12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jennifer Fliss

Jennifer Fliss (she/her) is the writer of the story collections As If She Had a Say (2023) and The Predatory Animal Ball (2021.) Her writing has appeared in F(r)iction, The Rumpus, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She can be found on Twitter at @writesforlife or via her website, www.jenniferflisscreative.com.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

I was incredibly honored Okay Donkey picked up my first book, The Predatory Animal Ball. It was a wonderful experience, working with them, but I don’t think it changed my life in a substantial way. I’m still in the throes of the publication period on my second book, As If She Had a Say.

I think we writers all think when we finally do X, then everything will change, but it rarely happens in quite that way. The experience with Northwestern University Press / Curbstone for my second book has been different, but not completely different.

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?

I started with fiction. Shortly after my father passed away, I felt a little freedom in writing about my lived experiences under his abusive thumb. But I was not quite ready to write it all out and say “here’s what happened to me!” So I wrote a short story and created a fictionalized version of my real experiences. I enjoyed the process so much that I just continued to write fiction. (Though in time, I also wrote and published nonfiction, baring myself a bit more and sharing my experiences.)

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I write quickly. Because I often write flash, these come out fully formed often. Oh sure, I need to go back and run edits, but the idea, the generative process is quick and flows like water. First drafts of these look similar to early drafts. Now I am also working on a novel, and that’s an entirely different monster. I need lots of time alone to dive deep. On a sentence-to-sentence level, it comes out quickly, but it does require constant rereading and moving blocks around like Jenga blocks.

4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I have vivid dreams and a lot of stories I write get their inception there. Because my work tends toward the flash category, they usually come out in one go. The collections aren’t really on my mind as I work, they’ve come together after I have a substantial amount of work to collate.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I get very anxious ahead of readings. But I also know it’s part of the learning process. It’s a way to get immediate feedback, to practice taking your work off the page. I wouldn’t say it’s part or counter of my creative process, but it is part of the business and networking aspect of the job.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

I feel like I should say yes. But truly, I absolutely adore the act of writing. So that’s the impetus for everything I write. As a human in this world, even subconsciously, I know that what I write is about asking questions in life. Why this? Why not that? Why me? etc.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

A writer is an artist and all artists are storytellers (this feels like the beginning of some kind of logic word problem!). The role of artists is integral to society, otherwise we’d be a bunch of automatons. People connect more to storytelling rather than just facts or opinions. This is true in so many areas: see advertising and marketing or nonprofit fundraising. It’s always the stories that succeed in piquing people’s interests.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I don’t find working with an editor difficult. I’ve been fortunate that most editors I have worked with understand what I’m doing and any edits or advice usually jells with that. Only once that I can think of have I had an editor accept my work and then change it completely. I was still rather new to writing, so I didn’t stand up for myself and I’m still kicking myself over it!

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Be a good human.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to flash fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

I write in several forms and I’ve recently been branching out a bit, genre-wise. Switching between flash and traditional stories and nonfiction have been easy for me. Novel-writing – which I’m working on now – is an entirely different monster and takes some time to get into the flow because it is so different. Genre-wise, I’m playing around with horror stories.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I don’t have a writing routine. I just write when inspired. Ignore the dogma that says you must write every day to be a writer. That’s BS. It works that way for some folks, but not all.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

When I’m not feeling inspired and not writing, I like to look at poetry. The word choices and imagery used by poets evokes so much and often gets my own juices running.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

I’m from New York, so I’d say the smell of fresh bagels in the early morning.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I am not familiar with that quote, but if he’s saying this is exclusive, that’s absurd. Of course writing comes from other forms of art, music, nature, science. For me, living in New York City was hugely inspiring to me. Just people-watching can get a ton of stories out of me. When I moved to Seattle, I wasn’t doing as much people-watching and have had to allow the incredible local nature in as inspiration.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I read a lot, but could not pinpoint any favorite writers. I love so much of what I read and often it comes from lesser known writers who publish at journals and don’t have a book out. I recently got a copy of Grapefruit by Yoko Ono which combines writing with instructions with visual art and I can tell a lot will be inspired from that.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

Go to Edinburgh during rainy season, rent a flat and read and write.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I work in nonprofit communications, lest one think creative writing can pay the bills! I really wish I had thought about library work. I'd love to be a librarian. I love reading, research, and organizing information. I love how libraries provide incredible social work outside of just lending books too.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

This is like asking what made me breathe.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Two books I recently read and loved are The Life and Crimes of Hoodie Rosen by Isaac Blum and A Psalm for the Wild Built by Becky Chambers. Both excellent and unique and I’d recommend them to anyone as required reading. Not a movie, but I just finished watching Dead Loch and I absolutely loved it and can’t stop thinking about it.

