Author: Christine Nessler

Hemmy So is a Korean American fiction writer from Houston, Texas. Her debut short story appeared this spring in Redivider, and she reads prose for Chestnut Review. In her former life, she worked as a news reporter, tech, and sports attorney. She currently lives in Alameda, California with her husband, two young sons, and an affectionate terrier. Hemmy is working on her debut novel.

Her flash fiction piece, The Language of Family, featured in Issue #12 is the runner-up of this year’s HoneyBee Prize in Fiction as selected by Roxane Gay.

Tell us about yourself. 

I’m an Enneagram 9 living in Alameda, California, which is an island in the Bay Area. I live here with my husband, two sons ages 5 and 7, and our affectionate terrier Mr. Puff. There’s a lot of male energy in this house! My side hustle is working as a sports lawyer. And when I’m not working, I handcraft greeting cards or see live music.

What made you want to leave your previous careers to become a writer?

A close relative of ours passed away during the pandemic, and her death brought me face-to-face with mortality. I couldn’t bear the thought of dying — and at that time, many of us worried we’d die sooner than we thought — without really putting in the effort to do something I had always loved.

How does writing bring value to your life?

I love exploring ideas through stories, and doing that is a real challenge. I also love learning, and I’m constantly learning from other writers, teachers, and readers.

What inspired you to write The Language of Family?

I’d been studying the Korean language for a couple years when someone asked me why. Many people assumed it was so I could better connect with my relatives, but funnily enough the real reason was so that I could watch BTS content without relying on subtitles. But the thought of reconnection led me to think about how families interact. I used language as the entry point for this exploration.

What is Miri’s greater challenge in The Language of Family – the language barrier between Miri and her family or Miri’s feeling that she owes her cousin for saving her life? 

Miri thinks it will be the language barrier, perhaps a naive thought. But she discovers the real challenge is the complexity of familial obligation. And in Korean families, that obligation can sometimes be overwhelming.

Although there is a language barrier, there are many nonverbal cues from her relatives that add to Miri’s unease. As a writer, do you find yourself studying human behavior? Where have you found the best place to observe human behavior and why?

I believe writers are always studying human behavior — how else to make our stories rich with characters? I don’t have one place that’s best for observing human behavior, but I’m often paying attention to people no matter the setting — especially how they talk about things.

How have your previous careers helped you as a writer? 

My training as a reporter has helped me immensely when it comes to identifying good stories, crafting tight language, and editing, though I’m always trying to improve. My legal career taught me repeatedly that you can’t make assumptions. And that’s also where I often find compelling stories – within upturned assumptions.

Do you have any words of advice for anyone who is working full-time and trying to dabble in writing or thinking about making a career shift to writing full-time?

You do you. I heard a lot of advice about how to manage my time, what kind of job to get to allow me to write more, what kind of writing I should pursue, how to stay accountable. But in the end, advice only works if it suits your personality and lifestyle. There’s lots of ways to do things, and that is OK. And it’s also OK to experiment.

What do you think of when you hear the phrase, “The Good Life?” 

Good people, good home, good food, good art.

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Thank you, Hemmy, for taking the time to participate in this Q&A and for sharing a small slice of your work with us.

Hemmy’s Flash Fiction “The Language of Family” can be found in issue #12 of The Good Life Review.

This week’s Author Q&A is with Oak Morse. Oak lives in Houston, Texas, where he teaches creative writing and theatre and leads a youth poetry troop, the Phoenix Fire-Spitters. He was the winner of the 2017 Magpie Award for Poetry in Pulp Literature and a Finalist for the 2020 Witness Literary Award. Currently a Warren Wilson MFA candidate, Oak has received Pushcart Prize nominations, fellowships from Brooklyn Poets, Twelve Literary Arts, Cave Canem’s Starshine and Clay as well as a Stars in the Classroom honor from the Houston Texans.

His work appears in Black Warrior Review, Obsidian, Tupelo, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Nimrod, Terrain.org, and Solstice, among others.
Morse’s poem, Ras Tafari Ghazal, was the runner up in this year’s HoneyBee Poetry Prize and is featured in Issue #12.

Tell us about yourself.

In all honesty, I am one who does not believe in adequate sleep, always thinking of the next poem to write or project to tackle. Sure, I unusually operate, but on my normal side, I teach theatre and creative writing at a Fine Art School in Houston. I also lead a youth poetry troop, the Phoenix Fire-Spitters. I am also a junkie for hip-hop and R&B music from 2006 and back. You will often find me overdosing on Anita Baker, Outkast, The Isley Brothers, Miguel, Maxwell, Musiq Soulchild, Alicia Keys and Kendrick Lamar. Funny, I cannot write an effective poem without playing some of them.

How would you describe your writing style? Do you typically choose ghazal poetry as your artistic vessel? Why or why not?

My writing style can be classified as charismatic, vulnerable and musical while it explores myth-making, resistance, and intimacy. During my final semester of my MFA program at Warren Wilson, my professor Connie Voisine encouraged me to practice using form, which I was slightly opposed to due to all the lyrical constraints.  But I was sold when she said that would help me make language tighter in my work. So this is my first Ghazal.

What inspired you to write Ras Tafari Ghazal?

