We recently published Donna Vorreyer’s insightful “I’m Not Sure What to Do Next.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) I love, love, love how you capture that heartbroken feeling here, that want to go back to what you had before.That uncertainty of not answering the knocking at the door. Do you think the narrator will ever feel like they know what to do next again?
Honestly, I think the narrator already DOES know. Every action taken in the progression of the narrative makes it seem like the narrator will never get over the loss, even hints at the fact that perhaps the ex isn’t completely done with the relationship, either, But then, in the last line, I believe there is a decision. It would have been easy to let the ex in, but the narrator summons all her nerve and doesn’t do it. So even though there’s a total feeling of being unmoored here, I like to believe there’s an underlying strength through the anger and the sadness. The subordinate structure of “since” implies that the title could be the completing clause, but it also leaves open the possibility for a more certain way to move forward.

2) The narrator finds a looklike for their ex on a dating app! Such a great detail that really demonstrates such a human need here. Did the date have anything in common with the ex outside of looks (signs point to no, but maybe)?
I find it funny that I even came up with that detail since I have been with my husband for 44 years and have never even SEEN a dating app other than on television! But trying to replicate the qualities you’ve lost in someone you cared about is certainly not a new phenomenon, though the technology to facilitate it is. I like to think that looks are the only thing the two men shared, the only reason she went out with anyone at all to alleviate the loneliness that came from being suddenly single. 

We recently published Martyn Pedler’s explosive “Stretch.”

Here, we ask him two questions about his story:

1) This story starts in such a familiar way, with a narrative trick that we’ve all seen before: “you’ve got to keep the caller on the line so I can trace them.” But then it takes that idea and (my apologies) “stretches” it out. What was your inspiration for this piece?
I think a lot of my short stories begin as a joke: “What if you had to keep someone on the line – FOREVER?” But then I try to take that gag-like setup and shift it into another register, often by taking something to its logical extremes. Here, I was thinking about the familiarity that comes with long-term relationships. After a lifetime on the phone with someone, how would you feel about them? And how empty or numb would you feel if they were suddenly gone?

2) And in the end, our characters (except for the narrator, who has died offscreen) have had a connection for a very long time. Long enough that there’s only certain positions that don’t hurt their hips, long enough that their ears feel “hot and naked” without the weight of the phone. And in the end …. Do you think the caller even remembers why he had a bomb anymore?That’s a good question! I’m also a screenwriter, and so I’m very used to notes about “raising the stakes”. I liked the notion that there’s this unexploded bomb ticking away in the background of the whole story. The trick, I guess, is that it seems like the characters forget the bomb is there, just like (hopefully) the reader does too. When ‘you’ finally ask about the bomb, is it a surprise to you that you’re asking? Or had you been waiting all along to build up enough intimacy to get the truth? In the end, it comes too late to matter.

We recently published K.A. Polzin’s brilliant “A Metaphor for Something.”

Here, we ask K.A. two questions about the story:

1) I love how current this story is, how now, how powerful. This could be happening anywhere, to anyone. It is happening everywhere, to everyone! How do you picture your narrators?
As the story is partly autobiographical – I have felt everything the narrator feels, at least on my worst days – I picture the narrator as someone not unlike me, speaking for both themself and their partner (or family). I’ve exaggerated the situations and emotions, so perhaps the narrator is someone like me after a night of terrible sleep.

2) “On the TV, the program never changes.” This paragraph, for me, is particularly striking — it shows the things we choose to “entertain” ourselves with for the pathetic reality they are. Why do you think so much of our media, our entertainment, takes this form?
As a teenager, I loved watching The Love Boat. I knew it was silly, but that was part of its power. Formulaic TV shows and movies are comforting, relaxing. They can be a balm for those with stressful, difficult lives, of which there may be more now than ever. I have found comfort in them in difficult times. But they are passive experiences – they are easy, too easy – whereas a great book or film is an active, meaning-making experience. But one must first have the mental space to do some work.

We recently published Justine Sweeney’s devastating “Two days after I died.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) The reader never learns how the narrator died — it could be an accident, illness, something else — and yet the story stands whole without that detail. But still: do you have an idea of what happened?
I wrote the story last summer when I was faced with a serious health diagnosis and my mind kept circling ideas of mortality and people’s reactions to illness and death. But I wanted to leave the illness ambiguous so that a wide range of readers could identify with this situation.

