Interview with ​Wendy BooydeGraaff

Meet NUNUM's Contributor: Wendy BooydeGraaff

3/25/2023

NUNUM

Blending Flash Fiction & Art

Interview with Wendy BooydeGraaff

What was the first book you remember picking and reading by yourself?

When I was very little, I was obsessed with Marvin K. Mooney, Will You Please Go Now? I copied it and illustrated it and believed I had made my own book. I loved Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, Fudge. Then there was Sounder, The Saucy Jane Family, Anne of Green Gables. I spent much of my childhood reading.

What writer(s) or which book(s) influenced your decision to become a writer?

All of them? I can’t remember a specific book. For many years, I saw books as isolated from writers, meaning I didn’t think about who created them. It was always all about the story, the world created, the characters. Once I realized on a visceral level that books were created by actual people, then I knew I wanted to write, and I started writing immediately (and badly).

Is there a writing craft book that you would recommend to new writers?

Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer was the first craft book that really made sense to me. It homes in on the sentence level, which I loved, and shows you that the best way to write well is to read well.

Is there a writer who has influenced your current writing style?

Everything I’ve ever read contributes to how I write. Yiyun Li, Lydia Millet, Jesmyn Ward, Colson Whitehead, and Ada Limón are a few writers I keep going back to.

Why write flash fiction?

Flash comes naturally to me, that short burst, the intensity, the details in a scene, the mystery. And it’s the perfect length for short attention spans. Dive in deep but don’t stay long. Also, the lingering. Flash lingers.

What advice would you give someone who is just starting to send their work out to journals?

Read widely. Subscribe to a few journals if you can. Remember to focus on the art of writing, and make your work the best you can. Rejections are inevitable and subjective. Good work will find a home. Or at least it makes you feel good that you’ve made something worth sending out.

Wendy BooydeGraaff’s short fiction and essays have been included in X-R-A-Y, Miracle Monocle, The Brooklyn Review, Five South, and elsewhere. She is the author of Salad Pie (Chicago Review Press/Ripple Grove Press), a children’s picture book. Born and raised in Ontario, Canada, she now lives in Michigan, United States.