Your poem “Estate Sale” in Volume 23 starts out really funny and lighthearted until about the time when the speaker finds sales tags on used underwear. Then it shifts into some very thought-provoking territory on the longevity of material objects and our inevitable deaths. Can you walk us through how you conceived of the emotional depth in this piece? What was your inspiration or intention with this poem?

I think I just walked through my own thought process as I went through this estate sale in Arizona. First, I was laughing at the absurdity, the bizarre things unearthed at these sales, but then I saw that underwear on the toilet and it struck me how uncomfortably intimate it was, how nonconsensual. I mean, what kind of person volunteers to sell their used underwear with stains on it? How many people really consent to estate sales in the first place? This was a retirement community in Arizona, so it struck me in that moment that most of these are sales after death, not from moving or other reasons. It got me thinking about how brief we are on this earth, how we can take nothing with us. I can’t help but think of that verse 1 Peter 1:24-25: “All people are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord endures forever.” That verse suddenly took new meaning at that estate sale.

There’s the line “how no one keeps secrets for the dead” in your poem that I keep thinking about; how nothing ever truly stays private even after we no longer remain. What does that line mean to you? What does privacy mean to creative writers?

This is such a great question. When I first started writing, I was shameless! I let everything hang out, to a fault. It was a form of coping, of admitting to things in the dark I’d never talk about in daylight. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more reserved. I can’t control what will remain or be forgotten once I’m gone—I don’t think any of us can, even writers—but I think I’m more conscientious now of doing everything in my power to clarify my message.  

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 think the big (tiny) thing I hunger for these days is fellowship, particularly writing conferences, conventions and workshops. I also greatly miss travel and exploring new places. I miss looking forward to things—these days, the biggest things I look forward to are getting take-out on the weekends and movie nights! I also greatly look forward to a respite from doing dishes. I don’t feel like I’ve ever done this many dishes in my life. Maybe that says something about my bad eating out habits!

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?

So many things! The overlooked people and things. How brief we are, and how quickly we’re forgotten. Coping with change. Coping with limitations (I’m a spoonie on the autism spectrum, but only recently discovered this). I think the things that haunt me most are usually spiritual lessons I still haven’t learned. Writing teaches me, slowly but surely, and I keep growing–but some lessons are ones that linger with us our whole lives.

What projects are you working on right now?

I am between projects and it’s the worst feeling! I just finished edits on a middle grade novel in verse, and want to try to jump into some more middle grade or young adult work, but haven’t quite settled on the next thing. I’ve also been writing down some poems here and there, and am trying to put together a new chapbook manuscript.

Meg Eden’s work is published or forthcoming in magazines including Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO, and CV2. She teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She is the author of five poetry chapbooks, the novel Post-High School Reality Quest (2017), and the poetry collection Drowning in the Floating World (2020). She runs the MAGFest MAGES Library blog, which posts accessible academic articles about video games. Listen to Meg read “Estate Sale” on our YouTube page. You can follow her on Twitter (@ConfusedNarwhal) and learn more about her work at her website.

Your short story “FastDog Security” in Volume 23 is, as Keith Lesmeister wrote in his editorial letter, “quirky and odd, in the best possible way.” Can you tell us how the idea came to you to write about a public transit security officer with terrible anxiety? What was your inspiration?

I first started thinking about what would become this story a very long time ago. I was on a cross-country bus trip and it must have been about 2002. As a country, we were just getting used to thorough searches in airports and the Patriot Act was looming and awful. But these were buses and we just got on and off them, no big deal, until at one station, there was a little checkpoint set up. There hadn’t been anything like that at the other stations. But my travel buddy and I let this fellow poke through our bags and wand us. Then we got on the bus and looked at each other and neither of us was quite sure if the man had any business being there. It scared me that I didn’t know, and I still just let him search me. In my brain then, it was going to be a story about the way so many of us submitted to search, collectively, without question, and how we gave up those aspects of our rights and privacy–how fear made us so easy to manipulate. I thought it was going to be a story about that. But on that bus ride it also turned into a joke that the guard’s wand wasn’t real. Years later, my travel buddy had turned into my husband, and we were still joking about that guy making beeping sounds out of his mouth. I don’t think he actually did, but I forgot what the original person was like, and Hank took his place in my brain. Then it was still a story about fear and anxiety. But it was coming from a very different angle. And I think that’s pretty reflective of the way I write. I often start out wanting to write about an “idea” and that almost never works out for me. The stories I keep with are when a character grabs me or when I get consumed by someone’s voice. But, of course, every character lives in a bigger world, and so the story has to also be about the world. Finding a character gives me an angle on the world and on whatever “idea” I want to take on.