20 - What are you currently working on?

A million things, like usual. I am about to begin a novel that I’m excited about. I have a great setting and ideas, but have to flesh out the story. And I’m always writing essays and shorter fiction – always!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Benjamin Niespodziany, no farther than the end of the street

 

First Date

You bought a plot of land and you dug a hole. You filled the hole with seasoned meat and cedar and silk. You covered the hole and you waited. It was supposed to take nine months, but I arrived in seven. When I appeared I was grown and vocal. You held me like a science finalist. The floor plan was stamped to my chest.

The full-length debut by Chicago poet Benjamin Niespodziany, following chapbooks through above/ground press and Dark Hour Books, is no farther than the end of the street (Los Angeles CA: Okay Donkey Press, 2022), a collection predominantly constructed out of short, single-stanza prose poems that float the realm between lyric, short story and lullaby. “I wrote you a poem,” he writes, to open the poem “Publicity Stunt,” “called ‘Planet Earth.’ / It’s a ghost / poem or maybe a poem // I ghost wrote. It’s an / X-ray I pass around / the neighborhood.” Holding echoes of myth and fable, Niespodziany’s poems offer a selection of prose openings into whole worlds that might even exist between the curved narratives of Lydia Davis and the surrealisms of Stuart Ross. “You can’t / take my call.” he writes, to open the poem “The Silence That Finds Us,” “You’re busy // making volcanoes / out of swamp products // and ketchup packets.”

Organized across five numbered sections—“Yardmouth,” “Baffling Scaffolding,” “The Flimsy Chimney,” “Front Lawn Songs” and “Partial Architectures”—there is such a sense of whimsy and narrative play throughout these poems, writing magical elements of hearts lost and ghosts on the tongue, blended in and around direct statements. “With a pitcher of water,” he writes, to open the poem “In Our Backyard Garden,” “I stood next to a neighbor / who had dying flowers for a face.” He writes a lyric minimalism of layering and accumulation, one that understands both pause and pivot, narrative structures and a scaffolding deliberately playing with what to suggest, what to exclude and what to offer directly. He evokes small lyric scenes, crafting realities built out of concrete and smoke. “We could no longer afford our gardener.” he writes, to open the prose poem “The Harmless Gardener.” “I asked / him over to talk. He arrived hanging onto his / cane. I looked and his cane became a sword. I / looked again, his sword was a mailbox. The flag / was raised.”

There is such a delight to these pieces, and there are moments throughout this collection that I almost see echoes of the short stories of Richard Brautigan, offering insights into daily interactions and simply being and living in and moving through the world, tinged with a wistful surrealism simultaneously playful and dark, moving in, out and through focus, from sentence to sentence. there is such a delight, even across such dark foundations of loss, death and distance, as connections are established, demolished or never quite connect. Across eighty-four poems, Niespodziany writes of first dates, first loves, weddings, streetscapes and neighbours, suggesting a lyric set entirely within the focus of a small geography, even one centred on the domestic, with not one poem set beyond a boundary set just down Niespodziany’s imaginary or actual street. One imagines a cul-de-sac, just down from an urban setting of shops and what-have-you; a small tucked-aside corner of residencial space, not far from everything else in the world. One imagines a set of boundaries established to attempt to keep the narrator and his household safe, from whatever dangers might exist beyond.

Neighbor

You witnessed her death on our street. Your feet were in the street, but your body was in the lawn. I was inside our home, crouched like a cloud. “Now he’s a widow,” you said, pointing to the grieving husband across the street as he sleepily watched his wife being carted away. The next day, we went to the funeral in their backyard. Everyone was there, even the dead wife. She was floating over her coffin like some type of goblin we wanted to trust. An antelope leaned against their fence. After the funeral, authorities ended up taking your mug shot. Now you cough without a bonnet. Now you claw at the attic’s moon. Too soon, the body was gone and we were back to talking about lawn darts and starter homes. I was alone. You were alone. We held hands.

