SOURCE: “The Practice of the Craft: A Conversation with John Metcalf,” in Queen's Quarterly, Vol. 82, No. 3, Autumn, 1975, pp. 402–24.

In the following interview, Metcalf discusses the short story genre, his literary criticism, and the influences on his work.

Born in 1938 in England, John Metcalf came to Canada a year after he graduated from Bristol University. He is the editor of several anthologies of short stories, and his own short stories have appeared in a wide range of anthologies and literary magazines. He is also the author of three books: a collection of short fiction, The Lady Who Sold Furniture (1970), the title piece of which is a highly praised novella; a novel, Going Down Slow (1972); and a recently published collection of short stories, The Teeth of My Father (1975), which marks a stylistic and thematic departure from Metcalf's previous fiction. The conversation that follows took place on the evening of 6 February...