Tag: interview

Simon Ashton is a former teacher and emerging writer, who was born in Scotland, grew up in England and has lived in various spots around the world from Turkey to Taiwan. Currently stuck in South Carolina, Simon is married with somewhere between 2 – 4 kids, and the best dog in the world. His brilliant short fiction story, Layover, is available in Issue #21.

Tell us about yourself?

I’m originally from Scotland but now live in the States with my wife, and Banksy, the World’s Best Dog. My two daughters and two step-daughters are scattered around the country.

Growing up our house was filled with books – every genre from German poetry to airport thrillers – but pride of place was reserved for my grandfather, who wrote a number of Hardy Boys-style books back in the 50s. I thought that was incredible, that an author could be somebody you knew, and I told everybody I was also going to be a writer when I grew up. Aged eleven I won my school’s story competition (the prize was a dictionary which, I was delighted to discover, contained all the naughty words), and then basically stopped for several decades because the stories I wrote were not as affecting as those I was reading. I only started writing again a couple of years ago once I gave up drinking and needed to find another, less self-destructive passtime. 

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the origin, revision process, and/or final version of your piece appearing in this issue?

When I lived in Taiwan two of my housemates were from Dunedin, New Zealand, which was how I learned they have a statue of Robert Burns in the centre of the town. There’s something so beautiful about that to me – these Scots sailed to the literal opposite side of the world and erected a statue of a poet. That he is facing a pub with his back to a church seemed too perfect.

What do you hope readers take from the piece?

The world can seem tremendously scary, particularly at this moment in history, but slowing down to carve out a little quiet for yourself is not only possible but essential. And, while I’m not a spiritual person I do believe, if we let it, life sometimes connects us with the right person at the right moment.

What fuels your desire to write (or engage in other creative outlets)?

The feeling of satisfaction which comes from creating something from nothing. 

I got very into cooking Indian food as there were no decent restaurants within an hour’s drive of where I live and, bizarre as it may sound, that helped me reframe how I looked at writing. I might never be a Madhur Jaffrey or Priya Krishna, but I can still whip up something I like and have a lot of fun doing so.

What have been the biggest influences in your writing?

I’m usually drawn to smaller stories, the ordinary dramas of life you find from writers like Maggie O’Farrell and Meg Wolitzer.  Roddy Doyle is a particular inspiration for the way his characters joke in even the bleakest circumstances. Humour is as natural a part of being human as sadness, but too often people think po-faced literary seriousness is more truthful. I disagree.

How do you make expression a part of your daily life or how do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

If anything, writing has helped provide more balance. I’ve worked from home for about twenty years and it’s very easy to blur that line between work and personal life. I’ve always been a night owl. I like to spend the evening with my wife and then, once she goes to bed, begin writing. The peace and quiet darkness brings is when I feel the least self-conscious and can allow my mind to wander more freely.

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

One of the worst/best things about getting older is realising how many trite cliches hold true. I’ve floated in the warmth of the South China Sea, walked a frozen lake in Wisconsin, and had a thousand more wonderful experiences I never would have dreamed, but the good life is getting to share those joyful times with people you love.

Thank you, Simon, for being a part of our growing literary community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We wish you the best with writing and all life’s endeavors!

Susan L. Lin is a Taiwanese American storyteller who hails from southeast Texas and holds an MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. Her novella GOODBYE TO THE OCEAN won the 2022 Etchings Press novella prize, and her literary/visual art has appeared in nearly a hundred publications. She loves to dance. Her flash piece, Taco Bell Customer Satisfaction Questionnaire, appears in Issue #19.

Tell us about yourself.

I always struggle when asked to describe myself in only a few short sentences. People are so complex! Where to even begin? I guess the most important thing to know about me is that I love to dance. In my opinion, it’s the most instinctive creative activity. Rarely do I find myself overthinking when I improv or freestyle. Instead, I simply let the music guide my body. It’s liberating! It also motivates me to keep going when I’m having a rough time.

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the origin, revision process, and/or final version of your piece appearing in this issue?

It probably won’t surprise anyone to know that I originally wrote this piece for Taco Bell Quarterly. Literary rejections typically don’t bother me at all, but I’ll admit to being kind of crushed when my dream journal ultimately passed. I am, however, thrilled that the story eventually found a perfect home at The Good Life Review, another publication I’ve long admired.

In terms of process, I had the most fun writing the robot deterrent math question because I’ve always thought the word problems on algebra tests introduced the most ridiculous scenarios that no real person would ever find themselves in, so I relished putting my own humorous-but-heartbreaking spin on it. Drafting the entire piece was an endlessly entertaining adventure though. I love playing with hermit crab forms, and blending a customer service survey with a school exam felt very natural and satisfying.

What did you learn (about yourself or craft or life in general) through writing and revising it?

I wrote a lot of silly stories as a kid but stopped as I got older because I thought I wanted to be a “serious” writer. In grad school, I slowly began returning back to humor (or at least absurdity), but this is probably one of the most overtly comedic pieces I’ve written. I had such a blast remixing pop culture nostalgia within a post-apocalyptic landscape that I’m now writing a futuristic murder mystery comedy novel set inside the film industry.

