I’m impressed with Kait Mauro. She’s 19 years old and has a book for sale since last February up on amazon.com which she published herself titled, One Six Billionth. She tells me it is Creative NonFiction.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): Hey Kait, the Like Birds Lit group seems to be thriving. Explain to us what Like Birds Lit is and talk to us about the group.

Like Birds Lit is an ‘online literary collective’ I started recently. At the most basic level, there are two parts to our mission – to benefit readers and to benefit writers. We give writers another place to publish their work, to get it out there into the world and reach new readers. Alternatively, we would like to think we give fans of literature a fresh selection of writing and authors to enjoy. The goal is to have a win-win situation that benefits everyone involved.

Tell us more about you and your work, things you’d like to talk more about, which is fine, whatever, we have the space, it’s fine. Any suggestions for Fictionaut regarding Groups, the site in general, etc? (Go ahead we can take it.)

I try not to take myself too seriously. I just started attending college at Washington University in St. Louis. I will probably publish another short book someday but the truth is that publication wasn’t what I thought it would be. I am not sure if this is normal or not. It’s been fun and rewarding at times but overall it has left me feeling a little too exposed and rather self-conscious. I dream of traveling the world. Also, I am so glad I have found this wonderful community on Fictionaut!

What is your favorite bird mentioned in a short story or novel of all time and why?

I don’t really have a favorite bird mentioned in a story but my all time favorite book is titled Bird By Bird (by Anne Lamott), so that’s probably the closest thing.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

(Photo by Miriam Berkley)

Kyle Minor is the author of In the Devil’s Territory, a collection of short fiction. Other recent work appears in The Southern Review, HarperCollins’s Fifty-Two Stories, Random House’s Twentysomething Essays by Twentysomething Writers, and Best American Mystery Stories 2008.

Q (Meg Pokrass): Which authors (throughout your life) have influenced you the most? Which authors have influenced you the most over the past five years?

When I started writing, I wanted to be a writer like David Foster Wallace, Don DeLillo, or Kurt Vonnegut. Some writers who actually influenced my first book: Andre Dubus, Katherine Anne Porter, Alice Munro, Larry Brown. By then I had downshifted at the level of language in order to try to accommodate some darker psychology.

The first book was formally dexterous. It’s got a single-movement single-I narrator, a double close 3rd in two asymmetric parts that are symmetrical at their ends, a double-I that is progressive over a lifetime’s worth of events, a dramatic monologue in the mouth of an illiterate, a Chekhovian 3rd, and a first person narrator who assumed omniscience enough to imagine the interior lives of his father and his old fifth grade teacher. I learned while writing it that my primary gift wasn’t with the epiphanic — it was with juxtaposition and accumulation — and that I had the ability to inhabit a multiplicity of voices (after the manner of writers like Jim Shepard or John Cheever or Jeffrey Eugenides, say) more than I was a writer of a great and powerful singularity (like DeLillo or Wallace.)

What now? I want to be more influenced by the colloquial, the high and grand, the genres (especially noir), and especially the Jewish writers I most admire (Philip Roth, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Cynthia Ozick, Nathan Englander, Bernard Malamud, etc.) At the same time, I feel the pull of the plainspoken, chronologically linear third person (as in John Williams’s Stoner.) I’ve spent much of the last nineteen months writing an epistolary novella that owes much to Alice Munro, who is possibly the most experimental writer alive.

Have you had mentors? Do you mentor?

I’ve had some very good teachers: Lee K. Abbott, Erin McGraw, Michelle Herman, Lee Martin, Bill Roorbach, William Bowers, Andrew Hudgins, David Baker, Kathy Fagan, Jon Saari, Mike Rich, Nancy Zafris, Michael Curtis. I’ve also been lucky to be in contact with writers whose lives I one way or the other admire, and who I think of as models, I guess: Pinckney Benedict and Laura Benedict, Chris Offutt, Edward Falco, Christopher Coake, Donald Ray Pollock, Rodney Jones. I’ve tried to apprentice myself to writers I’ve never met, through their work: Philip Roth, Alice Munro, Stephen Dixon, John Cheever, Edwidge Danticat, Denis Johnson, Richard Price, William Faulkner, Andre Dubus, etc.

