Anthony Doerr, "Save-A-Lot"

It’s December 3. Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See, would give a raccoon a donut if it looked at him right.

How would you describe your story?

ANTHONY DOERR: It’s about a baby raccoon, opioid addiction, and how a connection to animals can heal human wounds.

When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?

AD: A couple of years ago, the painter Linden Frederick asked if I’d write a story inspired by a painting he’d made. (You can see the painting here.) As with pretty much every request I get to write a story, I said yes in a fit of enthusiasm, wrote a few sentences, then realized the project would take me months longer than I expected.

(You can read about the book Linden put together here.)

What kind of research went into this story?

AD: My wife was working on affordable housing issues here in Boise, and we were reading Evicted by Matthew Desmond, and the father of a friend in Indiana (the painter Mitch Raney) was taking care of an orphaned raccoon, and my sons got a little puppy, and I was experiencing some back pain for which I was prescribed opioids—so, as usually happens, concerns and interests in my real life seeped into the fiction I was writing.

What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can’t?

AD: Short stories are special because they offer infinite possibilities in a form that a writer doesn’t have to commit years of her life to execute. Compression, verve, speed, humor—when I take a break from novel-writing to write a story, what I feel most is an urge to play. Suddenly I’m only investing months, rather than years, into a piece of writing, and so I tell myself: if the whole thing caves in, if I can’t finish it, if I never make a cent doing this, if no one likes it, that’s okay.

Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?

AD: www.anthonydoerr.com, I guess? Better yet, forget about me, go to a library or an independent bookshop and get your hands on some Virginia Woolf.

What’s the best gift you’ve ever been given?

AD: My kids.

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