The Predatory Animal Ball by Jennifer Fliss
Okay Donkey Press, 2021
Interviewer: Natalie Serianni
1) Your short story collection, The Predatory Animal Ball, features an array of animals—pigeons, bears, swans, etc.—as a way to often explain the unexplainable. Can you share what animals represent for you, and how they often find homes in your work?
I think we often forget that we too are animals. We are kidding ourselves if we don’t think we’ve taken the predatory/prey relationship into our humanity with us. Oh sure, our brains are bigger, and so we like to think we can add critical thinking into the mix, but at the core, we fight for food and territory in the same way as animals in the wild. By using animals in my writing, I hope I’m laying bare the reality of our human lives in a way that might be easier to see.
Animals play huge roles in storytelling the world over. Whether they are totems, guides, or represent food or protection or danger for a community. I find the myriad symbolic traits of animals rife with story potential.
2) I love how you create characters who are looking out and in, especially the idea of houses within houses, or in a terrarium, like in, “Just the Air That They Breathe.” There is a fishbowl, meta-quality to some of your pieces. How does this reflect the structure of your work, your writing process, and straddling the lines of reality and fantasy?
I love a diorama. In second grade my teacher, Ms. Woods, had us make dioramas, and it was my introduction to showing a scene in a story as a stage. That school project made a big impact on me. I love setting, both reading and writing it. I want to immerse in the world of the story, and I want to do the same for my readers. A story is the ultimate diorama, it’s just not tangible. What is the shoebox, and what are the little dollhouse like parts? Have you cut away at the top of the box and placed some saran wrap so the readers can peak into the story in another way? Is it only meant to be looked at straight on? Or maybe also from the back of the box? Is the diorama scene in media res or before the big climax or after? With flash, I feel like this way of looking at scenes and story particularly relevant.
3) “The Child Executioner” is a chilling story: the anaphylactic child while the father slurps soup, the woman and her green fingernails clutching the child. There’s a role reversal and a sense that the people in charge are not responsible; that the world is unsafe. That we need to pay attention. How does this thread weave its way into your stories?
I grew up in an unsafe home. There’s no way I could have kept that from encroaching on my storytelling. It formed who I was. In fact, I began writing as a way of processing the trauma, and I find writing and sharing stories about that cathartic. While I did not intentionally set about writing my fiction about situations that lack safety, I quickly realized how often my stories return to that. That my characters are constantly having to make do in an environment not conducive to happiness. How can they turn that around? How did I? I find that fascinating, how people react to trauma and then make decisions thereafter about how to lead their own life. To learn to really think about their decisions and own them.
4) As I read these stories, I feel there’s a sense of being left behind, or cast aside; the word “debris” is used often. There are unfinished conversations, unanswered or unspoken things, things left unsaid. What is the role of silence, reconciliation, or forgiveness in your work?
This is such a good question. One I don’t have a ready response for. I tend to hold grudges. Though on the other side of the coin, I also hold on to kindnesses in the same way. I am open to forgiveness if the offending side genuinely apologizes, but that, unfortunately, doesn’t seem to happen much. But we humans do grow. We can change our minds about things. I think we should all be more open to this kind of reconciliation. In stories, I think I focus more on a comeuppance for the antagonist. I have spent so much of my life cast aside. Oh, I have heart-wrenching memories—from my father to camp bunkmates who were so cruel in their casting away of me. I think I also want those who cast to read my stories and hopefully catch a glimpse of the harm they cause.
5) In “The Mourning Light,” grief is a framework, where it’s often described in terms like “levels,” “distance,” or “time.” I found that to be so comforting, and a way of thinking of grief rather than just an experience. There is space; it is different from sitting shiva; there is no expiration date. What kind of healing has occurred by writing this, and these other pieces?
Grief is big. But the tentacles of that grief reach into the smallest of spaces. I am fascinated about what we do with our grief in the after of a trauma. Do we collect the hair on the shower walls of someone right after they die? What do we do with those pieces of that person, those tendrils of grief? If we are terminally sick, how much time do we spend in the grief of that we realize we’ve wasted time we could have spent living? For me, grief is like outer space. If you think too hard or look too closely, it’s overwhelming. So how can you address it, honor the lack, and then keep it in the periphery so you can move forward with our precious few days?
6) If I’m doing my math correctly (which is a big maybe), you wrote most of these short stories while parenting a small child. Can you talk about how parenting has contributed to the themes of your writing, and/or your overall process?
I did write most of these since my daughter was born. With her naps, I found I had more time to write. And because early parenthood and babyhood is so chopped up, flash was the perfect avenue for me. I had a lot of feelings, as many new parents do. I had to do something with that. I had to find a vessel to pour it in. That vessel became my writing—both essays and fiction. I never had anxiety before becoming a parent. Now that there’s this new part of myself that’s so out of my control, it’s a little terrifying! That provokes so many confusing feelings and, therefore, my writing is often filled with manifestations of my anxiety.
7) In this collection, themes of oppression—predators, prey, the patriarchy, misogyny—combine with hope throughout your stories. How do daily experiences, as a woman, as a mother, make their way into your work? Do you have more or less hope from when you first wrote these stories?
Hope is critical. Everything has the potential to get better. We can glean goodness out of trauma. But it’s not easy. If you don’t have hope, why keep reading? Why keep living? It’s because we hope for things to improve. In some ways, we are in a far better place than we have been in history. In others, we realize we have a very long way to go. I really just want everyone to be happy. On a macro-level, upending racism, misogyny, and all forms of prejudice are critical. But it’s a big job, so we all have to do what we can do achieve that on whatever level we are working at. For me, it’s in writing and raising my daughter. For the person next to me, it may be in hiring for a corporation or in choosing where to live. Hope that your choices can make a difference and then work to make it so.
8) When we finish these stories, what do you want the reader to be left with? What does this collection signify for you, and how you do see it in conversation with some of your favorite writers who have just published books and collections this past fall?
I really want my writing to be accessible. In addition to other writers, I want non-writers to read it and get something from it: enjoyment on one level and hope on a broader level. I don’t want to write in a round-about way that requires a ton of brainwork. What I love about flash and my writing is that there really is a lot going on underneath. If you dig and dissect, you might be able to see why I make certain decisions in my writing. But if you want to read it more on the surface, there’s something there for you too.
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Jennifer Fliss (she/her) is a Seattle-based writer whose writing has appeared in F(r)iction, The Rumpus, No Tokens, and elsewhere. She is the author of the collection The Predatory Animal Ball, and her collection As If You Had a Say will be published in 2023 by Curbstone Books/Northwestern University Press. She can be found on Twitter @writesforlife.
Natalie Serianni is a Seattle-based writer and professor, with work at Motherwell, the Manifest-Station, Ruminate Magazine, ParentMap, and Literary Mama. She has an essay included in the recent anthology The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: GenX Women on the Brink. Her work centers on grief and motherless motherhood. Connect with her on IG and Twitter @natserianni.