I do have students of my own, and so many that proper mentoring seems out of reach, most of the time. You just try to give them as much of what you know as you can when you’re around them. But once in awhile someone of great promise comes along, and it’s difficult to avoid spending the extra time with them that their work and effort has earned, so you do it.

How do you stay creative? What are your tricks to get “unstuck?”

I just work every day. I don’t know that I’m even “creative.” Maybe once every two or three years you get that piece that’s a gift — it just comes in a rush, and it’s whole, and it’s good, and you ride it until it’s done. For me, that’s usually an essay — the first major draft of “You Shall Go Out with Joy and Be Led Forth with Peace,” from Twentysomething Essays, came this way, and also “There is Nothing but Sadness in Nashville,” which will be published later this year in Arts & Letters. But most of the time, I’m just grinding it out daily, draft after draft. Being “stuck” is a daily condition, and I wish I knew some easy to truck to get unstuck. What I do is just try and try again.

Do certain themes emerge in your work, ideas and themes that seem to keep coming back to you in different forms?

It’s difficult to escape childhood stuff — the family of origin, the childhood fears, the specter of religion. I’ve been thinking a lot about death, about how time reduces possibility, about class inequities, about how our walled-off interior lives and competing agendas make it difficult for us to connect with one another.

I’ve been thinking more generally about form, too, and the under-appreciated role it plays in meaning-making. Formal concerns, particularly with regard to structure and point of view, receive a considerable percentage of my attention.

What is new in your world? Tell us about what is going on/ what are you working on now?

I’m almost done with a new story collection. I’ve been back-and-forth between here and Haiti for a couple of years, working on a nonfiction book. I’ve got a novel going, too. And I’ve been writing these weird one-page stories, many of them metafictional, and publishing them at obscure websites, for fun, and to work out things I’m not temperamentally inclined to give space in the longer fiction.

Where would you like to live if you could choose?

Brooklyn, Budapest, somewhere in northern Italy, San Francisco, Ouest Province in Haiti.

What is your favorite new music? Does music influence your writing on a (somewhat) conscious level? Does film?

I often listen to music when I’m writing — Vic Chesnutt, David Bazan, Johnny Cash, the Gorillaz, Gnarls Barkley, Lou Bond, Bob Dylan, The Breeders.

I don’t want movies while I’m writing. Some movies I wish I could find a way to absorb as influences: The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, Alpha Dog, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Visitor, Brothers, The Anniversary Party, Tetro, Magnolia, Lost in Translation, The Conversation, The Red Violin, Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, Ghosts of Cite Soleil, The Five Obstructions, The Company, Goodbye Lenin!, In America, Inventing the Abbotts, 25th Hour, Good Will Hunting, Taken, Punch-Drunk Love, Amelie, The Heffalump Movie, Funny People.

We would love your recommended reading list!

Sure enough. Here it is! Some Books I Have Stacked in a Pile Near My Desk Because I Want to Re-Read Them Soon:

Louis Auchincloss, The Rector of Justin
Lee K. Abbott, All Things, All at Once
James Baldwin, Going to Meet the Man
Pinckney Benedict, Town Smokes
Thomas Bernhard, Correction
Bonnie Jo Campbell, American Salvage
The Stories of John Cheever
Joshua Cohen, Witz
J M Coetzee, Disgrace
Edwidge Danticat, Brother, I’m Dying
Paul Eggers, How the Water Feels
Stephen Elliott, Happy Baby
Shusaku Endo, Silence
Nathan Englander, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Barry Hannah, Airships
Michael Herr, Dispatches
Andrew Hudgins, American Rendering
Denis Johnson, Jesus’ Son
Edward P. Jones, All Aunt Hagar’s Children
Rodney Jones, Elegy for the Southern Drawl
Stephen King, The Shining
Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn
Alice Munro, Open Secrets
Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire
Joyce Carol Oates, The Assignation
Tim O’Brien, In the Lake of the Woods
Cynthia Ozick, The Shawl
Molly Peacock, Original Love
Donald Ray Pollock, Knockemstiff
Katherine Anne Porter, Pale Horse, Pale Rider
Richard Price, Clockers
Mark Richard, Charity
Philip Roth, Sabbath’s Theater
Philip Roth, American Pastoral
Norman Rush, Mating
Isaac Bashevis Singer, Collected Stories
Frank Stanford, The Light the Dead See
Emma Straub, Fly Over State
Wislawa Szymborska, Selected Poems
Studs Terkel, Hard Times
David Foster Wallace, A Surprisingly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
Lawrence Weschler, Vermeer in Bosnia
John Williams, Stoner