After years of teaching spoken word, theatre and writing my students’ performances, I kept telling myself I would write a reggae inspired performance one day. So finally, when the Black History Month program rolled around, I thought my fifth grade class would be good for it. Here is the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUBgx0joJhM

After writing the poem for them, I had so much left out material that I did not want to abandon, so I figured I would use some of it as a ghazal since I was studying form. I say, I killed two big birds with one stone. 

How has Rastafari, a figure known as a symbol of a proud and independent Africa, influenced your life?

When it came to “Rastafari” it was an opportunity to finally learn about the ideology. One of the great things about being a teacher is that you have to master the information that you teach, therefore it required a lot of research. This led to me having a fonder appreciation for religious and social movements.

What is the significance of the convergence of sound and earth in Ras Tafari Ghazal?

In this poem, I wanted it to not only reflect the influence of Rasta Fari but provide a full totality of the culture and how it transcends beyond the mere tangible but into the spiritual and emotional.

What message do you hope your readers take away from Ras Tafari Ghazal?

The message I want readers to leave with is do not let your culture drift away. Keep those tight rituals, those fruitful customs, because these things bring connection. 

Tell us about the Phoenix Fire-Spitters.

The Phoenix Fire Spitters is a spoken word troop, with four to five of my students I hand-picked from seventh and eighth. I coach them on spoken word performances on how to have an impact on audiences. We have been invited several times to perform for the school district at the biggest school’s convention. We also have performed at the Houston Zoo, as well as in the school. The great thing about this group is that it creates a sense of unity and belonging for students’ toughest time of their adolescence. One result of this is that in 2020, I was honored with the Houston Texans Stars in the Classroom Award for having a positive impact on one of my troop members’ social and emotional growth.

How does your work with young poets inspire you and your own writing?

Sometimes when I see them get all the praise and glory after they do a fantastic job on stage, it inspires me to want to get back out there and perform spoken word. On another note, I get a huge kick out of being their ghost-writer, knowing that they are bringing my words to life through a dynamic performance.

What words of advice do you share with the poets, the Phoenix Fire-Spitters?

The advice I give is “show how excellent you are, that’s what people want to see, nothing less.”

What do you think of when you hear the term, “The Good Life?”

When I think of “the Good Life” I think of something as sweet as freedom when everything around feels like music, a cool breeze, and relaxation, much like in the poem, Ras Tafari Ghazal.

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Oak’s Poem, “Ras Tafari Ghazal” can be found in issue #12 of The Good Life Review.

Tiffany Promise (she/her) is a writer, poet, chronic migraineur, and the mother of two wildlings. She holds an MFA from CalArts and has participated in the Tin House and American Short Fiction workshops. Her work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Okay Donkey, Jarnal, Francesca Lia Block’s new literary magazine, Lit Angels, and elsewhere. Tiffany lives in Austin, Texas and her flash fiction, Bird of Prey, won this year’s Honeybee Literature prize in fiction and is featured in Issue #12.

Tell us about yourself.

My name is Tiffany Promise. I live in Austin, Texas, with a four-year-old Scorpio and a six-year-old Gemini. I’m a writer, poet, chronic migraineur and an old school punk rock riot grrrl. At six, I started penning funny little poems (about unfair bedtimes and pink underwear) and I never stopped. Writing poetry was the only way I knew how to make sense of life, to make meaning out of things that seemed meaningless. My high school journals are full of headaches and heartache, the broken promises of bad boyfriends and bad dads. I found Sylvia Plath when I was thirteen and ballpoint-penned stanzas from Lady Lazarus onto the soles of my favorite shoes. I didn’t try my hand at fiction until I was forced to choose a secondary genre for my undergraduate degree. I thought I could get away with disguising prose poems as stories—but I fell fast in love with the accouterments of story-making—plot! dialogue! scene!—and I haven’t stopped writing them since.

The first story I ever wrote was called Vanishing Act and was published in my fiction mentor, Lynda Schor’s, now-defunct online lit mag, The Salt River Review. That story, like Birds of Prey, took place entirely inside of a car. I find it interesting to give myself limits—in setting, word count, form, sometimes even sentence length—and find ways to maximize really small spaces. While a few of my pieces have been long- and short-listed, the Honeybee Prize for Literature is my first first place. 

How would you describe your writing style?

I would describe my writing style as language-driven and southern gothic-inspired. Some of my favorite books are We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, Cruddy by Lynda Barry and Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh and I often think of my work as being in conversation with them. I am still interested in blurring the lines between poetry and prose, allowing language to be its most ferocious and unforgiving self. No matter how long or short a piece, every word has weight, and when I read my work aloud, I want to hear and feel its movement and breath.

What inspired you to write Birds of Prey?

I started Birds of Prey thirteen years ago as part of my MFA thesis. Even short-short stories sometimes take me decades to write; I’ll keep going back over and over until some kind of silence finally rises from the page. I often write stories based on images that come to me randomly. For this piece, the image was of a girl holding a ziplock baggie full of cremains. Sprinkling these ashes into her morning coffee, she was attempting to imbibe her lost love, to hold onto him forever. Though this image has long been cut from the story, I think Nightingale’s abandonment-anxiety is palpable throughout. 

