Kate Hill Cantrill‘s writing has appeared in literary publications including Story Quarterly, Salt Hill, The Believer, Blackbird, QuickFiction, Mississippi Review, Smokelong Quarterly, Swink, and others. She has been awarded fellowships from the Corporation of Yaddo, the Jentel Artists Residency, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and the James A. Michener Fund. She has taught fiction writing at The University of the Arts, The University of Texas, and the Sackett Street Workshop. Her short story collection, Walk Back From Monkey School is available for pre-order from Press 53. She lives in Brooklyn where she curates the Rabbit Tales Reading and Performance Series and is completing a novel.

Q (Meg Pokrass): What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer…

Kate Hill Cantrill: For me I think that my mentors have always ended up being replacement father figures for when my parents split and I only got to be with my father on weekends. My father has always and forever been my major word and humor-based mentor. He actually made it a rule in the house that my sisters and I watch It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World every year since I was an itty thing. He also had strict requirements about me being knowledgeable about M*A*S*H and Monty Python skits. He’d say, “Katie, a wink’s as good as a what?” “It’s as good as a nudge to a blind bat, Dad.”

I had a professor in college who was super handsome and who had on the shelf in his office so many books that I had already semi-freakishly read when I was a teen (because reading was easier than dealing with people for me at the time), and he noticed that I knew all of them and he liked my essays and so he suggested that I become a writing major. I liked the cut of his jib and he was one of the first teachers to NOT give me a C, so I signed up the next day. Thanks, Tony!

I guess I’m saying that mentorship just shazams into our lives, but I wouldn’t want it on any formal basis. You find them: they find you.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

I simply don’t write. I go and draw a cartoon or paint something or pet my plants or watch a cat video. Unless I’m given a task, I don’t write unless I want/need to absolutely write. I feel like my brain is always working, but I can’t control in what creative direction it wants to go in. I have a strong background in visual arts; I just couldn’t figure out how to make paint or wood or anything say what it wanted to say, so mostly I write.

Are there favorite writing exercises or prompts that you like and will share?

Depression has worked really well for me. So has some itty kid saying something so hilarious and profound I can’t let it go. My favorite sharable prompt though, has been to write a story that takes place in 30 minutes. And as a certain professor once suggested to me (and about a gazillion others): If you get stuck, make a man come through the door with a gun.

I prefer to have a jarring phone call happen or a weird sound in the backyard, but I know what he meant and it really works.

Do you know who your characters are before you write? Or do you find out who they are in the writing?

Most likely the latter. In fact, yes, totally the latter. I generally don’t know what they are going to say until they say it, so it’s often a surprise to me. I have gotten mad at my characters and been like “Oh Sh*t! You just totally threw off my trajectory of this story. But whatever, it is your story.”

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

It was from my mother, who is a brilliant sculptor (among other visual arty things)—I can’t say it verbatim, but it was something like: Don’t let the competitiveness of the art world drag you under. Create to create. Create to give something to the world or to you or don’t do it at all.

Please talk about the writing of your story collection Walk Back From Monkey School.

Thanks for asking this! The working title (all my working titles are this) was “Hello Friends and Neighbors.” My editor at the amazingly story-enthused Press 53 chose the current title based on one of the teeniest stories in the book, and I can’t be happier! I didn’t write this as a collection necessarily, although once I had the chunk together, and the quarter chuck as a chapbook got three first runners’ up awards, I decided to take a second look at my stories as a collection. They are very different in their style at times, but oh so similar in what they say. I’ve written several novels, but they were intended—short stories just come and smack me in the face and I am forced to write them. Long or short or mid-length, I can’t stop them when they come. They wake me at night.

What question would you like to be asked next?

Question: Do you ever get tired of writers thinking they are some special sort of being, even though you consider yourself to be one—not a special sort of being, but a writer?

Answer: Holy hell yes. The politics around writing and art in general makes me feel ashamed to be a part of it some of the time. The whole ‘discussment’ between “men” and “women” writers and the whole “where did you study?” and the whole utter snobbery at certain NY readings makes me want to fly fly away and hang with the birds and jam on my harmonica.

What is next for you?

I have three novels I would like to get published. I would like to adopt a dog. I might like to teach writing again, but only to the lost kids of New York—not undergrads or continuing ed or anything. I love teaching 6 graders and might look into that. I also want to pursue writing plays more. I’m getting really into that. Why be stingy with words? Let them flow through other voices and see what happens. This is exciting to me these days.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Sheldon Lee Compton just barely survives in Eastern Kentucky. He has five tattoos, all of them on his arms. He once spent a night in jail for taking a road cone from a construction site. He once called Harry Crews and Mr. Crews told him to keep writing and that he loved him. He is the author of The Same Terrible Storm and the forthcoming
Where Alligators Sleep. Visit him at bentcountry.blogspot.com.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer.

