SOURCE: "A Little Like Flying: An Interview with Carol Shields," in West Coast Review, Vol. 23, No. 3, Winter, 1988, pp. 38-56.

In the following interview, Shields discusses genre, form, and her writing process as they relate to several of her works.

[Roo:] You display a good deal of formal versatility in your writing. You have published poems, short stories, novels (and a film script within one of them), and are working on a play. What dictates your choice of form?

[Shields:] This question of form! I am, to tell you the truth, more indifferent to the boundaries between literary forms than your question indicates. Recently I went to Ottawa to sit on a Canada Council Jury and discovered, when we sifted through applications, that those writers who want to apply in a new genre (switching from poetry to fiction, play writing to poetry and so on) must apply in a...