If you have any connection to the speculative fiction world whatsoever, you know Kelly Link‘s name. She only writes short stories, most of them have appeared through her and husband Gavin Grant’s publishing press, Small Beer Press, but the accolades keep piling up – and so, no wonder Harcourt noticed and picked up her latest collection, MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS, for paperback release next month, giving the book a first printing of 15,000 copies and Link a tour in at least 10 cities.
AP’s Hillel Italie tries to find out how this all happened. Her editor at Harcourt, Tina Pohlman, said she first heard of the author a few years ago when Pohlman’s then roommate recommended “Stranger Things Happen.” Pohlman kept track of Link’s work, and, after reading “Magic for Beginners,” she met with the author and reached an agreement on distributing the paperback. “I had lunch with my old roommate a couple of weeks after that,” Pohlman noted with a laugh, “and she walked into the restaurant carrying ‘Magic for Beginners’ under her arm.”
“I can’t think of another writer in the last five to 10 years who has given me such pleasure to read,” says Michael Chabon, who picked one of Link’s stories for the most recent BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES collection, which he edited.”Beyond the fantasy and the science fiction and the creepiness she’s so good at, she’s just such a good writer. She has this strange combination of naivete and sophistication mixed with a huge gift for language.”
But the burning question is this: will Link ever write a novel? So far, not yet. “I don’t like what I’m doing at longer length; I’m forgetting how to leave stuff out. I feel I have to beat a retreat to short stories, so if I do write novels I don’t forget how to write short stories,” she says. But she’s also at a bit of a crossroads. “Right now, I feel like I’m sort of stuck between the stuff I know how to do and the things I want to do next.”