“FastDog Security” reads very tight and controlled, which I think says a lot about Hank, the narrator. How much did point of view factor in your writing decisions when you considered how to exaggerate Hank’s sense of controlling his narrative?

Well, he has to keep that tight control–his world is spinning out on him. I think the patterns of speech of a narrator can serve as a sort of mask for their true, tender self, or as a way of hiding their fears and vulnerabilities. Hank has to hold on tightly and when his control slips, when he can’t control his storytelling, that’s when it gets really interesting. It’s like, whenever someone is wearing a mask, you wonder so much harder what their face looks like. When something is hidden, it makes you want to find it. Because a character pretends to be tough, we know they are vulnerable, and we feel compelled to find that vulnerability, to poke at it. The words are the mask and we watch for when the mask slips.

With Erin Kate Ryan, you co-founded and run the Minneapolis Storytelling Workshop which includes classes and prompts that engage writers with television, comics, movies, and games. It’s a really fun and offbeat resource for many of us! What do these various mediums of art and storytelling mean to your own writing?

You know, we really just started the Minneapolis Storytelling Workshop because we wanted to teach a class about Buffy The Vampire Slayer and other organizations wouldn’t let us. But then it’s grown into something bigger. What we noticed is there are a lot of people who don’t necessarily think of themselves as intellectuals or artists or creatives, yet they’re having amazing conversations about TV shows. Because TV is great! And so are other forms of storytelling, even the ones that snobs roll their eyes at. All storytelling can be really subversive, too, which is something we’re always looking for when we teach classes or send out prompts. We are always looking for ways to fight injustice through engagement with narrative. How do we write stories that challenge societal norms? How do we re-envision the world? And how do we make those stories compelling enough that they lodge in people’s brains and do the work? Most of our prompts and our classes are about those ideas. But I should also admit we’ve been significantly less active since the pandemic started. So it’s a little bit dormant, but still alive!

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?

 It’s pretty satisfying to do tiny things. It’s a thing I realized kind of recently. It’s easy to use “that’s not enough” as an excuse to do nothing at all. But there are a million ways to do some tiny thing that might help a person or, you know, challenge fascism. I’m talking about mutual aid, I think. What tiny thing do I have that would be more just if someone else had it? Suddenly it’s less tiny.

Francis Bacon

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?

I write about cyborgs, I guess. But not exactly that. I like to think about what is body and what is something else, how other things become us, and also how we can cast off parts of ourselves to say “that is not me.” I like to think about how we can redraw the lines of self. In “FastDog Security,” the tool Hank uses becomes a part of him. It integrates with him in a way that when it doesn’t work, his own body takes over for it. Most of my stories take a look at how body is defined and boundaried by different characters. I often use gore to explore this, or magic, but sometimes it’s through more mundane things. I write about tattoos and cosmetic surgery, and about ghosts and dismemberment.

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

When other people answer this question, I think, “Oh those are great writers and I should go read them!” When I answer this question, it sounds like “She thinks she’s as good as those writers? I don’t think so.” But! When I first read Kelly Link, it broke open the world for me in terms of writing stories that are weird and cross genre and can do anything they want. She’s not the only one, but she’s incredible and she’s the first I read like that. In the past few years, here are just a few writers who have re-blown my mind: Carmen Maria Machado, Helen Oyeyemi, Kathryn Davis, Kiese Laymon, Yukiko Motoya. I don’t think I write like them. But I definitely learn from them. I also have a craft column for the Loft Literary Center, in which, once a month, I try to learn about just one technique from a book I am reading. I learn so much from all of the books I write about there.

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

I hate to research. I just want to make it all up.

What projects are you working on right now? 

I’ve been working on a novel for way too many years, but it’s finally maybe getting close? And I’m always writing flash–someone in my writing group noticed that lately it’s been “gooey” flash. So maybe that will keep up and I’ll someday have a whole book of ooze.