There’s a place for mentors, no doubt. But a mentor should be a friend first and a supporter and teacher second and third, I think. I’m still close with several of my teachers (who were actually called mentors) from my MFA days in Louisville, and I hold close to those ties, but in the end we mentor one another in this profession by reading and offering honest feedback. Say what you mean and mean what you say is what I believe. If I’ve mentored anyone by doing this, then I’m glad. The best thing we can do is return the favor.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

At the risk of seeming pretentious, it’s been a fair amount of time since I’ve ran into this situation. For the better part of a year now I’ve been getting up at 5 a.m. and starting work at 5:30. The truth of the matter is I’m just far too sleepy to take much time thinking and getting into a rut. I just do what I can to get to the work, dive in quick and get started. Writing full-time means my work day doesn’t stop until about eight or nine hours later, so there are for sure moments when I hit the wall. I play guitar then, and it seems to break things loose for me.

Are there favorite writing exercises or prompts which you use regularly & will share? 

There’s no stretching before these Olympics, but I do enjoy prompts from time to time. Less so lately, as I’ve moved to much longer stories and have been knee deep into a novel since October.

Suggestions for making characters live? Do you know who they are before you write or do you find out who they are in the writing?

It’s hard to say what brings a character to life for the writer, but that’s the first step, for sure. The storyteller has to see the character clearly before he can share the experience. My best results have come when I’ve seen the character in this way and then offered my trust. The writing process is one of discovery for me, and the guide is the character. If you give yourself over to this idea, the character development comes naturally and in a very real way because you’re both in it together, trying to make it through to the end.

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

I’ve had my share of advice, like most folks, but the bits that have stuck had more to do with writing with my heart. That’s not to say in a sentimental way but in a truthful way. Finding your voice as a writer is an early step. Learning to use that voice to convey a story from that perspective means letting your guard down and exposing yourself to judgment and praise, ridicule and high honor.

Please talk a bit about your book Shel. Tell us about it. Talk about anything you would like to here related to the process of writing it.

My current book, The Same Terrible Storm, is a collection of short stories, many of which have appeared in magazines and journals over the past several years. However, through a combing process with Foxhead editor Nathan Adkins, the stories have been strengthened considerably. I can’t thank Nathan enough for that. Some of the stories were written as many as six years ago and had been through a lot of drafts before landing in Foxhead’s hands. I couldn’t have imagined how much there was left to do that could improve them until I started into the editing process. I had nearly given up on nursing anymore truth from the tales until Nathan breathed new life into them. It gave me a headwind when looking at my second collection, improving that book as well.

What is next for you?

I’ll have a second collection out from Foxhead in the near future called Where Alligators Sleep and, as I mentioned before, I’m working on a novel called Brown Bottle day to day. In the meantime, I’m working to promote The Same Terrible Storm, making dates for book signings and readings and so forth. But first and foremost I’m just enjoying being here in the world with the people I love.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

James Claffey hails from County Westmeath, Ireland, and lives on an avocado ranch in Carpinteria, CA, with his wife, the writer and artist, Maureen Foley, their daughter, Maisie, and Australian cattle-dog, Rua. He is the winner of the 2012 Linnet’s Wings Audio Prose Competition. His work appears in many places including The New Orleans Review, NAP, Press1, Connotation Press, A-Minor Magazine, Literary Orphans, and Scissor & Spackle. His blog is at www.jamesclaffey.com.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer…

Mentors have been critical to me at junctures in my writing life. As an undergraduate at UC Irvine I was in Geoffrey Wolff’s workshop for two quarters (one where Maile Meloy took over because Geoffrey had a heart problem that needed surgery), and his wisdom and advice proved the early spark for me as a writer. I stopped writing for six years after undergrad, too busy teaching high school to carve out time to write. At LSU both Jim Wilcox and Jeanne Leiby were stalwart mentors to me; particularly Jeanne, who gave so much of her time and insight to my thesis project. We were of an age, similar interests, and hit it off. Just listening to Jeanne speak about writers and craft, in between her riffs about politics and the vagaries of life in Baton Rouge, was a wonderful experience. Jeanne opened me up to writers I hadn’t read, like Ron Hansen, Andrea Barrett, William Gay, so many others. We also conference called writers, agents, editors every week, and got to chat with great people like Billy Giraldi and Christopher Schelling. I wrote my first flash fiction in her forms course: 200-word shorts based on an updated version of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Her death was a terrible way to end my time at LSU, truly shook me to my core. I miss her a great deal, the diet cokes and cigarettes, the strident opinions about everything. Still, at AWP two years ago we had several dinners and very late nights in the lobby talking fiction and life with various people. She just loved to pour forth on writing; so passionate. These days, post-MFA, new baby in the house, readjusting to life back in California in this economy, I don’t have a mentor as such, but there are plenty of wonderful supporters of my writing who’ve helped me navigate the waters, and so many folk here at FN who provide feedback and support for my writing. if I named names it’d take up the whole page!

