Q&A with Jude Bridge
“And Eve did look upon Adam with a raising of her toppe lippe, for she knew him to be a foole.”
~ ‘New Year’s Eve’ by Jude Bridge
In your romp of a short story ‘New Year's Eve,’ Eve leaves Adam in the Garden of Eden, joins a band of escaped wives and takes heartily to modern life. What was the inspiration behind your work?
My favourite genre to read is modern gothic fiction, of which ‘Fingersmith’ by Sarah Waters is a perfect example. I have tried to write in the olde worlde style before, without success. So I tried again, taking the olde worlde language back to the beginning of the worlde according to the Bible, and had some funne with the language.
Some of my monologues for women have been performed recently, so I was very much in the mood to write a story about another strong woman who’s had a gutful and needs to get out of a situation.
Your piece is full of many truly laugh-out-loud moments. With a background as a comedian and performer, is humour an important part of your writing practice?
I began writing as a stand-up comedian, found it to be enjoyable and haven’t stopped. I can’t write serious stories; the ones I try to write end up as tragicomedies.
As a performer, I speak dialogue out loud, as the character, when I’m writing a story.
A cool group of peeps called Spineless Wonders run nights at a pub where stories are read out by actors. Lots of mine have been read, because I write them very much as performance pieces. They’re not monologues, they’re short stories, but they feel like theatre, and they’re always humorous.
I think that humour gets my stories published, because there aren’t many people who write funny. If you look at the winners of literary prizes and competitions, there’s not a laugh amongst them.
You've described yourself as "an extreme genre-hopper." What do you enjoy, or find challenging, about writing across genres?
When I was younger, I had a job rewriting menus to make them sound more delicious, which always made me hungry.
I won the Scarlet Stiletto Award for a short crime story but writing crime is challenging and I don’t do it much. Crime is complicated and requires too much intense thought.
I wrote a lot of stories for That’s Life magazine ten or so years ago, writing for a target audience within a range of themes. I found that quite difficult, not having free rein, but they paid well, so I got over it.
I write songs with my current partner in comedy, which is pure fun, and they flow quickly and easily, usually we write lyrics and music simultaneously and that works.
My stories have been classified as comedy, magic realism, fantasy and speculative fiction (but never literary fiction, and I’m good with that, there are plenty of literaryarians about).
On top of genre is form. I really like microfiction (under 300 words), because I write long and then edit the shit out of it. You usually end up with a darn good story when it’s pared back.
I’ve written videos for Curtin Library, the place in wot I work. The challenge of screenwriting is to be interesting, educational and funny enough to hold the tiny concentration span of the YouTube viewer.
What was the last book that made you laugh (or cry)?
The most recent book that made me laugh was ‘488 Rules for Life’ by Kitty Flanagan. My favourite funny book is ‘The Confederacy of Dunces’ by John Kennedy Toole, which won a posthumous Pulitzer for fiction, thus negating my earlier comment about how comedy doesn’t win prizes. It’s a rare example, OK?
Jude Bridge is a hobbit and past winner of the Scarlet Stiletto Award. Her short stories have been published in The Big Issue (Australian Fiction Editions), online, and in a gaggle of anthologies. In 2021 her monologue "The Joys of Menopause" was recorded and performed by Baggage Productions.