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 an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

For the past month Luna Digest posts here have been a bit spotty to say the least, as attention has been directed to Luna Park’s new website. But now the site is up—all thanks to Gene and Jenny at Supreme Value. Fantastic people (who also did PANK‘s site, among other things) and great work. All to say: Expect Digest posts at the regular weekly clip from here on out. Also, check out David Backer’s thoughts on realism and April’s online fiction at the new site.

The second issue of Corium is out, with new work from Gary Percesepe, Jenny Bitner , Roxane Gay, and B.J. Hollars among others. Read Marcelle Heath on Corium‘s March debut.

Percesepe also has work forthcoming in Stymie Magazine: A Journal of Sport & Literature—which interests me, as a past reader of Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature. Are there many such publications?

Another new magazine, Australia’s Blue Crow, has come out with their first issue, with a story from Matt Dennison, “All the Windows, All the Doors” (originally published on Fictionaut as “Rabbits“). The magazine should be a good addition to some great fairly recent Aussie lit mags, Torpedo and The Lifted Brow. Grab a sample PDF of the premiere issue to see for yourself.

I’ve also been informed that Dennison has poetry in the latest issue of Moose & Pussy. …That’s right. Fictionaut founder Jurgen Fauth wrote me, “This is the first I heard of Moose & Pussy.” Me, too. Dennison’s poems “Heat” and “Slow Horse” (listed simply as “Two” at Fictionaut) appear in the recent issue.

Quick bit of news from Colin Bassett, editor of Bearcreekfeed:

I wanted to let you know about a new ebook being released this week by Bearcreekfeed. Kendra Grant Malone‘s ‘Chasing Pigeons Makes Me Feel More Powerful’ will be published Wednesday (6/16). You can read the poems now at kendragrantmalone.bearcreekfeed.com and the ebook will be officially published at poetry.bearcreekfeed.com on Wednesday.

In other Fictionauter news: Mary Miller has a free new mini-book from Featherproof: “Foxes” (just print and fold). Susan Tepper has poetry in Cortland Review and work in the new issue of Gargoyle. David Ackley‘s novelette “The Warden” appeared in Vol. 4.1 of  Prick of the Spindle—and Percesepe’s story “Philosophy” is in the magazine’s newest issue. And Bill Yarrow has poetry in recent issues of Magma and Poetry International—a special double issue on Chile that also includes “Godzilla in Mexico” by Roberto Bolaño, translated by Mariela Griffor:

Hear me, my son: bombs were dropping
all over Mexico City,
but no one realized.
The air spread poison through
the streets and open windows.
You’d just eaten breakfast and were
watching the detectives on TV.
I was reading in the next room
when I knew we were going to die.
Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself
to the dining room and found you on the floor.
I held you close. You asked me what was happening.
I didn’t tell you we were on death’s telethon
but I whispered, We are going on a journey,
you and I, together, don’t be afraid.
When leaving, death didn’t even close our eyes.
What are we? you asked a week a year later,
ants, bees, wrong numbers
in the great spoiled soup of chance?
We are human beings, my son, nearly birds,Tin
public heroes and secrets.

Finally, I can never pass up mentioning new work in lit mags by Steven Millhauser and Jim Shepard. Always fascinating, mind-blowing writers. In the newest issues of Tin House and Zoetrope: All-Story, respectively.