Allison Wyss’s stories have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Moon City Review, Yemassee, Lunch Ticket, Jellyfish Review, and elsewhere. Some of her ideas about the craft of fiction can be found in a monthly column she writes called Reading Like a Writer for the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, where she also teaches classes. And she’s hard at work on her first novel, which is about dismemberment, fairy tales, and what makes your body yours. Listen to Allison read from “FastDog Security” on our YouTube page. You can learn more about Allison and her work at her website.

Your poem “Before the First Incision” in Volume 23 includes a speaker contemplating an impending surgical procedure while walking on the beach. Can you tell us a little bit about how this poem came into existence? What inspired it?

The poem is definitely autobiographical. It recounts the days before a surgery, a moment when profound fear and dread gave way to hope and defiance. I had been through a few rough few years, from a medical standpoint, and my mood was pretty bleak when I took a late-evening walk along a beach in the Pacific Northwest. The sky was uniformly overcast, and, in the muted twilight, the sky and sand, the mist along the shore, and the fog blurring the horizon had a silvery, almost otherworldly cast. Between massive pieces of driftwood that looked like human bones and the washed-up remains of a seal that had likely been gutted by a shark, I seemed to be surrounded by intimations of death. At some point, my fingers and feet went numb from the cold, and yet I didn’t want to button my coat or leave the beach. After weeks of feeling depleted, I finally felt alive. The sting of wind on my face felt like a gift. I didn’t stop walking until the tide forced me from the beach, and when it did, I accepted the icy water nipping at my heels as part of a natural cycle I had to honor and, as much as possible, meet on my own terms.

You have an extensive list of publications across genres which includes your novel The Wonder That Was Ours from Dzanc Books. I’m always curious how multi-genre writers come to the page. Can you tell us about your writing process? How do you know when a piece of writing should be in the genre you choose? Does your revision process differ or stay the same depending on the genre?

Others will have different takes, but I’m inclined to write poetry when I’m dealing with bewildering emotions that defy, at least in my mind, entirely rational analysis: grief, trauma, or fear. Essays usually allow me to draw upon my training as a segue-obsessed academic historian with a penchant for over-explaining. It’s impossible to generalize about short stories because there’s a huge difference between flash fiction and novellas, though I’m drawn to writing short stories when I want to explore a dynamic involving only two or three people. Novels allow for sustained attention to the complexity and broader social contexts of difficult moral choices. Whatever the case, no one should feel compelled by the clamor of literary cliques to extol one genre over another. I’ve heard a startling number of writers and editors argue that a certain genre represents the “highest,” or “most demanding” form of expression. (It’s usually the genre they work in.) In my view, every genre has value, and the choice of genre depends on the story. It would be absurd to explore the ideas at the center of Toni Morrison’s Beloved in a flash piece, though I’m sure some would dispute this. Ideally, open-mindedness and flexibility define the artistic process, and I try to start with a process, rather than a product, in mind. 

 My revision process is somewhat constant across genres. In the early stages of drafting, I put everything on the page—whatever images come to mind, fragments of dialogue with potential, and soon-to-be indecipherable notes to myself. Then, in alternating states of paralyzing anxiety and dogged determination, I group ideas, sequence paragraphs/stanzas, and write full sentences/lines. I always struggle to accept the slowness of the process. It’s so easy to give in to cravings for external validation, to rush to call something done and submit it, sometimes prematurely, in the vain hopes of stifling the intolerable insecurity that plagues most artists. I’m working on patience. 

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?

Standing in the narrow aisle of a bookstore and reaching for the same book, at the same moment, as another person, and instead of growing annoyed, smiling in the spirit of kinship. Sitting inside a café and staring out the window during a rainstorm. Small talk with strangers. Hell, at this point, going to the dentist. 

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?

“Before the Incision” doesn’t reveal this, but much of my writing reflects a preoccupation with father-daughter relationships. Though there are notable exceptions—Shirley Jackson and Sylvia Plath, to name two great examples—few authors focus on father-daughter relationships. Most novels about parent/child relationships focus on overbearing mothers and bristling daughters bickering with each other, or fathers and sons locked in battle over who will reign as the alpha chimp. The occasional stories centered on mothers and sons usually rely on a father having walked out on his family, as if a son can’t have a powerful relationship with his mother if a man is in the house. Father/daughter stories seem to be the rarest, the assumption perhaps being that a woman’s primary parental relationship is always going to be with her mother. Having grown up in a patriarchal household, I’m profoundly aware of how much fathers can shine, or loom, in women’s psyches. I keep returning to the complex dynamics between daughters and fathers, and, specifically, to daughters rejecting the versions of masculinity modeled by their fathers. 

