Little Fortified Stories was the winner in the Short Stories (Fiction) category in the 2025 IndieReader Discovery Awards, where undiscovered talent meets people with the power to make a difference.
Following find an interview with author Barbara Black.
“I’m truly honoured to be the winner in the Short Stories: Fiction category for the 2025 IRDA Book Awards. Thank you for giving my book, Little Fortified Stories, this distinction. The Flash Fiction genre is garnering more attention all the time, so I’m doubly pleased for my flash collection to have won this recognition.”
What is the name of the book and when was it published?
Little Fortified Stories, published May 2024, Caitlin Press.
What’s the book’s first line?
“Deep in a corner of the dimly lit Port Wine House in an eighteenth-century palace in the Bairro Alto district of Lisbon, the waiter sets down before me three small glasses with different samples of Portugal’s most famous spirit: port.”
What’s the book about? Give us the “pitch”.
Poetic and quirky, surreal and unsettling, the carefully crafted fictions in Little Fortified Stories range from 50-word micros to flash narratives and a few hybrids in between. Reality is negotiable. In this addictive, award-winning page-turner of a collection you’ll meet Kafka and Pessoa, Daedelus’s Wife and Medusa, stories based on dreams and art, a bat-like couple, a ruined saint and more from the author’s fertile imagination. The unforgettable fictions in Little Fortified Stories will haunt you and reverberate far beyond their minimalist size.
What inspired you to write the book? A particular person? An event?
After my first book of short stories, I started exploring flash fiction, stories from 300 to 1000 words. In Lisbon, on a Disquiet International scholarship, I took a flash fiction workshop and immediately fell in love with the concision, compression and invention of this genre. On a day off I went to the Port Wine Centre and during my first sampling I “found” a small story in a glass of port! Thus, the beginning of Little Fortified Stories.
What’s the most distinctive thing about the main character? Who-real or fictional-would you say the character reminds you of?
Since my book has 96 stories and more characters than even that, I will choose one distinctive character: a woman in the story “Where a Dark Heart Burns” who exiles herself on a small, remote island in Oxtongue Lake, Ontario, seeking healing and isolation in the natural world. This character makes me think of other mythological women who were exiled on islands, although not of their own choosing: Ariadne of Naxos, and Circe.
What’s the main reason someone should really read this book?
If you crave concise, vivid, haunting stories that linger long after reading; if rich language and vivid imagery excite you; if a touch of magic realism, a bit of disquiet and a deep feeling for humanity feeds your soul, this is your book.
If they made your book into a movie, who would you like to see play the main character(s)?
With over 100 characters, it would be impossible to make one movie. But if I could choose just one character from my book it would be Seinte Romhilde von Rothenburg, a 12th century saint who falls in love with a quirky creature named Gryffix and abandons her station as a saint to live happily as a regular human being. Helena Bonham Carter, master of the dark and quirky, would be my pick for the fallen saint.
When did you first decide to become an author?
I didn’t consciously decide. After being a freelance scribe most of my life—from concocting weirdo stories as a kid, to freelance editor, arts reviewer and columnist—the muse knocked on my door in my forties, urging me to write fiction.
Is this the first book that you’ve written?
This is my second book. My first book, Music from a Strange Planet, is a collection of short stories.
What do you do when you’re not writing?
I’m crazy for gardening and have created a garden so voluptuous and huge that I can barely keep up with it! It’s a great holiday from words. I also love motorcycling.
How much time do you generally spend on your writing?
I’m a free-form random writer. No schedule, no word counts. No outlines. The way I view writing is a meditation, a conjuring, a character consultation. I live for the heat and labour of creation.
Would you go traditional if a publisher came calling? If so, why?
Yes! Greater international exposure, more book sales, events planned, book tours not on your own dime. As an indie-published author, I appreciate all the promotion done by my independent Canadian publisher. However, as an author and a quasi introvert, doing so much self-promotion on top of that is exhausting. I would love my books to have a wider audience and believe that my style of writing would be appreciated in many countries that celebrate literary writing. (Sometimes I think I was born on the wrong continent.)
Is there something in particular that motivates you (fame? fortune?)
One word: creativity. Expressing myself in words and images. My life would be nothing without the arts.
Which writer, living or dead, do you most admire?
Anton Chekhov. A man of concision and humanity who trusts his readers to read between the lines.