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working? 

I read something that might spark a bit of writing. A lot of times I turn to Ron Hansen’s Mariette in Ecstasy, the form and the language energize me. Also, Mark Richard’s House of Prayer No.2. Then there are short exercises, your word lists, which I always find a great way to kick-start something. I’ll also dip into my memory and find something that triggers a sentence, then a paragraph, and so on. There are mental exercises and physical exercises that will help you and you can also use the curb appetite for better results.

Can you offer some suggestions for making characters believable? Do you know who your characters are before you write, or do you find out who they are in the writing? 

I don’t know who they are before I write about them. It comes out in the writing for sure. The character in my Irish story literally burst out of the pen for me. I hadn’t been happy with the “voice” of my first novel, and suddenly, late last summer when I began writing into this new  (familiar) world, this voice simply appeared on the page, and it felt right, straight from the first sentence.

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

I’ll steal and paraphrase from Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar, and the Rumpus coffee mug: “read like a motherfucker, write like a motherfucker.” I’d tell my undergraduate students in their workshops, you won’t be a good writer unless you’re a good reader. The reading is part of the raw material for the writing process. If the reading tank is empty, then there’s no way the writing can come forth properly. I don’t know a great writer who isn’t a great reader.

Please talk about the novel(s) you have written and are working on now… 

 The first one was my MFA thesis, and it’s a story of a man living in the United States, searching for the ghosts of his past, dealing with a crumbling marriage, a parent’s death, and figuring out how to go on. The narrative switches between present-day USA and Ireland, and his teenage years in Dublin.

My current novel is sort of an mash-up of The House on Mango Street and We the Animals. Many excerpts have appeared at FN, and have been published in numerous places, and it’s basically a story about a young boy growing up in Dublin, searching for his father’s love. I’m hopeful that this one will find a home, because I so believe in the voice of the narrator, and the way he interacts with the world.

The project I’m starting, edits permitting, is a short collection of flash fiction paired with a series of photographs of Civil War Ireland. The idea is to have the thirty or so photographs link with the stories to create a novella-in-flash manuscript.

What is a question you would like me to ask?

Answer: Is there any space left in your workshop?

Ha. I’m being facetious.

Before going to Louisiana for my MFA, I taught high school English, and since then undergraduate composition and fiction writing. Now, back in California, I’ve been unable to land a teaching job anywhere, and it’s the economy, the economy, the economy, I suppose.

But, I’ve taught in the inner-city environment, where you’re literally saving lives, and to not be able to contribute to that endeavor hurts. Maybe I can land a teaching gig, low-residency or traditional, but it’s getting harder by the year, with adjuncts becoming the new standard for universities, and newly-minted teachers so much less expensive for schools to hire than someone with years in the classroom (much more expensive). In the meantime, I work my temp job and write my stories and remind myself that everything changes, and think of Jeanne Leiby, driving on a sunny day with the top down, the summer in full flow, and it all went away in seconds. Life’s too short not to find the joy, even when the going is tough, and it’s a fragile thing for sure. So, I’ll take Natalie’s advice. I’m going to shut up and write some more stories. Work will figure itself out, let the universe provide as we say.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Kathy Fish:   Most of the titles of the vignettes which make up your novel From the Umberplatzen are one word titles.  “Wreath“ is one such vignette. Can you tell me why you chose this as your title? It feels to me like the wreaths held different meanings for M. and for Kitty Kat…

Susan Tepper:  Well, you started with a hard question but I will do my best here.  Wreath is a flash-fiction lifted out of From the Umberplatzen.  The book is set in Germany but told mostly in flash-back, after Kitty’s return to the States.  Most of the titles were chosen once I completed writing a particular flash.  I would sit a moment and use the first title that popped into my head.  And it seemed correct, appropriate, somehow, doing it that way.

So when Wreath begins, M is telling Kitty Kat (his pet name for her) they should get married; despite her being already married to a guy she left back in the States.  M also suggests they both wear wreaths made of Umberplatzen leaves.  He is a dreamer, whimsical, impetuous, a maker of kites; but he’s also a brilliant physicist.  M sees things beyond the realm of the eye.  I think he believed that the wearing of Umberplatzen wreaths for the marriage ceremony would somehow weave them together, too, in a sort of perfect harmony.  The Umberplatzen so essential to their lives, their story.  It’s a metaphor or conceit that is used to portray a place of peace.  But Kitty Kat, being the more pragmatic one, is appalled by the very idea of an Umberplatzen wreath on her head, and answers him by saying she could get gnats in her hair.

