Evie Wyld: After the Award, A Humble Happy Evie

Debut novelist Evie Wyld was chuffed enough to be nominated for Booktrust's prestigious John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 2009 for her book After the Fire, A Still Small Voice but to go on to win it? She was certainly surprised.

The part-time Peckham bookseller, currently working on a follow-up to her award-winning book, met us at Royal Festival Hall this week to talk through her thoughts on winning the process, her writing process and what she is currently working on. She was still buzzing with excitement at the win, laughing and howling with delight every now and then; and talking to her revealed someone self-assured, humble and quietly articulate, like her book.

> How does it feel a week later to have won this year's John Llewellyn Rhys Prize?

It feels amazing. It still hasn’t quite sunk in. It’s an amazing award to win, for the fact that it’s a memorial for a young man who was a writer and for 60 years after his death, someone has been helped just at the point that they need it. I’m stoked. I wasn’t expecting to win. Being listed alongside such well-known and well-thought of authors, I was so chuffed to be shortlisted; I was happy with that, thinking I can get a ‘shortlisted’ sticker on my book now. I hadn’t read any of the other books, except a bit of The Thing Around Your Neck, but I had to stop because it was very good and I thought if I read these books and meet these people, I’ll be a gibbering wreck.

> What was the best thing about winning so far?

Woman’s Hour... it was really nice going on that. I’d got to the stage where I was published in August and things had just died down, things were getting back to normal, which I was enjoying, but it’s nice to see it all being brought to the surface again. And having a reprint is exciting - I wasn’t expecting that at all.

> Any plans to quit the bookshop now you’re an award-winning author?

No! For a start, I can’t afford to. I just work there two days a week. I think as a writer it’s important to have something that you have to go to at least twice a week so you get dressed and you speak to people. I’d quite happily not speak to anyone all week.

> How do you separate the two worlds of working Evie and writing Evie?

I don’t think I need to. When I’m at the bookshop, I’m reading books and I’m finding out about books and occasionally there’s enough space that I can do some writing while I’m there. I don’t take breaks from writing - I don’t make myself write from 9-5 and then stop on the weekend. It’s something I enjoy doing so it’s a part of everything I do, I guess.

> Do the customers all know who you are?

They do now! When the book came out, we had a little launch there and probably most of the books sold have been out of that shop. My boss is fantastic about promoting it. And because it’s a tiny local bookshop, the Peckham community are excited about it and buying it as a Christmas present.

> Was there one book that you read that made you want to write?

It would probably be Cloud Street by Tim Winton. I read it when I was about 16 and I remember wanting, when I finished the book, to extend the characters. I had this idea that if you wrote, you would know what happened to the characters for the rest of their lives until their death and then their children etc. But that not how it works and now I’ve found that out, it’s a bit disappointing. Winton makes the particular and the everyday seem interesting.

> Have you always written?

I was writing short stories when I was a teenager. Not good stuff. I’ve got some of them and I’ve been joking with a friend that we start a website with writers’ teenage writing on. I was really into Angela Carter when I was 14, and I think it really shows in the short stories - it’s all dark fairytale and it’s all pretty grim. I did my BA at Bath in art and creative writing. That was really great. Then I did the Goldsmiths Creative Writing MA. I think it can be fantastically helpful as long as you go into it with an open mind, and not thinking you know it all. A lot of people go in thinking ‘I am a writer and I’m good at writing and they can’t teach me anything.’ I don’t know why anyone would choose to be taught in that situation.

> Were you read to as a child?

I was read to as a very young child but I was quite ill as a kid and spent a lot of time on my own, ploughing through books, usually horror- nothing worthy. Things like Point Horror and Stephen King. My favourite types of stories were things like Maurice Sendak- In the Night Kitchen and Outside Over There and obviously, Where the Wild Things Are. We used to buy a lot of kids’ books from junk shops so there was a lot of Enid Blyton and that sort of thing. There’s something really appealing about the food in those, characters are always collecting food, packing the picnic hamper. I had these Australian picture books with lots of Aboriginal stories about the Dream Time and they were quite gory and good. There was one about the Snake Men and the Kangaroo Men and the Snake Men butchered the Kangaroo Men and hung them up in the trees and the Kangaroo Men set fire to the Snake Men and it was all blood and guts and brilliant.

> Who is your favourite author now?

I find that really difficult. I think the author I feel most in awe of and I’ve never read a book of his that disappointed me is Tim Winton. But that’s boring because that’s what anyone who likes Australian literature would say. Every time I read a good book, I think ‘that’s my favourite!’ Lorrie Moore is amazing, David Vann is amazing. I don’t think my brain is big enough to compare all the books I read with my favourite ones so I’ll go for Tim Winton.

> Are there any authors you view as peers or akin to?

Well Dickens obviously! No... There are authors I strive to be like. I love Annie Proux, Carole Shields, Kerry Tiffany - I don’t know. I suppose the only way to tell is by who you’re put next to on the bookshelf. It’s quite nice because alphabetically I’m next to Tim Winton and I’m happy with that.

> You jumped from short stories to a full-length novel. How did you gather the confidence in your writing to do that?

