We recently published Stephanie Frazee’s miraculous “A Glorious and Unknown Place.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love how you take the Hans Christian Andersen idea of the soulless mermaid (I mean, really, his stories were ALL Christian allegories, weren’t they!) and turn her into something that both takes and gives. Do you think there is a part of your mermaid that longs for a soul like the Andersen version?
Absolutely! The mermaid’s longing for a soul has gotten lost in the modern versions of the story, whereas it’s the main driver of her actions, and gives poignancy to the resolution of her relationship with the prince, in the Andersen version. In this story, she believes the boys have what is inaccessible and unknowable to her and that she has found a way of getting closer to it. I did not set out to write a story about her longing for a soul, but it went there pretty quickly. I mean, what higher stakes can there be for a character? 

2) The boys that come to her — they lose their lives but they gain eternity. Or so the mermaid believes. Is this really an act of so-called generosity? Or is there jealousy at play here?
There is totally jealousy at play, among other things. In the Andersen version, the mermaid has a statue of a boy in her garden. That was the start of this story: how might she have gotten the statue (Andersen tells us it was a shipwreck, but what else might have happened?), and why is it so special to her? What does it mean to love something that can’t love you back, and alternatively, can’t reject you or leave or tell you how it feels at all? That is possession, not love. However, I think the mermaid believes her actions come from a place of love, and that takes the story to an even darker place. 

We recently published Sudha Subramanian’s brilliant “It’s Not So Bad That Appa Is Dead.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the lie of the title. I love that it is a lie that the narrator is trying to convince themself of. I love how the reader sees through the lie almost instantly. Does the narrator see through the lie as well?
This is such a great question. The narrator tries to believe the lie and doesn’t want to see through it until they see through the inevitable truth. In a way, the unwillingness, the conviction, helps in coping with grief, yet it falls apart like in this piece towards the end.

2) The parent-child relationship here is so relatable and so beautiful. Thank you for sharing it with us! The distance between them, and yet the closeness — is that something the narrator holds onto?
I think a parent-child relationship is always this – distance and closeness. Although we prefer to hold on to the closeness, the distance (like in this piece) can make the complexity of relationships more endearing.

We recently published Heather Bell Adams’ searing “What Kira Packed.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) The absolute devastation in this story — from what Kira packed to go to what Kira returned home with: it’s all so layered in meaning and heartbreak. Do you think there’s anything Kira wishes she could have left behind, either on her way to camp or on the way home?
Thank you for this insightful question. I think Kira would like to leave behind, or slough off, what other people think of her, the crippling weight of their expectations and judgments, the sense that she is always disappointing those who have raised her or been in positions of authority over her.

2) Kira is so young here, and so influenced by the cruel things she’s been led to believe. Do you think she will be able to break free of what she has learned at camp and realize there is nothing wrong with her? Or will this “sin” always be something she carries with her?
This is such a great, thought-provoking question. As she gets older, I envision Kira growing into a more mature sense of self. She has rejected what she was told in her teenaged years and found some degree of happiness, although it’s at the expense of her relationship with her family, especially her dad and grandfather, from whom she is estranged. It would take a lot (maybe a whole novel’s worth ;)) to work on healing those rifts.

We recently published Matt Kendrick’s illuminating “Nothing Certain.”

Here, we ask him two questions about his story:

1) I love the certainty that Mr. White begins the story with and the way he becomes unmoored as he stops to really think and not just accept things at face value. We see what he thinks of his wife (and how biased his perspective is). What do you think she thinks of him?
This is such a great question. It can be so easy in a scene that revolves around two characters to only focus on the POV character, but here, for me, it’s Mrs White who’s the more interesting individual. When the idea for this piece was first waltzing through my mind, I was thinking about the novellas “Mrs. Bridge” and “Mr. Bridge.” With both those (the dual perspectives of her POV then his POV), I find Mrs. Bridge much more fascinating as a character, and I hope there’s a little of that in my piece as well (and I would love to one day write this scene from the opposite perspective). Mrs White is trapped in this marriage in the same way her husband is trapped in his denial. On the surface, she stays calm, but underneath I like to think she’s full of rage, both at his condescending treatment of her and at his refusal to accept the truth of his own feelings. I think she has a complex mix of sadness, sympathy, weariness, confusion, love and disgust swirling about as well. And there’s a horrid irony to how she has to contain all of this because of the ways she’s been trapped. Although I haven’t necessarily stated it on the page, this is set in the 1960s, so Mrs White is trapped in this seemingly loveless marriage both by the unbending (i.e. certain) expectations of the time period and by the fact that her husband represents her own last certainty, her last anchor to her dead son.