K.F.  The whole push and pull of their relationship seems brought to a head in this particular vignette as M. asks Kitty Kat to marry him and she reminds him that she’s already married. They seem, throughout the book, to be in different places in relationship. I think you contrast this so brilliantly within the dialogue, most especially in this piece. Can you talk a little about your thoughts on what makes good dialogue and what dialogue can do to advance a narrative in general and then about the dialogue in this piece?

S.T. Yes, the push and pull, I felt it throughout the writing.  I think men and women are mostly always at different places in relationship, and that’s what makes for so much drama (in life and on the page and stage).

As for dialogue, I made some unconscious choice to have it embedded rather than lift it up in quotation marks.  I think doing it this way, for this story (and the book), helps the reader get closer to the characters.  It’s kind of like you get to read their minds and watch them do their thing at the same time.  Because I was an actor from a young age I read a ton of plays.  Dialogue comes easy.  I have to work harder on other elements.  But I think if the writer digs down and gets up close and personal with the characters, the dialogue kind of sings on its own.  As for dialogue moving the plot along— well if they are in the middle of a talk about marriage, and someone suddenly says let’s go shopping, that will definitely move the plot in some strong direction.

K.F.  I feel as though the story shifts emotionally in the middle of this piece when M.’s  hopes are dashed and there is the gorgeous line:  “When we met you were all stars.”

He says this at the moment where she regrets her dismissal of buying the filmy dress. I am so impressed with how you handle this moment. My question is, did this arise spontaneously from the writing? Because it feels like something that may have surprised you, the writer, too.

S.T.  I was constantly surprised by what these characters said and did, what decisions were made.  It all spilled out of my unconscious.  I, too, love that line (is it OK to love a line you wrote?).  What I love about that line is that this man M saw her as all stars.  How incredibly flattering.   It might be the only time in Kitty Kat’s life anyone feels so strongly about her, so that makes the line pivotal.  And again the line came out of the push and pull of that moment.  It’s like when someone is saying they love you, and you are denying it for some reason, and you both want to die from the inevitable agony you know is just around the bend.

K.F.  I noticed in Wreath there is no punctuation besides the periods. I think this is true of the whole book. I like it. It contributes to both the flow and the sound of the book and the individual pieces. It’s as if, to me, their voices are ethereal, floating, contributing to the aspect of recall. The words may or may not have been actually said, but this is how they are remembered. Also, there are no commas, no pauses, which also lends a certain sound to the book. The first sentence of Wreath is:  “Kitty Kat we should get married.”

Then later:  “See said M. This could be our wedding food.”

There’s a flatness to these statements that I like quite a bit. Not in the words themselves, but somehow, in the delivery. I feel like this was a conscious choice on your part, for this book, and not your style in general. Can you talk a little bit about this? (also, I intentionally put in a lot of commas, here, for the hell of it).

S.T.  Yeah, commas, what the hell!  OK, well, here’s the thing. I wasn’t aware that Wreath was without punctuation (other than periods).  In the book a few of the stories did get a comma or two. It wasn’t a conscious decision. The sentences came from a space in my writing mind that pushes out dialogue, and in this case the dialogue was short and to the point. If I were to analyze my choices, I would say I did this to keep the stories clear on who is doing the speaking, since there are no quotation marks.  Wreath, and every story in the book, is being told from Kitty Kat’s memory of what happened between them. And we all know how ‘skewed’ memory can be, especially after elapsed time, and distance.

Kathy, as for what you say here about my “style in general” I would have to answer by saying the story itself dictated the style.  I felt channeled writing the Umberplatzen stories.

K.F.  Okay, drawing from what you last said: “I felt channeled writing the Umberplatzen stories.”

I’m fascinated by this. Writers often say that they feel as if they are channeling something else when writing. Here, you say that you felt as if you, yourself, were being channeled. I want to make sure that’s what you meant. If so, who do you feel was channeling you? The two lovers? Were they dictating the story to you? It makes me love the book all the more. Did you ever feel as though you had to override them? Did you ever go, no, that won’t work, in the revision process? Or did you trust in the process completely, give yourself over to it? This is often how I write, but I do go back and change things.

Also, “the story dictated the style.” This feels right to me as I can’t imagine their story being told any other way. So I guess what I’m saying is that everything in Wreath and the book as a whole feels natural and whole. But did you ever doubt this process? Or did it just always feel right to you and you went with it?

ST: Kathy I felt completely at the mercy of my characters and plot. As if they had reached out to me, to tell their story.  There was never any doubt, or any ‘thinking’  going on.  I tend not to doubt.  I’ve had ‘writers faith’ from my first pathetic attempts at story.  I always thought my stuff was good.  Of course in retrospect I can see how flawed my early stories were.  But back then I thought they were just great.  Ha ha!  Plus I had the encouragement of wonderful writing teachers who gave me the green light.