What do you hope readers take from the piece?

I never write anything hoping to elicit a certain reaction or emotion. That’s not why I make art. And once something is published, I no longer have control over the response. But even though this piece is based on my own personal memories, experiences, and obsessions, I do hope that other people will find it relatable in some visceral way. Maybe it will make them nostalgic. Maybe it’ll make them laugh. Maybe it’ll make them sweat. Maybe it’ll make them hungry. Or sad. Or angry. Maybe even all those things at once? That’s up to the individual reader.

What fuels your desire to write (or engage in other creative outlets)? Or what have been the biggest influences in your writing?

I write (and create) for many reasons. My motivation differs depending on the project. On the most basic level, however, I’m most likely trying to externalize or immortalize a story, character, relationship, image, or mood. Some of my biggest influences are science, everyday objects, or other art forms. I’m as inspired by clocks, clouds, nightmares, and architecture, as I am by cinematography, choreography, fashion, and synth music. You can find structure in the most unexpected ingredients.

How do you make expression a part of your daily life? Or how do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

I have my laptop programmed to say, “It’s ## o’clock. Time for a dance break,” at the top of every hour. And then I take a dance break! I will dance to anything and everything. Different music genres help me access and express different emotions, so I never feel bored.

Summoning the mental energy required to write can unfortunately be more difficult, especially when I’m not feeling well. I try not to be too hard on myself if I don’t write regularly. My body knows its limits, so I’ve learned to listen to it. When I was younger, I used to get so upset when I didn’t live up to my own high expectations. I thought laziness must be to blame when the truth was I had unresolved trauma and an undiagnosed chronic illness. If there are words I absolutely must get on the page, I’m sure I’ll find a way to get them there. In the meantime, even when my pen is not physically moving, worlds are still being constructed inside my head. I know now that writing for the sake of filling a quota is not always a good use of my time.

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

To be honest, I’ve never put much thought into what other people meant when they said those words. In my youth, I didn’t really understand the phrase. But after surviving multiple health scares in the past five years, I’ve spent a lot of time pondering my mortality. I suppose for me “the good life” has become synonymous with life in general. The life I’ve lived. When you’re really going through it, so much of life feels terrible, but then you look back and realize how much the ugly parts shaped you as a human being and as an artist.

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Thank you, Susan, for trusting us with your quirky flash piece (we are also TBQ fans, but glad it worked out the way it did)! We appreciate you being a part of our growing literary community and also for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We wish you the best with writing, dancing, and whatever else strikes your fancy!

Keira Deer is a writer and poet based in Southern California. She holds a BFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University, and her work has been published in Scapegoat Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, and Halfway Down the Stairs, among others, and her poem, “if,” is featured in Issue #19.

Tell us about yourself.

I’ve always been fond of thinking about poetry as a way of telling secrets, a form of storytelling I’ve been practicing since I was a young teenager and now into my early twenties. My poetry draws its subject matter largely from my own life and experiences, focusing often on themes of voicelessness, coming of age, and memory, but I’m also passionate about writing poems that unveil stories from history, particularly narratives of minority voices and groups that have been overshadowed or erased in the course of mainstream American history. In synthesis of the personal and the historical, I find myself drawn toward poetic explorations of Asian-American—specifically Chinese-American—history in the U.S. I’m also interested in using poetry as a way of parsing the confusion and complexities of biraciality.

I hold a BFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University in Orange County, California, where I was born and raised, and will be pursuing a Master of Fine Arts degree in the same field at CU Boulder this fall.

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the origin, revision process, and/or final version of your piece appearing in this issue?

The poem that appears in this issue is a playful speculation of what alternate reality might exist if John Lennon had not been assassinated. The poem considers where the rock star might be and what he might be doing if he had lived beyond 1980, musing on his creation of new music, his continued career in the arts, and his favored walks through Central Park. While I don’t remember where the initial idea for the poem came from, I do recall how liberating it felt to imagine an extension of John Lennon’s life, how it gave me the freedom to bend the lines and march my own footprints in the margins of history. Even the fact that I’ve never been to New York did very little to restrict me, because I was writing about a New York that doesn’t really exist—I was beyond the realms of reality and therefore had the liberty to play and experiment.

What do you hope readers take from the piece?

I titled the poem “if” as an encouragement for readers to invite wonder into their own lives. By asking “if,” you’re really asking yourself to imagine a catalog of possibilities, a set of potentials that exercises your mind, your creativity, and your ability to dream. Ultimately, I think, half the work of an artist is to imagine all that is possible (and impossible) and then to realize it.

What fuels your desire to write (or engage in other creative outlets)? Or what have been the biggest influences in your writing?

I’ve operated my entire life as a notoriously quiet person, both literally—sometimes, my voice so quiet I’m asked to speak up four or five times before the ear can catch it—and personality-wise. For that reason, the feeling of voicelessness (and, by extension, a certain kind of invisibility and smallness) is one that I’ve always struggled with. Something that holds me so tightly in the fist of writing is the even ground that my voice finds on the page, the fact that I can tell everything I need to—all the truths, all the secrets—and be heard without even having to open my mouth. I get this unbeatable feeling when I’m able to write something that feels like Morse code tapped right out of my heartbeat, something that expresses exactly what I felt, saw, experienced, etc. and manages to transfer those sensations to the reader in a meaningful way.

