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Congratulations to Anna Venishnick Shomsky for being a runner-up in the Winter 2012 Flash Fiction contest for her winning story, :The Seminar." If you haven't had a chance to read it yet, go here.

Anna is a freelance writer currently living in Seattle, Washington. She holds an MATESOL (Master of Arts in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and has taught ESL in China, Germany, Boston, and Pittsburgh. While living in Pittsburgh, Anna wrote informational and promotional materials for a local art institution called Pittsburgh Filmmakers, as well as articles about art for the children’s section of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. She is currently staying at home with her infant daughter.

WOW: Congratulations, Anna, on being a runner up! What gave you the idea for "The Seminar"?

Anna: The story is compiled from events that happened while I was working at a public school. During my new teacher training, I was forced to sit through a seminar in which the rhyming method of behavior management was touted. I knew that it was inappropriate for me because I have a downbeat personality. It would also be inappropriate for the students I would be teaching, who were older than ten, jaded, and exposed to far better metered verse on the radio. Not long after the training, I had a small group of students who did what the students in the story do: flailed and yelled to get attention, flirted sadly, and worked with a minimum of effort. It was amusing to me that the advice I was given for how to deal with challenging students was so removed from the reality I inhabited.

WOW: Do you write a lot of flash fiction? Why or why not?


Anna: I don't write much flash fiction because I am too wordy.

WOW: What do you find challenging about writing flash fiction?

Anna: I find telling a story in under a thousand words to be challenging. I am accustomed to rambling on, adding clarifying information that is not entirely necessary, using descriptive sentences that contain an abundance of adjective clauses, and generally using too many words to state an idea that could be said well with fewer.

WOW: You are currently staying home with your daughter. How do you balance your writing time with being a mommy?

Anna: I take time to write while my daughter is napping. I try to write for half an hour three times a week.

WOW: Do your ESL teaching experiences often make it into your writing? Why or why not?

Anna: The teaching experiences that make it into my writing are usually the conflict between administration and teachers, the disparity between expectations and reality, and the residual emotional negativity from my time teaching middle school. I don't write much about my experiences with students, mainly because those have become mundane to me, and I have learned how to deal with the majority of classroom situations I find myself in. I write about things that are emotionally salient and ideas that nag at me. After a day of teaching, the actual time spent in the classroom and the interactions with stud

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Amy Lewis is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of political science at Colorado State University. By day she speaks in questions, scholarly provocations based in fact and spun with data. By night she dares to speak in answers camouflaged in stories. She has written numerous short stories over the years and is only in recent months beginning to share them. Her story, “What Unicorns Think” was short-listed in the Multi-Story short fiction contest. She is also the author of a quartet of young adult novels, reimaging Greek mythology in which princesses are the heroes, not the objects, of their own stories. These novels tarry with all the other tidbits of information on her hard-drive, awaiting a good going-over after she dispatches with the task of her dissertation.

interview by Marcia Peterson

WOW: Congratulations on placing in the top ten in our Winter 2012 Flash Fiction competition! What inspired you to enter the contest?

Amy: I’m not sure it was an inspiration. More of an impulse, a mad fleeting compulsion to have some fun, share some stories, belong to a community of similarly-interested people.

WOW: Can you tell us what encouraged the idea behind your story, Crate Training for Kids? It seems like your political science studies could have provided some inspiration.

Amy: I wish I could say it was my political studies, and I’m sure that somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking about the relationship between freedom, rebellion, and socialization (somewhere in the back of my mind I am always thinking about these things). In fact, I adhere to the notion that civics isn’t just a class, it’s a hands-on experience. The best way to teach young people about the importance of political participation is to encourage them to engage with the world around them, even if they don’t always do so in an adult fashion or through political topics. There is a growing cynicism in this country that problems are too big and institutions are too inept and/or large to respond to public demands. Although I share in these same frustrations, I also know that this feeling weakens democracy and inhibits improvement. Institutions may be big and intractable, but how much larger and recalcitrant are they when entire populations within the public remain silent? In my opinion, teaching children to be seen but not heard only lays the foundation for feelings of impotence later in life. So, I suppose the story is rooted in that. Nevertheless, the immediate inspiration was my Old English Sheepdog puppy. I’m almost ashamed to admit it, but I’ve crate-trained him. When I wrote this story, I was working through feelings of guilt.

WOW: What do you enjoy about flash fiction writing versus the other kinds of writing that you do?

Amy: Flash fiction has the pit-a-pat frenzy of a summer romance. It’s short, sweet, and relatively uncomplicated. I don’t mean to suggest that flash fiction is somehow less meaningful than a more long-term, stable commitment – you know, like a book. But I think it offers things books can’t; especially in that it reminds us how fun and exciting writing fiction can be. Fleeting literary crushes invigorates writer and reader alike. And

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I don't care for the feel of sand against my feet. Or anywhere else for that matter. When I read the title of Lori Parker's story, Sand, I felt the grit against my toes, felt it cling to my body, like it does when you emerge from a lake or the ocean. Then I read her powerful words, and I realized, I have nothing to complain about.

You will find Lori's story here. You'll want to read it, dust the imaginary layer of sand from your keyboard, and return to join us for a discussion about writing, reading, and inspiration.

Lori Parker lives in Chicago with her beloved husband and his extensive music collection. She wrote her first poem at age eight, her first play at age 15 and finished her first novel last year. So far, these works have not been published, but Lori is an optimistic existentialist, which explains her work on a second novel, plays, poems, and short stories. Beyond publication, Lori's goal is to author a book worthy of Shared Inquiry discussion at the Great Books Foundation.

WOW: Welcome, Lori! And, congratulations on earning 3rd place honors with your story. I like to think that there's a story behind every story, and I'm wondering, what inspired this piece?

Lori: I listen to National Public Radio a lot and last November it seemed the airwaves were saturated with stories about Iraq and Afghanistan and the work our people are doing over there as well as stories about returning vets and the many challenges they face here. Then I heard a debate about the President's decision to leave a certain amount of soldiers behind even after the "draw-down." That started me thinking about what it must be like to know you're going home but . . . not yet. I also drew from an account I'd heard a couple of years ago, also on NPR, about what one soldier found particularly difficult to deal with: "Sand. All that sand. And it gets in everything, your clothes and even your mouth when you sleep." That started me on the path to the story.

WOW:  That's a great behind-the-words glimpse at story development! Thank you for sharing. As soon as I finished reading your piece (and brushed away the imaginary sand), I realized what an important role imagery plays in the story. The image of sand, the drabness of it all, provides an interesting contrast to the matter at hand. How did you develop the imagery and carry it through the piece?

Lori: I started with that image of getting sand in my mouth. I grind my teeth in my sleep, especially during times of severe stress or anxiety. Imagine what that must be like for a soldier. From there I explored the ways sand can annoy a person, can wear one down with its constant presence; in clothes, food, the cracks and crevices of the human body. The image continued to develop as I followed my train of thought from sand to flood which rhymes with blood which brought me back to the human body - a bag of mostly water, to bags of sand, to sandbags against a flood of blood, and so on. Blood, sand and a soldier who wants to go home - for me it was just a matter of following that train of thought.

WOW: Word association can conjure so many mental images. The thought process is a never-ending cycle. In your author's bio, you mention that you showed an interest in writing at a young age. How has that interest changed through the years and how do you nurture your inner writer? 

Lori: It has changed in the sense that I have chang

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