This is going to sound really soulless but I got an agent through having some short stories up on the Goldfish website (Goldsmiths journal) and she said ‘Would you write a novel?’ and I nodded my head, thinking no way. She asked me again after I graduated and I sat down to write it. I didn’t have any plan of what it would be about. I just wrote it for three and a half years and rewrote and rewrote and that’s what came out at the end. I also didn’t stop reading while I was writing it- I know a lot of writers can’t read anything else but I feel like I need something to bounce off or something to measure myself by. I must have done 12 drafts and nothing from the 1st drafts is in there. Just by writing, you get much more confidence.

> When you were writing the first book, did you have a daily limit?

Yeah because I hadn’t written anything that size before. I felt it was important to get a block of words and it didn’t matter how good they were, just something to work from. I sat down for four months and every day I wrote a thousand words. Some days I wasn’t in the mood to do anything and I’d end up writing word after word instead of sentence after sentence, just trying to get the volume.

> What was the inspiration behind the book you ended up writing?

It’s funny because I didn’t sit down with a burning desire to write anything, I just wrote. Writing something long is interesting because you discover things about yourself as you do it. I suppose more than inspiration, I found an interest in what people don’t say to each other and the way people baton down relationships. It’s very English. I feel like there needs to be an antidote to the Hollywood-y attitude that everyone loves a lot and everyone feels a lot. I guess numbness is much more interesting to me.

> Well, in Hollywood, they do this thing of constantly reaffirming their relationships in clunky ways, like ‘I care so much because you’re my brother...’

Yeah!

> Whereas the relationships you depict are realistic, especially the role of ‘the absent father’, something written a lot about in this country... did you find it hard writing in very male voices?

That weirdly was very straightforward. It came out naturally as a man. I don’t know why that is. People have said, it’s because it was my first novel and I didn’t want anyone to think it was about me. I suppose that might be partly why I chose a man to write through. A lot of the time, I start writing and it does seem to be a male voice. The second novel will be from a female perspective.

> Can you give us any spoilers about book two?

I can but it might all change. The first one certainly did. At the minute, it’s set between seaside towns in England and remote Australia. It’s about a girl who in her youth set a bush fire in Australia and now she’s living with the consequences of that in seaside England. That’s as much as I’ve got so far.

> Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Give yourself time. It’s really easy to get flighty or angry when you write. You spend a lot of time on your own, you’re working really hard and you don’t have anything to show for it. You get a lot of people making comments like ‘writing her novel is she? Wink wink...’ There is a lot of navel gazing in writing but you need to give it as much time as it needs. Don’t send it to publishers and agents when it’s not ready and you know it’s not ready. Send it off when you honestly don’t know what the next stage to do with it is. Don’t send it off when you know you can still make it better. It might get to the unsolicited pile but if the first five pages aren’t as good as you can make it, the second five pages won’t get read and that breeds a lot of anger with writers.

> Have you looked back through the previous JLR winners to see the company you’re now in?

Oh yes! Absolutely blown away. It just... I don’t want to say it feels ridiculous but it does! When I think about me two years ago and me now, it’s such a boost to my confidence to go on and write more. The important thing is I can now afford to do that. I was just starting to look for another part time job but now with the prize, I don’t have to do that. It’s fantastic! One of the nice things Jenni Murray said on Woman’s Hour was that along with the Orange Prize and the Booker is the John Llewellyn Rhys and I think, while people in the industry know that, it’s spread out to listeners that it’s that big of a deal. It’s awesome!

> What’s your favourite book you’ve read this year?

I just read The True Deceiver by Tove Jansson, the lady who did the Moomins. She wrote some really wonderful novels. The True Deceiver is gorgeous and snowy and there’s a big dog. It’s one of those quiet books that you could eat in an afternoon.

> Do you write to your tastes? Would you buy your book if you saw it in a bookshop?

I try to. One of my tutors, when I was complaining that I wanted to write an action-horror thing starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and all that came out was little quiet sad emotional scenes about fathers and sons and I was feeling low and serious and pretentious, once said ‘if we could all write what we wanted to write, we’d be writing bestsellers and no one would have a problem.’ I try as hard as I can to write what I would want to read. Having said that, I haven’t reread the book. I tried to the other day but you end up flicking through loads of stuff and you’re so bored of your own voice.

> You work in an independent bookshop. Borders has gone under. What’s next for independent bookshops?

It’s terrible that Borders has gone under. It hasn’t gone under because people are buying from independents, it’s because people aren’t buying books full stop and anywhere people can buy books in person is important. There is a place for independent bookselling because much as Amazon can advise you on what you might like, it’s going on a computerised programme and you can’t go in and say ‘I’ve got a 20-year old boy who doesn’t like reading. What book shall I buy him?’ as someone did the other day and we could figure out what he might like.  There was that horrible article in the Guardian by a woman who said ‘good riddance to bookshops’ and I just thought, what are you doing? Her idea was that you should just have libraries but what writer would be able to support themselves without sale of book and what publisher will be able to publish those books. Bookshops are more than just a shop; they’re an atmosphere. People like to spend hours in there even if they don’t buy anything.

Read more about Evie Wyld

Read more about the John Llewellyn Rhys prize