Abi Hynes
Abi Hynes is a drama and fiction writer based in Manchester. Her fiction has been published in a variety of places, online and in print, including Litro, syntax & salt, Flash Fiction Magazine and other publications, and she was recently shortlisted for the inaugural Bath Novella-in-Flash Award. Her plays have been performed across the UK.
Abi has been writing stories and poetry for as long as she can remember, and books and theatre were a wonderful inheritance from both of her parents. She went off on a theatre tangent for quite a long time while she was at university, and she still feels writing plays is her first discipline. But she returned to fiction writing in her early 20s, and ‘it was like rediscovering a first love, and a version of myself that I’d packed away in a box for a while.’
Q: If you could travel in the past, which one of the great writers would you like to meet and why?
A: Mary Shelley, all the way. I think she’d be brilliant company. She wrote Frankenstein during a trip away with a load of male writers, and I’ve been part of a writing group that has been made up of six men and me for years – I feel like we’d have a lot to talk about.
Q: What is the least interesting part of writing for you?
A: Planning! I’m dreadful at planning and structure and I find it a real slog. I think that’s one of the reasons that I love short stories – sometimes you can get the thing down in just one sitting, and you don’t have to try and hold too many plot lines in your head at one time.
Q: What superpower would you like to have and why?
A: Do you remember the children’s TV programme Bernard’s Watch? I was a bit obsessed with that programme and I’d love the ability to stop time. I don’t particularly want a super power, I just want more time.
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