Why do you write flash? What makes it different for you?

I fell in love with flash twenty years ago when I read Augusto Monterroso’s “The Dinosaur” for the first time. It is a perfect diamond of a story – a single sentence long and it contains a whole world! I was so impressed by that. That’s why I write flash: I love the challenge of writing stories with traction and trouble and mystery, all in a single sentence, paragraph, or page.

What’s your writerly lifejacket: character or plot?

Character forever! But also make it setting and place. Sometimes I think of setting and place as the original characters I’m writing for/towards.

Writing style: Quick and messy or slow and precise?

Quick and messy at first and then slow and precise (and this can, no joke, take years).

What element or part of your “real life” do you think most influences your writing?

I love to travel and read and watch movies and go to museums – the world is incredible, and I’m consistently amazed and inspired by all of the things that I learn moving through it. Little tidbits and factoids I come across find their way into my stories all the time – for example, I visited Donner Memorial State Park (located in the California Sierra Nevada and named after the doomed Donner Party) and in the visitor center learned that one of the Donner women, upon her rescue by men who had climbed through the snow pack from the Sierra foothills to get them out of their camp, in a delirium asked: “Are you men from California or angels sent from Heaven?” I was so enchanted by this question that an abbreviated version of it found its way into my story “In Dead Waters” a couple of years later.

If you could recommend a few flash stories or writers, who/what would it be?

This is an impossible question, so I’m not going to over-think it. Very quickly: Barbara McVeigh’s story “Giants” takes my breath away. All of her work is so smart and clever, but this one’s my absolute favorite. Kate Finegan, my beloved Longleaf Review editrix-in-chief, writes lush and beautiful flash and one of my favorites of her historical pieces is “Botanical Nomenclature.” I read Ottessa Moshfegh’s novella-in-flash McGlue all in one sitting about a year ago and I just thought “damn!” I have deep respect for that book. I recently finished Megan Martin’s Nevers and loved it, it’s so razor sharp. “And What Is Wrong with Spells?” really captured my imagination – also, how great are her story titles?

What story of yours do you wish got more recognition?

One of the very first stories I published was a tiny weird thing I titled “Sojourner, along the outer orbits of empire” that made me laugh and was rejected by literary journals many times, sometimes with unhelpful reading notes like: “This is not a story.” I love that story very much. A big thank you to Sheldon Lee Compton for giving it a perfect home in The Airgonaut!

BIO: Residing in the Santa Cruz Mountains of Northern California with her dog Roscoe and person Richard, Sarah Arantza Amador writes about longing, ghost-making, and the endearment of monsters. Her work is featured in Best Microfiction 2019 and has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize. She tweets @ArantzaSarah and sometimes blogs from www.saraharantzaamador.com.