Eva Wyles’ Shelf Life
Eva Wyles, is a writer from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her debut short story collection, Deliverywoman, comes out with Influx Press in April 2025. She currently lives in London.
How and where are you?
I’m good, if a little tired. I’ve done my writing for the day and am about to go and swim some lengths. I’m in a small town in Finland on a writing residency that’s taking place in three lots of one-month stints – this is my second. It’s been beautiful in the snow, but today it’s misty and the snow has melted after last night’s rain.
What are you reading at the moment?
I’m about halfway through The Party by Tessa Hadley. It’s a joy.
And, of course, watching or listening to, or otherwise consuming?
Last night I watched Moominland Tales: The Life of Tove Jansson. I also just finished listening to the audiobook of Evenings and Weekends by Oisín McKenna – the character Phil lives not far from where I live in London, so it was a funny comfort to hear the scenes in the Big Tesco on Old Kent Road. Music-wise, I have a few writing playlists I’ve collated. They have all sorts in them – Portico Quartet, René Aubry, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Hikaru Hayashi, Emahoy Tsege Mariam Gebru, Group Listening, to name a few.
I went to the Larissa Sansour exhibition at the Amos Rex in Helsinki on my way back to the residency – anyone who can should go and see it. Sansour uses speculative and science fiction in her video work to explore dimensions of Palestinian grief and resistance. It was completely hypnotic, haunting, and powerful.
What did you read as a child?
The first thing that comes to mind was this ghoulish and totally addictive series called The Lady Jane Mysteries. I remember reading four back to back on a family holiday down on the wild west coast of New Zealand. The Cherub series by Rob Muchamore was another one, and The Roman Mysteries by Caroline Lawrence. I also loved Clarice Bean by Lauren Child, and all of Child’s other books. When I was really small, it was Elsie Piddock Skips In Her Sleep by Eleanor Farjeon and A Lion in the Meadow by Margaret Mahy.
Which books and/or writers have inspired and influenced you, and what have you learnt from them?
Gosh, so many. Probably everything I’ve ever read, would be the honest answer. I will and will always think about Temporary by Hilary Leichter – everything feels possible with Leichter’s imagination and careful attention. That was probably the first book I read that made me realise something absurdist can be just as emotionally honest as something realist. There are a few short story collections that taught me a lot about how stories can bounce off one another – not with any formal connection, but with a mood – to create a world of their own. Bug Week by Airini Beautrais and I Hold a Wolf by the Ears by Laura Van Den Berg are two of my favourite examples of this. I used to be afraid of having strange stories sitting next to ‘normal’ ones, but now I think it just makes sense. Normal things can be bizarre if you look at them long enough, and then the extremely bizarre can start to feel normal over time.
What’s the worst review you’ve ever received?
I’m lucky to be largely unknown, so am yet to receive any scathing reviews. Some memorable feedback I received to a journal submission once though was that a story was “too slippery.” It was very useful feedback, and one of those rare and lucky instances where the editor personally responded. My writing was slippery back then, sometimes still is.
Tell us a little about your creative process.
My creative process is always changing, and it tends to be far more instinctive than planned. I don’t have a specific time of day I write – sometimes I’m a morning person, like today, but often I’m not. The only constant is that I do my best to write every day. At this residency I do a minimum of 1,500 new words, but back in London, I write as best I can between work and everything else.
It’s a total collage of efforts – I jot down scenes on my phone while walking or when I’m trying to go to sleep. Sometimes I write by hand, or in bed, or go to libraries. Beyond that, it’s pretty elusive to me. I’d like to say it’s this very romantic process, but a lot of the time I write my first drafts nonsensically, with the visuals coming first and the plot often coming last, followed by a very reliable trail of doubt, copious rewrites, and more doubt. Then one day a final form emerges. It only feels like magic one percent of the time.
How has your experience of the publishing industry been?
It’s been largely wonderful given the discomfort in switching modes from private to public. A lot of this is down to the people I’ve been lucky to work with. I spent about four years chipping away at the manuscript for Deliverywoman before I threw my hat in the ring and cold emailed two agents I admired. One of them never replied, one of them did, and a week later we were meeting in London for tea. I couldn’t believe it. Then came a big up-and-down few months while Kirsty pitched to publishers, and one day an email came in saying that Influx Press was interested. I’m pretty sure I told my computer to f*** off. Gary has been brilliant to work with. There’s a lot I’m still learning, and I’m glad to be learning it under his and Kirsty’s guidance.
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Writing-related advice would be a quote by Sarah Lyn Rogers I often return to – “If you can identify elements of your writing as generous, my hunch is that your writing is communicating, not just expressing. To me, writing feels generous when something about it functions as a gift, whether that gift is ‘You are not the only one who feels this thing no one talks about’ or ‘I am playing with form to help you better understand an experience that isn’t well served by other narrative structures.’” I think there’s often a tendency, especially when starting off, to simply want to express yourself in writing. It’s a lot of fun to write what feels good, it’s another thing entirely to work on something long enough that it belongs to the reader just as much as the author. Non-writing-related advice would be the overused but ever-important “don’t burn the candle at both ends.”
What are you working on right now?
I’m working on a novel, much to my dismay. I have a definite affinity for reading and writing short stories, and have always said I wouldn’t attempt a novel until I had an idea that was big enough. I had a few other short form projects on the backburner that I thought I would move onto next, but last year I had a dream I couldn’t shake, and it brought about all these other ideas, and I found it kind of snowballing into these scenes and characters I realised were the starting ingredients for what I’m trying to write right now. It’s making my head explode a bit.