Friday Five – Page 6 – Andrew Careaga

Friday Five: writer, educator, and Short Story Substack winner Kate Kinney

‘Although they are fiction, I want the stories to seem real, so I am very specific in describing actual places, and I hew closely to what I know.’

In her short story “A Fait Accompli,” which recently won the Short Story Substack award for a story about family, Kate Kinney deftly weaves a poignant and powerful tale of an elderly widow who escapes her assisted-living residence for a holiday shopping spree but cannot escape the control of her power-of-attorney-wielding son nor certain elements of her past. Written in a first-person voice and steeped in realism, “A Fait Accompli” combines detail and seemingly mundane events with a view into the main character’s interior life and memories. The result is a whimsical story that holds the reader’s attention to the very end.

Photo of writer and educator Kate Kinney, from her website, kate-kinney.com — Author and educator Kate Kinney

An educator as well as a writer, Kate chairs the Department of English at Suffolk County Community College in New York, where she also teaches writing and literature. She earned her PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center, where she is a 2025-2026 Writers Institute Fellow, and attended the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in Meat for Tea: The Valley Review, The Toronto Journal, Superpresent Magazine, The New York Times, and NomadArtX. As a literary scholar, she has studied the influence of another writer named Kate: Kate Chopin. She co-edited the book Kate Chopin in Contexts: From Theory to Practice and is the author of the articles “Kate Chopin: A Woman of and Beyond Her Time” and “Teaching Chopin Through Multimedia.”

Read on to learn how Kate Kinney gleans story magic from the everyday, how her work as a teacher influences her writing, and how binge-watching The Walking Dead informed her favorite essay.

Friday Five: lessons from a lit mag first reader

What I’ve learned from the past six months of reading submissions for a literary magazine

For the past six months or so, I have volunteered as a first reader for a literary magazine. In this role, I’ve been one of the first people to read some 150 flash and micro-fiction submissions to this magazine. They come from writers of all kinds. There are the newcomers seeking their first acceptance, the veterans with several publications and awards to their credit, the MFA graduates and PhDs, the college professors, the undergraduates, the college dropouts, the writers of science fiction, horror, humor, crime, romance, fantasy and just about every other genre, including literary, and writers from every continent except Antarctica. I’ve read pieces submitted for contests as well as regular submissions to the magazine.

The experience of reading all of these submissions has taught me a lot about writing and the submission process, and I hope these five lessons will help you, too.

Friday Five: Latiné writer Melissa Flores Anderson

‘Take chances in where you submit your writing and don’t count yourself out.’

To celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 through October 15), I’m featuring some rising writers of Hispanic heritage in these Friday Five interviews. This week’s spotlight is on Melissa Flores Anderson, a Latiné writer and native Californian whose debut full-length short story collection, All and Then None of You, came out earlier this month from Cowboy Jamboree Press. This collection of 21 stories and a novella is praised for its portrayal of the “universal yearns, hopes, and griefs of everyday working people.” I’m about two-thirds of the way through the collection, and at every turn of the page I’m encountering surprising and intriguing prose, much as one might find unexpected sights on a drive along California’s back roads. Sights that make you want to pull over and have a look around.

Melissa’s flash and long-form fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in over 50 literary magazines, anthologies, and reading series, including swamp pink, Chapter House, Roi Fainéant, and HAD. A reader and editor for Roi Fainéant Press, she also co-authored the 2025 novelette Roadkill (ELJ Editions) and the chapbook A Body in Motion (JAKE). Read on to learn more about Melissa’s new short story collection, how road trips and country music play a role in the book’s formation, her literary influences, how her Mexican American heritage informs her writing, and a fun, buggy Easter egg contained in the book.

Friday Five: Frazzled Lit short story winner Gary Finnegan

‘I am trying to get over a bad habit of submitting every piece of fiction I write.’

Gary Finnegan‘s short story “Limbo Nights,” which won first place in the Frazzled Lit 2025 short story competition, has been described as “a word-perfect gallop through the highs and lows of a post-Leaving Cert trip, and the swift transition from irresponsible child to semi-responsible adult-in-training.” The story is also praised for its “Great imagery and dialogue,” and I agree wholeheartedly.

An accomplished journalist as well as a writer of fiction, Gary is based in Kildare, Ireland. His writing has appeared in The Hooghly Review, The London Magazine, Litro, Flash Fiction Magazine, Roi Fainéant, and elsewhere. Read on to learn more about the inspiration for “Limbo Nights,” Gary’s upcoming projects, his advice to other writers, and more.

Friday Five: ‘writer of short things’ Emily Rinkema

‘I love everything about flash fiction, as a reader and as a writer.’

On her website, Emily Rinkema introduces herself as a “writer of short things.” But if the cliche “good things come in small packages” applies to the craft of flash and micro fiction, Emily’s work exemplifies it.

Take this gut punch of a first paragraph from “Amy’s Mom,” which took third-place honors in Frazzled Lit‘s 2025 short story contest:

After Amy’s mom drops dead, like literally drops right in her driveway, groceries spilled all around her, we sit in my basement and get high and plan what to do if ours do too. Meaning our moms. Meaning if they just drop dead.
Emily Rinkema, “Amy’s Mom”