Introducing: Emma Timpany

Emma Timpany is the author of Fairlight Books’ novella Travelling in the Dark. 

Emma was born in Dunedin, New Zealand but moved to the UK in the 1990s, after receiving a BA degree in Anthropology from the University of Otago.

Emma has already published two short story collections – Over the Dam (Red Squirrel Press 2015) and The Lost of Syros (Cultured Llama Press 2015). She has also co-edited a short story collection Cornish Short Stories: A Collection of Contemporary Cornish Writing (The History Press 2018). A winner of many short story competitions, Emma is a member of the Society of Authors, the New Zealand Society of Authors, and the Katherine Mansfield Society.

Emma is married and has two teenage daughters. She lives in Cornwall.

A short Q&A with Emma Timpany can be seen below:

How did you start writing?

I started writing a regular diary from the age of eleven. It was in those pages that I began experimenting with words. I mainly wrote poetry, as it was my first love, as well as bits of prose. I attended my first creative writing class, a summer school, while I was a student at the University of Otago. After graduating, I continued going to evening classes in London and Cornwall and eventually my first short story was published in 2010. So from the beginning to my first publication was a slow process which gradually unfolded over almost thirty years.

Did you always want to be a writer?

Yes, but for a long time I didn’t think that it was possible. There was so much I didn’t know and I had little time to put into it. When my children started school, I began to have regular time to write and joined a local writers’ group. All my life I’ve loved reading fiction, and I strongly feel it’s important for writers to be readers.

You have experience in editing other people’s work. Do you think this helps you in your own writing?

It’s something I’ve only started doing relatively recently, working as an editor on Cornish Short Stories: A Collection of Contemporary Cornish Writing. I enjoyed it a great deal because it’s very collaborative. The writers I’ve worked with are usually pleased to have close attention paid to their work and are happy to make changes they see as improvements. I know I feel exactly the same way when my own work is sympathetically edited.

The general editing notes I make are always suggestions – there’s no onus on the writer to accept them if they don’t want to – and alongside these I pick up on any typos or unintended errors.

It’s also helped me understand that my own writing heart lies in the creative act rather than in editing others’ work.

Read our full interview with Emma here.

For more information, visit Emma’s blog.