Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction

Ploughshares is pleased to present Molly Aitken with the thirteenth annual Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction for her story “Thresholds,” which appeared in the Spring 2023 issue of Ploughshares. The $2,500 prize, sponsored by acclaimed writer, guest editor, longtime patron, and member of the Ploughshares advisory board, Alice Hoffman, honors a short story published in the journal in the previous year.

Hoffman writes, “Molly Aitken’s extraordinary story ‘Thresholds’ is a gift to the reader. In a world of grief and sorrow, the mysteries of being human are explored by a writer of immense talent and heart. I can’t wait to read whatever she writes next.”

 

 

What was the inspiration for “Thresholds”?

Many years ago—when I was about twenty-four—on a visit to Portugal, I was wandering down Rua Santa Catarina in Porto city. I was in love. I was sticky with the heat—my Irish innards tend to gently stew in any temperature over seventy-five. I was sweating and happy, my hand grasped in someone else’s, contemplating a fish supper, accompanied by tiny glasses of port wine, when I saw her, “a girl, no more than eighteen, her unbuttoned dress flapping wide and a baby drinking from her breast.” I had never seen anything I thought so beautiful or free. She was laughing, her step was light, bouncy even. She didn’t see me, and that was what was so perfect. I never forgot the image of her.

Some years later, I lost a pregnancy halfway through. The grief was immense, but I thought of her, and the two feelings began to meld, that free, innocent beauty of motherhood before you have it, and the immense pain and love of losing it. These feelings, and the image of the girl, are what propelled the story into being.

 

 

What did you discover or grapple with while writing the story?

I began writing “Thresholds” in first person. Up until this point, I’d never written anything that I wasn’t vastly critical of in third or even second person. I have always had this impression that only the most intelligent writers can pull off third or omniscient narration, only the brightest minds can see the world so broadly, and I could never class myself among these writers. I left it to the likes of Tessa Hadley, Lauren Groff, Leo Tolstoy, and Hilary Mantel. But the story stagnated. I knew there was something at its core, but first person couldn’t access it. The heart of the story wasn’t yet beating. I line-edited it, but it was like dressing a dead body for their funeral in a party outfit bought for them by someone else. It wasn’t honest. It wasn’t real, and it certainly wasn’t alive. I left the story languishing for a year, until I gave it one last try. I was sleep-deprived, my one-year-old going through his hundredth sleep regression. I think this is what gave me the boldness to try the feared third person. Just like that, the story worked. With relative ease, I had re-animated the dead.

 

 

What authors or works have had the largest impact on your writing?

I read so many writers as a child and teenager who formed me as a person, but the author who formed me most as a writer is Edna O’Brien. She showed me that I could write about being a woman in Ireland with fierceness and honesty. I was twenty when I read her novel The Country Girls. The writing captivated me. It is clear yet lyrical and drenched with emotion, but it was O’Brien’s bravery in writing about female sexuality in 1960s Ireland that emboldened me to do the same. As a child, even in the early 2000s, I was still living with the remnants of that suppression of women, and O’Brien showed me a way to express my outrage. She showed me it could be done with flair and verve. I, of course, will never write like her, but her bravery continues to inspire and guide my writing.

 

 

What risks do you take with your writing that have paid off?

“Thresholds” felt like a very risky story because of how I deal with time. On almost every page we move between the past and the present. For me, experimenting with time makes the act of writing more exciting. It makes me feel that within the bounds of fiction, I can do anything. In the first version of the story, I wrote the chronology all in the present, without flashbacks. Any necessary backstory I supplied through dialogue. The story felt dry and lifeless. It felt unrealistic for a character who was so reflective to tell her pain and history to someone she didn’t know. Instead, I separated past and present into sections that I moved about until the story felt as if the emotional chronology made sense … even if it was no longer chronological.

 

 

Do you have any advice for new or aspiring writers? What’s the most valuable piece of writing advice you received?

Years ago, I found myself in the kitchen of Fay Weldon, author of The Lives and Loves of a She-Devil, who sadly passed away in January 2023. Her table was littered with the remnants of breakfast and the pages of the novel I was writing. I was studying for an MFA in creative writing at Bath Spa University, and feedback from Fay happened at her house, which was itself a thing out of one of her books: a sprawling garden, a circular room lined with books, and friends of hers appearing at random in brilliantly loud outfits. I told Fay I was crippled by fear of getting facts wrong and spent all my time researching. “Molly,” she said, “there is a well of knowledge we all have access to. When you need the information, it will be there for you. Now go off and write.”

 

 

What writing (or reading!) are you working on now?

I have just finished writing a novel, Bright I Burn. It’s the story of Alice Kyteler, a woman who lived in thirteenth-century Ireland. The first time I heard about Alice, I was ten years old, in the classroom, and my teacher, who had clearly had hopes of a career on the stage, vividly described a woman so terrible, so greedy, so violent, that she was the first person in Ireland to be formally accused of witchcraft. I was terrified, but years later, I revisited her story and found instead of this fearful monster, a woman who, amid Ireland’s wars and her own personal strife, became one of the country’s richest and most powerful people.

And one day, as I sat at my desk, her voice whispered in my ear: “Are you afraid of me?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Me too,” she said.

I picked up my pen and I have only just put it down.