What books, writers, art, or artists inspire you and your work? 

I am most inspired and impressed by poets and prose writers who can write from multiple perspectives and employ a range of narrative voices, artists who have the versatility and empathy needed to inhabit the minds of radically diverse people. James Baldwin was a genius in this regard. He could write beautifully about straight and gay characters, about men and women, and about people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds. His ability to render even the most unsympathetic characters in three dimensions is a testament to his sophistication and humanity. I have similar admiration for authors like Kazuo Ishiguro, whose first-person narrators range from an English butler in the 1930s to clone orphans cultivated for organ donations. In the age of selfies, these writers seem possessed of a rare and refreshing curiosity about the lives of people who aren’t mirror reflections of themselves. There’s an assurance of human connection in that. 

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

I was an academic historian in a former life, and when I started writing fiction and poetry, I had to break certain academic habits. Mainly, I had to let go of my compulsion to over-explain, provide extensive backstory for every character, and shoehorn ham-handed segues between every paragraph. A few years ago, I detailed my rocky transition from footnotes to fiction in an essay [for Writers Studio newsletter] called “The Metamorphosis of Graham Greene.” Years later, I am still learning to trust my readers, and to embrace a practice familiar to seasoned poets—the practice of evoking rather than explaining. Ongoing experimentation of the sort described in my essay usually limbers me up. Granted, some of my rough drafts still read like legal briefs and VCR manuals, but I’m slowly recovering.

What projects are you working on right now?

I’m currently drafting my second novel. Maintaining focus during the pandemic and a period of political turmoil has been a challenge, and I’m relieved that I’m working on my novel’s messy first draft, blocking scenes and sketching characters and basically throwing lots of soggy spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Fine-tuning would be a challenge at this point. I’ve also been sketching ideas for new poems and stories and looking forward to the end of the pandemic and the return of my wayward brain.

Alice Hatcher is the author of The Wonder That Was Ours, winner of Dzanc Books’ 2017 Fiction Prize and the recipient of recognitions from The Center for Fiction, Friends of American Writers, and the Eric Hoffer Foundation. Her poetry, fiction, and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including Cagibi, Alaska Quarterly Review, Fourth Genre, The Beloit Fiction Journal, and The Lascaux Review. Her nonfiction received a special mention in the 2020 Pushcart Anthology. She currently lives in Tucson, Arizona. Listen to Alice read “Before the First Incision” on our YouTube Page. You can learn more about Alice and her work at her website. 

Your poem “The Book” in Volume 23 includes one repetitious line in each stanza that threads the narrative together. What does it say about this man that he refuses to accept separating from his former spouse? What was your intention in writing about divorce and loss?

The two refrains in the villanelle form often lend themselves to obsessive subjects, and the speaker’s refusal (or inability) to put this part of his past behind him certainly participates in that. I started this poem only with the intention to write something about books as physical presences and how people experience them as such, not just for the language they contain. I was genuinely surprised by the narrative that developed as I composed and revised it. 

We chose to publish “The Book” right as the pandemic hit the US, but you didn’t write it with Covid-19 in mind, and yet it’s interesting to me how much more painful this separation would be for your speaker if this were set in the real world. How does separation from loved ones take on a new meaning for you now after having this poem published when we’re all secluding ourselves?

At the time I began writing the present version of this poem (Sept 2018), I was living in West Texas, far from my family and friends, and quite often felt lonely. Now, at the end of 2020, though I’m living in a different part of the country, I’m still separated from the people I love. So while the circumstances of the separation have changed, the feeling strikes me as remarkably similar. I don’t know if the previous isolation has helped me to better handle the current one, but it seems familiar in some ways. One thing that this poem has kept clear in my mind is that even during times of public crisis, people continue to suffer in their own individual ways just as before. I worry that our private suffering has been even more painful this year because of the increased separateness; it often feels that way to me. 

It feels rarer and rarer to me to read contemporary poems that include a rhyme scheme. Was it difficult to stick with the form? Did you envision that from the beginning, or did it just begin to appear naturally?

While I didn’t begin with the definite idea of writing “The Book” as a villanelle in iambic pentameter, my drafts show that it proceeded in this direction fairly quickly. When I have only a vague idea or random set of observations that I want to try to make into a poem (as was the case here), I often choose a strict form to begin drafting in and let the rhyme and meter help me make connections I wouldn’t be able to otherwise. And that’s pretty much how this poem developed; the rhymes showed me what it was about.