At some point, I realized: if I could raise my own voice in this way, I could do the same for those who weren’t able to themselves. From there, I started writing poems centering around Chinese immigrants in the United States who experienced racism and brutality in the era of the Chinese Exclusion Act and beyond. My love of history and my love of poetry mutually inform each other and synthesize into creative projects that make me feel deeply fulfilled as an artist.

How do you make expression a part of your daily life? Or how do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

I journal a lot—every day, when possible. Any night available to me to stay up until midnight (and beyond) is spent in bed with my laptop and several books of poetry open and haphazard around me at arms reach. The poems come in pieces. I try to add one piece to the puzzle every day, even if just a line.

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

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about “the good life” lately, and the word that always comes to mind is “explore.” Find what interests you and do many things. Remember the catalog of possibilities you create for yourself and be willing to try your hand at each of them. Be a lifelong learner. Make mistakes and become better because of them. “Be like the fox,” writes Wendell Berry, “who makes more tracks than necessary, / some in the wrong direction.”

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Thank you, Keira, for being a part of our growing literary community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We wish you the best with writing and all life’s endeavors!

Alayna Powell (she/they) is a biracial Black writer with roots along the Southern East Coast and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Her debut chapbook, After Forgiveness (2024), was published by Bottlecap Press. She is a fourth-year MFA student at the University of Alabama, where she’s also pursuing a certificate in Archival Studies and serving as the current Poetry Editor for Black Warrior Review.

Powell’s piece, I Conjure My Great-Grandmother In a Dream; She Gives Me a Lesson on Revision, won the Honeybee Prize for Flash CNF.

Tell us about yourself.

• I’ve lived in six states.
• I’m a middle child.
• I have two cats: Misha (named after Misha Collins; Supernatural) and Zuzu (named after Zuzu Bailey; It’s A Wonderful Life).  
• I’m about to start my fourth and final year of my mfa program at the University of Alabama. This year, I’m the Poetry Editor for our grad-student lit magazine, Black Warrior Review. I’m also getting a certificate in Archival Studies.
• I love stone fruits. They often appear in my poems. 

What was special about your relationship with your great-grandmother as referenced in your Flash CNF,  I Conjure My Great-Grandmother In a Dream; She Gives Me a Lesson on Revision? How did she influence your life?

I actually never met my great-granny, but I would still say we have a growing relationship. Her name was Elmira (people called her Mollie) and she passed away in 1982.

Mollie was born in Cabal, South Carolina in 1894. She was biracial. She gave birth to ten kids and her husband died young. Mollie never learned to read or write. She lived with my poppy, her son, her whole life. She made quilts. She made salmon cakes. She picked cotton. She went to Sunday School every week.

There are the fragments of Mollie’s life I’ve collected over the past years. There is so much I don’t know, will never know, about her. My grandmother believes Mollie would have said more, told them more, if they had just asked. So now, I ask questions. I listen to story after story. I write it all down. I want the knowing to be easier for those who come after me. And it was Mollie who really set me on this path. My research and writing about my family has blossomed, and it’s allowed me to connect with my older relatives in really special ways.

While reading I Conjure My Great-Grandmother In a Dream; She Gives Me a Lesson on Revision I was swept up in the poetic prose and repetition. Does much of your CNF have a poetic feel to it? Conversely, does much of your poetry reflect your personal experiences like CNF? Do you often blend genres?

Most of my work is hybrid, but up until about a year ago, I considered everything I wrote a poem. When I wrote this essay, I thought it was a poem. At the time, I was taking a historical persona poetry class. I was writing about my great-grandmother a lot – from her perspective, from the perspective of her children, etc.

That same semester, Ander Monson was a visiting writer for our MFA program. He offered to hold conferences with us, so I asked for feedback on this piece. The first question I had for him was, “Do you think this is a poem? If not, what is it?” 

And he very straightforwardly told me, no, this is not a poem. He told me he considered it a speculative essay. We talked about the power of the “I” in an essay versus a poem, which is what really opened my eyes to the possibilities of CNF.

So, when I think about genre I think about the function it serves for me as a writer. Genre is most helpful for me during the writing process. I’ve found that I need repetition when I’m writing about real people and real things. When you’re holding someone’s history in your hands, you realize how fragile it is. It’s easy to get caught up in getting it “right.” Repetition keeps my momentum going. It fills in the blanks so the story can unfold naturally. Then, in the editing stage, you can remove the excess.

I’ve just recently started to consider myself a hybrid writer; however, my poetry has always drawn from real life and experiences. I’m still happy calling my essays poems once they’re complete.

How has poetry benefited your other forms of writing?

I think poetry teaches you to pay attention to the details. When I’m writing poetry, it’s a very auditory process. There’s a feeling or an image in my head that I need to translate to paper. It’s my voice – I just need to find the right words.

