Winter 2025 Author Mini-Interviews

To give authors a chance to talk more about their process and craft, or just to give us a little more insight into their piece, we provided them with a list of questions from which they could pick one to answer. We hope you enjoy this peek behind the curtain!

David Waters 

Q: How did your piece begin? What was the seed idea?

A: Last year I had a health scare, something acute and life-threatening that disappeared in two days with treatment. I was back to normal physically, and mentally too I thought. But something bobbed up from my subconsciousness, the gorgeous details of how I spent my summer between second and third years of medical school, more than five decades ago. I worked in the pathology department of a university hospital, helping out with autopsies most days of the week. I was gob smacked back then by the capriciousness of death, and thus life. I appreciated being alive in a new and profound way.

“Summer of the Dead” wrote itself. I remember the details of the autopsy cases and did not change them. Sylvia is a pleasant figment. I hope you read “Summer of the Dead” and grasp the reality that life is a precious crapshoot. 

Aidan O’Brien

Q: How did you land on this title?

A: The title of my story, “At the Gathering of the 848 Children...,” arose out of an initial frustration I encountered when beginning to write the piece. On the one hand, I wanted to simply allow the story's voice to develop without having to worry about orienting the reader in the setting and circumstances of the action. On the other hand, it was clearly very important for the reader to know exactly where we were and what was going on. After a number of failed attempts to begin the story, it finally occurred to me that I might “cheat the system.” I put the information I felt the reader needed into the title, and carried on from there.

Cortez

Q: How did this piece begin? What was its seed idea?

A: From the beginning, my concept surrounded two half sisters who are alone at their father’s house when it is stuck by lightning. I’d initially planned for the two to become convinced that the event was something their love had made, that their bond was strong enough to shake the earth. I was working in early childhood education at the time and was inspired by the bizarre and magical ways that children conceptualize the world around them. After taking some distance from that idea, I ended up fusing it with a different project I’d started surrounding a young narrator’s experience internalizing Christianity. That ended up giving me a strong character to work with, and I had a lot of fun populating her world with different family members. The Christian motif also justified the non-presence of the father, who sort of hangs  over the story like a God. 

Peter Alsante 

Q: How did this piece begin? What was its seed idea?

A: I had the opening line of the story in my head for weeks. “The blue jays are imported.” Something about it kept calling me back to it and distracting me away from whatever else I was working on. I didn’t know what it meant, or why I couldn’t stop thinking about it, but I knew it was something. So I got the line down and continued to write, in order to explore it. And in the end, I liked the line so much I made it the title as well.

Francine Witte

Q: What’s a helpful revision tip you follow?

A: One tip I follow for revision is asking myself “would I want to read this story?” Is everything clear? Would I be lost by the second sentence? Would I be bored? Are there too many characters? Do I know what the main problem is in the story, and does it follow through to a good ending? Another thing I ask myself is did I put enough writing into this piece? Is the language interesting? Is every word doing as much work as it could? Is each sentence pulling me to the next sentence. One way I approach this is to put something away for a few days after I’ve written it. I can then go back with fresh eyes and see how the story works. You must become your own best editor. You must stand back from your story and really be willing to cut things you love that don’t serve the story. I’m sorry, but you must. The truth is that if you wouldn’t want to read your story, if you wouldn’t walk away from that story and say, yes, that sings, it’s most likely not going to work for anyone else. 

Elissa Field

Q: How did this piece begin? What was its seed idea?

A: I’ve been obsessed with the images of this story since 2019. Two of my best friends had taken me hiking in the hills above L.A. and then to lunch on the deck of an iconic restaurant in Malibu between the PCH and the Pacific. Not two weeks later, those hills were on fire, and I could never shake the images of the llamas and horses that had been run down out of the hills, and tied to lifeguard stations along that same stretch of beach – the ocean, the one thing that could stop fire. The sky, rabid orange. That fire season was just one fire after another, thousands of houses lost. All the rescuers – firefighters, pilots, volunteers, neighbors – struggling to get people and animals out. And that one mare who kept going back to rescue her paddock mates. Of all the stories I’ve written in recent years, this was one obsession that nagged at me and finally came out in this flash.