About me

Chantal Corcoran is a short story writer and Pushcart Prize nominee who has recently completed her first novel, an upmarket psychological thriller about a missing boy, that explores the depths of maternal yearnings and the devastating impact of these when toyed with or denied. She is also finishing a collection of short stories, some of which you can read here. 

Her work tends to explore the complexities and profound heartbreak innate to familial relationships, particularly motherhood. She is also fascinated by fiction's chronic flirtation with truth. Finally, she loves nothing more than to dive deeply into place, dissecting how setting shapes experience and character to create or reveal story.    

A Canadian living in America for these last 25 years, Chantal studied English Literature at Carleton University where she fell in love with the work of writers like Dickens, Austen, Atwood and Munro. In 2010, she completed an MFA in fiction at Bennington College where she finally came to read American classics by Hemingway, Twain, Steinbeck, Paley, Olsen and Didion. She's been influenced by them all. William Trevor is another favorite. 

It was 25 years ago, when Richard Russo's Empire Falls transported her to a town that felt so much like home, that Chantal began to write. Saul Bellow called it when he said, "A writer is a reader moved to emulation."

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