Author Q&A with Amanda Siri Hill

Amanda Siri Hill loves to explore inner demons through storytelling. You can find her short fiction on the Creepy Podcast and Utah’s Best Poetry and Prose 2023. Accolades include multiple First, Second, and Third Place awards at Storymaker’s Conference and The Quills Conference.

Siri Hill’s flash fiction piece, The Great Swim Divide, is featured in Issue 17.

Tell us about yourself.

I am an avid reader, hiker, and mountain biker living in South Jordan, Utah with my husband and five children. I’ve always called the mountains my home and I don’t know if I could survive without them. Not only are they my playground and inspiration, they are also my compass. As long as I can see the mountains, I can never get lost. 

What inspired The Great Swim Divide?

A post on a social media site. A man posted a complaint about an old woman taking swim lessons which were meant for kids. Some of the comments were funny and I wondered what it would look like if the drama took place in a local community. 

Your wit shines through every part of The Great Swim Divide. With just email content, character email addresses, and clever subject lines you were able to not only develop clear character personalities, but also tell a poignant tale of age discrimination through humor. What made you decide to write this story as a series of emails? Why do you think that is the most effective way to tell it?

First off—thank you. I wrote the piece as a series of emails because the initial inspiration came from an online post, but the idea I wanted to portray needed to extend longer than the life of the average social media post. Earlier versions included social media posts, texts, and emails, but I found that distracted from the content and made it more confusing. Email addresses have the potential to portray character in less space, and there is a lot more freedom to bring in multiple characters over time.  

Do you often use humor in your writing? How can humor help to punctuate the point of a story?

Oddly enough, I mostly write mystery and suspense, but when I need a break from heavier topics, I turn to humor. Humor gives us the freedom to be blunt—soften the blow of the truth by blanketing it with a joke. It also gives us the freedom to laugh during difficult times. 

What message are you hoping your readers take away from The Great Swim Divide?

I hope my readers take what they need from The Great Swim Divide, but one thing that stuck out for me as I wrote it was that online communities can be a blessing and a curse. As a people pleaser I’ve had to learn who to listen to and who to ignore when it comes to comments made about me and to me. Carol is my inspiration in that regard. 

What can readers learn from Carol about aging with spunk rather than grace? How did Carol inspire you as you wrote her story?

Spunk and grace can be two sides of one coin, and both have their merits. Grace is praised more often, but there is value to spunk that sometimes goes unnoticed. I hope to be like Carol when I’m 84. I want to learn something new every day, say what I want, and ignore the naysayers. I once watched a reporter interviewing a woman on her 110^th birthday, asking if she was excited about her upcoming party. Her response? “Not one bit.” I will forever remember her because she was honest, memorable, and funny. Her spunk brought joy to my life and inspired me.  

What is one thing you hope to achieve or continue to do as you age? Why?

I want to keep learning as I age. There are things we must accept with the passage of time like loss of muscle and a slower recall, but none of those changes take away our humanity or our capacity to do good and improve. We’re better off if we can learn to shrug off the loss of smooth skin and realize it doesn’t change who we are. And the sooner we can accept these changes, the more freedom we have to do what matters.  

In your bio you mentioned a love for exploring inner demons through writing. What do you think The Great Swim Divide says about the inner demons of John? The other neighbors?

John’s inner demons are quite common. Lack of control and fear of the unknown. If John can make sure his kids know how to swim, they will always be safe in the water. It’s a level of control he thinks he can have over hidden dangers. He believes that life should be “fair” as determined by himself, and he will stop at nothing to achieve this fairness. He also suffers from a fixed mindset when it comes to the elderly. They have a certain place, and when any elderly person steps out of that mindset, he perceives it as a threat to the balance of his life. 

What do you think of when you hear, “the good life?”

The Good Life is finding beauty in the everyday, recognizing what you have to be grateful for, and being willing to accept what you can’t change. 

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Thank you, Amanda, for being a part of our growing community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We’re glad we were able to connect and we wish you the best with life and all your writing endeavors.