Community—Human & Ecological:
Courtney Bill interviews
Katherine J Barrett

Katherine J Barrett

Fellow summer issue #231 contributor Courtney Bill talks with Katherine J Barrett about Barrett's short story, “Half.” They discuss the rhythm of a short story, the trivialization of disordered eating, and the misunderstood.

Read an excerpt of “Half” here.

 

Katherine J Barrett lives in rural Nova Scotia / Mi’kma’ki. Her work has appeared in The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, Humber Literary Review, Quiddity International Literary Journal and many other publications. Her chapbook, a disobedient gathering, was published in 2024. Katherine is the founder of Understorey Magazine and managing editor of Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture and Social Justice.


“Half” focuses on an unnamed character’s tortured relationship with food, but there is a springiness to the prose, a levity, a breeze. What do you like to play with in writing?

I’ve been reading and writing a lot of poetry lately and enjoying the play of words and phrases. How much can you say in a handful of words? Short stories have more in common with poetry than with novels in that respect.

One of my favourite things about this story are the many sentences that internally resist themselves. For example, the doctor “asking too many questions and not nearly enough,” the protagonist who “has succeeded and [...] failed beyond all measure,” the diagnosis for “what she does and does not do. For what she feels and does not feel.” How did this pattern emerge for you? Do you see it as reflecting the protagonist’s inner conflict?

It definitely stems from inner conflict and from how we, as a society, view eating disorders. The narrator resists “having,” much less “identifying” as having a disorder, even as she is utterly consumed by her relationship with food. I hope this reflects the complexity of eating disorders and, at the same time, how they can be trivialized, reduced to some naive desire to look like a model: a disorder for the duped. These views can be convincing enough that we fail to see the depth. It’s just about food—and not at all about food. Why does the condition resist itself? Why does the narrator resist herself? Why do the words resist themselves?

Each section ends with a variation of the line “She prescribes herself…” From sit-ups to deep breaths to “a small untruth” (beautiful!), these lines aid the story’s bite-sized rhythm. What do you prescribe yourself when writing?

I can tell you what I don’t prescribe: numbers. I don’t insist on ten pages per day or ten submissions per month. Writing doesn’t work that way for me—and I have many other commitments. But I do push myself. I guess that’s what I prescribe: push myself to try a new voice, a new style, a new genre and, of course, to read a new author.

I noticed a pattern of descriptions revolving around colour, e.g. “the deep red stain of morning,” “the yellow cavity of lunch,” and “the day is all colours of ruin.” How does colour function for you in this story? How do you make meaning out of colour?

The protagonist lives in a tasteless world. She does not allow herself, or feels she does not deserve, to taste what she eats. At the same time, she constantly rates her actions: Has she been “good” today? She compensates for taste deprivation by exaggerating other perceptions (a sort of synesthesia) while also using the colours as a rating system. Besides all that, it was fun to write.

This story is host to various unnamed characters—the Team Lead, the racquetball player, the roommate, and the mother—who all inform the protagonist’s relationship with food. I see from your website that your writing often focuses on community. What are your thoughts on community in fiction, both within the stories we write and for ourselves as writers?

Community will save us when everything goes south! Seriously, I think community, defined in many ways, is the bedrock of our lives and therefore our stories. In “Half,” the narrator’s relationship with food keeps her apart from her small community but, again, it is and is not about food. She craves connection. We all do. I also write a lot about our non-human communities: plants, animals, ecosystems. That’s a challenge—how to write without being didactic or twee—but vital. It’s absolutely vital to give the land and our non-human kin a voice. And to listen.

Do you have any active/upcoming projects that you feel excited about right now?

Speaking of communities, I published a chapbook last year about misunderstood plants, aka weeds: Creeping Charlie, crabgrass, dandelion, and the like. That was part of a collective publishing project here in Lunenburg where all the writers helped each other with creation, editing, design, binding, and promotion. I’m now expanding that work into a larger collection of the misunderstood: pillbugs, June bugs, rats.... I’m also collecting my short stories into a cohesive whole tentatively titled Shore. Publishing “Half” in The Malahat Review has been a big boost for that project. Thank you TMR—and thank you Courtney for these inspiring questions!

 

Courtney Bill

Courtney Bill