Every Tuesday, Travis Kurowski presents Luna Digest, a selection of news from the world of literary magazines. Travis is the editor of Luna Park, a magazine founded on the idea that journals are as deserving of critical attention as other artistic works.

On “The Italian Lunch (II)”
by Con Chapman

“The Italian Lunch (II)” by Cherise Wolas is the narrative equivalent of a matryoshka, those Russian nesting dolls that stack within each other. A tale of unfulfilled desire–and the emotional betrayal it represents for a married man–is revealed in ever smaller circles; first the man’s mind, then a restaurant, finally the den at home where he foresees that he will be confronted by his failure of nerve and his shabby fantasy of infidelity by the mundane fact of a charge on a credit card bill.

On “A Life and Death in CCTV”
by George LaCas

Cherise’s story “A Life and Death in CCTV,” with its frantic momentum and fast, skillful prose, paints a vivid and sometimes frightening picture of its narrator’s consciousness. The reader shouldn’t be fooled by the pop-culture referentiality, like the names of TV cop shows and the detectives in them. “CCTV” is about fear and urban paranoia, among other themes, for its narrator (as much as she loves to read, and loves to watch crime shows on TV) expresses much more than she can tell us outright: her imagination contains its own free-form police drama.

The narrator’s voice gives way to the voices and thoughts of the cops and detectives who discover her dead body (again, only in her imagination, but what a vivid imagination!), and who then investigate her life and retrace her last movements around New York City. Surreality sets in when these imaginary cops piece together the exact comings and goings of the narrator/would-be vic, and the shifting POV combined with consciousness-within-consciousness combine to dizzying effect. And the doubling of meaning between TV and CCTV (closed-circuit TV, used in urban surveillance) blurs the line between the watched and the watcher, between fantasy and actuality, and between fiction and reality itself.

Fictionaut Faves, a series in which Fictionaut members recommend stories on the site, is edited by Marcelle Heath, a fiction writer, freelance editor, and assistant editor for Luna Park. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): What is The Literary Platform?

Sophie Rochester: The Literary Platform is a new online magazine dedicated to showcasing literary projects across all platforms. We’re taking a long, hard stare at the middle of that literature and technology Venn diagram, but also looking at literary projects launching on other platforms like the Underwood project on vinyl. The aim is to highlight these projects and also to bring together comment from industry figures and key thinkers in this area.

We noticed the surge of interest from publishers, literary agents, literary magazines, writers and developers in bringing the traditional book format to new platforms and thought it would be interesting to demonstrate the range of creative literary initiatives being launched in this important area. It’s such a rapidly changing industry and we hope the Literary Platform site will also act as an archive to capture this exciting time for posterity!

The Literary Platform is based in London but showcases projects from all  over the world and has readers in 88 countries (cough – thanks Google Analytics…).

What part does technology play in the expression of art? The writing of fiction? Do you see the medium as working well with non-fiction too. (Why/Why not?)

Technology has played a huge part in allowing more writers to find wider audiences. The key word circulating in book publishing at the moment is ‘experiment’. Traditional publishers and developers are experimenting with multimedia formats, established authors are going it alone, first-time novelists are bypassing publishers and niche literary magazines are finding their readers. It’s such an interesting time. What I’ve loved about this project is finding out about projects on the other side of the world like Paper Radio. What is also interesting is that despite the proliferation of new fiction online, writers still hanker after the print book deal with an established publisher. We’re seeing a lot of projects that are launched online, writers getting noticed and then picked up by traditional publishers. Perhaps at some point that cycle will change too.

How did you come to work with technology as part of your medium?

The internet was the natural home for The Literary Platform – most of our readers have found us through twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn. But ironically I would love to see The Literary Platform in print. I might ask Newspaper Club to do a special edition for TOC Frankfurt…

Anything else you’d like to tell us about the group, your project, and yourself here.

I’m going to turn this question around and say ‘is there anything you would like to tell me?’ We want to capture as many projects as possible in this area so do please (Fictionaut users) contact us if you have a project that you think would be relevant to our readers.