When I went back to this story (seven years after having started it) I had a wildly new close-to-home perspective. At thirty-nine weeks pregnant with my first child, my younger brother passed away unexpectedly. I was terrified of drowning my fetus in tears, of deforming her with my dark thoughts. The pregnant body is an alien surface on which every version of every story can be written. Nightingale’s unborn baby is the perfect blank slate for all of her nightmares to come to fruition.

The way Birds of Prey was written allows the reader to empathize with both characters. Was it your intention to make this a two-sided tragedy? Why or why not?

It was not necessarily my intention to make Birds of Prey a two-sided tragedy, I just happen to write about humans that I can imagine moving through the world. Because real people are multidimensional, Nightingale and Dusty both contain multitudes. In this story, they are both victims of circumstance.

What made you want to choose birds of prey as the allegorical theme of a piece about an unplanned pregnancy?

Birds cross thresholds and fly between worlds, they are small and light, but have resounding folkloric import. I think of them as creatures that are strange and wild enough to express inexpressible things. In this story, the narrator’s name is Nightingale, but she is called “Birdie” by Dusty. I have other bird-named characters in other stories: Robin, Raven, even Magpie. (IRL, my baby’s name is Sparrow!) At the end of this story, the “birdie”—the thing that seemed frail and frozen, just a slip-up—becomes an all-powerful bringer of death. 

What message do you hope your readers take away from Birds of Prey?

I like to investigate underbellies, to shine a light on things that other people shy away from. For whatever reason—and to my family’s dismay—I feel like it’s my job to write the totally honest and totally terrifying stuff, unashamedly. As products of our environments, how we tell and retell our stories shapes us. While I’m not necessarily concerned with relaying messages, I want people to read my work and feel something: understanding, heartache, joy. Maybe even just goosebumps.

How do you think storytelling is therapeutic for both writer and reader?

I write to make sense of the world around me, to make meaning out of the terrible and the mundane. As a mother, I am interested in exploring mother-child dynamics and the feminization of madness. I spend a lot of time investigating themes from my bloodline and attempting to unravel them. By writing about my family’s generational trauma, my goal is to rewrite our future.

What advice can you give to other aspiring writers or writers in general?

The best advice I can give to an aspiring writer is the same advice I give myself every day: Keep writing and keep submitting. Birds of Prey was rejected from at least five literary magazines before it won the Honeybee Prize; it’s all about finding the right readers for your work. I completed a novel a few years ago and I’m still querying agents and small presses. Daily, I send out poems and stories; I’ve submitted my poetry chapbook to ten contests so far. Life can get really complicated and it’s easy to let your writing fall to the back-burner, but just keep doing it and keep putting it out there—even if most of the time it feels like you’re screaming into the void. 

What do you think of when you hear the term, “The Good Life?”

When I think of “The Good Life” I think of mason jars filled with lemonade, fireflies in oak trees, the smell of rain disintegrating on hot concrete. Even though I lived in big cities for many years (mostly Los Angeles) most of my stories are set in the south, and even though these stories are filled with dirty aching things (glue strips stuck with dead flies, stillborn babies, runs in pantyhose set right by clear nail polish) they are also filled to the brim with truth, which makes them—somehow—“good.”

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Tiffany’s Flash Fiction, “Birds of Prey” can be found in issue #12 of The Good Life Review.

As both an actress and a writer, Lauren Dennis has a contrasting approach to creating a human connection, but as you’ll find in her micro fiction pieces of Two Micro Stories for Issue #11 of The Good Life Review, she has a talent for engaging the emotions of her audience.

“I am so happy I have both of these vehicles,” Dennis said. “One that I think connects to the human experience where I am building a bridge between myself and another character and another that hopefully connects directly from my internal experience to an unseen audience. I see them as the inverse to each other.”

From the time she was young, Dennis had an interest in both writing and acting. The passion of acting led her to New York where she studied at NYU. Expressing herself as an actress was overt, but her writing was done in secret.

“I was an ‘under-the-bed’ writer. Just writing and writing and writing and literally putting things under my bed,” Dennis said. “I got out of that habit about five years ago and started formalizing and taking classes. That is really much more useful for yourself and the world than just tucking your writing away.”

During these classes, she discovered micro fiction, a form of storytelling that limits word count to just 50 to 300 words. She appreciated the style of writing because although concise and even terse, it can also be very emotional. 

“Packing a lot of emotional punch within very few words is something I am really proud about,” Dennis said. “I have to get the reader’s buy-in quickly and then have them follow me on this journey that is very fast, but also hopefully gives some sort of experience of something changing or shifting.”

Although Dennis said she hated her class on self-scripting at NYU, she now finds writing her own story writing as a tool for reflection and emotional healing. 

“Your Dulcimer’s Too Loud” and “Baggage” are included in Two Micro Stories, which are a part of a larger manuscript Dennis is working on that follows the inciting incident of what she calls a cataclysmic divorce. 

“If the divorce is the inciting incident, how do I reveal these things in little bits and pieces that are really the emotional healing journey as opposed to the actual events that happened?” reflected Dennis. In her manuscript, Dennis examines how a person goes from broken to whole, maybe not realizing that they were broken in the first place. 
After having a bit of distance from the actual incident of her ex husband coming over to borrow luggage for a trip to Mexico, Dennis was able to examine the situation with a bit of creative license in “Baggage.”   

