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Category: Interview Series

Published on Leave a comment on Write, rewrite and rewrite some more, making sure the title works hard: An Interview with Sherry Morris

Welcome to the fourth of our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2025.

This week, NFFD's Diane Simmons chats with Sherry Morris, one of this year's NFFD Microfiction Competition Judges, about her inspirations and influences as well as her spoken-word audio programme and her top tips for approaching 100-word stories....

Photo of Sherry MorrisDS: In 2022 you won third prize in our Micro Fiction competition and this year you were Highly Commended. Do you have any tips for writing a story of just 100 words?

SM: It’s always a thrill to have a micro place for NFFD! Writing a good 100-words story is tough so here’s what I try to do…know the exact moment I want to capture and the feeling I want to convey. Then I write, rewrite and rewrite some more, making sure the title works hard. Then I send it to a trusted writing buddy to see how I did—and edit some more…

DS: I understand that you present a spoken-word radio show on Inverness Hospital Radio. Can you tell us a little about the show and how it came about?

SM: Thanks for asking—I’d love to! I’ve recently started presenting a monthly spoken-word show featuring short stories and flash fiction through Raigmore Hospital in Inverness called ‘Sherry’s Shorts’. I was involved in a one-off programme the station aired of Christmas stories they were looking for someone to run a regular spoken-word show. I had no experience but volunteered. The show focuses on stories with a Scottish Highland setting or stories by writers with a connection to the Highlands—though sometimes I include stories I’ve fallen in love with and want to share. The hour includes music and chat and the plan is to also have interviews with local writers. The programme airs on Fridays at noon UK time and as the station is internet based, listeners don’t have to be in hospital to listen. 😊 There is also a Listen Again feature so the show is available anytime on MixCloud. Check out https://www.hhr.scot/ and subscribe to Sherry Shorts.

DS: Can you remember the first time you encountered flash fiction or the first flash fiction authors that you read?

SM: I don’t remember how I found flash fiction but I remember reading Ingrid Jendrzejewski’s ‘Roll and Curl’ (Bath Flash Fiction February 2016 First Prize winner) and it’s still one of my favourite flash fiction pieces. I’d been submitting my writing by then and when I saw Ingrid was a judge in the 2017 NFFD micro fiction competition, I decided to submit something. I came third in the competition with my micro and that early success has kept me submitting ever since. Thanks, Ingrid! 😊

DS: Was there a particular person or persons who inspired or encouraged you to become a writer?

SM: Aw…yeah…my high school English teacher, Mr Beussink, who everyone loved and called Mr B. He taught Creative Writing and sparked something in me—he’s the reason I became a writer. He encouraged me to write and told me I was a writer. He was my touchstone and even after I moved to the UK we stayed in touch and I’d visit him and his family when I was in the States. I always shared my writing success with him and he even appears in a few of my stories. He passed recently and it’s a deep loss. I know he was proud of me and he knows that every time I write a story, it’s because he believed in me.

DS: You are an American living in Scotland. Does America feature much in your writing?

SM: I still write stories set in America even though I’ve lived in the UK for nearly 25 years now (the last 8 in the Scottish Highlands). I’ve lived in several different places and have American stories, Ukrainian stories, London stories and Scottish stories. It all depends on the character, really, who they are determines the story’s setting.

 

Originally from Missouri, Sherry Morris (@Uksherka & @uksherka.bsky.social) writes prize-winning fiction from a farm in the Scottish Highlands where she pets cows, watches clouds and dabbles in photography. She presents an online monthly spoken-word radio show featuring short stories and flash on Highland Hospital Radio, and received a 2025 Best of the Net nomination from Fictive Dream for her story ‘The Cabbage Tree’. Many of her stories stem from her Peace Corps experience in 1990s Ukraine. Read more of her work at www.uksherka.com.

Published on Leave a comment on Shear the unnecessaries until you have your gem: An Interview with Sudha Balagopal

Welcome to the third of our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2025.

This week, NFFD's Diane Simmons chats with Sudha Balagopal, one of this year's NFFD Microfiction Competition Judges, about her writing habits, novellas in flash, advice for those new to writing microfiction, and more....