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?

Simple things that seem trivial until they’re scarce: lazily eavesdropping on strangers’ conversations, the smell of my favorite restaurants, hugging my friends, meeting new people in person. 

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

This list would be far too long to record here, or even for me to remember properly. Recently, however, W.H. Auden’s and Anthony Hecht’s work–both poetry and prose–has meant a great deal to me, especially in terms of how to write clear and engaging sentences. Both of these writers can do this so well in both their poems and essays. I’ve also been learning a lot from translating Rilke’s poetry and the kind of intensive close reading that translation requires. Without dropping any names, I’m extremely grateful for my writing mentors, past and present. Some of them have been my teachers, some I’ve met at conferences, others I’ve never met but have learned from through correspondence. 

Do you practice any other art forms? If so, how do these influence your writing and/or creative process?

I don’t. Both my aunt and cousin are professional visual artists, though; and several other family members have painted or carved as hobbies. This has meant a lot to me, especially when I was younger–being around people I loved and respected who were engaged in creating art in various ways. It helped me understand art as a process early on, not just as a product.

What projects are you working on right now?

In addition to all that’s involved with being a graduate student–taking classes, teaching etc.–I spend most of my writing time trying to revise and expand what I hope will be my first book of poems. I’m also slowly working on translating Rilke’s Das Buch der Bilder into English, as well as helping my friend Yifan Zhang translate some essays and poems by a contemporary Taiwanese writer whose work we both love. 

Peter Vertacnik holds degrees from Penn State and Texas Tech. His poems and translations appear or are forthcoming in Alabama Literary Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Hopkins Review, Literary Matters, The MacGuffin, Poet Lore, and Valparaiso Poetry Review, among others. He is currently an MFA student at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Listen to Peter read “The Book” on our YouTube page. You can learn more about him and his work at his website, or follow him at his Twitter (@PeterVertacnik) and his Instagram (vertacnik_writing).

Your short story “Bear No Relation” in Volume 23 involves a lot of tension simmering in the narrative. I felt so anxious watching Jane spiral! Can you tell us why you chose a political meet-and-greet cocktail party as the setting for this story? 

Yelena Brysenkova

Politics involve a lot of performance; politicians are constantly trying to create an impression. Parties can be that way, too, for many of us. The expectation is for Jane to perform for her once-friends. The stakes for her are higher since her husband is angling to work for the candidate. Jane understands these dynamics. She pushes back but can’t transcend them.

One of my favorite parts of this story is that you included a passage from The Hours by Michael Cunningham. I’m curious—what made you think of this text when you were writing?

With the idea for this story, I looked to see how other writers depicted parties in their fiction. Virginia Woolf wrote a series of stories called Mrs. Dalloway’s Party. I read that and from there my mind drifted to The Hours. The themes and style of these books ended up influencing me a lot here.

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 miss going to the movies, though given the setup to the question perhaps I should say something more… Let me add: Like Jane, anyone who has experienced personal tragedy understands how abruptly the rug can get pulled out from under you. I sort of feel like we’re experiencing this, or some new sense of fragility, collectively. But then life, however it reconstitutes, starts pretty quickly to feel normal again, for better or worse.

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?

Relationships that purport to be loving, that’s a big one. I’m also interested in how we come to believe what we believe about ourselves.

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

I love the work of so many writers—Edwidge Danticat, Michael Ondaatje, Dave Eggers, Jesse Ball, Cormac McCarthy, Toni Morrison. My teachers in Pitt’s MFA program—Allison Amend, Irina Reyn, the late Chuck Kinder—they’re angels on my shoulder while I write.

What projects are you working on right now?

During lockdown, I finished the first draft of a novel. It’s actually four, linked “detective” novellas that take place in my hometown, Pittsburgh. (The main character is a law student, then family-man lawyer, then deadbeat lawyer, then retiree/part-time notary.) Each novella takes place in a different decade.

Dan Malakoff’s short stories have appeared in Pleiades, Wigleaf, River Styx, Best Microfiction 2019, and other publications. Comet Press published his novella, Steel City Cold. 

Accompanying artwork for this post is from a 2014 Spanish translation of Mrs. Dalloway by Yelena Brysenkova.