I’d also like to add that the site is beautifully designed by  the lovely Sam Oakley.

And you can follow us on twitter @TheLitPlatform.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

Jensen Beach lives in Massachusetts with his family. His fiction has appeared or soon will in Avery, The Lifted Brow, PANK, Everyday Genius, Waccamaw and the Best of the Web 2010 (Dzanc). Two of his stories were recently named to the Wigleaf Top 50. He helps edit Hobart and can be found online at jensenw.blogspot.com.

Q (Meg Pokrass): When in your life did writing become a passion?

First, thanks for asking me to do this, Meg. I really look forward to these interviews from Fictionaut, and I’m honored to be asked to participate. I guess around 2001 or so I first discovered that people were publishing stories and poems online. I was living in Hungary then and a friend of mine in the Bay Area (where I’m from) sent me a link to the McSweeney’s website. It was a total eye opener for me. I had no idea that things like this existed. Aside from reading certain books for the first time, I think discovering websites like McSweeney’s, Eyeshot, Surgery of Modern Warfare and later Hobart, Smokelong, Pindeldyboz, (there are too many to list) was a watershed kind of moment for me. It helped me meet people who were interested in similar types of reading and writing that I was, and it introduced me to new writers and new journals and books to read. This is probably around the time I started taking my own writing seriously, meaning I read and wrote a lot and sent my work out and so on. But it wasn’t until I started an MFA program and moved back to the US that I became more disciplined and regimented in my work.

Do you have a mentor, or have you ever.

At UMass, where I’m getting my MFA right now, I’ve been lucky enough to work with Chris Bachelder, Noy Holland and Sabina Murray. They have all helped me enormously. I’ve worked the most with Chris, though, and can’t say enough about him as a writer and a teacher. The way he thinks and talks about fiction has helped me a lot.

What are your favorite short stories or story collections of all time?

Of all time, huh? Well, I guess Flannery O’Connor is probably my favorite writer of all time. Bobbie Ann Mason’s collection Shiloh is probably the book of stories I’ve read most after O’Connor’s collected. But there are a whole bunch of writers, some of whom I have discovered more recently, that have stories or whole books that make me kind of tingle with excitement from the sentences. Denis Johnson (“Emergency” gets me every time, and the feeling I get from near the end of “Car Crash While Hitchhiking” when the wife is screaming is one that I chase after in all the rest of my reading. Amy Hempel, Grace Paley, Hemingway, Padgett Powell, Barry Hannah, Joy Williams. Honored Guest might be up there on the list for me, too. “Charity” is, I think, maybe one of the best short stories ever written. “Marabou” is another great one. This is tough. William Saroyan, Tennessee Williams, Tom Drury, Sam Lipsyte. I don’t know that I have a single favorite necessarily, but that’s a list of some of them.

Tell us about what you are working on and what is new!

I’m working a collection of stories, mostly set in Sweden, that explore place in a way that is new to me. The stories are much longer than I usually write, which has been an interesting experience.

What do you love about flash fiction?

I love lots about flash. I think I feel a kind of playful freedom when I write things that end up being shorter. I allow myself more consciously to work with structure or constraint in ways that until recently were hard for me in my longer work. Beyond that, I like reading flash because I like the feeling of keeping the whole shape of a story in my head at one time. I find this much easier in flash fiction than in longer stories. This is probably also true when I write flash, now that I think of it.

How do you get unblocked or unstuck (creatively)?

I read. I always start my writing day by reading. Even if just a few sentences to remind me of how great it feels to live with an amazing sentence. Then I can chase after that feeling in my own work. But, really, I don’t often feel blocked or stuck. If I’m not hearing a sentence in my head, I wait until I am. Or if I’m feeling especially critical and cranky, I’ll work on revising something. As far as being stuck in a particular story, that is my favorite part of writing a story. I love feeling stuck in the sense that I have no idea what is coming next, and just writing to figure it out.

