We’re changing things up today, Slushies, with a selection of prose from writer Charles Grosel. Spoiler alert: we only read the first page in the podcast itself. If you want the full experience of the piece before you hear us weigh in, scroll down to time stamp 38:15 where you can listen to the story in its entirety.
We’re all over the place in categorizing this piece as flash, fiction, and creative non-fiction. We discuss what literary elements are on display and which are not. Dagne notes the piece’s economy recalls Raymond Carver’s advice ‘to get in, get out, don’t linger.’ One character’s black-and-white outlook reminds KVM of the phrase “perfect certainty” that Sam used in a recent book review. Sam weighs in on the veracity, in general, of an author’s perspective. For example, she finds the famous fairy tale author, Hans Christian Andersen, an unreliable narrator based on his autobiography. Jason has thoughts about that habit of embellishment and about the iconic nature of the American Southwest. And listen in for the only thing that qualifies as pizza for KVM’s 90 year-old dad.
Sam also shares some of what she’s teaching to her writing students this semester, including a piece published in PBQ Issue 112 by Meghan Sterling called “Self-Portrait as Lee Krasner” that sent her students to the Smithsonian to see Krasner’s paintings in person. Thanks, as always, for listening!
At the table: Eric Baker, Dagne Forrest, Karen Hildebrand, Samantha Neugebauer, Jason Schneiderman, Kathleen Volk Miller, Lisa Zerkle, and Alina H. (Sound Tech)
Author Bio: Charles Grosel grew up in Ohio and now lives in Arizona. He has published stories in Western Humanities Review, Water-Stone, and The MacGuffin as well as poems in Epiphany, The Threepenny Review, and Cream City Review, among others. He has been a long-time student of The Writers Studio in NYC and would not get any work done without their support. His chapbook is The Sound of Rain Without Water.
