ZM: What led you to go back to writing after a career as an art dealer?
PM: Since childhood I’ve always loved telling stories, both my own and others’. As an art dealer, I would relay the stories of incredible visual creatives and the artwork they produced, but I never felt completely satisfied; I wanted to be writing my own work, being creative myself.
When covid hit I was afforded the time to write fiction and poetry again, after many years. Once I started, I couldn’t stop and now, nearly five years later I feel like I’m still just getting going. Like many, the lockdowns gave me a new perspective on life and really made me think about what I wanted out of it. Writing is everything to me these days.
ZM: What is the focus of your PhD, and are you enjoying it?
PM: I’m loving it. My thesis focusses on the intersection of short story collections and novels, analysing the way both forms reveal narrative. I’ve become fascinated with linked short story collections that are marketed as novels (such as Cloud Atlas, Olive Kitteridge, Winesburg, Ohio) and am exploring the pervading opinion that novels are ‘better’ than short stories.
ZM: What was the inspiration behind Inkfish, and what do you look for in a poem or short story? Are there challenges associated with running an online magazine, and has this changed over the years?
PM: Inkfishmag.com is relatively new. I set it up at the beginning of 2024 with a fantastic writer and friend, Kate Horsley. We wanted to work together on something fun and are passionate about finding the very best poetry and literary fiction out there. We’re always sending each other links to stories and poems we’ve found and fallen in love with, so setting up a website to showcase some of it seemed like a natural progression.
We look for work that grabs us from the first line and keeps us going until the end, so that we can’t take our eyes from the page. I suppose the most challenging aspect of it is working our way through all the submissions and choosing favourites that will work for the upcoming edition; it’s heartbreaking to have to turn down incredible writing, just because it won’t fit with what we’re already doing.
ZM: In your own writing, is the form of an idea always clear before you put pen to paper?
PM: It really varies. Sometimes I start with a theme, item or action and just freewrite; something will often reveal itself as I go that then becomes the focus for the piece as I redraft. Other times (usually first thing in the morning) I have a very clear story/narrative in mind and can sit down to type out a first draft in one go that isn’t that different to the finished product after it’s been edited.
ZM: Do you find common themes in your writing?
PM: Yes, I keep returning to loss, whether that be loss of love, life or happiness. Also challenging relationships, which can often cross over with the theme of loss.
ZM: Where do you like to work?
PM: I have a writing room at home, which I recently renovated to be a little more comfortable. There were piles of books all around me, which inspired a story about a hoarder being consumed by her beloved literature. It ended up having quite a bloody ending, so after writing, I decided it was time to put some shelves up and paint the walls.
In the summer I also write at the top of my garden, in a studio that overlooks St Michael’s Mount. It’s a beautiful, light space, but as winter descends, it becomes too cold to be in there, so I decamp back to the house.
ZM: What are you working on at the moment?
PM: I’m finishing off a collection of interlinked short stories that explores the fallout resulting from a five-year-old boy winning £1 million on the premium bonds in 1950s Paisley, Scotland. It’s based on a true story!
The Campbell family receive a knock at the door of their home – one of their young twins has won on a premium bond bought for him by his grandmother. The money will be held in trust until he turns sixteen, but can’t be shared with his twin, or spent by anyone else in the family. Resultant rifts and trauma tear the family apart, revealing their darkest secrets and the generational trauma this causes is then followed through time to the present day.
By fusing a novel with a story collection, I hope readers will enjoy reading the stories both individually and together.
As I mentioned earlier, this is all while working on my PhD, so it’s taken a little longer than I would have liked to get it to where it is now, but I’m very happy with it and excited to get it out there. I’m also working to publish a print anthology of short stories for Inkfish Magazine that focuses on Cornwall. It will be called Cornwall, In Short and should be available to buy at the end of 2024.
ZM: Do you have any favourite writers? What are you reading right now?
PM: I’m a big fan of F. Scott Fitzgerald and often find myself picking up one of his collections to read for the hundredth time. I love Hemingway’s writing, though I’m not such a lover of him as a person. I find I often need to really sit on one of his stories to fully understand it. I could read Katherine Mansfield and Daphne Du Maurier all day long and love their prose a little more each time I do. Anything George Saunders publishes thrills me and I think we’re lucky to have him writing for us. Alice Munro produced some beautiful collections that I keep revisiting and Margaret Atwood is of course a master of the craft.
Currently I’m reading House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. It’s a fascinating story presented in a revolutionary manner. A prime example of ergodic literature, it’s perfect for me to be considering as part of my PhD. The best thing is though, I’m really enjoying it as well as getting a lot out of it.
ZM: Do you perform your own work?
PM: Once a month, I meet with some fantastic friends from my MA course to discuss a piece we’ve each written over the past 30 days. We share it online beforehand, but begin the session by reading it aloud to each other. This performance of the work allows us to understand it much better and I’m always surprised at the deeper meaning revealed simply by doing this, often even in my own writing.
ZM: How did you get involved in the Penzance Literary festival?
PM: I moved to Cornwall in early 2021, about a fifty-minute walk along the seafront from Penzance. The following year I became aware of the Litfest and, not knowing what to expect, went along to a few sessions that were taking place. I was blown away. The event, though organised and run completely by volunteers, is incredibly professional. The authors it attracts are second to none and the series of workshops really helped me with my own writing. I knew I had to get involved somehow.
I sent an email to the organisation committee offering to help in any way I could and got an email back asking me to meet for an interview. I’m now going into my third year of helping to organise it as part of the team of eight and am excited to get cracking with it again soon. If you fancy a fun literary trip to a beautiful corner of the country in July, trains to Penzance leave from Paddington and you won’t be disappointed. Keep an eye on www.pzlitfest.co.uk for details of this year’s lineup.