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 an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

On Matt Dennison‘s “Magnets of Faith and Knowing”
by Lou Freshwater

There are stories which you read and then there are stories which get into your bones. “Magnets of Faith and Knowing” got into my bones. Matt Dennison didn’t write this story as much as he poured it from one of those unknown places, one of those deep places where shadows are the light. Matt opens this story with a shot across the bow in the first paragraph which puts the reader on notice. On notice that we are going to be inside the mind of a woman who has not only been broken but who now speaks with the kind of righteous power that being broken gives to some of the relentless and indomitable ones. The ones who have taken and taken until they simply cannot take anymore. On notice that if we get too close, we might get cut by one of the broken pieces. But the thing is, I wanted to be close. I didn’t want to be one of the others, one of the “wild dogs” barking at her, and I did not want to be on the other side of her door. I wanted to be with her, because I felt like I knew her.

This story and this character are expertly crafted. The language is both simple and complex, and it rings with poetry throughout. In fact, even if I were not aware of Matt’s poetry, I would have guessed I was in the hands of a poet who knew how to slip extended metaphors into their prose with grace and subtlety. From start to finish I was in the mind of this character, and the author never veered or wavered elsewhere. It was like reading Faulkner with a compass, and it was a privilege.

On Andrew Roe‘s “Why We Came to Target at 9:58 on a Monday Night“
by Ben White

Sometimes the stories that surprise you the most aren’t the ones about unique topics or characters. Sometimes it’s the stories that run over the same worn-in treads but somehow still feel shiny and new. Andrew Roe’s “Why We Came to Target at 9:58 on a Monday Night” is like that for me.

I don’t find myself moved by stories very much these days. Perhaps I’m being too cerebral when I read. Or maybe I’m reading too many “ooh, look at my well-crafted prose!” stories. But Roe’s first-person narrator is perfect. She’s more than real. We all probably know her.

And that’s exactly it: sometimes we don’t need to see something we’ve never seen before. We just need to really see what we thought we knew.

On Stephanie Bobo‘s “Bread, Fish, Serpent, Stone”
by Jane Hammons

The language of “Bread, Fish, Serpent, Stone” by Stephanie Bobo is so damned beautiful that I’m tongue tied trying to write about why it’s one of my favorite stories, not just on Fictionaut but period. Ever. That’s right. Ever. It’s a long story, 7500 words (part 1, part 2). So thank goodness the wise people at Fictionaut give us the option of downloading stories on PDF because I think that’s the way to read this story about Ezra Cato, just released from the mental hospital and looking for a place to stay: to sleep and also to stay his fears and confusion about how to be in the world. Ezra follows the Golden Rule, which “while it might serve him well someday in the eyes of the Lord, it usually served him ill down here on earth simply because he assumed that everyone else had the same attitude.” There is great wise humor in this story about vulnerable Ezra, eager to explore every new and mostly disastrous prospect, often afraid, always hopeful. Which is exactly how I feel when I read this story. Ezra Cato is alive on the page and under my skin.

Fictionaut Faves, a series in which Fictionaut members recommend stories on the site, is edited by Marcelle Heath, a fiction writer, freelance editor, and assistant editor for Luna Park. She lives in Portland, Oregon.

Q (Nicolle Elizabeth): What is Flag Day Challenge?

The Flag Day Challenge is an attempt to keep the holiday challenge ideal alive without interfering with too many summer vacations and writing projects. It falls nicely as a meaningless holiday between Memorial Day (when everyone springs for a three-day weekend) and Fourth of July (like Memorial Day this year, but with fireworks.) The challenge itself sprang from the April Fool’s Day Challenge, which came from the Valentine’s Day Challenge.

Even though nationality isn’t supposed to matter on the Internet, I’d like to think that the Flag Day Challenge is also a celebration of the idea of freedom. The only real restrictions I placed on it were that stories or poems have to use the words “flag” and “patriot.”

For those who haven’t finished their pieces yet or joined the Flag Day Challenge group, you have until 11:59 p.m. local time Monday to do so.

Please provide us with some historical background for what Flag Day is.