2) The “dependable earth.” Oh, god, the “dependable earth”! That reveal tells us so much and in such a casual, beautiful way. Does Mr. White look at the sun and the earth and all of these inhuman things as dependable because life isn’t?
All of my short fiction at the moment stems from a saying (here it was “nothing is certain but death and taxes”) and I like to start by giving that saying a bit of a prod. While they contain a lot of wisdom, a lot of these sayings feel like they veer very much into absolutism. Are death and taxes both completely certain? And aren’t there other things like gravity, illness, embarrassment, discovery, and loss that are equally certain? For me, as writer, Mr White is a medium for these contemplations. I’ve purposefully chosen someone who I’d place in the category of MAMCASAW* man (*Middle-Aged, Middle-Class, Able-bodied, Straight, and White). He clings to what he’s always been told because he thinks that’s the “correct” way to behave. By extension, he believes in keeping a “stiff upper lip.” He also believes the husband “should rule the wife.” This is all he knows. He isn’t emotionally developed enough to approach his shared grief in any other way. These “inhuman” certainties are thus a bit like a shield. But that shield is wearing thin. His certainties are crumbling, and through that shift from certainty to doubt, I wanted to present a buried truth. Not that “nothing is certain but death and taxes.” But a new truth. That nothing can be taken for granted and that burying our heads in a false “certainty” (as Mr White is determined to do) leads nowhere good. In that way, I hope Mr White is multi-layered. I hope he comes across as a unique individual. I hope he comes across as a type who echoes outwards into universality. And I hope he comes across as a medium for philosophical contemplation. I’m not sure I accomplished all of that, but that’s what I had in my mind when I set out to write.

We recently published Pamela Painter’s powerful “The Warning.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the brilliant characterization of Hank, how you reveal piece by piece what kind of person he really is. His justifications and rationalizations are so perfectly displayed! While we — the readers, the writer — know who he is, do you think Hank will ever admit to himself that he knows it too?
Thank you for those words “brilliant characterization of Hank.”  Well, first off you say that we– the readers and the writer (me)– know what kind of person Hank is, and I agree that his character is on display.  But I leave it up to the reader to decide if his warnings are harmless– the musings of a man who finds Chrissy attractive–or are they sinister.  If they are sinister, then they might foretell how the story really ends.  

2) And poor Chrissie! Is there a part of her that understands what kind of a threat Hank is, or do you think she sees him exactly the way he wants to be seen? The way, it seems, her father sees him?
Sadly, both Chrissie and her parents are unaware of the threat that Hank could potentially be.  So, yes, she does see him as her father sees him.  He is “Mr. D” to her.  Just as everyone is “Honey” at the diner where she works

We recently published Chris Scott’s devastating “Go Bag.”

Here, we ask him two questions about his story:

1) The go bag’s contents go from the mundane and realistic (water, first-aid kit) to the unexpected and impossible (“ideas of a new world, a better world than this one”). In a situation like this, the unexpected items seem more useful than the mundane items — something to hold onto in the face of (at best) uncertainty. What will the protagonist cling most tightly to out of this go bag?
I briefly researched go bags about a year ago after reading Annie Jacobsen’s excellent Nuclear War: A Scenario, one of the most sobering and viscerally horrifying works of nonfiction I’ve ever read. I was surprised at how much that book upset me and infected my thoughts. Even though I’ve lived in Washington, DC for a couple decades now, that was really the first time I started kind of watching the skies and truly contemplating that level of catastrophe. This story is in part a dramatization of my experience thinking through the contents of my own go bag, realizing the futility of this (at least in the face of nuclear annihilation), and making my peace with what would hypothetically be actually important to me, or to anyone confronting a definitive end: your thoughts, memories, feelings, the present moment stripped of any pretense of security theater, planning, or fear of what’s around the corner. I don’t know that the protagonist is clinging to this so much as discovering that’s all there is.

2) Okay, but that ending: “call it a sunrise because there’s no one left to say otherwise”! The power here! The heartbreaking, stunning beauty. What if it really were only the sunrise? What then?
I don’t want to undermine the ambiguity of this ending, but after spending so much time dwelling on this topic, I will say I was attracted to the idea that there’s catharsis in considering something as inconceivable as total cataclysm, actual oblivion, and consciously, defiantly choosing to find peace anyway. This idea that an ending can be a beginning simply because you want it to be, because you choose that. That really moved me. Whether that’s resilience or resignation, wisdom or naivety, is up to the reader.

