Your flash cnf piece “air in the brain” in Volume 23 feels like this urgent, almost pseudo apology or justification from the speaker who feels compelled to explain their mother’s behavior. Can you tell us how this piece came to be? What’s the inspiration behind it?

Grief actually inspired this, and mourning. One of my friends killed herself & I started to write about how moments can get the best of you and make you act irrational. As I tried to write about my friend though, I found myself writing about my mom. Even though my mom abandoned me multiple times during my childhood, her actions are incomprehensible, seemingly implausible to her. She often even says, “I must have had air in the brain. What was I thinking?” 

I think it’s really difficult to articulate the harm you cause others and it’s easier to “metaphoricalize”—that way your hurt is outside of you, not a part of you—and I also think it’s easier to forgive people when you do this. You can place blame on the abstract, something uncontrollable. I discovered while writing that’s what I was doing, both for my mother & my friend— explaining their irrationality by air in the brain (which I actually have a sister piece of, but I’m still editing).

One thing that I love so much about “air in the brain” is how it can be read as either creative nonfiction or fiction. I love it when genres blend and blur. Do you consider yourself a multi-genre or hybrid writer? Do you often work in one genre over the other? How do you see multiple genres intersecting in your work?

Odalisque by Didier William

I am a hybrid writer. I don’t like limitations or being told what something ought to be or should be. Most of my workshops and school and teachers were proscriptive, and, quite honestly, they took the fun out of writing. Hybridity, at least to me, is about joy and vastness. As a lover of all genres and writing, why wouldn’t I borrow features from all of them? Basically my philosophy is aligned with Hannah Montana:  YOU GET THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS.

You’ve won several flash contests, and clearly have a knack to succinct storytelling! What do you think are necessary components of a story for a flash piece to work?

RISK. RISK. RISK.

This issue was birthed during this pandemic and the political and social unrest that’s been spilling over on the streets in cities nationwide. It feels like day after day we witness more violence and division, and we felt that the title “hunger for tiny things” took on a multi-faceted poignance for this issue. I’m curious—what tiny things do you hunger for these days?

I hunger for my family, traveling, eating inside a restaurant, wasting time window shopping, going to the mall, not being afraid of strangers, so so so much, and at the top of everything— I really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really really hunger for carelessness—for late nights out partying, dancing the night away with my friends, all of us dressed up in post-apocalyptic outfits, faces glittered, heads light and heavy, not having a care in the world, just living, carving out bliss. 

Writers tend to write what haunts or obsesses them. What are some themes/topics that are important to your writing, or tend to show up a lot in your work?

Since I’m only really working on a nonfiction project, I’m typically writing about trauma (sexual assault, grief, suicide, etc.). If you check out more of my work, you’ll notice this theme very fast. I used to wonder why I couldn’t write about happier things, but Rahna Reiko Rizzuto contextualized this for me in her essay “How Writing Fiction Helps Me Give Shape to the Chaos of Trauma” saying, “Fiction does not just mirror our truths so they are safe to experience; it also helps us endure the aftermath.”

What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? Do–or have–you had any mentors in your writing life?

Oh god, so, so, so many artists + writers + books I love. I aspire to create a project as breathtaking as Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Jenny Offil’s Dept. of Speculation, Justin Torres’ We the Animals, Gillian Flynn’s Dark Places, Diana Khoi Nguyen’s Ghost Of, and Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, to name a few.

I’m constantly inspired by writers like Saúl Hernandez, María Esquinca, Annie Trinh, Aldo Amparán, Maureen Langloss, Tucker Leighty-Phillips, Tara Zambrano, Sage Ravenwood, Blake Levario, and Cathy Ulrich. There are so, so many others (basically most of the people I follow on Twitter). 

I owe my joy for writing & fascination with storytelling to queer fan-fiction, especially Teen Wolf + Mass Effect, which got me started writing in the first place. 

What craft element challenges you the most in your writing? How do you approach it? What is your quirk as a writer?

Ever since metaphor-gate happened on Twitter, I feel like I’m constantly trying to find metaphors of quality, whatever that means. Language that lives in us changes almost daily, and it’s difficult for your past, present, and future to have peace. I try to make language unfamiliar to myself so I can combat this, which is not always successful. 

Is silence a quirk? If it is, I’d say that. 

What projects are you working on right now?

I’m currently on my flash-hybrid-creature-of-a-novel. It’s all I’m working on and one day I’ll finish. 

JJ Peña is a queer, burrito-blooded writer living and existing in El Paso, Texas. He is the winner of the Blue Earth Review’s 2019 Flash Fiction Contest, CutBank’s 2019 Big Sky, Small Prose Flash Contest, and Mythic Picnic’s 2020 Postcard Prize. His work is included in the Best Microfiction 2020 Anthology and Wigleaf Top 50 (2020). His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Hobart, Cream City Review, Pembroke Magazine, Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. He serves as a flash-fiction reader for Split Lip Magazine. You can learn more about JJ at his website.

The artwork featured in this post is “Odalisque” by mixed-media painter Didier William. You can learn more about his work at his website.