Interview with Lynda Williams

Danila Botha Interviews Author Lynda Williams

Lynda Williams is an incredible short fiction writer, and I had the great fortune of mentoring her for two years as part of our certificate program at the Humber School for Writers. The opening story of her brilliant debut short story collection, The Beauty and The Hell Of It (which will be published by Guernica Editions, on Sept 1^st, 2025) Matches is the first story of hers that I read, and I was impressed and moved from the opening paragraph. Her stories are sharply observed, with accomplished characterization and voice, and delightfully wry humour. The Beauty and the Hell Of It is one hell of a collection, and I recently had the chance to chat with her about her writing and editing process, the stories themselves, and what she’s working on now.

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Danila Botha: Firstly, let’s talk about the title. I remember that Don’t Look Back in Anger was the working title when we worked on it, but I love The Beauty and the Hell Of It even more.

Lynda Williams: That’s right, yeah. Titles are always last for me, and that was the same for the title of the book. All along, I used Don’t Look Back as a working title, but it didn’t stand out enough. I was thinking of a story [in the collection] and a line in it, “the thing about marriage, Liam realized, is that you have to keep choosing your partner, over and over. It was the beauty and the hell of it.” You know, when you think of marriage, you don’t just choose your partner once, you have to choose them every day…so that line fit perfectly with the stories, there were lots of dark moments leading to the light in all of the stories, and that line just seemed to encapsulate all of that.

DB: Absolutely. It’s a beautiful way to end the collection.

LW: You know, the final story in the collection, the title story, almost didn’t come to be…

DB: What do you mean?

LW: I remember you saying you were interested in what happened to the characters next….

DB: I mean, who wouldn’t? Your characters are so spectacularly real.

LW: It was this moment of creative synchronicity.

DB: That’s so lovely to hear. You were always so open to feedback and discussion though, not just from me, but from other writers, from writing groups, you’ve always been very involved in the writing community.

LW: When it comes to creative endeavours, even solo endeavours like writing, we’re so much better with a community, because when we’re able to talk about our stories with each other, that’s the kind of feedback we generate, and sometimes people picture a future for our characters that we don’t even recognize.

DB: I completely agree. I remember when I was doing an event for my last book, Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness, last spring, a writer came up to me, really excited to tell me that she was in a writer’s group with you, and how wonderful to work with. That writer was Su Chang, and her beautiful novel, The Immortal Woman, is doing so wonderfully.

LW: Yes! Su Chang and I were part of the same cohort at School for Writers. What a courageous story.

DB: Absolutely. I want to come back to The Beauty and the Hell of It now, because I’d love to talk about the order of the stories, which is something I often struggle with when putting together a collection. How did you choose the particular order? Did you group stories chronically or by theme?

LW: I struggled with the sequencing of the stories. I don’t think it would be as good as it is without the feedback from you.

DB: I’m not sure that’s true. You’re incredibly talented. I mean, I appreciate it, but really, this is all you.

LW: I see an evolution of my writing style, the first story is the first one I wrote, and the last one is the last, which happened organically.

DB: Can you tell me how your style evolved?

LW: When I think of the original stories I had when I came to the program, they were almost reactionary, to things that were pissing me off in my own life, for example, and as I moved through them thematically, and then the writing became more of a conversation with the writers I was reading, because I definitely became a better reader as I wrote this book.

DB: That’s such an interesting insight. What were you reading?

LW: I’d read some Lorrie Moore, and I got her biblical collected volume, The Collected Stories, and I burned my way through it, and it was definitely a heavy influence. There was this book, Natasha by David Bezmozgis the summer between the two years I did the program, I read that, and I thought wow, where has this been my whole life? Why didn’t I get to this sooner? The title story Natasha stood out the most, and I wanted to read this from the point of view of the writer so I can consider it from the craft point of view of craft, but I got caught up in it as a reader. It was funny and moving, and it was almost moving because it was funny and vice versa and those two things were inextricable from each other. It’s heartbreakingly hilarious and poignant.

DB: Let’s talk about working with your editor, Julie Roorda.

LW: It was lovely and totally not what I expected. I thought there was going to be a complete overhaul, and I was honestly a little scared that my voice would get lost, but she did a really good job of preserving my voice but making me sound that much more intelligent than I actually am (laughs)

DB: I can definitely confirm the intelligence of your writing from even the earliest drafts. Are you working on more short fiction right now?