We recently published Kim Magowan’s brilliant “Subject: We Are All Appalled.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the voice here — it’s the exact right amount of slithery and manipulative, alongside
defensive and faux-concerned! Was it hard to get this voice just so?
Cathy, ha, I love the word “slithery”! Perfect descriptor! Ditto with “faux-concerned.” Perhaps
because I’m a parent and have witnessed a few finger-pointing brouhahas, this unreliable
narrator voice was easy to inhabit. I love using first-person plural point of view, “we” narrators.
It’s a great POV for exploring complicity, avoidance of accountability. Megan Pillow’s “We All
Know About Margo” is a brilliant example of how choral narration works to deflect (or at least
to diffuse and dilute) blame. Before writing this story, I’d been reading about the Bystander
Effect. The more people there are witnessing a harm, the less likely it is that any individual will
step up and intervene on behalf of the victim. These parents are hiding behind the communal
“we,” and trying to align themselves with the larger “we”: “We, like all members of our parent
community, are appalled.” But in order to pull that move off, and shift blame away from their
own children, they require a scapegoat: Sebastian LeComte.

2) Only Ryan Gottfried (the victim) and Sebastian LeComte (the “perpetrator”) are named by the
parents writing this letter — clearly a conscious choice to hide their children’s identities! But do
you think the authors of this letter might turn on each other and start naming other names as
things progress? Do you think this “united” front will stand?
I love this question! And it’s a good spot, that they name (first-and-last name) both the victim
and the “perpetrator.” In fact, Ryan Gottfried, the victim, gets subtly condemned himself a few
times: “It shocks us to see that kid with his big, sloppy smile inhaling that beer bong,” they say, and later they call him “a willing and cooperative victim.” They stipulate that Ryan consents (to
drink, and to be filmed). Furthermore, they emphasize their own children “did not give Sebastian
permission to record them,” implying that their children are not only “victims” like Ryan
Gottfried, but even more victimized, since Ryan’s “smile” or “smirk” indicate his awareness and
complicity. Why they have it out for Sebastian LeComte is obvious. First, they need a scapegoat,
so spotlighting Sebastian is convenient and pragmatic. Second, they’re angry at him for
supplying evidence of their children’s involvement, by filming Ryan and then sharing the video.
They also name Ryan’s parents, but only, intimately, their first names: “our thoughts and prayers
go out to Linda and Gary.” I wanted that sentence to read as insincere, “faux concern” as you put
it earlier. (The “thoughts and prayers” evokes that knee-jerk, hypocritical response politicians
who take money from the NRA have to every school shooting. Screw them!). I deliberately did
not have parents sign the email with their names. For obvious reasons, they prefer anonymity.
But of course the mass email has to come from somebody. My mental picture is it gets sent out
by a lawyer parent, a partner in her firm, who is cutthroat enough and arrogant enough to agree
to be the “face” on the email. And probably her kid’s voice (or green sleeve) is most identifiable.
But if the parents turn on anyone next, it would be her kid; she’s made herself vulnerable. Next
in line would be the parent of a kid who has a particularly distinctive voice—a nasal squeak
maybe, or an accent—or the parent of the green-sleeved child, because everyone knows who he
is. These author parents have no loyalty. Their alliance is purely one of convenience. They’ll
throw any weak link under the bus, so long as their own child escapes punishment.

We recently published Anna Mantzaris’s delicious “Application to Eat the Sweetest Peach in the World.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) Of course, this story brings to mind that famous line from Eliot: “Do I dare to eat a peach?” In
this case … well … does the character dare? It feels, at times, almost like the peach is too good to
be eaten!
The backstory of the peach and I why I chose one that just may be “too good to be eaten” is that it
seemed like the complete opposite of anything that could be obtained through an application. We
apply for jobs, housing and funds—our basic needs and wants—but not something like the
sweetest fruit in the world. I’ve always had a lot of anxiety about filling out forms! On paper,
there’s limited room and electronic forms often have a set number of characters. There’s no place
for storytelling, which is why I dislike them so much. I decided to write a series of applications
for things that use the structure of a form to place stories. I handwrote this story (which I almost
never do because I have trouble reading my handwriting) and read it at an in-person series
(which I also rarely do) and the analog origins and in-person reading seemed fitting for
something that’s impermeant, like a peach. I hoped to capture a feeling of nostalgia for
something—even before it’s gone—that seems “too good,” fated not to last.

2) That said, this peach isn’t a peach — is it. Or not merely a peach. It is a gift, laden with
meaning. There seems to be the implication that the former lover is doing the gifting — what do
you think they expect from the “you” of the story when (if!) this peach is eaten?
The former lover mysteriously appeared for me at the end. Aside from the speaker there aren’t
any characters here, and it’s probably debatable if the speaker is even a character! We just have
them and this ghost-like ex at the end. I really like stories where a character is gossamer, off the
page in a way, like in Rivka Galchen’s “The Lost Order.” There’s a woman in her apartment and
a caller misdials and wants to place an order for Chinese food. The caller is the closest thing to
another character and even though we don’t see them—they’re just a voice on the line—they propel the story forward. I love that you ask about the ex-lover and give them expectations. It
would be nice to think that nostalgia is a two-way street here, with the ex-lover’s memory of
“you” being the “sweetest in the world,” even if it’s filtered as a memory through the other
person.