As for Wreath, and the other Umberplatzen stories, many of the details did in fact come out of ‘snippets’ of my own real life (like the parakeets Sonny and Cher).  But there was no ‘active consciousness’ going on during the writing.  There was no revision, except to correct typos or to research a particular date or some details I put into the German language.  On one occasion I asked Jurgen what the beer gardens were called, because that word eluded me.  In the past I spent large chunks of time in Germany.  But each little story came out in the book in its original (first draft) form.  It is mystical, but then again it’s not. Why shouldn’t there be two characters named M and Kitty Kat living out this life somewhere?  I was happy to breathe life into them on the page, in our realm.  It was a very contented writing time for me.

Read “Wreath“ by Susan Tepper

Kathy Fish’s short fiction collection  Together We Can Bury It is forthcoming in September from The Lit Pub. Her collection Wild Life is available from Matter Press.

My mother was born in Hatchett Holler in a house barely larger than a shack, now 70 years later dangerously leaning and bereft of paint. I come from the world of tent revivals and singings where simple folk and their homes, nature, God and medication played the leading roles. Actually, I’ve just come back from that same place: from Sheldon Lee Compton’s The Same Terrible Storm.

Told mostly in male first-person or third-person narratives—although there are a few surprises, such as “Place of Birth” told in the second person and “A Tree Born Crooked” told by a female character—Compton’s short story collection is a melodious, somber ballad of place. I’m tempted to call this a rural southern place, and it certainly is. But there’s a deeper place Compton describes in such rich detail. It is the burning place in the characters’ minds that they all seek to soothe. The persistence and medication of pain, witnessed but ignored by nature—and I will venture to include God as disinterested bystander—are at the core of almost all of these stories.

Also at the core of The Same Terrible Storm is a seething, pent-up anger, like the gun in Greg’s pocket from “A Dark River’s Silt,” one of the longer stories in the collection. Greg is a man trying to make things right, to get clean, to find God. Convinced by a dream his girlfriend will leave him for a man of more brawn, he decides he needs a gun. But first he must make a choice between right and wrong. His grandmother’s guitar—the Hummingbird—is hanging on the wall at the pawn shop. Music/family or violence—which will be the antidote that saves him? Of course he buys the gun, which imbues the story with Hitchcockian suspense.

The ending of “A Dark River’s Silt” is explosive, baptismal in a way the reader might not expect. In the same way, the ending of “Intruder” is both devastating and beautiful. Compton’s need to “get the chords just right” has produced a work of finely tuned description. I could quote a hundred passages, but I’ve chosen this one from “Remodeling” because I think it shows Compton’s focus on the home as character. In this passage, the house has retained the residue of anger, as if the room has been ravaged by a storm:

People had certainly lived here. Families. In an area that served as a kitchen there were four chairs that seemed blown about the room. Two tilted against a far wall  and the others sat upright but on opposite sides of the room. There were dishes in a  cancerous sink.

But there’s hope, and I’ll go ahead and tell you Compton has saved the antidote that will calm the storm until the last story, the last stroke. Redemption and the relief from pain come through family, through a moment shared between father and son. Is this a message? Am I allowed to look for one? And if I’ve found one, does it matter if none was intended? I know one thing: if I were a character in one of these stories, I’d be looking for a sign from God that one day all my efforts would pay off, that I would someday be whole.

Sheldon Lee Compton’s The Same Terrible Storm is available from Foxhead Books and Amazon.

Christopher Allen, a native of Tennessee, lives in Germany. His fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in numerous places both online and in print. In 2011, Allen was a Pushcart Prize nominee and a finalist at Glimmer Train. He blogs at www.imustbeoff.com.

Stephan Clark is the author of Vladimir’s Mustache, a collection of short fiction. His stories and essays have been published in numerous magazines, including Ninth Letter, Cincinnati Review, LA Weekly and Witness, and been recognized as notable in  Best of the Web and Best American Essays. A former Fulbright Fellow to Ukraine, he earned his Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from USC and currently teaches at Augsburg College, in Minneapolis.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer…

I used to believe – and then hope – that a mentor could teach you how to write. You know, as if one would take your story or novel, mark it up with a flurry of red ink, then spin it round on the top of his desk and say, “See! Now it works.” Today, my thoughts are more limited: I believe a good mentor can introduce you to stories worth reading and help you believe in the quality of your own prose. TC Boyle has done this for me more than anyone else. When I washed up in his fiction workshop as an undergraduate, he had us read  a handful of books, including Jesus’ Son, The Remains of the Day, White Noise (or was it Mao II?) and Lucky Jim. Each, along with his own The Road to Wellville, seemed like a minor miracle to me, as did the belief that I actually knew what I was doing, which he instilled in me then and during the years to come.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

I reach for a book on my shelf and re-read a favorite passage, or I pace in my writing room while talking out loud. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go one of two ways: up (with a shot of espresso) or down (with a nap). Usually, it is the nap that works best.