The story reflects what she was feeling in that environment and frames the way she took in that experience. It was the literal baggage of her ex needing suitcases, but also the emotional baggage and its weight that makes her story resonate. As Dennis points out, anyone who has been through a divorce or has shared custody potentially can understand the connection to objects and the transferring of goods from one household to another. 

In writing “Your Dulcimer’s Too Loud,” Dennis was able to understand the emotional journey she went on when deciding to learn to play the mountain dulcimer, a special instrument not many people play. For her it was not just about doing something unique, but also about reclaiming some part of herself she never knew existed.

As an actress, Dennis can gauge an audiences’ reaction while on the stage. While these micro stories are healing for Dennis, she hopes to have them resonate with her unseen literary audience as well. 

“In the case of these particular stories, to have people read them and find resonance for themselves I think is really gratifying,” Dennis said. “We write in solitude and then put it out into the world. If people connect with it, it feels like less of a lonely experience.”

She hopes her readers will bear witness to what happened, but also understand the brevity of it all. To know that the hard times will pass.
Dennis is blessed with various forms of expression. While acting is an escape from reality, writing is her reflection on it and she uses those contrasting tools as forms of human connection.

“I have always seen my life from the outside in as if an audience is watching me,” Dennis said.  Having that lens has influenced her distinction between moving more inward. “The process of writing for me feels more like the process I go through when I am preparing for a character rather than the actual character you might see. It is kind of like getting inside a person’s head that you don’t necessarily know. I think it’s interesting because the characters in all my stories are me.”

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Lauren’s two micro fiction stories, “Your Dulcimer’s Too Loud” and “Baggage” can be found in issue #11 of The Good Life Review.

This week’s Author Q & A is with Tania Runyan. Runyan is the author of the poetry collections What Will Soon Take Place, Second Sky, A Thousand Vessels, Simple Weight, and Delicious Air. Her guides How to Read a Poem, How to Write a Poem, and How to Write a Form Poem are used in classrooms across the country. Her poems have appeared in many publications, including Poetry, Image, Indiana Review, Atlanta Review, and The Christian Century. Tania was awarded an NEA Literature Fellowship in 2011.

Runyan’s poem, Mass in Quarantine, is featured in Issue #11 of The Good Life Review.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m a California native who has spent most of my adult life in the Midwest, sharing a home with my husband, three kids, and three dogs. Having taught both independently and in the public schools, freelancing as an editor and content writer, and doing the best I can to make time for my own writing (poetry, poetry instruction, creative nonfiction, and the beginnings of a novel), I’ve collected a variety of literary experiences over the years! I also enjoy playing Celtic fiddle and violin, gardening, reading, and walking in the woods.

What inspired you to write Mass in Quarantine?

During the later phase of lockdown, I took monthly trips to nearby Airbnb’s for a bit of weekend solitude and writing time. I distinctly remember holing up in an attic-type of a bedroom a couple of weeks before Christmas, writing poems inspired by articles exploring how people were coping with the pandemic in creative ways. The image of those parishioner photos attached to the pews grabbed me right away; the seemingly unending dailiness of the pandemic called out for the repeated rhyme and refrains of a villanelle. 

What message do you hope reaches your audience through Mass in Quarantine?

I would love for my audience to be responsive to whatever message they need to find in those lines. I suspect these messages will differ by reader!

How have your life experiences impacted the way you write? How does religion impact your writing?

My faith influences my writing because it is at the heart of how I live and relate to the world. I look for moments of grace and humanity in the hardest of circumstances, recognizing that hope can’t be found without some pain.

How has poetry shaped your life or helped you make sense of the world around you?

Poetry is a form of processing for me, a way I deal with feelings, events, or even people I don’t fully understand. I’ve written quite a bit of poetry informed by Scripture, although I’ve used writing more as a way to grapple with the Bible myself–faith, doubt, anger, humor, all of it–than teach others any sort of doctrine. That said, others who have struggled with their own bouts of doubt and spiritual struggle have expressed that they feel a connection to my work.

Tell us about work you have done or are doing that makes you most proud.

I’m proud of my book Making Peace With Paradise, my first book of creative nonfiction. It just came out last fall, around the time I had started a new teaching job. Not great timing for getting my book “out there!” My whole life, I’ve had a fraught relationship with my native Southern California. This book is another form of artistic processing, exploring some difficult (and hopeful) life experiences against the backdrop of freeways, earthquakes, suburbs, Hollywood, and music.

How do you stay inspired as a poet?

I have to consciously make time for inspiration, whether that looks like reading, walking, playing music, or spending time with other writers. Inspiration, really, comes from the chance to think, reflect, and slow down the world so I can be receptive to the words out there patiently waiting for me.

What style of poetry helps you to best express yourself and why?

These days, I’ve been writing in a lot of forms: villanelles, pantoums, sonnets, sestinas. ghazals. Forms give me some kind of structure to hold onto, a playground for discovery. Picture kids on those big playground structures at school. The equipment gives them a means for exploration, but how they explore is up to their mood, their friends, the weather, whatever. In those times of exploration, they may discover new games, physical moves, imaginary situations, or relationships they may have never considered before. That’s me in a playground of rhyme, refrains, or end words. I love the freedom that comes with structure.