In the United States, Flag Day is a celebration of the stars and stripes. June 14, 1777 is when the Congress officially declared Old Glory as the flag of the United States. Other countries celebrate their own Flag Days, but thanks to Woodrow Wilson and the United States Congress during the Truman administration, Flag Day in the United States is celebrated on Monday.

What would Flag Day’s suggestion be for a United Nations flag logo be?

Anything would be better than the current flag and emblem of the United Nations – the god awful light blue background with white globe and laurel wreath would do. If the United Nations wanted to impress someone, they’d have something cool on their flag. Like a bald eagle killing a rattle snake.

How many authors have participated in the flag day challenge and how is it going?

So far, there are 15 members of the group, and 12 stories or poems posted. I will say that some of my favorite stories have been “The Grand Unfurl” by Nathaniel Tower, “D.X.” by Kelli Trapnell, “Pleiku Jacket” by Jane Hammons and “Pacific Light” by David Ackley. There have been a wide variety of excellent short stories generated from this challenge. I am hoping that on Flag Day itself more will join in and give me some excellent reading.

What is your favorite part about the Fictionaut group concept as a whole?

I love Fictionaut groups because it takes a collection of stories, poems and even nonfiction types of writing and groups it together – sometimes by subject and others by publication – for readers to enjoy. Because things are grouped together, it allows for casual readers to find something they might like and look for in a work.

Actually there are 5 questions. Any thing that you’d like to tell us here about yourself, your work, etc., please.

Three things, actually.

One: There’s plenty of time to write something for the Flag Day Challenge. There are already reviews of stories up on my website, and I hope to add a lot more. There’s another challenge coming up in August. Keep an eye out on the Forums and for a new group shortly. New rules for this one will make it interesting.

Two: I’m currently working on a first draft of a serialized novella I’m calling “The Devil Does You In” that I’m posting in parts every Tuesday on my site. Some of the stuff is new, other stuff I’ve already posted here (Boxcar Blues, Cliche, for instance) and am editing and reusing. I consider it a fun summer project, if anything else.

Three: Did I mention that Flag Day is Monday? Yes? Good.

Wait, one more thing: At the end of the summer, I plan on releasing a free e-book of short stories called “The Book of Daniel.” A lot of it will be stuff already posted on Fictionaut, some of it will be new.

Nicolle Elizabeth checks in with Fictionaut Groups every Friday.

Scott Garson is the author of American Gymnopédies. He edits Wigleaf and has stories in or coming from American Short Fiction, Mississippi Review, New York Tyrant, Unsaid and others.You can read “Duluth Gymnopédie,” originally published in Hobart, on Fictionaut.

Q (Meg Pokrass) As a reader, which writers have you recently discovered and felt closest to?

News of his death has prompted a slow rediscovery of Barry Hannah.  When I first read him, I was put off by some parts of the bargain readers end up having to strike with his narrators (anybody who’s read him at all will know which parts I mean).  But reading him now, I think I may fall more within his line than within those of some of his contemporaries I used to like more.

At different points, have you had mentors? Do you mentor?

I’ve mentored a little.  Have I had a mentor?  Probably not, but as I was asking myself that question earlier today, the face of my first fiction prof came into my head — Wayne Carver, who’s now emeritus at Carleton College.  He was a quiet guy, willing to let you learn nothing if that was what you wanted.  But he took fiction seriously.  When he talked about stories — which he did in intense, somewhat monotone jags — it was clear that he was talking about magic.

How do you stay creative? What are your tricks to get “unstuck?”

You didn’t say ‘writer’s block,’ but can I tell you why I have no patience for that term?  It makes it seem like you’ve caught a cold — like you’ve had some bad luck that you have to wait out.  From my angle, if you’re stuck, you’re telling yourself something as a writer.  You’re telling yourself, Something in the vision ain’t right.  You’re saying, If I push ahead in this way, wrong will be piled on wrong.

Tell us about what is new with Wigleaf!

