Clare Wigfall was born in Greenwich during the summer of 1976. She grew up in Berkeley, California and London. In 2008 she won the internationally acclaimed BBC National Short Story Award for The Numbers, one of the stories from her debut short story collection The Loudest Sound and Nothing. She currently lives in Berlin.

Mark Thwaite: What gave you the ideas for the stories in The Loudest Sound and Nothing?

Clare Wigfall: These stories have come from all over the place. The title story, for instance, was inspired by a piece of music by the Australian trio Dirty Three. Listening to it, I saw a woman alone on a cliff top who became Aureline. A Durer engraving of Adam and Eve triggered the chain of thought that led to The Party's Just Getting Started – I began to imagine Adam as a modern-day house husband, consigned to changing nappies and so forth thanks to Eve's lapse. Free was a half-dream which I woke from and then scribbled notes for in bed. A line in a history book talking of how the Parisians ate the zoo animals during the 1870 siege of Paris led to The Ocularist's Wife, but in the end it became a strange personal response to the events of 9/11, all of which occurred while I was in the midst of writing. Only one story was taken directly from life, My Brain, the last story I wrote for the book. My boyfriend and I happened to sit opposite Brian (real name), his mother, girlfriend, and the girlfriend's son in a New York Chinatown restaurant – it's odd to think that he's probably still walking around the city totally unaware that this small incident in his life has been fictionalised in a book published on the other side of the world.

MT: How long did it take you to write your whole collection, Clare? On average, what sort of time does it take you to complete each story?

CW: Almost a decade. I'm blessed with a very patient editor. I was only 20 or 21 when I wrote the oldest story in the collection. I was 30 when I finished the last. I'm a painfully slow writer and probably average about six months per story, although a couple slipped out more easily and were finished in a few days. I usually have several on the go at once (I'm working on 3 or 4 at the moment) and sometimes I'll have a story in mind for years before I actually write it.

MT: Do you approach each story as its own little novel or is the thought process different to that?

CW: No. These are stories. Not small novels. But each story is its own world and the characters need to be as real to me as they would if they were characters in a novel. I feel like it's my duty to know all the details, even if in the end I choose only to include a few. As I was writing the later stories I was experimenting with drawing and I saw a close correlation between that and what I was trying to do with writing – being able to capture the essence of something in just a few lines, providing just enough on the page so that the viewer can fill in the rest.

MT: How do you write? Longhand or directly onto a computer, straight off or with lots and lots of editing?

CW: I write notes in longhand in my notebooks, very messy notebooks, with scribbles all over and articles I've torn out from the newspapers, and postcards trapped between the pages. Sometimes I'll start jotting down lines for the stories, but on the whole I write them directly onto the computer. I usually begin by hurriedly typing ideas as fast as they come to me, in a totally jumbled fashion, and from there I slowly, slowly start picking out what the story is about and begin to shape it. When I finally finish a draft the process begins of paring it down further. Only then do I begin thinking about how a reader will encounter the story and often I realise that much of what I've written I can cut out and leave for them to decipher for themselves – that's what I mean about it being similar to line drawing.

MT: You live in Prague! What's that like!?

CW: Well no actually, I've just moved to Berlin. I lived in Prague for the best part of my twenties and loved much about the city, but in the end I really needed a change. Somewhere with a more active cultural scene. Somewhere where more bands come to play and people make art on the street. Berlin is perfect. I realise I'm probably still caught up in the honeymoon high of a new city, but at the moment I love everything about it. That said, I'm already planning where to go next – the States, I think.

MT: Why do you think that short story collections have such a difficulty attracting large readerships?

CW: People keep asking me this question, but the truth is I don't really know. It's probably a lot to do with how difficult it is to gain exposure for short story collections. Reviewers and booksellers often snub them and without media attention or in-store promotion they're not going to become best sellers. But I think a more fundamental problem is that there's a great deal of prejudice towards the short story form. People seem to think they won't be satisfied by stories, which is a shame because from my experience when stories are written well the reading experience can be incredibly intense and heady. Rather than finding yourself unfulfilled you can instead be left in awe that within a matter of pages the author has totally encapsulated a world, created characters that live and breath, and left an impression that resounds long beyond the end of the tale. You realise their length is a bonus, because it allows them to be savoured, like a very delicious and indulgent treat – they can become quite addictive.

MT: The Numbers, an "eerie tale of life on a remote Scottish island", and the opening story in The Loudest Sound and Nothing, won the BBC National Short Story Award. How did that feel?