What do you think when you hear the phrase, “The Good Life?”

I think of lying on the couch covered in dogs, a cup of coffee in one hand, a book in the other.

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Thank you, Tania, for participating in this Q&A. We wish you the best in life and all your writing endeavors.

This week’s Author Q & A is with Christi Krug. Christi’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in dozens of journals, zines, and anthologies, most recently in Backchannels Journal, The Saturday Evening Post, and GRIFFEL. Krug is a 2022 Emerging Writer for Centrum and a 2019 creative resident for North Cascades Institute. She is a presenter, a Pushcart nominee for poetry, and the author of Burn Wild: A Writer’s Guide to Creative Breakthrough, inspiring audiences across the United States. Krug serves as a writing coach, teaches for community education programs in Oregon and Washington, and leads nature/yoga/writing experiences at the Oregon Coast where she makes her home. You can find our more about Krug at www.christikrug.com.

Christi’s first appearance in TGLR was in Autumn of 2021 (our 5th issue) which included her flash essay, The Coats in Summer People and we are pleased to have her back with a new non-fiction piece, Nocturnal Lagophthalmos, featured in Issue #11.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m someone who likes joining elements in new ways. As in Nocturnal Lagophthalmos, I like to rearrange memories into something new. I’m a writing coach, yoga teacher, and hiker, and in my writing classes and retreats I bring in modalities of breath and nature; likewise, when leading a nature or spiritual experience, I’ll often bring in writing. 

Nocturnal Lagophthalmos tells the story of a young girl who is protecting the fragile nature of her finally happy life. What inspired you to tell this non-fiction story?

A secret usually makes a pretty good story. All my life I never told my foster mom, who is my Mom now, what I’d prayed that night: that my birth mother wouldn’t be healed.

What do you hope your readers gain from reading Nocturnal Lagophthalmos?

I hope that readers can enter into the mindset of a pre-teen and open up to stories and emotions and experiences of their own.

You have a wide range of writing experience from children’s novels to horror stories and self-help to fiction. What is your favorite writing style?

My favorite writing is something that brings the reader into immediacy—whether in a nonfiction account, a fairy tale,  or a literary story. I love being caught up in another world, another time. I just finished The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro, an author I love for the overarching reality he creates in each novel. I admire his ability to write in so many different voices.

How do you help others ignite their creativity? How does that differ from igniting your own creativity?

It’s not very different to ignite others’ creativity than it is my own. Some of my most successful teaching and coaching experiences have brought me the best story ideas—right in the moment. Whether teaching or writing, I seek to create a generative dream state, a relaxed and excited space. The tricky part is that when teaching, I have to toggle on and off, in order to give instructions and enable the process for others. Once that’s in place, I can share in the act of writing alongside.

How is ignition different from inspiration when it comes to creativity and writing?

I have so much to say about this! My book, Burn Wild: A Writer’s Guide to Creative Breakthrough, is intended to get you inspired, which is gentle and affirming—but also to ignite action, making a commitment to your creative process.

What makes you most proud?

I’m most proud when a reader says, “Wow, you really took me there. I understood how that character could feel that. It’s something I’ve felt, too.”

What is more rewarding, writing your own work or helping others to believe in themselves as writers? Why?

Both teaching/coaching and writing are integral to sharing my gifts. For years, I prioritized helping others, and then I realized I was missing something huge by putting my own work on a lower rung. Coaching is the day job. But I offer so much more when I lead by example. My residency at Centrum last year was an amazing turnaround for me, reminding me that I’m a writer who coaches, not a coach who writes.

What is one piece of advice you can give to aspiring writers?

Make writing part of your lifestyle. Don’t wait for someone to affirm you. If you love it, give it a huge place in your life and allow others’ reactions a moderate to small place, merely to help grow your skills. Find those who have encouragement as their superpower.

What do you think of when you hear the words, “The Good Life?”

I can relax and be myself. Ah, this is it, no more striving to get anywhere, just allowing what is.

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Thank you, Christi, for sharing another of your stories with us and for taking extra time to participate in this Q&A. We wish you the best with writing, coaching, and finding a satisfying balance where you can relax and enjoy all you have accomplished.

This week’s Author Q & A is with Richard Stimac. Stimac has a full-length book of poetry, Bricolage, (Spartan Press) and a forthcoming poetry chapbook, Of Water and of Stone (Moonstone). He has also published flash fiction in BarBar (2023 BarBe nominee), The Blue Mountain Review, Book of Matches, Bridge Eight, Bright Flash, Drunk Monkeys, Flash Fiction Magazine, Half and One, New Feathers, Paperbark, Prometheus Dreaming, and elsewhere.

Stimac’s flash fiction, Good Friday, is featured in Issue #11 of The Good Life Review.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m 54. I read. I write. I have a cat. I make money as a licensed massage therapist and an Uber driver.

What inspired your flash fiction piece, Good Friday?

