A Conversation with PEN America Best Debut Short Story Author Katherine Magyarody

On August 22, Catapult will publish PEN America Best Debut Short Stories 2017, the inaugural edition of an anthology celebrating outstanding new fiction writers published by literary magazines around the world. In the weeks leading up to publication, we will feature Q&As with all of the contributors, whose stories were selected for the anthology by judges Marie-Helene Bertino, Kelly Link, and Nina McConigley, and awarded PEN's Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers. Submissions for the 2018 awards are open now.

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Katherine Magyarody grew up in Toronto, Ontario. She received her PhD from the University of Toronto in 2016 and is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Texas A&M University. She is currently working on an assortment of academic and creative projects. “Goldhawk” is a story about Dinara, an immigrant and the only woman on her team at her IT firm. 

Dinara Akhmatova survived the purges. First the company laid off the lazy and the incompetent. Dinara, with a row of programming manuals and her cut-glass award for ten years of service the only ornaments in her cubicle, was not even looked at by management. Or rather, their eyes passed over her while the fingertips of one hand flew across the keyboard and the other cradled the newest prototype. When the company still hemorrhaged money, they began cutting entire projects. The aspirational ventures, the innovations that had made their name. Dinara, slight of body and flexible of mind, refocused all her attention onto product development. Once the mandarin class of employees had been cut loose, the company went through each remaining team and discarded one in three. She came in early and stayed later than anyone. She survived.

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Catapult: Where did you find the idea for this story?

Katherine Magyarody: I heard a non sequitur about seeing a wild animal outside a window. The comment seemed to begin a story but led nowhere, or, rather, into contemplative silence. So I decided to take that image and build a story around it.

Other than its location within a corporate office, the setting of the story is unclear. Why did you make this choice?

Along the highways that link urban and suburban spaces, you can see many, many islanded workplaces. They are isolated from one another by roads and expanses of grass (or snow), and yet they are somehow identical. Dinara’s workplace is specific, but also typical.

Dinara’s co-workers misidentify the hawk, just as they were unable to find a label for her. What’s the significance of an ambiguous person within an unambiguous setting?

People are ambiguous according to the signals they put out and by others’ ability to read them. Dinara would not be at all mysterious to another community, but she’s chosen to relocate to a country and to work at a place where she can cultivate certain identities and ambiguities.

Why did you choose a hawk?

Birds of prey are charismatic, but also private and dangerous. I like the idea that Dinara identifies with those qualities.

How long did it take you to write the story?

I usually struggle with short stories, but this was one of the things I’ve written fastest. It took an afternoon, followed by some brief editing the next day.

How has the Robert J. Dau prize affected you?

I am incredibly grateful for recognition from an organization that I respect so much and to be among the incredibly talented co-winners of the Robert J. Dau Prize. It’s a very big official start to something I’ve been working on for years. The award motivates me to push myself further.

What are you working on now?

I have two academic projects that I am alternating between, and on the creative front I have a short story collection that is turning into a novel, two YA manuscripts, and a middle-grade manuscript.

Finally, where do you discover new writing?

By “new” can I also include “obscure children’s literature from the nineteenth century” or “academic articles hot off the electronic database”?

I’ve been very fortunate to be in places where discovery was part of my routine. During grad school, I house-sat for a professor who is a book reviewer. Squat boxes and beautiful, thick envelopes would arrive on the stoop every day, and I would open them and make a list of them for her. I was free to read anything I pleased. Then I worked for an academic journal that had an annual issue (Letters in Canada) that surveyed as much as possible of literature produced in Canada or by Canadian authors. One of my jobs was to go through catalogs and publishers’ websites and order books for my boss. Canada has a thriving and excellent independent literary scene! All through this, I listened religiously to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s The Next Chapter with Shelagh Rogers and Writers and Company with Eleanor Wachtel. Now that I am in the States, I need to find the equivalents.

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