As part of his statement on the prose poem, included in a folio on the contemporary prose poem at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics, Niespodziany wrote: “The prose poem does not demand an ending. It does not demand an explanation. It does not need a resolution. It contains none of these things and all of these things. Anything can happen inside of such a boxed-in paragraph. A pair of wings catches fire and turns into a frog. I fell in love with the prose poem because it felt like a contained commercial break, a parable in interlude form. Enough to chew on while eating lunch, while walking around the neighborhood. A world within a wink.”

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Todd Dillard

Todd Dillard's work has appeared or is forthcoming in numerous publications, including The Adroit Journal, Fairy Tale Review, Superstition Review, Split Lip Magazine, Booth, and The Boiler Journal. His debut book of poetry Ways We Vanish (2020) is available from Okay Donkey Press. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife and daughter and works as a writer in a hospital.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

This book has been a goal of mine for over twenty years… and I took a bit of a detour to get here, so I wasn’t sure I’d ever even have a book. It’s a tremendous relief. It’s also… how do I say this? It’s cleared the way for the other work I need to do. Publishing a book has taught me that the work is never done. I anticipated this somewhat, but I didn’t think it would be one of the main feelings I have about the book—joy, relief, even triumph, yes… but also: I have more to write! I don’t have time to stop!

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

A 7th grade teacher assigned a poetry prompt to my class to attach sensory elements to a feeling—“mellow is the yellow of cigarette smoke” I think I wrote. My 8th grade English teacher made us submit work to a writing contest, and I, as a lazy student, submitted the poems I’d written the year before and did really well. In this way, I stumbled into realizing I don’t quite think the way other people think, and that mode of thinking lends itself to writing poetry.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

My book Ways We Vanish spans about 15 years of writing. I’d say I write quickly and can start projects quickly, but most of the time I stop because I lose interest or steam or something else comes along. My poems sometimes come out similar to how they will end, or sometimes they go through radical changes. It’s different for each poem; this I know is a broad answer.

4 - Where does a poem or work of fiction usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I just kind of write whatever I want and then, when I see themes develop among my work, I note that. I don’t try to create toward those themes, but I try to be sensitive to them if they appear in what I write. In this way I build a collection that I then shape into a book—at least, that’s what I did for my book.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I love doing readings! They have nothing to do with my process.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

My book isn’t interested in interrogating literary theory—which is the kind of theory I think is implied in your question. I think the book’s big question is: How Does One Build a Life? But the construction of building a book around questions suggests there’s investment in answering them too, which there isn’t. My book explores grief and moving on and fatherhood. That’s a vast country. I’m not looking to stake a flag into it, I’m looking to reach its edge and peer over it.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Writers don’t have roles! This suggests something nebulous to me, or, worse, something prescriptive, or, even worse, something moralistic about what writers *do* or *should* do. I don’t know what writers should do. We’re weird and feel things and see things in weird ways and sometimes we write them down, perhaps less often than we want to. The things writers should do are the things everyone should do: floss, sleep more, learn to swim, practice kindness, pet a dog, etc.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I didn’t have any difficulty working with my editors at Okay Donkey—it’s one of the pleasures of the book experience, having editors who both get your work and are excited to get your work into the hands of others who get your work. I’m pretty laid back about the whole thing, which means if someone else has a comment about a piece, I’ll consider it, even implement it to see what they’re seeing, and if it works great! And if not I’ll say no thanks. I think there’s a sense that perfectionists are combative, but I’m a perfectionist who finds great humor and joy in breaking and rebuilding work, and having someone alongside me to do it with is thrilling. It helps to have someone who’ll watch you blow up and poem and laugh and say “Let’s try it again a different way!” and also laugh when that explodes too.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

Just say it. Obscurity is not originality. Poems live by exploring truths and die by clever turns of phrases.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to fiction)? What do you see as the appeal?