When I’m writing CNF, specifically persona, the details are even more important. I start with the facts – these are the bones of the piece, the bones of the speaker. I have to see their whole body, in the time and space they existed, before I can hear their voice. Once there’s a clear image in my head, I can begin the poetic process of imagining and translating their voice.

Also, I think it’s cool to use line breaks in essays.

What writer or artist has most inspired you in your own writing career? Why?

Toni Morrison <3. Her work encapsulates the hybridity I try to instill in my own writing. She pulls from the historical record and extends it into new possibilities. You could take an excerpt, at random, from any of her books, and it would read as a poem. And she always leaves the reader with questions to bring back to their own life. I really appreciate that.

Tell us about your chapbook, After Forgiveness, and why it is a testament to love.

I think, as humans, we want emotions to fit into these neat, contained boxes. My poems taught me that wasn’t true. I wrote about my anger for a long time before I realized I was also writing about the love, and loss, I had experienced. Once, in a workshop, a friend told me that I wrote “haunted love poems” and that description really stuck with me.

My chapbook is a reflection on relationships and the evolution of those relationships. I will always love the ritual of fishing with my father, but I will never again be a child on his boat, and that hurts. My mother’s cancer has been in remission for twelve years, but the fear of being motherless in middle school remains with me. I still dream about my roommate who moved out five years ago, but despite the anger I hold towards her, the dreams are always sweet.

I think the love we hold for ourselves and others is always changing shapes and sizes. After Forgiveness really leans into that. It doesn’t have a lot of answers. But it’s trying its best to make sense of things, while also keeping the plants alive.

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

The good life, in my opinion, is picking plums straight from the tree. It’s when your loved ones are always nearby, and your cat feels like cuddling, and you think you figured out the twist at the end of the movie, but you end up surprised anyway.

Thank you, Alayna, for spending extra time on this Q&A and for the lovely audio recording of your work. We’re grateful to have you as a part of our growing community and wish you the best with your writing and other pursuits!

A multiple Pushcart nominee, Sharon Lee Snow earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. Her award-winning short stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry have been published in Passengers, Burningword, New Plains Review, South 85, Gulf Stream, and other journals. She currently lives in Tampa where she teaches professional writing to college students and works on her short story collection.

Snow’s piece, When Mr. Boppo Joined the Cohort, won the 2025 Honeybee Prize for short fiction is available in Issue #20 along with the judge’s endorsement and audio of Sharon reading a portion of her work.

How would you describe yourself—not just as a writer, but as a storyteller in everyday life?

Like most writers, I consider myself a student of human nature. In everyday life, I am trying to make sense of our complicated world and our interactions within it. I am deeply interested in human motivation – what makes a formerly “good” person do something deemed “bad?” How do we act when faced with an extreme situation? How are we all alike yet unique in our humanity? Watching closely, not as someone judging people, but rather, in empathy as a fellow human, I try to make sense and find the beauty and moments of grace in this mess we call life. My characters are deeply flawed as are we all, and I try to see the shared humanity in their struggle and failures. I care about my characters as people, and at the end, I want to see at least some vision of hope for all of us.

Readers often interpret characters through their own unique perspectives. As you wrote When Mr. Boppo Joined the Cohort, what did Mr. Boppo personally represent to you?

I have a fascination with clowns, especially the story of Pagliacci, which I love for its play-within-a-play concept and timeless plotline of jealousy, adultery, and murder. When Mr. Boppo walked through the classroom door in that MFA fiction workshop, I saw him as an actual clown who challenges the main character, Evan, as an ambiguous kind of antagonist who also represents many things to Evan who is struggling at that moment. I encourage readers to create their own interpretations of my writing, but I definitely know what Mr. Boppo means to me, even if Evan can’t see it until the end. I hope my readers can enjoy the bizarreness, yet strange normalcy of this clown character who is more real than he seems.

Have you ever experienced a time in your life when you felt like a “clown” or an imposter? How did you navigate or move past that feeling?

We all feel like clowns or imposters at some points in our lives, especially when we try something new or are out of our comfort zone. That is not a great feeling, and it can hold you back if you don’t push past it. I am constantly jumping out of my comfort zone into new situations, such as a move to LA or a new job in a new field, and it is both exhilarating and terrifying! When I walked into my first college classroom as a Visiting Instructor, I definitely felt like an imposter! To help with those concerns, I went to training sessions, talked to colleagues, studied the material and prepared, and then dressed in a confidence-inspiring outfit, took a deep breath, and addressed my students with a confident hello! Preparation and acting “as if” will get you far! Talking to colleagues and friends is also key. The main thing is to remember that you have the credentials, you can do it and move through until you beat those imposter lies.

In what ways did your time in the MFA program at the University of South Florida shape or influence this story?

