As first prize winner of the short story contest, what inspired this story? Any particular images, sights, or sounds? Why?

“A Tale of First Love” is very autobiographical, the same thing actually happened to me. I just retold it.

Dad’s hand on my back while I laid on the bed is something I will never forget. I wrote this because I believe that human love should be honored at all stages of life.

Many fiction authors maintain the line between fiction and nonfiction is a permeable one. Is this true for you? How do you decide when a memory or essay has crossed the line from nonfiction to fiction?

For me, the line is ever so vague and blurry. I use a lot from my own life in my fiction, after all, no one knows me any better!

What short stories do you admire the most? Why? What have you learned from them?

I love Eve’s Diary by Mark Twain, to me he’s a brilliant writer. He goes past what we know and expect, without us even noticing.

Do you have any current projects we should know about? Explain.

I have a novel with agent Rena Rossner with the Deborah Harris Agency in Jerusalem, we just submitted it to publishers. it is about a fifteen-year-old Muslim boy in love with a Christian girl during the civil war in Syria. I want people to stop labeling each other and just love.

What Syrian writers do you admire and wish you could share or translate?

The Syrian writer I admire the most was my father, Kherridean Shamsi-Basha. he was a noted poet in Damascus. Unfortunately translating his work would not work. In Literature, you lose many language merits.

Learn more about Karim from his unique blog, Arab in Alabama, as well as his columns and photographs for various media outlets.

What inspired your prize-winning flash piece?

The Unopened Present was inspired by a lonely night during the Christmas season when I was sitting alone drinking. My only decoration was the little Christmas tree I had bought in Key West almost 25 years ago on a Christmas trip with my late wife. The trip’s primarily purpose was to try and patch up a marriage that was a very bad state of disrepair. I’m not sure where the idea for the unopened present came from, but I often think of my daughter who died some four years ago, during the holiday season. The story is very much rooted in my own life.

Did the piece start as a flash or did it morph from a short story or poetic form?

The original draft was something over 1000 words and I had written it for our writing group in Montgomery. I decided to see if I could cut it down to 500 words for the flash fiction category and it turned out, as things often do, that less is more.

What writers inspire you to write flash and how?

My primary writing interest has always been the short story and I find writing something that really affects people in a small number of words a challenge. I have always been a big fan of Ernest Hemingway’s short stories and just recently I was introduced to Sonja Livingston at a Tennessee Mountain Writer’s convention. Sonja’s presentation and her book, Ghostbread inspired me to concentrate more on writing even shorter fiction. I recommend her book to anyone who is interested in flash fiction and creative nonfiction.

When did you begin writing fiction?

I started writing fiction casually in high school and college and then took a long hiatus during my working career. After retirement I joined the Montgomery creative writers group and rekindled my writing. I write because I truly enjoy it and have little interest in commercial success; however, winning a prize in the Alabama Writers Conclave competition is a wonderful ego boost. It is great to be recognized by your peers.

What two short stories or flash pieces do you think every aspiring fiction writer should read?

I highly recommend two of Hemingway’s short stories, Hills like White Elephants and A Clean Well Lighted Place, to all aspiring writers. Not only are they wonderful examples of brevity and show, don’t tell, but there are critical discussions of both stories online just a Google away.

1. What led you to write your first place winning nonfiction piece, “The Stray Cat?”

“I think a lot about memory, not because I have a lot of memory to think about but because my memory bank is so shallow, as shallow as a pond on the pavement after a spring shower. I was trying to remember my earliest memories, and I think my earliest memories were of my age four. This story is perhaps the only memory that stood out as something more than a moment, something that might support a story. So I wrote it recently and I liked it, I liked how I could tell the story and express what I learned from the story, how I grew from what I learned, and to me that is the beauty of the memoir as a form of writing art.”

2. Are you inspired by a particular nonfiction writers or essayists?

“I love the memoirs of Patricia Hampl. She wrote at least four memoirs, each following a different arc or theme of her life. She proved to me that a non-fiction writer could have an impact in creative writing even more than a writer of fiction, and could be just as effective.”

3. How do you balance the need to protect the privacy of loved ones against the passion for telling a good story?

“In my memoir, The Newspaper Boy, I put a note or disclaimer in the front of the book indicating that I had changed some names for obvious reasons. I think that’s all you can do if you want to write about those characters.”

4. What inspired you to write your beautiful first-place-winning poem (which is also, uniquely, a prose poem)? Is poetry a new medium for you? What do you like about it? Why?

“Maybe I’ve spent too many years focused on my work and never opened up my trunk of memories until now… When I lift the lid all I find are scraps of thread scattered here and there, the fabric of the memory having long before dissolved. I have only skeletal memories and I’ve tried to write about a few of those things. Poetry is an ideal medium for skeletal memories, particularly if there is a lesson to be learned or a question to be explored.”

5. What poets have freed or inspired you to write in earnest, or, borrowing Emily Dickinson’s expression, to “tell it slant”?

“My friend Barry Marks is a fine poet and his poems come in all forms and styles and cover a broad range of topics, both mundane and philosophical. I’ve learned a lot from him and his discipline in writing about every conceivable experience. As for a historical poet, I think Emily Dickinson is most impressive. She wrote for years with no publicity and, so far as I know, no encouragement or social contact with other poets for support. Yet her poetry is fresh and original and uniquely inspiring.”

6. Why does poetry matter in our modern commercial culture?

“Poetry is the medium for expressing the truth in a few well selected words designed to please the hearer’s ear, to seize the hearer’s heart, to squeeze tears from the hearer’s eyes. The truth, the emotional truth, that is what matters, and poetry is the medium to achieve it.”

The Alabama State Poetry Society is Accepting Submissions for the Annual John and Miriam Norris Memorial Chapbook Competition. Deadline is May 31, 2017. Winner receives $100 and 25 copies of their winning chapbook. 

Poems may be previously published if poet retains all rights. Send 16-24 total pages of poetry, (poems may be longer than one page, but total page count must be 16-24, and no more than one poem per page) with two (2) title pages: one with author identification, and one with NO author identification.

Please send manuscript with a $15 reading fee payable to New Dawn Unlimited, Inc. Mail to: 
NEW DAWN UNLIMITED, INC.
ASPS 2017 Morris Memorial Chapbook Competition
1830 Marvel Road
Brierfield, AL 35035