it by people who didn't live here, I'm always like, I saw the worst of people and also the best of people almost every day, and it made things even more dissonant and strange.

SPEAKER_04 25:39

Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's that is uh that is exactly the description I would I would lay out for people as well. Um, all right, well, shifting gears. Um you're participating in the short story summit um at the loft. This is in partnership with the University of Minnesota. Um, you'll be uh in conversation and uh with two other new works. Uh Amina Ahmad and Julie Schumacher will be joining us uh as well. Uh tell me, tell me what you're looking forward to about this event.

SPEAKER_01 26:13

Um yeah, so I'm missing to hear Amana read from her collection when her debut was at well, not her debut, this is her second book, but I was out of town and I'm really interested to hear Amina talk a lot about the ways, especially because I I don't know if you or your listeners have read Amana's first book, but one of the things that really impressed me was well, it's like a rich character study. She's so good at pacing, like it's one of the few literary novels I can say that I just kind of turned the pages like eating, it was like eating popcorn a little bit. And then I'm slowly reading that collection right now, and I'm thinking a lot about how much slower the pacing is, where there are so many moments where she makes time to show someone move through their everyday life so that we can understand what change is about to come. And so I'm interested in seeing how she thinks about pacing between the novel and the short stories. And then with Julie, um I've read Patient Female and Julie is so interesting to me because she's so sharp and funny, and also is someone who she's so interested in women, and she's so interested in the ways that women especially build relationships and friendships. And I'm interested to hear how she mixes how sharp her wit can be with how tender and sentimental has kind of become a bad word in a way for a lot of people, but I don't mean it in that way, but there's a there's a layer of sentiment in the way these women in her collection treat each other that's really interesting to me to see how she balances these two elements.

SPEAKER_04 28:14

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I I'm personally I'm I'm just I'm really looking forward to this conversation. I think the three of you have such um it's it's interesting to me how I think different your work is, but how complimentary it is. It's it's such an interesting mix of writers to have on the stage talking about the short story form. So I'm I'm really looking forward to it. I think it'll be a really um a really fun conversation.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Yeah, one of the strange things about teaching is you have a sense of what other people's ideas of are in the classroom, but you rarely get a chance to sit down and talk about like what you're thinking about as artists and writers and what you're trying to do. Like most of the time we sit down and it's like, how are things going in that how is your rich inner life?

SPEAKER_04 29:08

Right, right, right. Um yeah, well, that that event takes place uh September 30th. Um, be sure I'll put some uh a note in the show notes uh for you to uh get get more information about that, but please join us for that. I think it'll be a really fantastic event. I just have uh kind of one more closing question, Megan. What's what's I mean, it's always sort of daunting when you have this work that just came out and people ask you this question, but I I'll I'll just ask you what's next? What are you working on? What's what's uh what's on what's hot, what's the next ember in the fire?

SPEAKER_01 29:44

I'm working on another novel. Um it's a little too early in it to be specific because I know it's a book, but it's in that drafting stage of I could still throw out like half of it and it could become a completely different book. But it's one of the most helpful things to me as I always try to have a new project going so that when the actual next book gets published, I feel a little less depressed about it. It can be really hard to let go of a big project and feel ready to move on to the next, and especially when you publish, it becomes other people's not yours. That having the next one is great.

SPEAKER_04 30:26

I think that's why you know you mentioned that that number of people who don't write a second book. I think that's that is that you know, I've talked to countless authors where that is a very real, and if you don't have something to focus your attention on next, you're really focused on the fact that I've spent all this time, it's no longer mine, it's over, I what's next? All those sort of questions sort of creep in. So it's a it's a really important part, I think, of the writing uh phase.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Yeah, the best thing my Aiden ever did is when I saw my first book, he was like, Okay, what are the 10 ideas you have that you actually he's like it doesn't be like this perfect, like, let's go write the book, but what are you interested in? What do you want to write next? And just having that conversation, it kept me going. It was so generous and kind of him to do that.

SPEAKER_04 31:14

I love that. I love that. That's and that's the what you want out of an agent, right? Is somebody who's who's sort of in your corner but also pushing you towards what's what's next kind of thing.

SPEAKER_01 31:24

Definitely.

SPEAKER_04 31:26

Well, Megan, this has been a delight. Um, thanks so much for joining us. Um, and I'm really looking forward to reading the collection. I've got it on order, and uh, I'm looking forward to seeing you on September 30th at the loft.

SPEAKER_01 31:38

Thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to the event.

SPEAKER_04 31:42

A big thank you to Megan for joining us this week. Be sure to check the show notes to sign up for the short story stummit on September 30th before spots fill up. We've also dropped a link in the show notes for the upcoming George Saunders event at the U of M as well. This podcast and all of our programming are made possible by the Friends of the Loft. If you'd like to support our mission, please visit us and join us at loft.org backslash join. That's loft.org backslash join. So that wraps up today's episode. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review and subscribe so you'll never miss a future episode. Until next time, thanks for gathering around the fire.