My time in the MFA program at the University of South Florida definitely shapes this story! First, I could vividly visualize the classrooms, campus, and this fictional cohort with their professors and picture exactly how they interact, having been an MFA student and taught first-year composition in those very classrooms! But more importantly, my amazing professors and MFA student colleagues have been beyond generous in helping me progress as a writer. They are talented writers and great colleagues who inspire me daily. Also, our course readings were varied and many of us found similar interests. I am a huge fan of science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, speculative fiction, and weird fiction. I became inspired by works by Jeff VanderMeer, Aimee Bender and Karen Russell, novels such as The Midnight Library, by Matt Haig, The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, and Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke, and wonderful work by my mentor, author John Henry Fleming. While I have a little fun in my imaginary Mr. Boppo MFA program, I am forever grateful for my wonderful MFA experience at USF!

How do you guide your first-year composition students to give and receive constructive feedback on each other’s writing?

I guide my first-year composition students in receiving and giving constructive feedback through thinking back on my experiences in the MFA program where we learned to focus on what’s working in the writing and provide positive suggestions on what to consider for revision. In all my writing classes, we have discussions on kind and useful peer review considerations before we undertake the actual work of peer review! It’s important to seriously consider language choices and tone in how you present your information about someone’s writing. First-year students are often new to university life as well as college-level writing. I make the atmosphere a welcoming, safe environment. If students don’t feel safe or heard, they will shut down. My goal is to let everyone know, writing is a process. We all start at the beginning and can improve through feedback and revision. There is not one right or wrong way to do this. Everyone has a voice.

What do you believe is the most important lesson a new writer should learn early in their journey?

I believe that the most important lesson that a new writer should learn early in their journey is to read voraciously – both inside and outside of their chosen genre – to learn how to read as a writer. Writers need to study other writing for structure, language, plotting, and characterization. They should find their cohort or people who can help them on their journey, such as fellow writers, readers, or friends who encourage them. They should also read about the craft and art of writing from authors such as Stephen King, Anne Lamott, Annie Dillard, James Scott Bell, and others. Most importantly, stop worrying about the work not being good enough – just keep writing and revising. Keep a solid writing schedule that works for you. Then send it out and keep sending it out. We need your writing!

You’ve published a great deal of poetry. How has writing poetry influenced or enriched your fiction writing?

Writing poetry definitely influences and enriches my fiction writing. I write poetry because I love the dance of words on a page and enjoy the concision needed to convey an image or thought in a poem. However, beautiful, crisp, concise language and the dance of words enriches fiction just as well. I also have longer stories to tell than a poem can convey, but I always love the language too. Poetry has been helpful in learning concision. I’m a long writer, but today’s readers don’t always want long stories. I used my poetry training to help me narrow down a 24-page short story into a 2-page flash fiction piece that became my first published flash fiction story! I enjoyed that challenge very much, and poetry definitely helped by giving me new tools.

When you hear the phrase “the good life,” what comes to mind?

When I hear the phrase “the good life,” I see a person relaxing on a beach! I live in Florida and don’t get to the beach as often as I’d like. But more generally, the good life feels like a state of mind more than a place. I’d like to think that we all deserve the good life – whatever that means to us: abundant resources and things we need to live without stress, but also, the chance to encounter, enjoy, and create art and things we love. Joy. Being in nature or with loved ones – that’s the good life too. But again, I think it’s about being in a good place mentally. Your journal is The Goodlife Review and its beautiful covers with an adorable bee logo make me smile along with your mission created out of the pandemic to foster not only writers, readers, and art, but also positivity and kindness. That, I believe, is truly the hallmark of the good life.

Thank you, Sharon, for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We’re grateful to have had the opportunity to work with you and wish you the best with your writing and all life’s endeavors!

Jim Parisi lives in Washington, D.C., with his long-suffering wife, Beth, and Dolce, a spicy mix of boxer, pit bull, and Australian cattle dog. (Their two kids, Aidan and Nora, have flown the coop.) After a long career as an editor of research products for the academic market, he is focusing on fiction writing and freelance editing while he still has that new-unemployed-guy smell. Much of his free time is spent coaching Little League softball. His writing has been published in FlashFlood Journal and ihavethatonvinyl.com.

Parisi’s piece was the winner of the 2025 Honeybee Prize in flash Fiction. “While Making Out the Lineup for Tomorrow’s 12U Softball Championship Game” is available in Issue #20 along with the judge’s endorsement and audio of Jim reading a portion of his work.

How would you describe yourself—not just as a writer, but as a storyteller in everyday life?

My wife heard me read this question aloud and said that I’m a “quick- witted wiseass.” I started to protest but had to concede that she nailed it. I try to infuse every text, every email, every conversation, ever social media post, every story with humor. That was true even before I started writing fiction with a sense of purpose–and urgency, given my relatively late start—the past couple of years. But I’ve found that as I’ve become more confident as a fiction writer, I have also become more adept at telling stories in everyday life, both orally and in writing. I’m still a “quick-witted wiseass,” but I have become better at spinning a tale that goes beyond one-liners.

While Making Out the Lineup for Tomorrow’s 12U Softball Championship Game feels deeply personal, almost like flash creative nonfiction. How did your own coaching experience shape this piece?