I studied prose poetry, so when I write flash it’s often just me writing a prose poem that needs something more—a series of escalations, or something that resembles plot to make it work. That’s my flash fiction, basically prose poems in trench coats and fedoras. This is pretty easy for me to do and quite satisfying, as flash fiction frees me up to go wild in a way I don’t feel I can in a poem. So, that’s the appeal of (flash) fiction to me. Poetry is appealing because sometimes you can sneak in a rhyming couplet at the end.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

For this book, I’d read new poems and do some editing before bed, read/edit on the bus/subway to work, write during lunch, read/edit between meetings at work, read/write/edit during the evenings between hanging out with my kid or my wife, read while going to the gym… every spare moment I was asking myself if I needed to dedicate time to my writing. It’s slacked off a bit since the book came out, and I’ve been mostly editing the poems that I like that didn’t make it into the book.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

For some reason I read this question as if my writing was a horse being put in a stall—which I think would be good for my writing. I’d love to know I could also saddle it up sometime and go somewhere. Unfortunately my writing is a pterodactyl. It doesn’t get stalled so much as stops to nest for a bit before flying off. When it’s unreachable I just read stuff I like, or, if I’m just exhausted, I’ll go back and revisit some cherished books. They always recharge me.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Pine and sunscreen and sautéed garlic and bread and chocolate chip cookies in the oven.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

My poems are very interested in prosody, I think in part because I enjoy childhood fables and the cadences therein, and in part because I played clarinet from middle school through college. The music is there in my work, though I’m less interested in overt lyrical performance than I am in taking quotidian rhythms of speech and using register, alliteration, and assonance to elevate or suppress certain narrative moments. Also I tend to write in imagistic sequences similar to comic books—my family co-owned a comic book store when I was growing up and they were a very important part of my life until I moved away from TX and to NY.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

I’ve benefitted from a glut of some of America’s best writers: Jericho Brown, Marie Howe, Vijay Seshadri, Claudia Rankine, Matthea Harvey, Dennis Nurkse, Suzanne Gardinier, and Tom Lux have all been my instructors. I’m over 10 years removed from their instruction, but their lessons remain with me. I’m also lucky to have some amazing beta readers: Ben Kline, Niina Pollari, Lee Potts, Cyndie Randall, Madeleine Corley, Teo Mungaray, and Peter H. Michaels are all people I can reach out to for comments and advice, and I’ve flourished under their intelligence and creativity and guidance.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I would love to write a series of Avatar: the Last Airbender fanfiction about the fall of the Turtle Cities and an earthbender who must combat waterbender using their waterbending arts to spread a plague throughout the world. Sometimes I’m happy knowing, though, that this story remains in my head. In general I’d love to write a novel, but I’ve tried and am awful at them.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

Oh I would love to do hospital operations. Not the kind that involve opening patients, the kind that involve opening clinics. Had I not been a writer I would’ve been a band director and remained in Texas, probably.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

In college, when I was split between being a music major or pursuing creative writing, I had to decide what I wanted out of my life… and I could kind of see the trajectory I would have had if I had been a band director. I was a happy, normal-ish life I think, but I wanted more. Writing led me to a crazy life in New York, and now I work as a writer for a major teaching hospital in Philadelphia. I love the experiences I’ve had, the life I’ve lived, even if some years I was more surviving than living. I think with other pursuits, I kind of had an idea of who I would have been had I chose that path, but I didn’t know who I’d be if I chose writing. And now, many years later, I can’t imagine being any happier.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Delights and Shadows by Ted Kooser for poetry and Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders for prose. I don’t watch movies! Except with my kid. I quite liked Frozen 2.

20 - What are you currently working on?

You know, I have this big project idea, which I submitted as my NEA application… but really, I’m just working on decompressing. Getting a book out in the world, then trying to stump for it, then waiting to see how people react to it, then figuring out what a reading/book tour would look like during a pandemic… it’s a lot. In the way I needed time to write toward the book and sort myself out throughout my twenties, I feel like I need some time to write myself away from the book too. So I’m working on that, working on finding my way back to writing the kind of poems that wouldn’t go in this book. It’s done, it doesn’t need a B Sides. I need newness, and so I’m working on discovering that newness. For now.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;