American Short Fiction blog

1.     Tell us a little bit about the genesis of “Heliotrope.” Where did the idea come from? How did the talking placenta first arrive in the story? What kind of revision did “Heliotrope” go through?

I once nannied for a family of vegans.  They were really strict about diet, so the meaty-looking lump Ziplocked in the freezer had me curious.  I finally found out it was the youngest kid’s placenta. How crazy that something so intimate and raw and meaningful and sort-of-maybe-disgusting would be chilling next to the peas!  I came home and wrote a few sentences in which a teenage babysitter steals a placenta, with the idea that it would talk to her after the theft. I knew the placenta needed to talk; I didn’t know what it wanted to say. Maybe by giving it a voice  I was trying to give it back some of the power I felt it had lost in the freezer.  But I couldn’t do anything with the idea, writing-wise. A talking placenta without a story is just a gimmick. I didn’t find the story until five years later, when I used the word “stereoscope” in conversation with a writer friend, John Evans, who proposed we each write a page, including the word “stereoscope,” and submit it to five journals by the end of the week.  This time–maybe it was the luxury of a deadline, maybe it was the challenge of incorporating the stereoscope–the story came. I read a bunch of blogs about the things people do with placentas–everything from eating them for strength to making placental quilts.  Planting seemed to fit the story, and maybe I was interested in sunflowers and heliotropism at that point because I’d just planted a garden. Anyway, I made relatively few revisions once I wrote a draft.  (By the way, the exercise worked for John, too. His stereoscope poem, “Elegy with Boardwalk,” is coming out soon in the The Missouri Review.)

2.     At 240 words, “Heliotrope” is a miracle of compression. There’s a tension between the vision researcher and the placenta, the narrator and her sister, fatalism and free will. There’s a lot going on here! Nick’s position as a vision researcher seems like a particularly salient detail. Could you talk about the position of science in the story?

Thank you for saying so! I like to pack stuff into stories, though sometimes it’s a struggle not to overdo it. I’ve always thought one of the coolest things about being a writer is that any information or experience you come across is potential material. (And when experience fails, there’s Wikipedia.)

Well, first of all, science got my mind to a place where I could finish it.  Until the Stereoscope Challenge, the talking placenta idea was just a kernel. Science made it pop.

Science is full of poetic truth.  Certain concepts resonate with human intuition, our experience of the world. The mechanisms underlying heliotropism and holograms are complex, but they’re also ideas you can distill and explain to a child. In this story, invoking science allowed me to pack a lot of ideas, and symbolic possibilities for the reader, into a short piece.  I got a similar bargain out of philosophy and linguistics.

3.     “In the end, we compromised. I buried it in the garden with a sunflower seed and later that year, after Nick had left us all, we sat and watched the flower’s face track the sun.” The last paragraph suggests that perhaps the narrator and her sister now stand on equal footing—at the very least, relationships have fundamentally shifted. What kind of shifts were you looking to accomplish in “Heliotrope”?

I wouldn’t say I was looking to accomplish anything more specific than a shift that would provide an honest ending.  Starting a story involves posing myself a riddle. When I typed that Nick left them all behind–the sisters, the placenta, and the baby in all its innocence–my gut breathed a sigh of relief and said, ‘Finally! Took you long enough!’ and I knew I was onto something. But until then, figuring out that key shift was the riddle keeping the story kernel in my head.

4.     What are you working on now?

I’m finishing a novel. It’s the story of a Japanese-American woman who, as a child in Kyoto, murders her bully.  She goes on to start a new life in America–becomes a nurse, marries, has a daughter–but tells no one of her past.  A death in the family brings her back to Japan for the first time since the murder, and, well, she finds out she’s not the only one with a secret.  I’m also working on a second story collection about where I grew up, outside Chicago. (The stories in my first collection, Ms. Yamada’s Toaster, are all set in Japan.)

B. J. Hollars gave us the great short “Missing Mary.” You can read it online here. In this short interview, we ask him about his inspiration, his methods, and his new work.

1. Tell us a little bit about the genesis of “Missing Mary.” Where did the idea come from and what kind of revision did the story go through to get to us?

I think I started this piece as a result of my desire to try to subvert a somewhat clichéd story trope. The opening line points to that—”You’ve heard this one before.”