 

Photo of Sudha BalagopalDS: You were runner up in this year’s Bath Novella-in-Flash Award with your novella Nose Ornaments and highly commended in their 2021 competition with your novella Things I Can’t Tell Amma. Both novellas went on to be published by Ad Hoc Fiction. Could you tell us a little about them?

SB: Nose Ornaments narrates the story of three generations of women from the same family—grandmother, mother and daughter. The tale starts in 1960s India and ends in contemporary times in the US. All three are strong women who confront and surmount the challenges in their lives. The novella explores the complexity of the women's relationships with each other and illustrates the struggles in their quest for meaning and love.

Things I Can't Tell Amma, is set in the 1980s and tells the story of Deepa, a student who travels from India to the US to pursue further studies. Everything in the US is different, the grocery stores, how students dress, how professors teach. Besides, she must also contend with loneliness, little money and a sense of displacement. Along the way, she adopts a baby quail, finds a friend, and falls in love with her neighbor.

DS: You were highly commended in the 2024 and 2023 National Flash Fiction Day Micro Competition. Do you have any advice for someone perhaps attempting a micro of 100 words for the first time?

SB: Every writer has come across this six-word story at some point: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Readers get the depth, the intensity and the the emotion from what’s left out. The iceberg theory, attributed to Hemingway, says that if a story is like an iceberg, then, only the tip is visible. A short-short format, such as the 100-word story, challenges the writer shave that tip down until the story is becomes like a word snapshot, a dense nugget that captures a small, but intense moment with layers of the unsaid. So write long first, find the emotional crux, then shear the unnecessaries until you have your gem.

DS: The first National Flash Fiction Day in the UK was in 2012. Can you remember when you first heard about NFFD? Is there a story from any of the anthologies that stays in your mind?

SB: I learned about NFFD through Twitter, which I joined in 2016. I don't believe I actually engaged with the posts until a couple of years after that. I think FlashFlood attracted me first and later the micro fiction contest. One of the NFFD stories I love is Adverb, by Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar. It is dense and emotion-packed and a worthy winner of an Honorable Mention in 2021.

DS: Do you need silence or an empty house to write or would you rather be in a crowded café or a room full of people?

SB: I spin stories in my kitchen, surrounded by food, by cooking fragrances, the rattling dishwasher. I have always written at home; the appeal of comfortable clothing and ready access to food/beverages far outweighs the lure of a crowded cafe!

DS: Do you enjoy performing your stories at writing events? Does knowing you might have to read it out loud ever affect how you write a story or do you ever alter the wording slightly before performing it?

SB: I do enjoy reading my stories at events. I've come to realize that the story's impact is vastly different when it's read aloud in the author's voice. And no, when I write I do not consider that I might, at some point, have to read it to an audience. As far as altering the wording before a reading, there are occasions when I might edit the story slightly, mostly to adhere to time/word constraints.

 

Sudha Balagopal is an Indian American writer whose fiction straddles continents and cultures, blending thoughts and ideas from the east and the west. Most recently, her novella in flash, Nose Ornaments, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction, UK. Her highly commended novella in flash, Things I Can’ t Tell Amma, was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2021. Nominated for several awards, her work has appeared in Best Microfiction, 2021, 2022 and Best Small Fictions, 2022, 2023, 2024. When she’s not writing, she teaches yoga.

Published on Leave a comment on Give yourself permission to play: an interview with Sara Hills

Welcome to the first of our series of interviews with this year's National Flash Fiction Day Anthology Editors and Microfiction Competition Judges! Submissions for the Anthology and Microfiction Competition are open until 15 February 2024 and this interview series will resume in the new year.

This week, Diane Simmons chats with Sara Hills, this year's NFFD Anthology Guest Editor, about everything from music to collections to some tips for tackling this year's anthology theme....

 

Photograph of Sara HillsDS: Firstly, thank you for agreeing to be a co-editor of this year’s National Flash Fiction Day anthology. The theme is the natural elements: air, earth, fire and water. Do you have any tips on how to interpret the theme or any advice on how to approach themes in general?