This story came very easily to me, but it is not autobiographical or even based on situations or characters from my time as a softball coach. (In fact, the only player in the story who was based on a player I knew in real life ended up on the cutting-room floor after the first draft.) But I have been immersed in that world for years, and from the moment I came up with the premise for the story, I had a clear idea of how I would describe the lives of each of the players. I had to figure out the interpersonal relationships of the adults as I went along, but that also came pretty quickly, even though the suburban town I imagined as the setting is foreign to my experience as a coach.

This story moves so naturally from humor to something much more heartfelt. How do you approach building emotional tension and conflict in such a short space?

In my first draft I set out to give a fuller picture of the personalities and circumstances of the players along with the interweaving of relationships between the adults. The beauty of the structure of this story is that I could describe each girl in one discrete paragraph and could also explain, when the story called for it, how that girl or her family played a role in the plight of the coach. So building tension and conflict was fairly easy. I did it one block of text at a time, whittling my expansive first draft (all 3,400 words of it) to home in on a few telling details and plot developments. The humor comes naturally to me, but I’m constantly on the lookout for signs that the humor is coming off as too glib or facile and dampening the emotional resonance of the story. It’s a work in progress, an ongoing struggle in all my writing. (My wife just interjected, “in all your life.”)

The father in the story feels layered—like someone who may not have planned to coach, but stepped up for the sake of connection. Was that part of the character from the start, or something that emerged as you wrote?

I envisioned the father as someone who got started in coaching because his daughter’s team needed a coach and he agreed to fill that role. (That’s how a lot of coaches get their start, even lifers like me who end up sticking around long after their kids have moved on.) The connection with his daughter would have been part of his reason for wanting to coach, but when he started coaching, his personal life had not yet taken a turn for the worse. So he would have been doing it because he wanted to be a good dad who also liked teaching the other kids how to play. But as I kept heaping misery upon misery on the poor guy, I came upon the realization that softball was one of the cherished tethers to his earlier life with his daughter, which added to his sense of melancholy approaching this last game of the season.

Do you often experiment with different forms or genres in your writing? What draws you to flash fiction in particular?

I always thought that I was too much of an overwriter to be any good at flash fiction. It sometimes takes me 200 words just to clear my throat. And my writing in no way resembles the prose-poemy lyricism of the best flash stories. But I’ve found that I love being able to come up with an idea, then write a first draft that might indulge my proclivity for excess, then pare that down to get to the heart of the story and the characters. When it works well, I can come up with a finished story in a few days (then pick at it endlessly, something I had to stop myself from doing with this story even after it won the prize). Most of my flashes tend to have traditional story structure or verge on being vignettes. This story’s annotated lineup is an exception. I have recently completed the first draft of a novel that I began in 2023. I’m currently taking a brief break from that to gear up for writing the second draft. During this downtime, I’ve been writing stories that I hope will, if my nascent plan bears fruit, find their way into a novella-in-flash that I will return to whenever the novel stalls.

Flash fiction often relies on what’s left unsaid as much as what’s on the page. How do you decide what to include and what to leave out?

I am constantly fighting my natural urge to explain too much. I think I’ve gotten better about it, but I still need to be vigilant about leaving those spaces for the reader to fill in. But I am an editor by inclination as well as training; so as I’ve gained confidence in writing flash fiction, I have been able to direct my editing efforts to focus not only on correcting what’s on the page but also on figuring out what doesn’t need to be on the page. That too is a work in progress.

There’s such warmth and subtlety in the humor here. How has humor influenced your writing voice over time—and how do you decide when to use it? 

My biggest struggle lies in figuring out when not to use humor. My default mode is writing humor. Buried somewhere in my attic is a report card from the eighth grade on which my English teacher wrote. “Jimmy’s sense of humor comes out in his writing.” REDACTED years later, I am still at heart that thirteen-year-old kid, especially when writing dialogue. I have found that the subject matter and natural rhythms of the story dictate when to use, and when not to use, humor. But even in the more serious parts of this story, my intention was for the coach to use humorous asides and self-deprecation to leaven what could have been a relentless litany of misery and indignities. I can’t imagine writing characters without the use of humor, either overtly or subtly.

Which writers or storytellers have had the biggest influence on you, and what is it about their work that sticks with you?

This is the question I’ve been dreading. Ask me to name my favorite or most influential anything, and I’ll draw a massive blank. But I’ll try my best.

I could go on about many authors, but I’ll pick the first three who popped into my head as having influenced how I think about writing over the years. I was a huge John Irving fan in my early twenties, back when he wrote novels that were Dickensian in scale but filled with humor. I wish I could write as well, and as perceptively, as Kurt Vonnegut, but I certainly aspire to the liveliness of his prose and his ability to use humor to point out society’s absurdities and outrages. And Roddy Doyle’s dialogue jumps off the page for me, especially in his earlier books. He has definitely influenced my approach to writing dialogue.

But honestly, the publication that had the biggest influence on me from an early age was MAD Magazine. I read that religiously as a kid. MAD—along with genetics (from my father, although my mother can hold her own in that department) and a healthy dose of New Jersey attitude—definitely played a significant role in developing the comic sensibility that runs through everything I write.

