Tag: Robert Vaughan

Interviews

Nicholas Cook on Flash Fiction, Writing Retreats, & Creative Inspiration

Kathy Fish

Nancy and I are absolutely thrilled  that Nicholas Cook will be joining us in the French countryside for our French Connection Retreat in June. Nicholas took a few moments to chat with me about writing and writers, creativity, and flash fiction.

Hi Nicholas! Have you ever done a writing retreat before? And what are you most looking forward to in France?

I did a workshop in Taos, NM last year with Robert Vaughan and Meg Tuite. It was a blast, and I made some good friends and even managed to get a story from the workshop published. As for France, I’ve never been before so I’m looking forward to all of it, but mostly the chance to work with Kathy and Nancy, especially as I am interested in flash novel(la)s.

What inspires you creatively?

I find reading other peoples works inspires me the most. Otherwise, music, walking the dog, traveling, re-reading books.

Aw, I love this photo of you and your dog. I get the same creative boost when I’m out with my dog as well. Can you share a piece of writing of your own that you especially love and/or feel most proud of (and talk a bit about why?)

“The Eclipse” which was published in Lost Balloon in 2017. This story was a finalist for the 2018 Best Small Fictions and a Glimmer Train Very Short Fiction contest honorable mention. This is still one of my favorite stories of mine and one of the few I can go back and read and not cringe over. The story came together easily and was inspired heavily by the story Pool Night by Amy Hempel, who I was re-reading for the hundredth time. I like it because the voice and character are very different than what I usually write.

I love this story, Nicholas. I remember reading it when it came out. It does remind me of Amy Hempel’s work, quiet but powerful. No wonder it was recognized. What books or short stories have you read many times, and what draws you back to these works?

I will re-read every piece of flash written by Claudia Smith until the day I die. She was one of the first flash authors I really “got” over a decade ago, and her work still resonates with me (the voice, simplicity and economy of words, and emotion). Other flash authors I love are Cathy Ulrich, Kathy Fish, Kim Chinquee, Meg Pokrass, Tiff Holland, Casey Hannan, Robert Scotellaro, and so many more. As for novels, “Why Did I Ever” and “One D.O.A…” by Mary Robison are essential reads and I re-read them in some form once a year. Mary Robison has one of the most distinct and captivating voices and is a huge inspiration to me. I find I think like a lot of her characters (although maybe not so exaggerated, I hope).

Thank you for the mention! I feel the same way about Claudia Smith Chen’s, work and Mary Robison is an all-time favorite writer of mine, too.

Forgive me, but I always ask this question: Is there something funny / interesting / weird / wonderful about you that you’d like to share? 

I’ll have been traveling around Europe prior to and after the workshop as I’ll be on a twelve week sabbatical from my job. I’m excited to see what inspiration that brings! Maybe I will stop writing about the southwest and deserts.

Nicholas Cook’s fiction has appeared in Lost Balloon, Jellyfish Review, Unbroken Journal, Bath Flash Fiction Award, and elsewhere. He was a finalist for Best Small Fictions 2018. He lives in Texas.

Note: Our French Connection Retreat sold out very quickly (you may get on the wait list for it though!) Check out our other upcoming retreats in Costa Rica (there’s a VERY special limited time discount you might want to jump on) and Grand Lake, Colorado. 

Interviews

“Writing has been my window.” A conversation with April Bradley

Kathy Fish

Nancy and I are so excited that the wonderful April Bradley will be joining us for Rendezvous in the Rockies this August in Breckenridge, Colorado! Here, April chats with me about her writing life and her story, “Little Wake,” which is my personal favorite.

You’re coming to Breckenridge in the summer for our retreat. What has been your writing workshop/retreat experience in the past? How do you find ways to honor your writing in your day to day life?

Along with several workshops with Kathy Fish and thematic ones on the craft of flash and revision offered by Nancy Stohlman, I’ve taken two hybrid writing workshops, one each with Robert Vaughan over at Word Tango and Jonathan Cardew with Bending Genres. I took a workshop on Surreal Flash from Meg Pokrass as well.

I met Kathy while taking Hannah Tinti’s fantastic workshop over at One Story. Last summer I began my MFA program and had my first academic fiction workshop at the Sewanee School of Letters with Jamie Quatro.

I read like a lunatic regardless if I am actively writing. I love the idea of honoring one’s writing. That’s so much better than feeling guilty about not writing.

Respond to this quote by Dani Shapiro:

“Writing saved my life. Writing has been my window — flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence — my way of interpreting everything within my grasp. Writing has extended that grasp by pushing me beyond comfort, beyond safety, past my self-perceived limits. It has softened my heart and hardened my intellect. It has been a privilege. It has whipped my ass. It has burned into me a valuable clarity. It has made me think about suffering, randomness, good will, luck, memory responsibility, and kindness, on a daily basis — whether I feel like it or not. It has insisted that I grow up. That I evolve. It has pushed me to get better, to be better. It is my disease and my cure. It has allowed me not only to withstand the losses in my life but to alter those losses — to chip away at my own bewilderment until I find the pattern in it.”

This is such a wonderful expression of what writing can do for the life and mind of writer, and some of it articulates my own experience. I did not start writing fiction until I was in my 40s and found different ways of attaining and experiencing what she describes, mostly through my own graduate work in philosophy and theology and though my experiences in motherhood. Creative writing, however, pushed me in ways I’ve never imagined. I’ve cried, walked away from a story, swearing I was done with it, only to sit down and work with it more. Writing has been that only thing as Shapiro writes, “…has allowed me not only to withstand the losses in my life but to alter those losses…” Writing has revealed things to me about human nature I didn’t expect. It has revealed things about my own life and past I did not recall. Writing is closely related to reading and to other writers. Writing and reading opens up new worlds for me, allows me to me to express more fully the different aspects of myself but when it reaches others, and when readers tell me something I’ve written takes on meaning for them, there is the gift.

What is your favorite story that you yourself have written (“favorite” doesn’t have to mean “best” or more successful or whatever). And why is it your favorite?

My favorite is “Little Wake.” CHEAP POP published it last year, and I was thrilled. I managed to convey a moment in time and expand it to something so much more and capture the emotion I felt in that moment, that sense of magic, bittersweet loss, love, even a childhood fascination and an adult crush. I can still hear the frogs croaking along to Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da when I think about that story. Got lucky on that one.

Tell us something we don’t know about you that you are happy to share. : )

I meet people I know in unexpected, surprising places like in Venice or New York, in airports, concerts, interviews, courtrooms, emergency rooms. Neat things like that happen to me, and I love it.

Love that! And thanks so much, April. See you in Breckenridge in August!

April Bradley is from Tennessee and lives with her family outside New Haven, Connecticut. Her short fiction has been recently nominated for The Pushcart Prize as well as The Best of Small Fictions. Her writing has appeared in CHEAP POP, Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Narratively, NANO Fiction, and Smokelong Quarterly’s “Why Flash Fiction” Series, among others. She has a Master’s in Ethics from Yale Divinity School and is an MFA candidate at the Sewanee School of Letters.