Lovely Marie Gethins interviewed me about all things flash and my recent co-authored flash collection with Robert Vaughan, RIFT, for The Short Story. Marie asked great questions!
I have a couple of new stories published in stellar places! First, “Imagine Your Daughter Is a Cherry Red Convertible,” a micro under 100 words, at New World Writing. Many thanks to editors Kim Chinquee and Frederick…
Submissions are now open for Indiana Review‘s 2015 1/2 K Prize, judged by Kim Chinquee. Work from any genre will be considered–just as long as it’s under 500 words. Entrants may send up to three pieces of up to 500 words per submission. All entries are considered anonymously. Multiple entries are OK, but the entry fee is non-refundable if the submitted work is accepted elsewhere.
As a reader, I expect to be moved, surprised, realize something in a new way, whether that be with image, language, tone, character, rhythm, etc.; I hope to do the same as a writer.
Kim Chinquee, "Hot Flashes: An Interview with Kim Chinquee" (by Len Kuntz)
Kim Chinquee is an inimitable voice in the writing world, one that makes us rethink both the way we read, as well as how we tell stories. Her truncated works are blisters of the human soul, sticks of lit dynamite ready to explode. In some pieces, Chinquee creates a shattered world in as few as one hundred words. Indeed, she was well entrenched in the field of flash fiction writing long before most had ever heard of the form. Her two collections, Oh Baby and Pretty, are masterworks to be studied by any aspiring writer.
Chinquee’s work has been likened to Giacometti’s sculptures and Raymond Carver at his apex. At once both complex and brilliantly spare, Chinquee is able to twist seemingly mundane moments into harsh reflections on the human condition. Her characters suffer and struggle, discover and discard, while the sting of their aftermath singes the reader’s consciousness.
Recently I was fortunate to get some insight into Chinquee’s methodology and philosophy. As I’d suspected, she was refreshingly open and ever humble.
You were one of the earliest practitioners of flash fiction, writing extremely short works before anyone had even heard of the form. The piece, “Oh Baby,” which is also the title of your first collection, is in fact only a paragraph long, yet it is replete with brooding, symbolism and underlying angst. What do you expect from flash fiction as a reader, and what do you hope to achieve with the form as a writer?
I think flash fiction has been around a long time! I'm not sure I'm its earliest practitioner—thought it's quite an honor to be considered! Thank you. And thanks for the words about "Oh Baby."
How often do you write? Do you have a routine? And what gets you started on a new piece?
I try to write every day, or I plan to. I don't have much of a writing routine, though I tend to write at night. I tend to go in spurts. I use prompt words almost every day, or some days I use other prompts. I host an online writing group called Hot Pants, and the prompt words there usually get me going.
It seems like you love to mire your characters in tense situations. There’s always some conflict at work, yet you don’t always resolve it in the usual blunt way, instead often leaving it up to the reader to draw his/her own conclusions. Is that how you see it, or is the outcome clear to you?
Early on one of my teachers, Frederick Bartheleme, said to always start the story in the center of conflict. I try to remember that. I think in life, there's never really a solid conclusion, or resolution. I hope to give the reader credibility, to be at the heart of the conflict, and I think sometimes just the realization of conflict, and the smallest step towards resolution is resolution in itself.
In many ways, your writing echoes that of Raymond Carver. Was he an influence? Who else shaped you stylistically?
Wow, that's a very nice compliment. Thank you. I love Carver's work. My first creative writing teacher, Tom Williams, assigned Carver and also Gardner, so I had these influences in my early days of writing fiction. In graduate school I studied at the University of Southern Mississippi's Center for Writers with Frederick Barthelme and Steve Barthelme and Mary Robison—I wrote my first flash in Robison's class.
Then I attended the University of Illinois, where I studied under the direction of Jean Thompson, Richard Powers and Philip Graham. I also read a lot of Lydia Davis and Diane Williams—Diane Williams has also been a great teacher to me, working with me on several stories that I've sent to NOON over the years.
Who are some of your current favorite flash writers and why?
Oh, all of the above I just mentioned! I admire so many. I love Davis' quirkiness and insight, and how Williams' work always surprises me. I admire every issue of NOON and its writers. So many others, and especially the writers in my writing group.
What words of advice would you give to the novice writer, and also to the established writer who may sometimes wonder, “Why does what I’m doing matter?”
That's a good question. I struggle with that, and especially lately, but then I have to remind myself that I started writing because I love to write—I did not write with intentions to publish. This may sound silly, or cliché, but writing matters to me because writing makes me feel good, it keeps me thinking, it makes me real, it makes me feel alive! Even though it's tough sometimes, writing makes me happy! That may not be the case for everyone, of course, but I think that question can apply to anything. Why does anything matter to anything? That's getting a little crazy, but that's what I do when I start thinking about it too much. If it doesn't matter, then don't do it, and don't stress out about it and do something else.
Can you tell us what are you working on now, and what you may have on the horizon?
I currently have a short story collection and a novel circulating with publishers. This summer Ravenna Press is publishing my collection, Pistol in a Book with two other authors, as part of their Triple Series. I've just compiled two additional flash collections, and I'm working on a new novel unlike anything I've ever written! I hope to have that finished very soon.
Len Kuntz is a writer from Washington State whose work appears widely online and in print. Additionally, Len is an editor at the online literary magazine Metazen. Len’s story collection from Aqueous Books debuts in 2014. You can find him at lenkuntz.blogspot.com.
Kim Chinquee is the author of the collections Oh Baby, Pretty, and Pistol. Her work has appeared in several journals and anthologies including The Nation, The Huffington Post, NOON, Conjunctions, Denver Quarterly, Fiction, The Mississippi Review, The Notre Dame Review, The South Carolina Review, New York Tyrant, Best of the Web 2010, The Pushcart Prize XXXI: Best of the Small Presses 2007, and many others. She is an associate professor of English at Buffalo State College.
Today's Stor(ies) of the Day come from Kim Chinquee, a ridiculously talented writer whose work I have only recently discovered but am now devouring with purpose. Dubbed a "queen of flash fiction," Chinquee's collections, Oh Baby and Pretty, are worth some summer.
From "It Was Hard to Get Off":
"She put her wardrobe into boxes, and found a hooded sweatshirt from a track coach. Old and too big for her, and the last she heard her coach was Mafia. The shirt said Go, and she remembered him pushing her, saying she could do it. She found a shirt from an ex. She put it on. It was brown and cotton and from Mexico and she’d washed it too many times and it was too small and pinched her arms like the boyfriend."