SH: I’m delighted to have been invited to co-edit the NFFD anthology, and I love this year’s theme as the natural world is so rich with possibility and conflict. What happens when there is an absence or excess of one element? How do these elements sustain or destroy life? What sensory descriptions or experiences do they inspire?

I’m a firm believer in free-writing and brainstorming so I usually tackle a themed prompt by first making lists. For example, take five minutes and list everything you can think of to do with one of the natural elements. Write without stopping—just whatever crazy thing pops into your head. If you’re anything like me, you’ll hit upon the common ideas first. But the longer you keep pen to paper, you’ll start to find more unique ideas, ones that spark because they call up hints of character and conflict. As soon as something sparks for me, I’m off running to get the words down. You can do this for each element if you like and see how they contrast or support each other. And if you’re a more visual person, you can also try the elements as the center or main branches of a mind map and challenge yourself to use a handful of the words/ideas you brainstorm in your draft. Above all, give yourself permission to play and see where it takes you.

 

DS: I believe your first publication was for something other than fiction. Can you tell us a little about that?

SH: Good sleuthing! Since my writing often trends toward darker subjects, I suppose it might surprise people to know that my first publications were actually knitting patterns for toys in a natural crafts magazine: an apple tree and a root vegetable garden. Besides writing, making toys is probably my other happy place. When my kids were younger, I spent countless hours making myriad dolls, playscapes and machines… whatever might delight them. Now that my kids are grown I try to filter that playfulness into my writing.

 

DS: You were born and grew up in America and now live in the U.K. How much does America influence what and how you write?

SH: This is such an interesting question. I wish I could say that after living in Europe and the UK for fifteen years that my stories are infused with medieval architecture or the charm of pub quizzes or queues for the sake of queueing. But so much of my writing is still very much rooted in the physical and economic landscape of the US. It’s the smells, sounds and mindsets of home that my writing brain churns over. I don’t know if that’s because the formative years never truly leave us or if that’s just what feels most honest to me.

What has begun to infiltrate my writing more is the lingo of Britain, and oftentimes I don’t notice it. I’m lucky to have a critique group that points it out to me, and then I have to decide if these Britishisms belong in the story. The same is true with sensory details. After discussing one of my stories, a group of astute high school students in Montana reminded me that ambulance lights in the US are predominantly red. Whereas after living in Europe for so long, I can’t imagine them as anything but blue now.

 

DS: Your flash collection The Evolution of Birds was published by Ad Hoc Fiction in 2021. Can you tell us a little about how you went about putting the collection together?

SH: I followed all the advice to start with, such as put your best stories first but save a few good ones for last. But then I decided that the stories felt like they wanted to be in conversation with each other. I like to think of my characters as people who might live in the same neighborhood or trailer park, experiencing similar familial situations or challenges. So I grouped many of them by age and theme to try and create a sense of cohesion, and it seemed to evolve from there. I also checked endings and openings for flow and made sure to scatter the stories with bird-related images throughout, playing on the overarching theme. There was a lot of second-guessing, but I’m so grateful for how well it was received in the end.

 

DS: Do you ever listen to music when you write?

SH: I find music incredibly inspiring, especially if there’s a particular mood I’m trying to capture. I often listen to a certain song or playlist on repeat in my non-writing hours while I think about a story. For example, with my story ‘Lil Fucker’ which was recently published at Fractured Lit, I listened to The Smith’s ‘How Soon is Now?’ thirty or forty times while I was churning it over in my head. While I only reference the band in my story, that song perfectly conjured up those gutting teenage feelings of my character, plus it has a muddy sound that reminds me of the setting—the winter sky in Utah where I lived for several years. In similarly inspired stories, I’ve often referenced albums or song titles because most lyrics are copyright restricted.

However much music affects my process, when it comes to putting words on paper I prefer silence so that I can hear my own thoughts. And if I’m in a loud environment, I’ll listen to something like a rainy cafe background with light jazz to drown out distractions. Until I get immersed in the story, I’m a ball of distraction.