Are there favorite writing exercises or prompts which you use regularly & will share?

A writing instructor of mine, passing this down from a writing instructor that she herself had had, once told me that all fiction can be reduced to one of three stories: a stranger comes to town, somebody leaves town, and boy meets girl (or any such combination of functional equivalents). For this reason, I often have my students read The Life You Save May Be Your Own and write a story in which a stranger comes to town. In addition to producing the stranger, the students must have him “come to town” in the first paragraph, as the brilliant Mr. Shiftlet does in the first paragraph of Flannery O’Connor’s story.

Suggestions for making characters live?  Do you know who they are before you write or do you find out who they are in the writing?

The novel I’m currently working on began one day when I was feeling stuck or uninspired (see above) and I got it in my head to reread the opening chapter of White Noise. This was the summer I read Fast Food Nation and started paying attention to the artificial flavorings industry. My love of the one book and my introduction to the other resulted in a kind of mash-up. After I returned to the day of the station wagons, I pictured a scene: a flavor chemist stood at his office window, watching as a group of school-children got off a long yellow bus and crossed the street toward a wooden sign hanging over the front door: FlavAmerica, it read, in three bands of color that had begun to bubble and fade. Like that, I had everything I needed to start my novel: the flavorist’s starched white lab coat, required of all employees at FlavAmerica, was suggestive of a subculture as rich as The Department of Hitler Studies, while his teeth, thrust forward in his mouth like something too hot or too large to swallow, gave him an English childhood like mine. How had he gotten to New Jersey? And what would it have been like to have come of age during The Age of Tang and the four-compartment aluminum tray, only to enter the new millennium at a time when your daughter is demanding nothing less than organic fresh-squeezed?

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

Writing is rewriting.

Please talk a bit about Vladimir’s Mustache and tell us what the stories are about, how they came together, etc. Anything about this book and the process of writing it which would like to share here.

Vladimir’s Mustache is a collection of short stories set against the backdrop of Russian history from the time of Peter the Great, through the purges of Stalin, and on into the mail-order bride agencies of the present. For some of the stories I did a lot of book research, for others I called upon personal experience, and for still others I relied on field research.

At first, I didn’t even realize I was writing a collection of linked stories. The first group of stories, set during the Great Purge, was written when Bush the Younger was in the Oval Office and I felt the need to test that old adage: those who don’t know history are bound to repeat it. This was when Guantanamo was opening up, the Patriot Act was permitting secret trials, and government officials could unilaterally brand someone a terrorist – or an enemy of the state – and be considered a champion of freedom for doing so. Why didn’t I know more about Stalin? I wondered. Hitler I had covered, but Stalin and his reign of terror? It was time to inhabit his world, I thought, so I immersed myself in Soviet history, including Edvard Radzinsky’s excellent biography, Stalin.

From there, I wound up traveling to Russia, for the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, which in turn inspired a couple of stories about outsiders being influenced by their travels to the country: one, about a castrato brought to the Kuntskamera to sing for Peter the Great; the other about an American leftist who gets cold feet before his marriage and, in an effort to passively aggressively end his relationship, tells his Republican fiancée that he’s become a communist.

The last of the stories written for the collection are set in Ukraine, where I went on a Fulbright Fellowship to research the mail-order bride industry. These stories, drawn from the interviews and field research that I conducted over there, might have never been written if I hadn’t, just before going off to grad school, lived on the Russian River, in rural northern California, near a landlord who returned from Ukraine with a so-called “mail-order bride.” His new bride had a teenage daughter who was later forced to return to her homeland because she hadn’t been granted an immigrant’s visa like her younger brother. Before leaving, she kind of indirectly asked me to marry her. At least, she let it be known that she was looking for someone to marry, because then she’d be able to stay. And so what ever happened to Liliya? I kept wondering — proving, perhaps, that almost all of my stories begin with a nagging question.

What is next for you?

Finishing my novel, The Flavorist, finally, because I have been working on it for far too many years, and then starting another book, perhaps one set in pre-Great Recession Ukraine.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel, The Lola Quartet, was the #1 Indie Next pick for May 2012. Her two previous novels are Last Night in Montreal and The Singer’s Gun. She’s a staff writer for The Millions. She is married and lives in Brooklyn.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer…

I’ve never had a writing mentor, but I imagine it must be nice to have one. I had mentors when I was a dancer, and they were important to me, so I imagine having a writing mentor must be a nice thing. I’ve never done any sort of training as a writer, and I suppose I haven’t had very much contact with older writers over the years. But like most writers, I’ve spent a lot of time reading, and I’ve certainly learned a great deal about craft from writers whom I’ve never met and who don’t know that I exist.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

I switch to writing about a different character, or switch from third to first person, or turn to a different part of the story. My novels to date have been fairly non-linear in structure, and I write that way too. Sometimes a change of scenery can be immensely helpful, especially if the change of scenery involves easy access to lattes; it can be helpful sometimes to get out of the apartment and go write in a café for a while. Or sometimes I’ll just give it up for the day and go for a walk or something. I’m afraid I’m not quite as disciplined about writing for long hours as I should be.