2) The story isn’t about the narrator, really, but about this woman who “mourns” her so performatively and about her sister, who is so changed by her death. We don’t learn how the narrator feels watching her sister’s reaction, but we can imagine how heartbreaking it must be. Do you think seeing her sister’s pain is harder for her than her own death?
I think social media adds a surreal performative aspect to the experience of grief, like when a celebrity dies and everyone’s posting about it. Someone who’s lost someone close might want to be very private with their experiences, and, thinking about mortality like I was, I wanted to explore what it would be like to be going through that for real and have someone else acting out this social media grief right in front of them, making it all feel worse. I think it is incredibly hard to watch someone you love being ill and suffering, because you feel completely powerless, so the situation with the social media post represented that sense of powerlessness on the sister’s part.

We recently published Sagar Nair’s brilliant “Not One of Us.”

Here, we ask him two questions about his story:

1) I love stories like this, where the narrator(s) reveal much more about themselves than the person they are presumably talking about (and judging!). Do you think the characters here realize how much they are showing of themselves? Do you think they would care?
Such an interesting question. I think the narrators are unbothered by what they show of themselves, because they believe they are right. They have full conviction in their unjustified disgust. They believe what they say makes them look good, but that is for the reader to decide. Also, I think the narrators hide behind the first-person plural POV to shield themselves from negative perceptions. They speak as a collective to appear valid and authoritative, despite little justification for their views.  

2) Isabel seems like such an amazing person! But do you think she is hoping to wear down her neighbors with kindness? Or does she, as they believe, harbor some sinister intent behind her “giraffe eyes”?
Ultimately, I want readers to decide if they believe the narrators and if Isabel has sinister intentions. Personally, I think Isabel is trying to appease the narrators and prove her goodness through hyper-politeness. Sadly, there is no winning for Isabel—whether she’s rude or polite, she cannot change their minds and they will twist all her actions to support their beliefs. Isabel’s character demonstrates the psychology of a scapegoat. Some scapegoats resist the irrational blame, whereas others turn to respectability and the illusion that one can control what others think. Isabel is trying to prove her right to exist to people who are not listening.

We recently published Emily Rinkema’s devastating “Things That Don’t Matter.”

Here, we ask her two questions about her story:

1) So much of this story is told through nonverbal cues and gestures — there’s such a feeling of the narrator understanding and knowing, and yet being unknown to others herself. How correct do you think her interpretations are here?
I wanted to capture the feeling of being in a social setting and being just a hair’s breadth away from losing it–that feeling when you aren’t sure whether it’s just you or whether your interpretations are actually true–when you know you have to keep that smile plastered on your face or you’ll be crying into your dinner plate in front of everyone. Going through perimenopause has made this feeling all the more resonant for me–I have learned that I can’t always trust my own emotions, that I need to give myself a few beats (or 24 hours!) to decide whether I feel as strongly about something as I do in the moment. Which feels dangerous, not to be able to trust myself, my perception, my intuition.

The narrator here is on that edge, and she definitely doesn’t feel heard or seen by her husband (whom she imagines is truly listening to Manny’s wife), or even by Manny, who has chosen her as a confidante but knows nothing about her in return. And as she maintains control of the party, she is losing control of herself…but not so much that she isn’t able to sense that and disappear upstairs! 

2) And so much of this story is also the keeping up of pretenses, the look of perfection and correctness. In the end, the narrator seems to be unable to cope, but … will her lasagna burn? Will she make it back downstairs to maintain as much of her mask as possible? Or is she going to let it all burn down?
I wanted there to be some ambiguity, since I’m not sure she knows whether she’ll be able to pull it together or not. And the story ends with her looking in the mirror, seeing herself since she thinks no one else sees her. I think the sting of the plucking (an ultimate pretense!) is a way to feel there, to feel present and real, if that makes sense. Ultimately, I want her to let it all burn down, but I don’t think she will. The question is, will she have eyebrows left when she makes it back downstairs!

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.