The Short of It: M.V. Feehan & In the Shadow of Crows

For Short Story Month, we’re spotlighting one author every Wednesday with a mini interview and excerpt from their short story collection.

All Lit Up: Tell us about your collection in a few short sentences.

M.V. Feehan: The idea for this collection began years ago: the little poem we’d recite on seeing the birds, the prophecies foretold in their numbers, and the closeness of nature in coastal towns seemed fertile ground for literary seed. As they work their way through the maze, looking for signs and hoping for friendship, the people in these tales count the crows that fly a little closer to heaven than they do.

ALU: What do you love about the short story form?

MVF: I love that it is often the forum for small epiphanies that are not necessarily plot driven. Something about that feels very honest to me. The shortness of the form was always a plus on lunch and coffee breaks when I did the 9 to 5. Like most literature, it offers the secret truths about experience, except in the short story, it’s pared down to a more essential offering—like poetry.

ALU: Who are some of your favourite short story writers?

MVF: Alice Munro, Edna O’Brien, Claire Keegan,Tobias Wolff, Laurie Moore, Mavis Gallant, John Cheever, Hugh Garner, & Alistair MacLeod…to name a few.

ALU: What are three things on your writing desk/place of writing?

MVF: A mess of papers, a few books and three photos: my mother’s prayer card with her picture, my son at four, and my mother-in-law.

I slit open my mail and erased the first task from the list she’d left the night before. The heavy doors downstairs closed and slow footfalls ascended the steps to my floor. Rolling my chair away from the window and toward my desk, I sat again and closed the email screen. I imagined Mr. Caine face down on the stretch of shore we called The Cliffs though Anna hadn’t indicated where on the beach he was found. He has passed through the door to the other side beneath the high water mark of St. Anne’s beach. I touched my lips and thought of O’Neill and the man’s elbow I brushed last night. There was something in the fellow’s gait as he left, freewheeling and happy as he clipped along the street—as boyish as Mr. Caine before the kiss. There was nothing of O’Neill’s ghost that shadowed him to the street though I did notice that he adjusted his hat in the window’s reflection before entering the pub.

Born in Nova Scotia, M.V. Feehan has lived, studied and worked in many cities and towns throughout Canada, the United States and Ireland including Inverness, Montreal, Edmonton, Vancouver Island, Boston, Providence, and Dublin. She spent years as a reader and editor for the Vancouver literary journal Room and was a member and reader for the Providence Writer’s Circle Annual Publication. Her work has appeared in Canadian, American and European journals and in the anthology Echoes of Elizabeth Bishop. In past years she has received the Budge Wilson Award, The Hedy Zimra Scholarship and the E. Bishop Centenarian Fiction Award. She completed her MPhil in Creative Writing at Trinity College Dublin in May 2021 and received the Individual Arts Grant from NSArts in 2022. She also received a place in the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program to complete her first collection of short stories In the Shadow of Crows. Verna currently resides on Cape Breton Island with her husband and son.

Thanks to M.V. for answering our questions, and to Baraka Books for the excerpt from In the Shadow of Crows, available here on All Lit Up or from your local indie bookseller.

Check out our whole month of The Short of It features here.