GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS SHORT STORY PRIZE 2025/26
Ten questions with GBP Short Story Prize author Kinneson Lalor
HI THERE KINNESON. CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR GBP SHORT STORY PRIZE LONGLISTING, WITH ‘CLEAN SHEET’. CAN YOU PLEASE INTRODUCE IT TO OUR READERS, IN TWO OR THREE SENTENCES?
It’s the story of a woman in the middle of a divorce grappling with questions around identity and desire.
AND CAN YOU ALSO TELL US MORE ABOUT THE INSPIRATION FOR ‘CLEAN SHEET’, AS WELL AS THE WRITING OF IT?
I did a workshop with Robert Olen Butler at the International Conference for the Short Story in English in Killarney, Ireland in June 2025 and he talked about writing from your ‘white hot centre’ then gave us a series of prompts. We had to write the first prompt (something about a character waking up from a dream and looking at all the objects in a room) to exhaustion before looking at what the second one was.
I had no idea where the story would go or what it would become. I just wrote to the prompt each time, writing until I could write no more, writing from that white hot centre. I had no control over it at all. Which was sort of terrifying, but also sort of freeing. I’d been thinking a lot about consent, and found the story circling around the idea.
TELL US ABOUT CONSENT IN THIS STORY. YOU SAY, “CONSENT HAS TO BE RECEIVED CONSTANTLY… IT WAS A LINE I TAUGHT TO BOYS AND GIRLS. IT WAS NOT A LINE I LIVED.” I KNOW THAT SPEAKS FOR ITSELF – BUT WHAT MADE YOU WANT TO EXPLORE THIS?
The short answer is: living in a woman’s body.
A slightly longer answer is that few years ago I was teaching a PSHE class about consent to a group of year 9 students, and we watched that scene from Twilight where Bella wakes up and finds Edward in her room watching her sleep. As a class, we talked about what might be wrong with that scenario. The materials and class were great, and I feel like those kids are going to have a much better idea of what consent looks like when they need to start thinking about it, but I had none of those conversations when I was a teenager. And this idea of ‘yes’ goes beyond sex. How often do we go along with things we don’t want just because we’ve been conditioned to please or make things smooth for others? How often do we feel powerless to say no? I’m not sure what it feels like for other people, but for me saying no is a constant negotiation between who I’ve been told I should be and who I actually am. It’s not frictionless, and it can be exhausting.
AND CAN YOU TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT WANTING TO LOOK ‘WELL’, AND WANTING TO LOOK ‘GOOD’?
These are strange, slippery words. ‘Well’ implies some sort of internal health, but is often used when commenting on a woman’s appearance. As women we are also taught to ‘do well’, to ‘be good’. But to ‘look good’ is not necessarily to inhabit the same sort of ‘good’ expected in our behaviour. It is a different sort of ‘good’. Yet all of these things are observed, monitored. We inhabit dual meanings. We live in our bodies, but see ourselves from the outside because the outsider perspective is introjected. The woman in the story is struggling with these meanings, trying to find what feels right for her. It’s a constant negotiation. It’s not frictionless.
OK! ON TO YOUR WRITING MORE GENERALLY. HOW LONG HAVE YOU BEEN WRITING? DO YOU HAVE A DAILY ROUTINE? ARE YOU WORKING ON SOMETHING AT THE MOMENT?
After I finished my PhD, I had a bit of a ‘what now?’ crisis so I applied to the MSt in Creative Writing at Cambridge, and I think that’s when I started really writing. But I started the course just before COVID and so my writing routine was cemented in that strange period of isolation and Zoom workshops.
I write almost every day. I typically write first thing in the morning. I like to be connected to the part of me that was dreaming, rather than the part that is thinking of the fifty million things they still haven’t done.
I’m currently working on my novel about the later years of Ada Lovelace’s short life when she was trying to find a foothold in the male-dominated world of Victorian science while battling ill-health and the pressures of being a mother, a wife, and Byron’s daughter. But it’s written from the perspective of her maid who has her own scientific ambitions, but another set of battles she must fight.
WHAT’S THE BEST WRITING TIP YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED, AND WHAT’S THE WORST?
Best: ‘if you write, call yourself a writer’ because there’s something empowering about owning it.
Worst: ‘if you write, call yourself a writer’ because you’ll never stop answering questions from colleagues and friends about how the novel is going.
HABITS, TOO. WHAT’S A BAD WRITING HABIT YOU HAVE – AND GIVE US ONE THAT’S PROVED FAIRLY USEFUL.
Bad writing habit: owning a smartphone.
Useful writing habit: putting my smartphone on a very high shelf in a cupboard where I cannot see it and where I will forget where it is.
CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT SOME AUTHORS YOU ADMIRE, AS WELL AS SOME THAT YOU ARE INFLUENCED BY?
I’m obsessed with Anne Carson. This story in particular was influenced by Chris Kraus, Maggie Nelson, and Rachel Cusk. And, of course, the book that the story mentions: Javier Marías’s Your Face Tomorrow, that constantly rolls and folds in on itself. I really admire Claire-Louise Bennett, Maggie O’Farrell, Shirley Hazzard, Emma Donoghue.
AND WHAT ARE YOU READING AT THE MOMENT?
I just finished Solvej Balle’s On The Calculation of Volume I and have just started Rebecca Perry’s May We Feed The King. I like these books because they are slippery books, books that make me think about connection and time and whose stories we hear and remember.
“THE HORROR OF THE BLANK PAGE.” DO YOU FEEL THAT HORROR? AND HOW WOULD YOU ADVISE OTHER WRITERS TO GET BEYOND IT?
I am on the nth draft of my novel, so I long for the blank page.
But just write. Start writing and write through whatever it is you need to to get to your burning core.
Or don’t write. Walk around with characters and ideas in your head until they feel part of your burning core.
When you do write, write from your burning core.
Write to burn down the thing you want to change.
KINNESON LALOR moved to the UK from Australia to do a PhD in Physics at the University of Cambridge and followed it with a MSt in Creative Writing from the same institution. Her work has been anthologised in places like Best Microfiction, and has won or been shortlisted for various awards including the Bath Flash Fiction Award. She lives in Cambridge with a lot of chickens and teaches maths and computer science (mostly to children but sometimes to chickens). She is represented by Nelle Andrew at RML and is currently working on a novel about Ada Lovelace.