Can you believe it’s been over a year since I interviewed Vanessa Gebbie, author of Words From a Glass Bubble, for the Writer Profile Project? (Check out the interview here.) I can’t! It was February 27th of 2008… Whew. So much has changed! Especially for Vanessa! Check out what this busy lady has been up to. Here she is, in her own words:

Vanessa says:

How excited I was when you interviewed me. My first collection – my first book – was coming out in a week’s time! There can’t be a feeling to equal that, unless it is seeing people buying it, receiving invites to do readings and Q & A sessions, invites to reading groups (surprising, I hadn’t expected that -) and of course reading reviews. I was lucky, had some lovely reviews, all of which are emblazoned on my new website. www.vanessagebbie.com.

Isn’t this website FUN? I love the graphics, especially the disembodied hand that snatches the paper when you send me a message. Thanks to musician and web designer Roger Betts, for his amazing creativity and skill.

What else have I been doing? Umm.

First I was asked to contribute a chapter to The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Fiction, due out next month. I was delighted to do so, especially when I saw the line-up I was joining.

Dinty Moore, Editor of The Mammoth Book of Minuscule Fiction has this to say about the Field Guide:

“A thoughtful and thought-provoking resource, casting fresh light on the practice of flash fiction. Each essay is a gem, encrusted with outstanding prompts and valuable exercises. Anyone who hopes to write (or teach) the very short fiction form needs to read this book.”

Working with our editor Tara Masih was a really good experience. It gave me good quality grounding for my next big project…working as commissioning/contributing editor for a guide to writing short fiction for my own publisher, Salt Modern Fiction.

The Salt Guide, entitled Short Circuit is due out later this year, and is a collection of chapters from prize-winning short story writers who also teach creative writing. Two outright winners of the Bridport Prize, three Bridport runners up, the National Short Story Award winner, the winner of the Asham Award for New Women Writers, the winner of Fish Histories … too many to go on about. Oh, I must mention Tania Hershman, who has just been commended by the judges of The Orange Prize for New Writers. She has contributed a chapter on writing short short stories.

It hasn’t just been text books. I am still writing shorts as well as ‘the novel type thing’ which is now between 70 and 80K but I keep deleting bits in fury. I managed a few print pubs through the year, such as .Cent Magazine, Southword and foto8, a photojournalism mag. A few pieces online, notably in The Café Irreal. I came second in the Fish Short Story Competition this year, which gives me a freebie week at my favourite writing retreat in Ireland. Bliss.

I have been working all year too with the One World team on Zoetrope organised by Ovo Adagha, polishing a collection of short fiction. We were amazingly fortunate, and found a great publisher, New Internationalist. The One World Anthology includes stories by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Jhumpa Lahiri, and was launched in Oxford earlier this month. We are donating all royalties to Doctors Without Borders/Medecins Sans Frontieres.

I have a collection of flash stories coming out later this year with Salt Modern Fiction. The title keeps changing. At the moment it is “Ed’s Wife and other Creatures.”

Finally; you may remember I bleated on about how being adopted was at the root of who I am. Developments there include tracing my family and discovering I have four sisters. We all look scarily alike. And I (at 5 ft 31/2) am the tallest!) Three live in the States. I am coming over in May to be with two of them, in California, for my birthday.