I begin each piece, poetry or prose, with either a strong line or a strong image. Maybe I have a plan, but mostly I don’t. I figure out the content as I write. Good Friday began with two things. First, my mom practiced what’s called folk Catholicism, meaning there’s the official teachings of the Church and then there is what common people believe. For example, my mom was convinced that it rained every Good Friday. That was one thing. The second thing was the line that “each storm tells its own story.”

What message were you hoping to convey through Good Friday?

I wasn’t trying to convey any message. I had an idea, an image, and I developed the story as I wrote it. I’m a formalist, so I don’t think that a piece of writing has a “message.” If it did, then why didn’t the writer just give the message? Because a work of art is more than its paraphrasable content, that is, more than its message.

How do you fuel your creative fire?

I write daily. 

Do you write in other formats besides flash fiction? What is your favorite format of writing? 

I published my first full-length book of poetry, Bricolage (Spartan Press), in November, 2022. All but two of the poems are sonnets, often with strict meter and rhyme scheme. It took five years to finish Bricolage. After finishing, I wanted a break from poetry, so I began experimenting with flash fiction. I am finishing up a collection and will be looking for a publisher. Also, I am attending the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop this summer for fiction writing. I plan on writing full-length short stories next, along with a non-fiction book on a local historical figure.

Tell us about the work you have done or do that makes you most proud.

Some, actually quite a few, of the poems in Bricolage are very good. So are some of the flash fiction in the collection that I am finishing. What makes me proud is that I was able to write both poems and prose that are both literary and accessible to a casual reader. 

How have your life experiences impacted the way you write?

I write about one thing: growing up in the 1970s in a small Rustbelt town. That’s how my experiences impact what I write about.

How does writing help you to make sense of the world around you?

It doesn’t, except that I’ve recently accepted that I am a writer, so what I do is write.

What is the most rewarding part of writing? And what is the most challenging part of writing? 

I am very intentionally trying to make art. So when someone else reads something that I’ve written and responds to it, then I am satisfied. The most challenging part of writing is the writing. If one wants to be a writer, not someone who writes, then one has to write, all the time.

What do you think of when you hear the phrase, “The Good Life?”

Champagne and lots of cash to spend.

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Thank you, Richard, for your contribution to our growing community of writers and artists. We appreciate the extra time you spent on this Q&A and hope the hunt for a publisher for that next book goes well. We wish you the best!

This week’s Author Q & A is with Nancy Jorgensen. Nancy is a Wisconsin writer, educator, and musician. Her most recent book, a middle-grade/young adult sports biography, was released in 2022: Gwen Jorgensen: USA’s First Olympic Gold Medal Triathlete. She is also an essayist writing about music, equality, family, aging, and education. Her work appears in Ruminate, River Teeth, Wisconsin Public Radio, CHEAP POP, and elsewhere and more about her is available at at NancyJorgensen.weebly.com.

Her flash nonfiction, The Heart and Other Organs, is featured in Issue #11 of The Good Life Review.

Tell us about yourself.

For over 30 years, I taught high school choir, directing concerts, madrigals, barbershop quartets, collaborations with professional orchestras, and musical theater productions. Every day, I saw 350 students, often with 100 in a class. I now work at home, with just my husband in the house. Very different! 

One thing has been constant and that is writing. While I was teaching, a colleague and I wrote two choral music education books, and there were always concert and theater programs to write, with bios and notes. Now, I write nonfiction books, creative nonfiction essays, and a little bit of poetry. The balance has shifted to more writing, less music. But I still play piano accompaniments for solo performers, and piano duets with a friend. I am also in an early music group that plays recorder, psaltery, krummhorn, and cornamuse. I enjoy bread making, working with textiles, and spending time with my two daughters and their families, which now include two grandsons.

The Heart and Other Organs was beautifully symbolic and poetic. What inspired you to write the story and write it in that fashion?

I wrote “The Heart and Other Organs” in response to a submission call for “letters I’ll never send.” When the essay wasn’t accepted, I continued to edit, revise, and submit to other markets. This is often the path my essays take. A submission prompt inspires a story, and when the piece is declined, I continue to hone the idea, tweak the metaphors, polish the language, and eventually sharpen it into a publishable piece.

What message do you hope reaches your audience through The Heart and Other Organs?

People are complicated. Relationships are complicated. Love is complicated. And there is no formula for who, when, or how we love. I want to impact readers who have lost friends and lovers too soon. Who nurture memories for a lifetime.

Is this a tribute to your old friend? What impacted you most when writing it?

We were friends when I was in my twenties and thirties—a time when I made career decisions, established lifelong friendships, and got married. Because those years were so impactful, they are fresh for me today. I think about the songs, the food, the secrets, my circle of friends. Some of those friends are still in my life today, but there is an enormous hole left by others. As I wrote, memories rushed back and made me grateful, but also sad and resentful: what if we had lived thirty years later when AIDS was not a death sentence?

How do you use symbolism in your other work?

Symbolism and metaphor help me frame ideas. They make a point without a literal explanation. Whatever I’m writing—essays, poetry, nonfiction—I look for symbols to enhance the piece. They allow me to tell two stories, one on the surface, and a second one that lives deeper. It’s always a challenge to know how much I should explain and how much I should leave for the reader to work out.

Tell us about the work you have done or do that makes you most proud.