Suggestions for making characters live?  Do you know who they are before you write or do you find out who they are in the writing?

I don’t know who they are before I start writing. I think that for a character to seem real, they have to be both consistent and flawed. They can’t be entirely good or entirely evil, because no one’s entirely good or entirely evil, and throughout the book they have to behave more or less within the parameters of the personality you’ve established. If they do something outside those parameters, I think you have to have a good reason why and you have to set it up carefully.

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

This is such a cliché, but: “murder your darlings.” In other words, go through your manuscript and get rid of everything that doesn’t serve the book, even if it’s your favourite chapter or a character that you love.

Please talk a bit about The Lola Quartet here. Anything related to writing and birthing this book!

Sure. I started it about three years ago, in the spring of 2009. It was around the time when my first novel, Last Night in Montreal, was published. That summer I sold my second novel, The Singer’s Gun, and found myself simultaneously promoting the first novel, doing revisions under deadline on the second, and stealing time here and there to write the third. It was such a pleasure when the final draft of The Singer’s Gun was turned in and I could finally focus on this book.

The Lola Quartet is a work of literary noir, and is concerned with jazz, Django Reinhardt, economic collapse, love, Florida’s exotic wildlife problem, fedoras, and the unreliability of memory. It took about two and a half years to write, which seems to be about average for me. I listened to Radiohead’s album In Rainbows a lot while I was writing it, and I think the music affected the mood of the book.

What do you wish people wouldn’t ask you about your writing life?

It’s sort of awkward when people ask how I come up with my ideas. I have no idea how I come up with my ideas—it just sort of happens—but it’s difficult to express this without sounding like I’m trying to be mysterious. I’m not trying to be mysterious.

What is next for you?

Another novel. I’m fighting my way through a first draft. I’ve also been thinking lately that maybe I should write more short stories.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Alice Boatwright’s book Collateral Damage will be published by Standing Stone Books, and she has recent work in Amarillo Bay and Marco Polo Arts Mag. MaryAnne Kolton’s story “Beth” is in the latest Inwood Indiana. Jane Hammons’ story “Oryx Love” is in the summer issue of Wilderness House Literary Review. Linda Simoni-Wastila’s story “The Way It Is” is published in Scissors and Spackle, edited by Joani Reese; and her story “The Abridged Biography of an American Sniper” is a flash-fiction finalist for Press 53 Open Awards. Gloria Mindock’s poem “Sorrowful Air” appears in Ibbeston; her poem “Forever” has been published in Bagel Bards Anthology; and her flash fiction “Lonely” is forthcoming in Thrice. Andrew Stancek’s story “Elephants and Banana Leaves” appears in r.k.v.r.y., illustrated by Vax Liu. Marcus Speh’s story “The Preparation” was shortlisted for The Reader Berlin’s 2012 Short Story Competition. Larissa Shmailo’s “The Girl @theparisreview Says Uncool” is in the summer edition of Gargoyle; three of Larissa’s not-poems, “Fish,” “Date,” and “Phase Change,” are published at Unlikely Stories. Cheryl Anne Gardner’s “Blowout” appears at Literary Orphans, and “Hula-hoops,” “Boys,” and “Bottle Rockets,” is published at Salt. Meg Pokrass’ “I Married This” is published in The Literarian.

On my flight from MSP to LGA on Friday, headed to New York for the Fictionaut gathering, I considered the book in my lap that I had read once for the purpose of reviewing and twice for pleasure: Susan Tepper’s From the Umberplatzen: A Love Story.  Suspended in the air, I realized something about it that I had not realized on land.  Then, as if to reward my diligence, the pilot announced to the passengers that our flight may reroute to Albany or Syracuse to refuel.  We had been flying for an hour in a holding pattern.  Five minutes later, the pilot said we had clearance to land at LGA and would fly through the storm.  I turned to the man next to me and began to chat, as if it might be the last time I chatted with anyone.  The man next to me was a technical writing consultant.  He and his wife were traveling from Idaho for her first trip to New York.  His background was in philosophy, and he was backburnering a novel, a potboiler, that could bring in a shipload of cash.  “What are you reading?” he asked, and I said, “A novel.”  He said, “It looks too slim to be a novel.”  So I said, “It’s a novel composed of very short stories.  Have you heard of flash fiction?  It is a novel composed of flash fictions.”  The man and his wife, intelligent readers, had not heard of flash fiction, so as our plane flew into the alps of clouds, I explained what flash fiction is.