We recently published Lauren Kardos’s biting “What we talk about when we want to talk about Fight Club.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love the voice(s) here. I love their rage, their pain, their sensitivity. And yes! They ask: “What did nineties-era white men have to be so mad about?” What did they have, indeed? What do they have to be so mad about now?
I admit I am a Palahniuk fangirl. Fight Club was the first Palahniuk novel I read. It rocked my 16-year-old brain in the early aughts. It’s a rare case where the movie does great justice to the book, in my opinion, and I’ve returned to both often over the years. I wanted to imagine the girls encountering this story the same age I did, but with the layer of contemporary events in the United States: the Me Too movement, the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the Epstein Files. etc. The girls’ question is both reductionist and not, just like Fight Club. The 90s era men, in the novel, hated their jobs, hated feeling stuck in the cycle of overconsumption and overdrawn bank accounts, hated the systems which killed their health, hopes, and perceived freedom. Hated their mothers (Chapter 6) for teaching them non-violence, so in grasping for adulthood control, they latch onto Fight Club and Project Mayhem as a way to enact change. I hated how Marla was the only female character in Fight Club, a character we’re set up to dislike. Many of the men’s anger was valid! The systems did suck in the 90s. But to ignore or disdain a giant chunk of the population, girls and women, experiencing the brunt of violence from these systems already? Tyler Durden’s ideology is ignorant of reality (to say the least of a dissociative personality). The systems are shit on a massive, global scale now. Go check the headlines to see what white men in power say they are so angry about today, the ideology that trickles down into voters of a certain persuasion. They’re enacting violence to expand control in ways different than in Fight Club, not just against women, but also communities of color, immigrants and asylum-seekers, trans and queer communities, and more. It’s way scarier. We can’t let these men horde all the anger, something the girls in my story react to, try to remedy.  

2) The reasons for what the girls do here — oh, damn, the reasons. Every broken little bit of their worlds sneak their ways into this. But unlike the men of Fight Club with their white-men madness, these girls are practicing for their future. For a world that will try to knock them down, that won’t “pull her punches.” Maybe this isn’t the best way to go about it, but … do you think this will make them stronger? Safer?
This question reminds me of podcast host banter at the start of an early My Favorite Murder episode. Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark were attempting to explain why they learn about and recount grisly true crime stories, many of which feature the violent death of women. Both said something along the lines of: if I can learn about and imagine every worst case scenario that could happen, then when something similar happens to me, I have a higher chance of survival. It was the when not if of their reasoning that shook me, stayed with me for its truth. My heart breaks for American young women coming of age now, for girls born with fewer rights than Gen X and Millennials and our Boomer mothers had. I don’t know if the girls’ cemetery Fight Club will make them stronger or safer. What they have to respond to is so outside of their immediate control. But I hope it makes them angry, makes them persistent, makes them ready for the fight.  

We recently published Shira Musicant’s devastating “Boy Cries Out.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love how “Boy” and “Mother,” “She” and “He” become such perfect descriptions of the characters as the story progresses. Lacking any agency outside of what the writer gives them, they are defined by their roles! Do you think the impression would be the same if you (or their writer) had given them names?
If the writer would have given them names, say James and Sally, they might have begun to have personalities and required some development. Without names, Boy and Mother are stand-ins for the roles they might play in a story: a mother, whether good or bad or indifferent; a child, mischievous or playful or deprived. Their specificity might have made their demise tragic for the characters.
But not naming the characters, and later erasing the roles these characters might have inhabited, the writer narrows his story and clarifies his theme. So, I also read into this that the loss of those roles in a story, as in life, has tragic elements.
Sitting with your question, I think of characters I have had to delete from stories for various reasons, often because they do not contribute or move the story forward. I am always a little sad about deleting them and I love the idea of writing a piece featuring some of those discarded characters. Imagine the dialogue! Thank you for sparking that idea with your question.

2) Though your story is about Boy, the writer’s story is about Mother, then Woman. Except, of course, it’s not — it’s about martinis and climbing into cars and “toppling” heels. Do you think the writer has any understanding of the characters he has created? Or is he simply propelling them through a plot/desire of his own?
I think propelling the plot forward is a good way to describe the reason for this writer’s decisions. He takes a minute to find the narrative he wants to write, and, in the process, he creates Boy and Mother. When he does find his story, the writer decides it is inconvenient for the woman to have a child, to be a mother, so he must delete both Mother and Boy.
The deletion itself could have been a story, and there are many about these kinds of erasures: divorce stories, abandonments, murders even. But this writer has a different vision and wants to tell a more prurient story. 
So my story is about Boy, as you note in this question, and about the children who are erased for whatever reason.