This isn’t a new story: a girl goes missing, she’s never found, the end. While I was interested in Mary herself, I was far more interested in the lives she touched after she vanished. I was also interested in the mystery of the thing. I sort of viewed this as an erasure story. I started with a much, much longer piece with far more answers and then I just started whittling away until I broke it down into its simplest elements. I’m a bit obsessed with coming-of-age stories, but I want to write them in a unique way. I think this genre of story is often exploited and the end result is rarely original. And so, this was my attempt at an old story in a new packaging—something stripped of its essentials.

2. The narration of this story is one of the things that makes it unique. You address the reader directly, including asides like “but that won’t prove to be a critical detail.” Can you tell us a little about this style of narration?

Sure. I think this goes back to my idea of “new packaging.” I felt like that omniscient voice seeping through was quite ominous. Because the question becomes: “Wait a minute, if there’s an omniscient narrator involved, than why doesn’t he tell us what happened to Mary?”  The narrator himself is implicated in this way. If the narrator knows which clues are important and which aren’t, then surely he knows far more than he’s letting on. And so, the reader is forced to choose: Do I trust this withholding omniscient narrator or not? And I guess if you read the story, you really don’t have much of a choice.

3. Your piece is not the typical “missing child” story. In some ways, it’s about a whittling away—or collecting the lack of evidence, assessing material that does not relate to Mary. And then the ending has a surprise turn. How did this progression, this arrangement of details, come about?

Yes, I really like that interpretation. I think that’s dead on. This story is about whittling away. I want the reader to be the detective, but I want the detective to have bare bones resources. And so, a reader is given facts, but a few of them are red herrings. Some facts seem to push the reader on a particular path, but since we never know what actually happened to Mary, we aren’t sure which suspect (if any) is the guilty party. I wanted to create a world overflowing with suspects: a classmate, a police officer, a fisherman, even Mary’s family. But I think the lack of closure is important. As I was writing this, a friend of mine lost her dog, and I just kept thinking: How much more terrible to never know what became of her. That lack of closure, I think, puts a major hole in the center of the story. I couldn’t imagine any other possible ending.

4. What are you working on now?

Oh, all kinds of things. I’m quite excited about my nonfiction book forthcoming from the University of Alabama Press titled Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America. I’m also in the early stages of a second anthology. And there are always short stories to be written, and an essay in need of revision, and that bear of a novel that never quite steps into the light.

Reading Lisa Locascio’s “What Is Disneyland?” is like taking part in a fevered, wondrous dream. Be sure to check the story out and then return here to read more about Locascio’s inspiration and editing techniques.

1. Tell us a little bit about the genesis of the story. Where did the idea for “What Is Disneyland?” come from and what kind of evolution did the story go through to get to us?

I have often found that my best work comes from refracting my experiences into my fiction. Certain elements of the story are “true”—I did go to Disneyland, I am engaged to a man from another country. The character “Stella” is a sort of self-proxy I’ve experimented with over the last few years. She has appeared in a few stories, including this one published by Candor Magazine. When I wrote “What Is Disneyland?” I had just moved to Los Angeles, which I immediately loved, and I had just met my fiancé, whom I immediately loved, but both the city and the man were a bit mysterious and unknown to me.

I’m fairly obsessed with the allure of mystery—the moment of not knowing before we discover whether someone or something is dangerous or benign. I wanted to write about all of this in some way, and I started thinking about Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraint 9,  an art film I watched at midnight a few years ago in New York, where he and Björk meet on a whaling ship and get married. So I started out with Stella’s travel narrative, and then the way she can’t escape her thoughts, even in a distant place like Disneyland. The implications of migration and movement in a story about being in love with a foreigner really weren’t planned, and were only pointed out to me after the fact by my advisor, Aimee Bender.

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We are delighted to share this month’s web exclusive, “Driving,” by Katherin Nolte. Read it here and return to check out our two questions for Katherin below.

ASF: Tell us about the genesis of “Driving.” Where did the idea for the story originate and what kind of development did the piece go through?

KN: After a couple of loved ones died, I dreamt that I scattered their ashes in bed and in the morning woke to find them both alive. I was absolutely overjoyed in the dream, that these two people who I’d thought were gone forever had miraculously returned. That was the genesis of the story. I worked on the piece for almost a year. I knew much of what would happen and when—and a portion of the story is simply my dream transcribed—but it was a difficult story to write. And finish.

ASF: This story has such a wonderful arc for a short piece. What’s your philosophy on writing short shorts? Is there a particular short short writer or collection you admire?

KN: I’m not sure that I have a philosophy per se. I just try to get rid of anything that isn’t necessary, which often ends up being a lot. Another short short I wrote, “Before the Train and After,” which appears in New Sudden Fiction, was originally 400 words longer. It wasn’t until I cut those 400 unnecessary words that the story was published. I love Nadine Gordimer’s “Homage” [in her collection Loot and Other Stories]. I was blown away the first time I read it. Jenny Hollowell’s “A History of Everything, Including You” is equally beautiful.

Katherin Nolte’s fiction has appeared in a number of places, including Glimmer Train Stories, the Beloit Fiction Journal, Blue Mesa Review, and the anthologies A Best of Fence and New Sudden Fiction. She received an MFA from The University of Iowa, where she was awarded a Truman Capote Fellowship.

Johannes Lichtman provides us with the very funny “On Teaching Mandatory Harassment Seminars in Visalia,” our web exclusive for February. We advise that you read it now. Then come back and take a look at our Q&A with Jo.

ASF: Tell us a little bit about the genesis of the story. Where did the idea for the piece come from and what process did it go through to get here?

JL: The inspiration came from the harassment seminar that all the TAs at UNC Wilmington have to take. As soon as the course started, I began taking notes, not because I thought the test was going to be particularly challenging (I think I got one question wrong—I didn’t realize you could harass someone via screensaver), but because the course content was kind of blowing my mind. “People are inherently different from one another.” “Generally speaking, people do not like being ridiculed for the differences which they cannot control.” I think the most memorable part was a skit where a guy put Christmas decorations all over his Jewish coworker’s cubicle—you know, for fun. Apparently that’s harassment.

By the time I was done, I think I had a three page list of quotes and ideas. Maybe a week or so later, I wrote “On Teaching Mandatory Harassment Seminars in Visalia” in one really fun sitting. After some astute readers told me to stop being such a snarky S.O.B., I changed a couple details and then harassed your magazine until you printed it.

ASF: The format of the story is really unique. What influenced the piece? What were you reading when you were working on it?

JL: There’s probably another writer whose organizational structure influenced this story (read: I definitely cribbed this), but I’m not sure who. It was meant to look like an outline that you might prepare for a lecture.

I wrote the story in late October, and at the time I think I was reading Ben Fountain’s Brief Encounters with Che Guevara and The Collected Stories of Leonard Michaels. I can’t really say how either of books influenced my story, except that they’re both wonderful pieces of writing that made me want to pick up a pen and try to scribble something down. I highly recommend Ben Fountain’s book to anyone who is a fan of writing or reading or, you
know, life.

ASF: What are you working on now?

JL: I’m working on this series of stories titled, “On (Something).” We’ll see how long that lasts. The latest from the “On (Something)” Series include: “On Reading Montaigne at the 21st Street Clinic” and “On the Challenges of Being a Womanizer.” They’re currently sitting with two very important people in my life (read: people who for some reason agree to read my work without being contractually obligated to do so)—Wendy Brenner and Jeremy Hawkins—and
I’m eagerly awaiting their feedback, perhaps unconsciously hoping that dropping their names will inject some superhuman editorial magic into their already brilliant minds.

Oh, and the Visalia part of the story came from the movie Bull Durham. Maybe you can watch it and explain to me how that relates to my piece. I’m undecided.

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Johannes Lichtman is pursuing his MFA in fiction at UNC Wilmington. “On Teaching Mandatory Harassment Seminars in Visalia” is his first published story.

Our web exclusive for January is up! Jean Kane, who’s been published in illustrious journals such as the Georgia Review and the Indiana Review, gives us a brilliant short, “X C E.” Head over and read it now.

ASF: Tell us a little bit about the genesis of the story. Where did the idea come from and what process did the piece go through to get to its current form?

JK: My sister is a nurse of many years. She has a treasury of anecdotes about her experiences. I once drafted a longer, more conventional short story trying to capture her voice, but it didn’t work. Very recently, I realized that the short short would be an ideal genre for recasting these nuggets fictionally. It came out more or less as a piece once I sat down and tried the idea in this form.

ASF: We’re seriously impressed by your academic resume. Could you tell us a little bit about balancing fiction writing, teaching at Vassar, and scholarly pursuit?

JK: Thanks. I love the combination of the scholarly and the imaginative in teaching and writing. Vassar is a college that promotes the affinities between these modes. But there is never enough time—I juggle as everyone who writes anything does.

ASF: What’s next for you? What projects are you working on now?

JK: I’m focused on the topic of labor in my imaginative writing now.

I’m trying to find a publisher for my academic manuscript on Joyce and Rushdie, trying to publish a collection of poems, and generating new fiction and poetry manuscripts.

But mostly teaching!

Our web exclusive for December is up! James Davis, who has published in Nano Fiction and has a piece forthcoming in the New York Quarterly, offers us “Bible Adventures.” Click here to read it.

We asked James to tell us a little bit about the origins of his story, which combines Old Testament narratives from the perspectives of Noah, Moses’ mother, and David. Here is his reply:

“Bible Adventures” is one of a series of poems and stories based on Nintendo games by Wisdom Tree, Inc., a real developer of Christian video games I played often as a child. Much credit is due to fans who’ve posted walkthroughs on Gamefaqs.com and Youtube.com.

Our latest web exclusive is up. Pop over and read Rachel Khong’s “Arizona“—you won’t be sorry.

Save the date! Our next reading event is coming up on Friday, December 4 at the very cool Space 12. We’ll have Michael Noll, writer in residence at the Katherine Anne Porter House, reading from his story “Bullheads,” which is in the new issue. Also on deck: Ashley Butler, reading from her incredible essay collection Dear Sound of Footstep, and actor Maggie Wilhite. Frank Smith band members Aaron Sinclair and Steve Malone will offer a pared-down set.

Our short story contest—judged by Rick Moody—opens next Tuesday, September 15. Guidelines are here. You can prepay for your contest entry now and get friendly contest updates and submission reminders from us.

Our September web exclusive is up now. It’s John Maradik’s biting, disturbing, and really, really good “Tied to Us.” Go read it.

Next week, we’ll have a full report on what ASF staff is reading. But right now, we wanted to share this object of beauty: Pictorial Webster’s: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities. We need one. Uh, for the office.

The book, which was more than 10 years in making, is “a little universe of 19th-century America.” With beautiful, strange engravings. Check out this behind-the-scenes video from fine-press bookmaker John Carrera. Or enter a drawing to win your own copy.

Melissa Swantkowski

Our web exclusive for August is Melissa Swantkowski’s funny, poignant, fresh “How to Fall in Love.” We asked Melissa to give a little bit of background on her story.

ASF: What was the genesis of “How to Fall in Love”? What sparked this story?

MS: I work in museum education, and part of my job is telling hoards of school kids not to touch, which inevitably leads to at least one kid sticking out his hand to touch something. It’s like a reflex, almost. I started thinking about this and then it led to noticing other things that people touch or the way they touch, the tone of the touch, even.

And the cabbages. I needed to write something that mentioned the cabbages because they really rile me up. I live in NYC and in some neighborhoods, they are everywhere, and I can’t wrap my head around grocery produce as decorative landscaping.

ASF: The Zen Progression Alarm Clock. Your narrator is obsessed with it, and it becomes something of a touchstone. Could you talk a little about this object in the story?

MS: The narrator’s obsession may speak a little bit to my own. Around the time I wrote this story, I got a clock that works similarly to the one my narrator is so fixated on, so it was easy to let myself fall into that place of obsessing. I am not a morning person. And this clock really changed everything. Then, about 6 months later, it just went back to being an alarm clock.

In the story, the Zen Progression Alarm Clock, gives the narrator something concrete to hold onto and to control, both as something to obsess over—to imagine her future—but also very literally as an object that she can program and manipulate.

ASF: The voice of this story is so vulnerable and young—it really pulls you in. Did you have any models for this voice? (It strikes me as similar to some of the young people in Salinger’s stories.)

MS: I have definitely read and taken inspiration from Salinger’s stories. The voice of this story speaks to the things young people find so obvious and that adults sometimes overlook, but in all that self-assurance, they are unable to see their naïveté.

ASF: Who’s on your reading list for fall?

MS: Right now, I’m working my way through The Collected Stories of Leonard Michaels  and reading After the Affair, Graham Greene. And on the ever-expanding to-read list:

Dancing After Hours, Andre Dubus
Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson
House Fires, Nancy Reisman
Let the Great World Spin, Colum McCann