Trina asked Julia Glass:

I've been told novellas are the kiss of death. Did you write the Three Junes with a unifying device in mind? Or did you publish them as separate stories, e.g., in The New Yorker? Do you plan to write any more? I was really thrilled to find out that you were the judge in the Faulkner competition for novellas - thank you for giving mine an honorable mention:)

Julia Glass You have asked a number of questions here! All interesting, however. First, "Three Junes" is decidedly a novel, though it did grow from a short story to a novella ("Collies," which won the Faulkner novella award, thus qualifying me to be a judge in a later year) and finally became a novel, of which "Collies" is the first part. You could still read that first part on its own, but I wouldn't say the same of the novel's second and third parts, which are fully interdependent with each other and with the first part. I couldn't conceive of their being published individually (and btw, I have never published anything in "The New Yorker," much as I would love to).

As for novellas being the "kiss of death," that's a harsh statement! If you mean they're hard to publish, that may be so--although an increasing number of online venues, including byliner.com and Kindle Singles, now offer opportunities for writers to e-publish (and be well paid for) pieces that are longer than stories and shorter than full-blown books. And I have seen debut books that are collections of novellas or a novella grouped with stories. Among my favorite authors are two masters of the novella: JIm Harrison and Rachel Ingalls. Their best books are trios of novellas, and that is how I discovered them both. I just read another magnificent trio of novellas, "The Liar's Wife," Mary Gordon's latest. I find that there is a very particular pleasure to reading a novella. It's like taking a three-day weekend trip instead of a two-week vacation. So if the novella is your favorite form as a writer, don't despair.

The closest I've come to writing a novella since "Collies" is my very long story "Chairs in the Rafters," which was originally published on dailylit.com and is now a Kindle Single. I thought I was writing a short story--rare for me now--but it became a bit ungainly at 40 or so pages. It's an inconvenient length I call a "novellini." I'd like to try for a few more, but in general I'm a card-carrying novelist.

Good luck with your own writing, Trina!

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