Patrick O'Keeffe

When and how did you get started in creative writing?

I didn't attend college until my mid-to-late twenties, but I knew when I enrolled that I wanted to read and study literature; I longed to write, but I kept it to myself--but at college, I enrolled in creative writing classes. The first were in poetry writing, because the fiction classes were constantly full, so I ended up writing poetry for a few years before writing fiction. I didn't really take myself seriously, as a writer--wasn't fully absorbed--until I came to the program here at Michigan.

Why do you enjoy this art form?

I find great excitement and pleasure in it; there's nothing else I'd rather do in life, though sometimes writing's not that exciting or pleasurable. I like the way the story happens in the writing; I want it to surprise me, and draw me in. I enjoy the intense concentration, forgetting about myself, and I suppose I do love seeing and feeling life as I understand it through language.

How long had you been working on the pieces for which you won the Story Prize?

It's hard to put an actual time frame on it, but I'd say about four to five years. Most of it was written in the summers, over holidays, and throughout fall I only worked part-time so that I had time to write.

What made you want to enter this competition?

I didn't enter it, and didn't know I was in it until I was informed that the book was in the top three. The editor of the book, Paul Slovak, entered it, and I am very thankful to him for doing that.

When were you first published? How did you feel when this happened?

I was first published in Limestone, the college magazine at the University of Kentucky, Lexington, where I was an undergraduate. The name of the story was In The Home For The Aged. I was thrilled, and I didn't think then I would do any better.

What inspires you to write?

It's the desire to tell a story in an exciting and absorbing way. I don't have that much planned out when I sit down to write, and I let the story wander in whatever direction it's going; then I want to craft it, see what happens. I like that challenge. Often it's a very concrete image in my head, or a voice I hear, and I want to hear and see it in language. There's much writing that you don't end up doing anything with, but you had to do it to get to where and what you particularly wanted.

How much time do you put into your writing?

I'm more obsessed and persistent than disciplined, in any strict sense of so many hours a day. If I'm into it, I can keep at it for a long time, in that I don't notice or think about time.

Who are your favorite authors? Do they influence your writing?

I have favorite writers, who I reread, and I read as much contemporary fiction as I can. I also read poetry: Louise Glück, Keats, C K Williams, James Wright, Yeats, Seamus Heaney, and Philip Levine, among others. In fiction, and off the top of my head: William Faulkner, James Agee, Cormac McCarthy, the Bible, William Trevor, Edward P Jones, Deborah Eisenberg, Jhumpa Lahiri, J D Salinger, Chekhov, Tolstoy, and I particularly enjoy Alice Munro's work. I have been reading this Irish writer, Aidan Higgins, and his work is very inspiring. I've also been reading George Saunders, who I didn't think I would like, but I actually do very much. Certain writers influence me a great deal, but not in a conscious, apparent way.

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

I think you have to find the pleasure in the actual writing, because that's really the only pleasure, and then do the very best work that you can. I was inspired to write because I loved to read--but you must enjoy the process of writing and rewriting, not think about things outside of it, and keep doing it over and over, which might make you demented at times.