I’m still loving up to this year’s Wigleaf Top 50, guest-edited by Brian Evenson, which went live a couple of weeks ago.  Now I’m on summer break-from Wigleaf and work — but I’m already looking forward to the new stories in the fall (the first two, both wildly great, will be from Glen Pourciau and Andrea Kneeland; and as of now there are two debut stories, by unpublished writers).  Also — and this is the official announcement, I guess — we’re doing a special late-summer issue with Robert Swartwood, tied to the release of Norton’s Hint Fiction anthology.

What is happening right now that you would like to share in your writing world? Tell us about your new book… etc.

The collection, American Gymnopédies, has sold out, but I’m hoping that as word of it spreads a reprint of some kind will start to make sense.  On the writing front: I’m in the middle of a longer story whose working title derives from a mishearing of an old Helium lyric — “Crazy and Dirty and Fucked.”  If it works out (maybe that kind of working title is not such a good idea?), it should be the last one in a full-length collection I’m in the end stages of getting together.  Of course, I’ve been saying that for over a year now — that I’m in the end stages.

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 an editor at Smokelong Quarterly, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.

Dear Fictionauters: If you would, please send me notice of your publications, editings, designings, and whatnot in the lit mag world. Would love to include many more of you in future Digest posts. This also goes for great things you have read by other people and the like. Recommendations are most welcome.

Summer is a typically slow time for lit mags (not least because many of them are run from universities or edited by writer/teachers)—but here are some things you might not want to miss.

Hobart has put up their June online issue on the theme of beginnings, which includes a great roundtable discussion with these 12 authors of first books on writing and publishing: Kyle Beachy, Jedediah Berry, Andrew Ervin, Roxane Gay, Rachel B. Glaser, Julia Holmes, Caitlin Horrocks, Holly Goddard Jones, Tom McAllister, Laura van den Berg, Kevin Wilson, and Mike Young. Here’s an interesting bit from Kyle Beachy on self-promotion:

There’s definitely an egotism to the promotional process that has made me uncomfortable at times. I suppose it’s not really all that different from the whatever’s required to believe, hey these words I’ve written are worth your time — so sit down with my book and give me your undivided attention. But the avenues of promotion today are so wide and varied, with blogs and tweetfests and the universe of Facebook, that the task of self-promotion has achieved a new dimension, and it’s constant. I admire the way that Stephen Elliot handled his tour, and I enjoyed his reading here in Chicago, but I frankly can’t imagine the project of travelling the country and looking into all of these people’s eyes and basically asking them to buy my book. Standing in living rooms and kitchens…. My favorite Faulkner bit starts with, “Read if you like or don’t read if you like.”

The new issue of Threepenny Review is to say the least fantastic, with a new story from Sam Ruddick, Philip Gourevitch on the writing of James Salter, poetry from Henri Cole and Dean Young, and the usual bit from Javier Marias. Here’s just the beginning of editor Wendy Lesser’s review of the republished 1955 Isaac Asimov novel The End of Eternity:

The world we inhabit is one in which weekly newsmagazines, printed on paper in columns of type, are considered primitive and profoundly obsolescent; in which an entire bookshelf of bound volumes can be stored in a gadget the size of a fingertip; in which a mechanical device that is only about four inches long and a fraction of an inch thick can record whatever we like, play it back to us through a tiny earpiece, and rest comfortably in a pocket when not in use; in which space flight has been invented but is rarely used by humans, who have lost interest in it after the initial decades of excitement; in which hand-held or easily portable computers are a commonplace item; in which literature can hardly be distinguished from film in the public mind; and in which some members of society long fruitlessly for a past era when all such developments were unknown and almost inconceivable.

You also shouldn’t miss this podcast from the editors of absolutely sensational Paper Radio (really—have you seen their website? Have you listened to their first story, “The Drowning Man”?) about literary podcasts like theirs.

And I’d recommend following Bookforum‘s followings of the magazine world—such as Paper Trail, their digest of publishing news, and this recent link-filled blog post: “Magazines we never knew.”

Every Tuesday, Travis Kurowski presents Luna Digest, a selection of news from the world of literary magazines. Travis is the editor of Luna Park, a magazine founded on the idea that journals are as deserving of critical attention as other artistic works.