“Writing the Complexity of Happiness: An Interview with Sherrie Flick”

Below is a brief excerpt from Michelle Ross’s interview with AHP author Sherrie Flick! To read the full piece, check out the Fiction Writers Review site here. 

If you had to choose a favorite story in this collection, which one would you choose and why?

Interesting. People don’t usually ask me to pick favorites! I think I’m most proud of the story “Dance” because it shows my most complex POV writing and is just newer than some other stories in the collection and I love the weirdness and tenderness of the characters. I’m kind of in love with “Monkeyhead” because it went through a giant “a-ha!” revision after publication and now I feel like I finally found the heart of that story, so it’s dear to me right now. “How I Left Ned” has been a pet story of mine for a very long time. I first wrote it in grad school and it was one of those stories that came out in one big sit-down whoosh of explosive, completely coherent writing. It’s great to read aloud and was and still is a favorite of many people in my University of Nebraska creative writing cohort. It was rejected over 50 times. It was rejected so many times I was running out of places to send it, but I still believed in the story and didn’t want to do any kind of radical revision on it (which isn’t the norm for me) so when Robert Shapard asked me for a story to consider for New Sudden Fiction many years later (I did not know Robbie at this time. I was recommended to him by a mutual friend John McNally, so I was submitting to him cold.) I thought, why not give it one more try? And they published it. Ha. The little mafia corn farmer story that could. So its first publication was in a Norton anthology, which when all was said and done, was the best place for it. So, I guess it’s my favorite story in the collection. I’m really proud that it made it all this way.