LW: I am working on more short fiction. I want to do somewhat of a departure of what I’ve done, but I don’t want to abandon the voice I’ve worked so hard to create.

The stories have centred around betrayals, how we betray ourselves, how we betray each other, and right now is also a moment where we have to consider how we’re betraying the planet.

I don’t have a lot of desire to write a novel, and I definitely want to write more short stories.

DB: Good, because we need more. You’ve been doing a lot of podcasts and interviews to promote the collection, how is that going?

LW: It can be challenging to be on the same wavelength as selling and creating, in the position of talking about what you’ve previously written and still create new material. But when you’re feeling kind of gross and like a salesman, I find the antidote is to be creative.

DB: I love that. One of my least favorite questions is when people ask me if my stories or fiction is autobiographical (spoiler, it never is) Do people ask you that too?

LW: It is one of the perils of writing in first person, people tend to assume, okay this is you. To some extent, I am guilty of borrowing inspiration or details from my life, but it’s not like I’m writing a memoir. If it’s something that’s happened to me, I’ve wondered what would happen if a fictional thing went down, and then I’ve tried to see how it would play out fictionally instead.

DB: Right. One of my favorite things about your writing is the complex way you characterize women.

LW: I write what I wanted to see, which is messy complicated women, who got the dignity of being anti heroines not just unlikeable women. I always like the underdog, the messy Holden Caulfield characters compared to the superheroes but when I started writing stories, some of the early feedback I got was, I liked the story, it was funny, but I didn’t like her. And I didn’t know what to do with that right away, it did throw me for a loop, I didn’t realize that this character had to be likeable. We’re asking the women in literature what we ask of them in life, which is to be lovely, and it’s a really heavy burden to carry, and I thought, I’m going to lean in to this, I’m going to make it my mission to make these unlikeable women hard to love, but loveable because I want that for myself.

DB: That’s’ beautiful. Can we talk about the cover of The Beauty and the Hell of It? It’s so striking.

LW: I was so blown out of the water with the cover, in the sense that I didn’t know I’d have as much say as I did. This is one of the reasons publishers like Guernica Editions can be so wonderful. I didn’t know what to do with that kind of freedom, but David Moratto was great, we spoke for an hour on the phone, and this was a beautiful collaboration. I love the colours (red, yellow, green, turquoise and cobalt blue) and that he went bold. He definitely has a lot of vision.

DB: Yes! I loved working with him for A Place for People Like Us too, he’s really talented. Are you reading anything that you’re excited about right now?

LW: I’m reading the novel White by Aviva Rubin. I’m not quite halfway through it, and it’s such a timely book. It’s what we need right now, to be considering and having conversations about white supremacy.

Laurie Hahnel is hosting my launch in Calgary, so I’m reading her work. I just read her short story collection Vermin, and what’s really impressive is her range, one minute you’re reading a story in contemporary Calgary, and you’re reading about a place you know, dealing with issues like homelessness and then you read something else that’s set in the 1920’s in Ontario, and she does one just as believably as the other. Her last novel was Flicker, which I’m reading now.

In terms of craft, I’m rereading Burning Down the House by Charles Baxter. His essays are just lovely to get lost in and thought provoking. He is a lecturer and it’s like going back to university.

And your new book, A Place for People Like Us. It was a really compelling story, which I raced through, because I needed to know what was going to happen next.

DB: That’s so kind, thank you. You know what, I think that’s a short story writer thing, because in a short story, you get to that ending so much more quickly, and the question is how, and why. I sometimes read like that too.

LW: That’s so true, that’s exactly the approach to a short story.

DB: I can’t wait to read more of your stories, and for this book to get into hands of readers and short fiction fans everywhere next month.

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About the Interviewer

Danila Botha is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collections, Got No Secrets, For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known, which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, The Vine Awards and the ReLit Award and most recently, Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness. The title story was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. The collection won an Indie Reader Discovery Award for Women's Issues, Fiction, and was a finalist for the Canadian Book Club Awards, and the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. She is also the author of the award-winning novel Too Much On the Inside which was optioned for film. Her new novel, A Place for People Like Us will be published by Guernica this October. Her first graphic novel will be published in 2026 by At Bay Press.