By Allison Sobczak

It was around this time last year, on one of my many random excursions to the bookstore, that I purchased Eugene Cross’s Fires Of Our Choosing, a short story collection I had heard nothing but good things about. The praises and acclaim I had heard were true. Each story gripped me and didn’t let go for the duration of my winter break. When I returned in the spring for my final semester, I had the chance to talk with Cross about his first full-length publication and the process that went into completing it.

AS:  How did you find your publisher?

EC:  I had some friends who had published with Dzanc Books and began to explore their titles. I really liked what I found: a quality publisher with a social mission. Not to mention, the books were beautiful.

AS:  This being your first published collection, can you tell me a little bit about the publishing process? What was the experience like for you?

EC:  It was long and somewhat nerve-wracking. I had won Dzanc’s Prize for Literary Excellence and Community Service for my proposal to teach creative writing workshops to a community of Nepalese refugees living in my hometown. Still, I had no idea whether or not they planned to accept the book for publication. That email was one of the best I’ve ever received.

AS:  All the stories in this collection were originally published in either online or print journals/magazines. When did you first get the idea that you wanted to try and put them together for a short story collection?

EC:  I knew fairly early on that I wanted to compile a collection. It was a question of not just having enough stories, but the right stories. Eventually these began to take shape for me. They started to fit together. I could feel similar themes and a uniform setting being established.

AS: What is your writing process like, both in general and in regards to writing Fires Of Our Choosing?

EC:  I wish I could attest to writing every day, but it’s more fits and starts for me, especially during the school year. However, the work is best when I’m writing every day, and that’s when I feel the least amount of shame and self loathing so that’s good too. The process with Fires was a lot like that. Working and revising constantly. Reading the stories to myself out loud so many times that they felt like old friends and sometimes like old enemies, enough so that it got to the point where we became respectful foes.

AS:  You teach at both Columbia College Chicago and Northwestern University. How do you manage your time between teaching and writing?

EC:  It’s a lot and some times are busier than others, but I like to work late at night and on the weekends. I also find myself taking advantage of the breaks. My younger self was much more interested in drinking tall boys in Panama City over break, now I want somewhere quiet where I can work…and drink tall boys.

AS:  Did you have to do any major rewriting or editing with the stories before you decided to put them together in a collection?

EC:  Yes. I’m tempted to leave it at that, but I’ll just say that it was a long and heart wrenching situation. I literally had to have open-heart surgery along the way. No joke. It was due to a congenital defect, but I like to think that it was partly because the revision became so strenuous as well. It just sounds better.

AS:  All the stories in this collection had powerful, unexpected, yet ultimately satisfying endings (“Rosaleen, If You Know What I Mean” and “The Brother” being just two examples). Could you talk a little about the endings to these stories and how you view endings in regards to your writing process? Do you find them to be the easiest part of writing or the most difficult? Do you already have them planned out or do you find your way to them through the writing?

EC:  I think the most successful endings for me are the ones that I discover through writing. I find the whole Robert Frost “No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader,” thing to be extremely helpful. I also like a little bit left off the page, a little bit of uncertainty and open-endedness for the reader. I want the story to resonate and I find that to be too definitive or prescriptive with our characters sometimes takes away from that.

AS:  One of my favorite stories from the whole collection is “Come August”. It’s incredibly tragic but beautifully written, with a poetic prose quality. I also found it interesting that it’s the one piece in the whole collection told in second person, one of the rarer POV choices. How did you come to the decision of deciding to write this particular story in second person?

EC:  The story is based on a tragic event that occurred in my hometown. A babysitter fell asleep and the two young girls she was supposed to be watching wandered out of the house and drowned. The press crucified her and it was easy to see why, but life is never that easy, never that clear cut. I wanted the reader to hear the story from a different angle, to imagine themselves in her stead.

AS:  You grew up in Erie, Pennsylvania, and many of your stories (if not all) are based in the rural areas of PA. Was it a conscious decision to set your stories in your hometown? How has your environment fueled or inspired your writing process?

EC:  I love Erie and am very proud to be from there, but for a long time I was trying to escape it, both in real life and in my fiction. Something changed once I stopped fighting that impulse on the page. It helped me grow as a writer and helped me appreciate all of those things I’d taken for granted about where I was from.

AS:  Do you have any writing (or general) projects planned for the future?

EC:  I’m working on a longer piece right now, trying to make my way into the utterly-terrifying world of the novel, smiling and shaking all the way.

ALLISON SOBCZAK is a graduate of Columbia College Chicago, where she earned a BA in Fiction Writing. As a student, she worked as a Fiction Writing Tutor and had her work published in the 2012 Issue of the Story Week Reader. Originally from a small town outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Windy City has become her second home and her place of residence since 2009. She can be found at either a Starbucks, enjoying a chai tea latte, or at a concert venue, enjoying a performance from some heavy metal band. Along with working as a Staff Member for Hypertext Magazine, she is currently working on a short story collection. For more information, please visit her personal website at allisonsobczak.com.