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

What comes to mind when I think about the good life is vacations with my family: sitting on the nearly deserted beach late in the afternoon, the sun setting behind us, the sound of the waves crashing, the sense of peacefulness. I think I’ll need to make a concerted effort to conjure that image to counteract the sense of dread that pervades my thoughts whenever I think about the state of the world.

Thank you, Jim, for being a part of our growing literary community and for spending extra time with us on the Q&A as well as the audio reading. Congrats again on the prize… we wish you the best!

Sara Maria Hasbun is an American linguist, currently based in Beijing. You can find her on instagram, @misslinguistic. Her short fiction, Tbilisi, appears in our spring issue.

Tell us about yourself. 

Before I started writing fiction, my background was in linguistics. I’ve always been fascinated with the very different ways that languages describe and categorize the world, and as a college student I set for myself the impractical goal of learning the five languages of the UN (Spanish, French, Mandarin, Russian, and Arabic). I liked the fact that they mostly came from such distinct language families, and yet would also give me access to such a large swathe of the world. I didn’t learn all those languages to fluency, but learning their structures really did open my eyes to new ways of thinking.

That led me, for awhile, into working as a translator. Later I started a consultancy. My work has almost always been remote, so I was very lucky to spend extensive time living abroad. 

I only recently started writing fiction, and I think the main impetus for that was feeling like I was having trouble processing reality. I was living in China during the pandemic, I was reading Chinese news and American news and European news and feeling like the more I read, the less I actually understood. I was also living in a small, tight-knit community of foreigners and locals, wonderful people who I love fiercely. But everyone in that small community knew a little too much about everyone else, or worse, operated under the dangerous assumption that they did. I started to realize just how easy it was to subvert reality, to invite delusion.

You would think that would lead me towards surrealist fiction or magical realism, but I find reality even more insidious and confusing, so I’m sticking with literary fiction for now.

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the origin, revision process, and/or final version of your piece appearing in this issue?

I have this habit of falling in love with cities, especially cities that feel like they’re on a precipice, cities that are about to cross a threshold. That sort of precipitous change seems to turn all inhabitants into thinkers. In those kinds of cities, very few residents have the luxury of being complacent or incurious. So if you turn up in a city like Tbilisi or Beijing, you are immediately thrown into a conversation. Everyone is asking big questions. It feels almost impossible to end your day without feeling like you’ve learned something new about humanity.

In Tbilisi, during the times that I visited, everyone was asking big questions. What is a nation? they asked. What is sovereignty? What does it mean to be accountable to your country? What does it mean to be accountable to the people that you love?

What did you learn (about yourself or craft or life in general) through writing and revising it?

To be honest, I was stuck on this piece for a very long time. The current Georgian situation (their nation, their culture, their history, their conflicts, their identity) is incredibly complex, and I really did not want the piece to sound like it came with a political agenda. 

And as with many other subjects, I felt like the more I learned about Georgia, the less I actually knew. 

But of course, when a person describes their experience of moving through life, their observations will naturally coalesce around one interpretation or another. To deny that would be unrealistic. 

Eventually I realized that I needed to lean, as I always should do, into that uncertainty, and bring the reader along as I try to piece things together. I tried very hard to write only what I saw and heard, and to avoid drawing conclusions. 

What do you hope readers take from the piece?

I want to bring the reader into the process of trying to figure out the world, I want them to question what they thought they knew to be true about themselves and their surroundings. Whenever I write, what I want more than anything is for the writing to bring about more questions.

I hope this piece encourages readers to think about their own relationship to accountability: who are they accountable to? What does accountability look like? And in a world where your country asks so much of you, how important is it to protect yourself?

Mostly, I hope it inspires readers to hold some empathy for people who are still figuring all of that out.

What fuels your desire to write (or engage in other creative outlets)? Or what have been the biggest influences in your writing?

Right now I’m fueled by confusion. So much about the world confuses me these days, and I write to try to make some sense of things. I really enjoy this process, I enjoy talking to friends about what I’m writing and what they are writing, and trying to come closer to some sort of understanding. I think you never actually reach fully reach an objective truth, but it is fun to help each other hold back the curtains, to try to get a glimpse.

How do you make expression a part of your daily life? Or how do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

My favorite kind of day has me writing in the early afternoon. I “clock in” at one of my favorite Beijing cafes, I start writing, and then I pretty much blink and the sun has already gone down and my coffee is cold, and friends are sniffing around to see who will be the first to order a bottle of wine and ruin the rest of the day’s writing. It is truly a good life.

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

The good life is full of more questions than answers, because no one wants to go to a dinner party and hear someone give you all the answers. The good life is sitting around with people whose company you enjoy, having some good food and some good drink, and trying to piece together an understanding of reality. Ideally one that leaves room for hope.

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Thank you, Sara, for being a part of our growing community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. Best wishes with writing and wherever life and your travels take you next.

Allison Hughes lives on North Haven Island in Maine. She holds a BFA from Emerson College. Her work has been featured in Wack Mag.

Allison’s Essay, “I Am a Body Lying In the Grass” is featured in Issue #19.

