“I’m just a random white gal raised upper-middle class. But to think that I am disconnected only allows for the continuation of a system that benefits from my ignorance.”

Amy Bonnaffons:“I really liked the idea that even the people who literally carry out the business of death and of transition from this world to the next have no idea what they’re doing.”

“You almost always use more words than you need on a first pass, but I’m the type that gets obsessive over what ends up on the cutting room floor. The benefit is that anything excised can be repurposed in a different work. “

“This may be weird but I don’t feel alone when I write. Most of the time I’m writing about or influenced by other writers, so I feel like they’re right there with me. I feel alone when I am NOT writing.”

“The memory that stuck out from these time was of my father — a fervently religious immigrant — beginning every Sunday by waking me up at dawn for service in our all-white parish.”

“I like non-casual reading experiences, and I notice more writers’ and their work pushing back against the instinct to simplify their work, if it serves what they’re working on. These projects seem to experiment with language and syntax beyond concerns of what’s palatable to a casual reader, and that’s exciting to me.”

“I love reading work that surprises me and makes me think, "Oh, I didn't know I could do that!" Some examples would be the use of emoticons and text speak in poems, or new forms being invented like the pecha kucha or the duplex.”

Write your story to the end. Then go back and revise.

Pingmei Lan’s short story, “Cicadas and the Dead Chairman,” which appeared in Epiphany’s Fall/Winter 2018 issue, has been named a winner of the prestigious PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize.