CONTRIBUTOR SPOTLIGHT:
INTERVIEW WITH ABIGAIL CARLSON
Rappahannock Review Fiction Editors: We love how you brought to light the selkie myth, a story few know of outside of Ireland and Scotland. What drew you to selkie folklore? How did you come up with the idea to humanize the skin of the selkie?
Abigail Dobbins Carlson: I have loved folktales and fairy stories for most of my life, and I’m really drawn to selkie stories in particular for sure. There’s so much in these stories about roles often expected of women—the idea that a Man of some form will appear and then a part of you will be hidden away forever so you can be his wife and mother his children without any of the life that brought you joy before. It seems like such a cruel thing, to want someone only when she can’t be complete. The humanization of the selkie’s skin came from that yearning for an unlimited, complete self—I always preferred the stories of the selkie wife who made it back to the water again, even violently. It reflects that the “story” with the fisherman is ultimately only a part of the selkie wife’s life, and that she can make it back to the ocean and recover herself. There’s trauma, but there’s the possibility of recovery, too.
RR: We’re interested in the lack of quotation marks, which gave the story a more ethereal, mystical quality. What led you to that style?
AC: I definitely wanted that mythical effect! The narrator’s voice was the strongest part of this to me, and she was recounting her own story—I didn’t want to pull away from the same voice that described everything else, even when she was speaking for what someone else said.
RR: Do you often draw from myths and folklore for your other stories? Which are your favorites?
AC: I do—I love water women myths. I think there’s a lot of fascinating emotional underpinnings to folklore and I’ve drawn from stories about undines, unicorns, and talking wolves in some of my other pieces. I’m really interested in the modern mythic, in fairy tales that happen in everyday settings. Because is the pressure we put on young girls REALLY that much different from cutting antlers from a daughter’s head before the world can hurt her first?
RR: We understand you’re working on a novel, Tears Into the Sea. What can you share with us about that project?
AC: Ah, that was actually my senior thesis from my undergrad at Denison University! In the form it took back then, it was actually also related to some selkie mythos, but over the years it’s compressed down to a novel about familial trauma and the relationship between a mother and daughter.
RR: If you could transform into any creature, land or sea, what would you choose to change into and why?
AC: Hmm, tough question… Right now I would have to say a goose—the humans of the bird world! Plus the power of flight, and who doesn’t love a bird that can hiss?
Abigail Carlson’s work in Issue 8.3: