Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Interview with ​Keith Woodruff

What was the first book you remember picking up and reading by yourself?  Probably a picture book version of Old Yeller - which set the table for all the boy and his dog stories to come, and all the tears. Notably Call of the Wild.  What writer(s) or which book(s) influenced your decision to become a writer?

Oddly, it was 70s disaster movies. I was obsessed with Towering Inferno, Poseidon Adventure and Earthquake and started writing tiny tiny disaster stories. My first was Tidal Wave. Later it was Charlotte's Web, Of Mice and Men, and poets like Wallace Stevens and Wordsworth. Is there a writing craft book that you would recommend to new writers?

Not a craft book per se, but I would suggest diving into all editions of Best Microfictions and Best Small Fictions, and Grant Faulkner's Fissures, Lou Beach's 420 Characters and Nothing Short of 100. Is there a writer who has influenced your current writing style?

I would say everyone I have read, though on the whole poets have influenced my flash more than any one flash or fiction writer because I came to love flash through my love of prose poems (Kathleen McGookey). I had a prose poem selected by Amy Hempel for Best Small Fictions and when I read my contributor's copy that was my intro to flash really and my heart started racing. I really am fairly new to flash.  ​Why write flash fiction?

What advice would you give someone who is just starting to send their work out to journals? I would look for journals that describe their aesthetic in some way. That really helps me gauge where to send a piece and where not to. Though I am sure I often read these descriptions and hear what I want to hear and send work that is not actually a fit.  I love the description Does it Have Pockets? has and what Moon Park Review says.

Keith Woodruff lives in San Antonio, TX with a backyard full of moody tomato plants. His writing appeared in lovely places like Wigleaf, Does it Have Pockets? JMWW, HAD and is forthcoming in Pithead Chapel and FlashFlood. Read him in BSF 2017 and 2019. He was awarded a 2018 Pushcart.

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Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Interview with ​Janel Comeau

What was the first book you remember picking up and reading by yourself? ​ The first one that stands out in my memory was a Nancy Drew book - specifically Nancy Drew #7, The Clue in the Diary. That was my first hit, and I was completely addicted after that; I maxed out my lending limit at the local public library trying to get through them all. There are a total of 175 Nancy Drew books, so I don’t think I got through them all, but I put a pretty good dent in the list.

What writer(s) or which book(s) influenced your decision to become a writer? ​ I can remember making up stories from a very young age, but it was Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events” that really solidified the idea that I could be an actual writer someday. It was the first book I can remember reading that was thoroughly, unapologetically weird, and that was a big deal for me as a kid who was still very much apologetically weird.

Is there a writing craft book that you would recommend to new writers? ​ It’s not specifically a writing craft book, but I always recommend “Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils and Rewards of Artmaking” by David Bayles and Ted Orland. It’s not so much about the mechanics of making art as it is about getting out of your own head and getting out of your own way and just creating something, and that’s the advice I’ve always most needed to hear.

Is there a writer who has influenced your current writing style? I love writers with a distinct voice, the kind you can pick up and recognize from the writing alone - writers like Douglas Adams, Kurt Vonnegut, and Christopher Moore. I am under no illusions that I can write like any of them, but I’m having an awful lot of fun trying.  Why write flash fiction?

I like the challenge of it. In a lot of ways, I think it’s more difficult to write flash fiction than to write fiction that isn’t subjected to strict word limits. I am naturally a very verbose person who likes to pontificate and extrapolate at length, and writing flash fiction really forces me to distill a story down to its most essential elements. 

What advice would you give someone who is just starting to send their work out to journals? ​I think the best thing you can possibly do for yourself is to develop an immunity to rejection that would be downright pathological in any other aspect of your life. Send your work everywhere you might possibly want to be published. Journals you’ve heard of. Journals you haven’t. The New Yorker. Everywhere. Stand on your mountain of stories and rain your work down on the literary world.

What is your typical writing routine?  ​ I am very easily distracted and I have the sleeping habits of a cave-dwelling goblin, so I do almost all of my writing very late at night. I wish I could be one of those writers who can sit and tap out a masterpiece amid the comforting din of a little coffee shop, but, unfortunately the only way I can reliably get anything done is to just wait until everyone else has gone to bed.

Janel Comeau is a writer, illustrator, comedian and youth worker based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions, and has appeared in Haven Spec Magazine, Paranoid Tree Press, HAD, and several other fine publications and anthologies. She also writes satire news for The Beaverton.

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Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Interview with ​Gargi Mehra

What was the first book you remember picking up and reading by yourself? There must have been many children’s books but the first one I remember is a Famous Five, called, quite simply Five Have Fun. What writer(s) or which book(s) influenced your decision to become a writer?​

PG Wodehouse. I first read The Mating Season at age 12 or so, and remember thinking where can I read more of this hilarious material? And how can I write like this? Reader, I still can’t write like that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t try. Is there a writing craft book that you would recommend to new writers?

There’s a book I don’t see widely recommended called Be a Successful Writer: 99 Surefire Checklists by Gordon Wells. It kickstarted my writing practice. I still have it and still refer to it! Is there a writer who has influenced your current writing style? ​ At the moment it must be a mash-up of all the styles I read online and in print. However the writer I have in my mind and whom I’m always trying to impress is the one and only – PG Wodehouse.

Why write flash fiction? ​ Honestly I picked up flash due to paucity of time. I had written short stories of 2-5000 words for ten years and though I loved it, I was beginning to find it increasingly difficult. With two kids and a fulltime hectic job, I do my writing on the weekends only. And it would take at least 2-4 weekends to finish a short story. But I had a number of smaller ideas that I found I could explore within a shorter

word count. And I could finish writing them within a weekend and editing them the next. As an added bonus, I found that writing and reading the stories aroused as much emotion as an entire short story. What advice would you give someone who is just starting to send their work out to journals?

Try and evaluate honestly if your work fits the journal in terms of theme and writing style. I ignored this step in my early stages of submitting and paid for it with a ton of rejections until a more experienced writing friend bluntly told me my voice needed improvement. This story explores emotionally difficult terrain, yet it contains moments of humour and absurdity. What does humour allow you to say that a more straightforward treatment of the same material might not?

I think the humour and sarcasm make it more memorable and induce more pathos than a straightforward treatment which might only elicit sympathy for the narrator. Why do mothers appear frequently in your work? ​ It’s the first and closest relationship most humans have. Its only natural that this provides the most material.

If someone else in the story were allowed to narrate it, who would it be? And what changes would they make to the story? ​ Only the mother could narrate this, and she would insist the whole thing was a misunderstanding.​

Gargi Mehra is a writer, a computer engineer, and a mother. She plays the piano and thrives on word games including crosswords, Scrabble and Wordle. Her creative writing has appeared in several literary magazines online and in print. She lives with her husband and two children in Pune, India.

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Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Interview with Leah Oates

What was the first book you remember picking and reading yourself? ​ Winnie the Pooh. What was the last book you read that made you say damn, that was a good book? ​I recently read and loved Margaret Atwood’s new bio a Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts.

Which artists have influenced your current artistic direction? ​The artists who inspire me are Monet, Cezanne, Matisse, Basquiat, Francis Bacon, Hockney, Georgia O'Keeffe, Rembrandt, Degas, Velázquez,  Goya, Turner, Helen Levitt, Yoko Ono, Diane Arbus, Sebastião Salgado, Robert Frank, Frida Kahlo, Lee Friedlander, Joan Mitchell and Louise Bourgeois.

Is there an artist in your local community that you would recommend people check out? Check out Pierre St-Jacques work: https://www.pierrestjacques.com/index.html What advice would you give someone just starting to send their work to journals? ​ Follow the instructions and send in your best work for consideration.

Artist's Statement

Leah Oates has B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, an M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a Fulbright Fellow for study at Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland.  Oates has had solo shows in NYC, Toronto and in Chicago at Remote Gallery,  Susan Eley Fine Art, Artemisia Gallery, The Central Park Arsenal Gallery, Real Art Ways, The Brooklyn Public Library and at the MTA Arts. Oates has been in group shows in the NYC area and in Toronto at John. Aird Gallery, Arta Gallery, Papermill Gallery, Wave Hill, Edward Hopper House and The Pen and Brush. ​

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Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Interview with ​Jeffrey-Michael Kane

What writer(s) or which book(s) influenced your decision to become a writer? ​ This will strike most as odd, and many will not even understand the reference, but John-Boy Walton was the first “writer” that made me almost obsessed with becoming and identifying as a writer. I was already a notebook user, even at that young-age, and the fact that an older “person” was equally attached to writing things down and carrying his notebook everywhere, was something that was very mentoring to me. I am sure you did not see that coming.

Is there a writer who has influenced your current writing style? ​ There are six…depending on the genre.  For fiction, Claire Keegan and William Maxwell. For essays: John McPhee and Joan Didion. For hybrid works, Olga Tokarczuk and Maggie Nelson. Why write flash? Writing flash fiction forces you to compress and, most importantly, to trust your reader.

You do not have the word count for unnecessary dialog. You do not have the dialog to explain things to your reader. You do not have the word count to build a plot.  You have to come in hot, stay briefly in the piece, and then get out. Drop the reader right smack in the thick of it, then leave the reader to finish the work…don’t pull them by the nose to a neat and tidy ending. Lastly, make sure every word, and certainly every sentence, is load-bearing and/or doing something to propel the story.

If a word ends in “ing” (adj.) or “ly” (adv.) you probably should cut it. Use contractions almost always…saves a word. Use em dashes and semi-colons…saves predicate words. What advice would you give someone who is just starting to send their work out to journals? Do not let perfect be the enemy of good.

J.M.C. Kane is a writer and environmental attorney in New Orleans. Kane is the author of Quiet Brilliance: What Employers Miss About Neurodivergent Talent and How to See It (CollectiveInk U.K.), a celebrated nonfiction work on cognitive patterning and inclusion in the workplace. His prose has appeared in Smokelong Quarterly, Eleventh Hour Literary, and other publications.

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Blending Flash Fiction & Art