For author Lisa Alward, an image is key to the story

Lisa Alward always begins her stories with an image.

The titular story in her latest collection of short stories, Cocktail, comes from a real line she heard from her mother when Alward was growing up: “The problem with parties is people don’t drink enough.”

“My real mother said that to me once,” says Alward. “I laughed because I thought it was so ridiculous but also kind of true. And so that was kind of the germ of that story.”

Alward was in Halifax last week for the AfterWords Literary Festival. She spoke at the festival’s Now We Are Six event, celebrating AfterWords’ sixth anniversary.

Alward published her short story collection Cocktail in 2023. The book is the winner of
the 27th Danuta Gleed Literary Award. It was also long-listed for the 2024 Carol Shields
Prize for Fiction.

Originally from Halifax, Alward completed post-secondary studies at the University of
Toronto and Saint Mary’s University in London, England. She spent most of her career
in book publishing in Toronto, which, for her, was “plan B.” Her plan A was always to be
a writer, her rebirth happened when she turned 50, and she began to write seriously.

Christmas delivery

In Little Girl Lost, one of the stories in Cocktail, Alward begins with an image from a
story her father had told her. He had been delivering Christmas gifts to artist Miller
Britain, only instead to find the artist’s young daughter alone in the house.

“My father remembers being home for Christmas and his mother saying, ‘Could you drive this box of presents out to Miller’s house?’ ” she said. In the retelling of the story, the house was really “decrepit and needed repair and … (with) this eight or nine-year-old girl all by herself in this huge mansion in the country.”

Alward says starting with an image helps build her stories outward. An image builds plausibility and lets her make the ordinary magical.

Alward says drawing out a story from an initial image can be challenging. She compares beginning a story to pulling threads. Sometimes you can pull hard on one particular thread and nothing will come of it but if you change to a different thread the rest will follow.

The stories in Cocktail are not connected, not allegorical, nor are they written around
themes, she says. Alward writes about characters and tries to build believable characters that her audience can understand and feel for.

Alward hopes her writings will elicit emotion in her readers.

“I just really want [readers] to enjoy the characters and I would say also to feel empathy for the characters because not all my characters are the most likable or most morally upright figures,” she said.

She says when she was writing Cocktail she would show her text to friends and colleagues and ask if it made them feel anything.

“That to me is very important as a writer … that [readers] have an emotional response.”

Alward is making up for lost time with her writing career. Her new book is already
keeping her up at night. She’s been reading Alice Munro’s early work to re-examine the writer following the recent revelations about the abuse of Munro’s daughter.

Alward lives in Fredericton, N.B., with her husband.