Tell us about yourself.

I’m Allison, a queer nonfiction writer from Maine. I’ve been writing about my life since First Grade. My teacher wrote weekly letters to all her students, and my first letter to her was about swimming at a sandy beach with my cousins in September. I still swim in September but now the beaches are rocky and my cousins live in different states. I live on North Haven Island with my partner and our pet fish named Henry, who has far outlived his life expectancy.

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the origin, revision process, and/or final version of your piece appearing in this issue?

I wrote the bulk of this essay in the notes app on my phone when I was having trouble falling asleep.

What did you learn (about yourself or craft or life in general) through writing and revising it?

I learned to use inspiration when it strikes.

What fuels your desire to write (or engage in other creative outlets)? Or what have been the biggest influences in your writing?

Curiosity is one of my biggest influences. My desire to write is fueled by my desire to learn. It helps me feel my emotions and to understand situations or people from different angles. I love to write about my relationships, sexuality, family, and home.

How do you make expression a part of your daily life? Or how do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

The outfit I choose to wear, the music I listen to, and the dinner I cook are all a part of my personal expression. These pieces of my life help fuel my creativity.

I find a balance between my writing and other responsibilities with the help from my community. I enjoy writing in the company of others, whether I’m in a packed coffee shop or sitting next to a friend. My friend calls it “parallel play.” She draws and I write or we both write or we both draw. I’m in a writing group that meets twice a month, since there aren’t many opportunities to sit in a packed coffee shop on the island. I value my relationships and try to connect with new writers.

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

When I hear “the good life” I think of Maine. I think of my first cup of coffee of the day, reading on the beach, winter walks, falling asleep to the sound of waves crashing on shore. I think of falling in love and healing from heartbreak.

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Thank you, Allison, for being a part of our growing literary community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We wish you the best!

Myna Chang is the author of The Potential of Radio and Rain (CutBank Books). Her writing has been selected for Best Microfiction, Best Small Fictions, and WW Norton’s Flash Fiction America. Find her at MynaChang.com or on Bluesky at @MynaChang.

Myna’s Flas Fiction, “The Next Empty Cup” is featured in Issue #19.

Tell us about yourself.

I write flash fiction, short speculative fiction, and poetry, as well as creative nonfiction. I also interview authors and publishers for several magazines, and publish fiction reviews on my blog. I have a large German Shepherd who lays on my feet as I write, and a quick-witted husband who brings me sandwiches when I’m on a deadline. I feel incredibly lucky.

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the origin, revision process, and/or final version of your piece appearing in this issue?

This story is a reaction to the many ways society belittles and ignores older women. I’ve watched my grandmothers and my mother seemingly lose “value” as they aged, and I’m experiencing it myself directly now as I sail past middle-age. In this story, I wanted to repackage my frustration and anger into something more resonant, something a bit hopeful.

How do you find a balance between your writing and other responsibilities?

Finding balance seems somewhat unimportant to me. After too many years in a demanding career, and too much juggling of duties as a parent, I am joyful that I now can do what I want with my time. Someone else can wash the damn dishes—I have a story to write.

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

To me, “the good life” means having the freedom and opportunity to live life as I choose. I believe every person in the world deserves this unfettered autonomy, and I’d love to see more people working toward this goal.

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Thank you, Myna, for being a part of our growing literary community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We wish you the best!

Chris Lisieski is an attorney and poet. He graduated from Antioch College with a degree in philosophy and creative writing, and the University of Virginia with a J.D. His work has been published by In Parentheses, The Courtship of Winds, and The Journal of Undiscovered Poets. He has one good dog, one other dog, and a multitude of rotating hobbies.

Lisieski’s poem, “ephemera 31” is featured in Issue #19.

Tell us about yourself.

My interest in writing originated where it does for many of us, I think:  in reading.  I could never put books away.  I remember getting in trouble in Mr. Plischke’s sixth grade class for reading novels during class.  My relationship with language has changed a lot over the years, particularly so during law school, but I’ve never gotten far away from writing.

What unique or surprising detail can you tell us about the origin, revision process, and/or final version of your piece appearing in this issue?  

Each of the poems I’ve written in the ephemera series start from what is essentially a piece of trash:  a discarded paper or list or advertisement or some other kind of printed, written, or typed word with limited and temporally constrained utility.  I typically start with the piece of ephemera, and have no idea where the poem will end up from there.  Also, I have Saving Private Ryan to thank for the vocabulary word “defilade.”

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

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking recently about how essential dualities are for human experience:  that pain is part and parcel to love; that happiness must contain sadness within it; that anger and peace are different ingredients in the same soup.  At a basic level, you can’t know, understand, or appreciate any single emotion without its counterpart.  If you feel joy, at some point, you’ll feel the absence of joy.  So, when I hear “the good life,” I think of the weird amalgam that flavors it, and how that includes “the bad life” within it.  Some bitterness, some sweet, some salt, all key to a rich broth and, in the end, inevitable to our very human lives.

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Thank you, Chris, for being a part of our growing literary community and for spending extra time with us on this Q&A. We wish you the best!