“That Long Body of Hers” by Julie Esther Fisher appeared in Issue 46 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about this story.
Free writing is the only way I’ve ever been able to outrun the inner critic. Free writing with 104 fever is that process on steroids. At twenty years old, freshly home from the ten-day retreat for my low residency bachelor’s degree program, I crawled out of bed to fulfill the first in a daunting array of writing tasks set by my mentor. I’d hoped that a fever might earn me the right to stay in bed and postpone my workload, but my tough, and ultimately wise mentor required me to get on with the job. I’m forever grateful to her. That Long Body of Hers was to become my first published story, accepted by Alaska Quarterly Review, thrilling an idealistic young artist who didn’t quite realize what she was getting herself into.
My fascination with, and urge to tell stories, manifests in this fever piece in which not even the protagonist can suppress this most ancient of human arts, gathering around the campfire to spin a good yarn.
There was not much to do when my mentor returned the story to me with her feedback. She wanted one succinct paragraph answering the question: how long have these two women been taking baths together?
Recommend a book for us.
These same campfire instincts are exquisitely fulfilled by “Revenge,” Yoko Ogawa’s dark and twisty collection of linked stories. In sometimes skeletal, sometimes poetic prose, the author penetrates the ravages of loss and grief with an almost gothic sensibility. Each story is a piece of blade-like precision. Together, they cut the reader apart. By the end of the collection, the reader becomes just another member of the slowly exsanguinating, for whom there are no saving stitches.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be?
I’d love to sit down with Yoko Ogawa, but I would be scared! To plumb the consciousness of an author who takes me to places of trauma with such unsettling ease makes me wonder what everyday life is like for her. Her horror is often conveyed in just such settings, the innocuousness of the daily. I’d wonder what might happen next, and though I imagine wanting to flee before it does, I know I wouldn’t be able to tear myself away.
What are you working on now?
I have many irons in the proverbial campfire. I’m always looking to write new stories, revise old ones, or repurpose material searching for its best crucible or form. A novella is three-quarters of the way to the finish line, and my forthcoming poetry chapbook requires of me an eagle’s editorial eye. I always return to poetry, my touchstone, my north star.
Our thanks to Julie for taking the time to answer a few questions and share this story. Read “That Long Body of Hers” here.
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Julie Esther Fisher’s short stories and poetry appear or are forthcoming in Alaska Quarterly Review, Chicago Quarterly Review, Prime Number Magazine, Tahoma Literary Review, Waxwing, Radar Poetry, On the Seawall, The Citron Review, Litmosphere, Leon Literary Review, Passager’s Contest Issue, and elsewhere. Winner of several awards, including Grand Prize Recipient of the Stories That Need to be Told Anthology, and Sunspot Lit’s Rigel Award, she has been shortlisted in numerous other contests and received multiple Best of the Net and Pushcart nominations. A poetry chapbook is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press, and her collection of linked stories, Love is a Crooked Stick, is about to go out on submission. Raised in London, she holds degrees in fiction writing and counseling psychology. Today, she lives on conserved land in Massachusetts, where she designs gardens and breaks her back building stone walls. Visit her website at julieestherfisher.com