My recent book Gwen Jorgensen: USA’s First Olympic Gold Medal Triathlete, was a collaboration with my two daughters. We noticed a hole in the middle-grade nonfiction market, and booksellers and librarians agreed. There are not enough books with female heroes, specifically female sports heroes. We were lucky to have the perfect subject: my daughter Gwen, the Rio 2016 Olympic champion in triathlon. So, the three of us, Gwen, Elizabeth, and I, wrote a book about Gwen’s journey.

Elizabeth and I did the bulk of the writing, with Gwen providing stories and themes for us to capture. Letters are a big part of the book, with Gwen writing to her younger self and to the reader. We kept technical information about triathlon out of the narrative and placed it in sidebars. And we devised a two-timeline approach: one that follows Gwen during the seven days leading up to her Rio race, and a second that flashes back to experiences from childhood to professional athlete. 

Once Meyer & Meyer Sport released the book, we wrote a free Educator Guide for parents, teachers, or coaches with exercises and activities on goal setting, team building, showing gratitude, and taking risks. I’m proud that my daughters and I have a loving, supportive family relationship, but also a respectful professional one that allows us to work creatively together.

What is your writing process? How do you make it a part of your daily life?

As often as possible, I write first thing in the morning, from 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. I like to have a project or chapter in mind when I begin. For the days I’m not in the middle of a project, I keep a Google Doc filled with ideas so I have a resource for inspiration. In the afternoons, I walk in the county park near my home. Although not officially writing time, ideas often pop into my thoughts. When that happens, I send myself an email, so the next day I have material to incorporate into an existing or new essay. I am lucky to have my daughter Elizabeth as a writing partner.

She teaches creative writing in a public high school and has shown me so much about editing and critiquing. When either of us has drafted an article or a chapter we share via Google Docs. The other person offers suggestions, comments, and line edits. Elizabeth spots inconsistencies, holes, or faulty logic that I miss when I’m too close to a piece. I do the same for her. Elizabeth and I have co-written many articles and collaborated on two nonfiction books.

How have your life experiences impacted the way you write?

To play piano requires discipline and daily practice. For years, I played scales and arpeggios, usually at the same time every day. The routine and time-blocking facilitated progress, and I have applied it to my writing life. I don’t have to search for writing time each day—it’s already built in. 

Creatively, I incorporate experiences from a long life. I was a pre-Title IX student, professional woman, musician, mother of an Olympic champion, and educator. I also use rich memories of grandparents, parents, and their stories of the Great Depression, of women denied an education, and of family dynamics positive and negative.

What is your favorite type of creative writing?

I’ve tried fiction and I’m terrible at it. I’m a beginner in poetry but hoping to learn and improve. My favorite genre is flash nonfiction. I enjoy telling a powerful true story in very few words. Although the word count is low, the challenge is great. To use just the right literary device, to convey emotion, to create metaphors, to deliver a universal message. All in 1,000 words or less.

Which has impacted your life more, music or writing? Or are they equal on the scale of expression?

Writing words and making music are both so emotional. In each, the goal is to create a feeling—to affect the reader or listener. For me, music has more impact because it is a collaboration, while reading and writing are solitary. Musicians work together for hours expressing passion, power, joy, longing. Sharing musical emotion braids a bond of personal emotion. As hard as we try, words cannot describe or evoke that experience. Even when listening or playing alone, music fires a unique chemistry in the brain. Nothing else compares and it’s unlike anything words on a page can do.

What advice can you give to beginning writers?

Writers, beginning or advanced, need a writing partner or writing group. Honest feedback from unbiased readers are essential. Writing partners can see and expose big issues like a hole in the narrative or an out-of-order timeline. They can also reveal smaller issues like repeated words, misspellings, and grammatical errors. Skilled partners will point out literary strengths, too, so we can build on those. An added benefit is that a writer learns from others’ mistakes. And there is an emotional benefit from belonging to a group that shares common ambitions, problems, and goals.

What do you think of when you hear the phrase, “The Good Life?”

Life can be imperfect and still deliver joy. The good life is filled with strong personal connections, a life purpose, creativity, and positivity. All of those require learning, work, and thought, and that is part of the good life too.

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Thank you, Nancy, for participating in this Q&A and sharing your story and part of your journey as a writer with us. We wish you the best!

This week’s Author Q & A is with Patricia Aya Williams. Patricia is a Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Prize recipient and Steve Kowit Poetry Prize finalist. Her work has appeared or will soon appear in Santa Clara Review, San Diego Poetry Annual, Writers Resist, Origami Poems Project, and The Closed Eye Open. She is a graduate of the Poetry Certificate Program at San Diego Writers, Ink, and a 2022 Pushcart nominee.

Williams’ poem, Love Poem for My Mother, is featured in Issue #11 of The Good Life Review. 

Tell us about yourself.

I grew up in the Bay Area and received both my BA and MLIS degrees from San Jose State University. I’ve been lucky to have had two wildly diverse and satisfying careers: first as a flight attendant, second as a public librarian. From an early age I kept journals and notebooks, although it’s only since I retired from being a librarian that I’ve had time to pursue writing more seriously. I live in San Diego with my husband and our French bulldog; they keep life fun and interesting. And I enjoy Soul Line Dancing!