CW: Astonishing. The reality of it is still hard to grasp. I can remember writing that story at my kitchen table in Prague, sitting alone as the night trams trundled past, dreaming of a place I'd never seen. I never imagined it would go out into the world and be honoured in this way, or that over a million people would hear it on the radio, some of them even hailing from the very islands that had inspired the story. Naturally, there has been some interesting response from those islanders because of course they know that world much better than I do, but many people (Scottish ones too) have also told me that they loved the story and that it moved them. It makes you realise the power of your words, that what you're writing can touch lives. It's an amazing thing to happen so early in my career. I feel very, very fortunate and grateful.

MT: What is your opinion of literary prizes in general?

CW: People love to criticise the literary prizes, but when there are so many books out there and so many authors, I'd like to think that prizes do help readers to find writing that is outstanding.

MT: Do you read the critics? Have you been pleased with the responses to your book? Have you learned anything from them?

CW: Before the book came out I'd been warned that story collections struggle to get reviews and I shouldn't expect too much, so the response we received was consequently quite overwhelming and it was really heartening how positively the critics responded. I think I was very lucky, and I feel for short story writers whose work doesn't get such notice – if you work so long at something and then it goes out into the world and nobody pays it any attention, you must ask yourself what's the point? So yes, I do read what the critics write, and I find it very fascinating because I was so private with my writing previously I had no idea what people would make of it. I always used to tell my writing students, 'Never underestimate the intelligence of the reader,' and it's so true. People are very smart. They really do think about what you've written, and yes certainly you can learn from them. I never realised, for example, that my writing was so very dark and so tinged with melancholy – a TLS reviewer even did a body count! I'm not sure why, because my outlook on life is very positive – there are probably some deep psychological reasons for it! - but I'm glad people have also recognised the beauty I try to capture. It means a lot when a reader or a critic makes contact because they want to tell you they've read and loved your book, it makes you want to write more for them.

MT: What do you do when you are not writing?

CW: Oh, I don't know. I travel a lot, I read, I get inspired by new projects, I hang out with my boyfriend, I listen to music, I walk my dog, I clean the house, I laugh a lot, I draw, I drink tea, I chat with my family, I go to gigs, I run a face painting company, I take the tram, I watch movies, I sit in the park, I go to the supermarket, I write emails, I go out drinking with friends, I sleep, I dream, I think about new things to write – totally normal stuff, really.

MT: Did you have an idea in your mind of your "ideal" reader? Did you write specifically for them?

CW: I think I've touched on this above. The answer is no. I write very much for myself, it's my way of understanding the world, and thinking about the reader only comes in at a later stage. At that point, yes, I consider the reader because as I've said my stories rely on them, they fill in the elements I've chosen to leave out and that's what allows the story to live and breath, but in terms of the writing process the reader for me is still only an abstract notion, the x in the equation.

MT: What are you working on now, Clare?

CW: I'm writing some more stories, because I don't seem to be able to stop the ideas coming. I'm also restructuring a novella I wrote about a girl briefly adopted by Picasso – it's a project I've been working on for a long time but I've had new ideas about how I want to write it and what I want it to be about, so that's exciting. I've been working on a children's book for Walker Books which will probably be the next published thing – it's funny to be able to say I'm following up a book of dark and brooding literary stories with a book about a chihuahua! I'm also hoping that as a result of the award I might have a chance to go to the Hebrides now as I'd love to write something more about that, perhaps for a music journal as the history of the folk music there really interests me. And I have other ideas. Too many ideas and not enough time.

MT: Who is your favourite writer? What is/are your favourite book(s)?

CW: I'm very indecisive and find it hard to pick favourites. On this occasion, I'll mention a few of my favourite short story writers whose books I can see lined up on the shelf above my desk (thereby missing, I'm afraid, all those worthy authors whose books are sitting on my shelves in Prague or London). Check out any of these authors (listed in no particular order) if you need evidence that short stories are worth reading: Alice Munro, J.D. Salinger, Claire Keegan, Truman Capote, ZZ Packer, Raymond Carver, Harold Brodkey, Jhumpa Lahiri, Peter Hobbs, Miranda July, Paul Ewen, Lorrie Moore.

MT: Do you have any tips for the aspiring writer!?

CW: Read lots, I guess, and write because you love it. And don't make the mistake of thinking that writing a book is easy. I remember looking at all the books on my shelves after I finished the first draft of my novella and marvelling to myself, rather like a new mother might after giving birth, 'But how could they all do it?! All those authors?! It's so hard!'

MT: Anything else you would like to say?

CW: No, only thank you.