Looking and Smelling Just like a Present Participle:
An Interview With Kim Chinquee
by Doug Martin
The following is an interview conducted by Doug Martin, an editor at Snowvigate. Kim Chinquee's work has appeared in Conjunctions, Noon, Denver Quarterly, elimae, Quick Fiction, Mississippi Review, Fiction International, and in several other journals. She has just been awarded a Pushcart Prize. She teaches creative writing at Central Michigan University.
Doug Martin: Can you smell words?
Kim Chinquee: Hopefully, yes. A good work provokes the senses, and a really good work makes one feel and experience those senses, whether it be sound, smell, taste, etc. An excellent piece has its own flavor, one greater than the words on the page.
Doug Martin: Often it seems that writers look like their writing, literally walk like their sentences, or facial-gesture at the end of a brief exchange of words in a type of epiphany one finds in "flash" fiction. Can you comment on this?
Kim Chinquee: I think a writer can resemble the essence of his/her writing. Or rather the writing can be the essence of its author. Kind of like two people who spend enough time together begin to mimic one another in their expressions and gestures. Maybe one's flash can be like the way he/she smiles at someone or scowls, or waves, winks, etc. We're not always making the same gestures and not always writing in the same fashion, yet the essence is there, and I believe it evolves with us as we grow.
Doug Martin: Is the current trend of "flash" just a trend as it was for a while when James Thomas first did his "Sudden Fiction" anthology, or is it something that now is permanent in a society methed out on ADD?
Kim Chinquee: I'm pretty sure it's permanent. I'm pretty sure it's always been permanent. Yet I see it gaining popularity with the internet. It's easier on my eyes to read a flash on the screen than a twenty-page story. And many lit mags are publishing on the internet either exclusively or as a supplement to their print issues. And more people are online, of course, than ten years ago, thus the popularity of flash fiction. I'm not sure about ADD. I read more than I used to and I really like reading longer work, but I have to be able to hold it and turn the pages and I can't do that with my computer screen. Yet I do spend a lot of time at my computer.
Doug Martin: What is the difference between a prose poem and a "flash" piece?
Kim Chinquee: I have no problem with the two being alike. I'm more likely to publish something as flash only because I classify myself as a fiction writer. I'd love to be called a poet; it feels sexier to me. Maybe a prose poem is richer in language? Maybe a flash piece might have one small element that makes it more story-like? But there's such a fine line. I think the two are pretty much the same. Yet I think flashes are granted permission to be longer, and the longer they are, the further they are from being prose poems.
Doug Martin: To be a "flasher" is like skinny-dipping. So is it a young person's game? Do older writers still "flash?"
Kim Chinquee: I hope not! I mean, I hope it isn't a young person's game. I hope everyone keeps flashing.