What inspired you to write Love Poem for My Mother?

Once over the phone I told my mother about a dead rat I found in the backyard. It must have made an impression because the next time we talked she asked me about it. Her question became the first line of the poem.

What message do you hope reaches your audience through Love Poem for My Mother? 

I hope this poem speaks across generations and cultures to anyone who seeks deeper connection with a parent, especially a parent born and raised in another country for whom emigrating to the U.S. represents The American Dream. I also hope that it gets people thinking about how their own identity may have been influenced by generational trauma. 

What impacted you most when writing it? How was the process therapeutic? 

My mother died about a year before I started writing this poem, so I was missing her, still am.

We had a close yet complicated relationship, and it wasn’t always easy to find things to talk about. Writing and revising this poem through its various versions—more than a dozen over two years—gave me a chance to feel her presence with me, to hear her voice again, and maybe more importantly, to find my own voice.

Tell us about the work you have done or do that makes you most proud.

As far as writing, I am proud of the semi-autobiographical chapbook I wrote called On a Train Both Waving, about my parents and growing up during the 1970s in East San Jose. It’s a coming of age narrative and also a coming to terms with the deaths of both of my parents. I started sending it out at the beginning of this year; fingers crossed that it gets published. In my previous career as a librarian, I was most proud of creating and coordinating an annual Japan Festival celebrating the sister city relationship between Encinitas and Amakusa, Japan. It ran for ten years, with the last year being 2019, the year I retired.

What is your writing process? How do you make it a part of your daily life?

I attend a weekly writing workshop, so I aim to have a fairly solid draft of at least one poem a week. Throughout the day and when I wake up at night I try to have a notebook handy to jot down words or ideas, and sometimes I text things to myself. I like to see things on paper, get a working draft going, then start typing on my laptop and revising from there. When I’m at home I like to work in a quiet room, although I recently attended a generative workshop where we wrote while listening to the album Kind of Blue, by Miles Davis, and I loved it! Lately I’ve started writing at a couple of coffee shops close to home and have been productive that way. I just pop in my AirPods and go!

How have your life experiences impacted the way you write?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I started keeping journals around the age of eleven, soon after my father died. As an only child, writing was the only way I could begin to express the tumultuous emotions I was experiencing. Actually, I repressed a lot, because in those days (1977) no one talked to children about death and grief and what it feels like to lose a parent at such a young age. I had been Daddy’s little girl, and suddenly I was left alone with an inconsolable grief. My mother, being Japanese, came from a country and culture where emotions were even more repressed than in the U.S.

My father’s death traumatized us both, and my mother had already suffered many previous traumas that stemmed from being orphaned at nine years old in Japan during the second world war. Although our circumstances were quite different, my mother and I were both lucky to have found a way to survive parental loss as children. So I’m interested in that legacy of loss, how it persists and plays out in conscious and unconscious ways, how it carries on between generations, and how we learn to live with it.

What is your favorite type of poetry to write? Do you write in other forms as well?

I don’t know that I have a favorite type of poetry to write. I like to write free verse, and I also like writing within certain boundaries of form. Lately I have been writing a series of compressed quatorzaines in couplets with lots of wordplay and allusions to proverbs, nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and pop culture.

How has writing poetry impacted your life?

I’m attracted to the ineffable quality of poetry, how we can use it to “say the unsayable”. For me, poetry is an artistic vehicle for imagination, self-expression, meaning-making, and social connection. By social connection, I mean the connection between a reader and a writer on the page, and I also mean connection in the wider world. For example, attending poetry-related events gives me the opportunity to meet some really cool people–I was excited to meet

TGLR editor Shyla Shehan at this year’s AWP conference in Seattle! I’ve made friendships through poetry and worked with some incredible teachers and poets, such as Ron Salisbury and Allison Pitinii Davis. Poetry has enriched my life in so many ways!

How does poetry compare to visual arts? What form of expression do you prefer?

I think of poetry as visual art in a way, working with image and metaphor. I like to work with photographs, too. A teacher named Meri Aaron Walker introduced me to mobile digital photography, using my iPhone to both capture and edit images with a variety of apps. The immediacy and portability of that way of working really appeals to me. I like working with both poetry and photography and being creative with the ways they intersect.

What advice can you give to beginning writers or visual artists?

In many ways I am at the beginning of this journey myself, so I will just share a few things that have helped me up to this point. I try to read as much as I can, poetry and otherwise, and I also read articles and craft books about poetry. I look for opportunities to study: whether it’s a one-shot ZOOM lecture or more intensive ongoing courses. I attend a weekly workshop with the goal of writing and/or revising at least one poem a week. I send my work into the world and see where it leads. And I’m delighted this poem has led me to The Good Life Review!

What do you think of when you hear the phrase, “The Good Life?”

Your literary journal, of course! Also, there is a British sitcom from the 1970s called The Good Life that my husband introduced me to (he’s from England), so I think of that.

And just living “the good life” I have now with my husband and dog, trying to include as many things as possible that make me happy.

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Thank you, Patricia, for sending us your poetry and allowing us to share it with more people. Thanks also for participating in this Q&A and coming to visit with us at AWP this year! It was wonderful to meet you in person!!