It was on the plane that I realized that the stories in From the Umberplatzen fly.  They do not walk, carry, or drive.  They conspire, in the air, like postcards as they float across the Atlantic on official business, transported by trusted officials, for the purpose of continuing love.  They hover over the sea that separates the lovers, Kitty Kat in America and M in Germany, who have met in another ethereal place, the trees she calls the Umberplatzen.

The story is told in 48 stories.  The telling is not loud but internal and sweet, with the tones of lovers who tease each other boldly.  The dialogue, some of the best I have read of its kind, is indirect.

Here is an excerpt from “Nails”:

His bookshelf was leaning.  Too many heavy manuals on the one side.  M was kneeling pulling out books.  Soon the floor was covered.  Guess I’ll finish it tomorrow he said.  I need to buy nails.  You can’t leave it this way.  Why not.  Well how can we sleep here.   How can I get to the bathroom in the dark.  I’ll trip and be killed.  M had started tickling me.  I screamed for him to stop.  So that’s all you’re worried about Kitty Kat.

The words that pass between them are not demarcated by quotation marks or split into separate paragraphs but go as thoughts do between the hemispheres of one mind in two bodies.

Ann Bogle has been a member at Fictionaut since July 2009.  She is fiction reader at Drunken Boat, creative nonfiction and book reviews editor at Mad Hatters’ Review, and served formerly as fiction editor at Women Writers: a Zine. She earned her M.F.A. in fiction at the University of Houston in 1994.  Her stories have appeared in journals including Blip, Wigleaf, Metazen, Istanbul Literary Review, The Quarterly, Gulf Coast, Fiction International, Big Bridge, Thrice Fiction, fwriction : review, THIS Literary Magazine, and others.  Her short collections of stories, Solzhenitsyn Jukebox and Country Without a Name, were published by Argotist Ebooks in 2010 and 2011. Books at Fictionaut features reviews of books published by Fictionaut contributors.

Myfanwy Collins lives in Massachusetts with her husband and son. Her work has been published in The Kenyon Review, AGNI, Cream City Review,Quick Fiction, and Potomac Review. Echolocation is her first novel. A collection of her short fiction, I Am Holding Your Hand, is forthcoming from from PANK Little Books in August 2012.

What is your feeling about having mentors as a writer? Talk about the mentor relationship if you will, its importance to a writer…

Like all crafts, there is a sense of apprenticeship within writing, a learning from those who have come before. As such, mentors are extremely important to the growth of the writer, I believe. Both to be mentored and to mentor. As much as you get or have gotten from others, you should be prepared to give that to another. You should be prepared to give more.

What do you do when you feel stuck or uninspired and does it work to trick the brain into working?

I used to need to write in the quietest, most tranquil place. I would need all of the stars to be aligned. It was extremely easy for me to allow myself to be distracted out of my writing time. Not anymore. As I have a small, no-longer-napping child, my time for writing is limited. Even if it weren’t limited, my brain capacity is limited as it is filled up mostly with him and his needs at present. As such, when I get time for writing, I just write. Noises don’t bother me anymore. People around me don’t bother me anymore.

Same thing when I’m feeling uninspired. I just write and write until something comes. Something will always come.

Are there favorite writing exercises or prompts which you use regularly?

I have never been good about writing to a prompt. I admire people who can do that but I’m not one of them. I wish I could.

Can you offer other writers suggestions with character development? Do you know who they are before you write or do you find out who they are in the writing?

Gosh, good question. I guess it’s something you just have to feel in yourself as you write, don’t you?  If I don’t feel them inside me then I don’t figure anyone reading can feel them either.

What’s the best writer’s advice you ever got?

The best writing advice I ever received is the advice I give over and over again: in order to be the best writer you can be, you first have to be the best reader you can be. Keep reading and don’t ever stop.

Please talk a bit about your new works…

My next book is a collection of short fiction coming from PANK sometime within the next six months or so. It is called I Am Holding Your Hand and is comprised of both short stories and flash fiction, written (and rewritten) over the past ten+ years. I’m very excited about it.

What question do you dislike being asked the most in interviews?

This one: “What’s your book about?” I am continually tongue-tied at that question and need to learn to better respond.

What is next for you?

The biggest thing I’m working on right now is helping my son prepare for kindergarten. He begins in the fall. I’ll soon have my final reading for the promotional tour I set up for Echolocation. It’s been a really fun and exhausting couple of months touring around and reading. I’m extremely grateful to everyone who hosted the events and everyone who came out in support. You people are wonderful!

In addition, I have just received my MA in English Literature (my graduation is on May 20th, 2012) and am planning on applying to MFA creative writing programs over the next couple of months.

As for writing, I’m going to be starting on a new novel soon. I’ve got the beginning already but just (finally!) came up with the story. I’m excited about it. Life is beautiful.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. Her first full collection of flash fiction, “Damn Sure Right” is now out from Press 53. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.