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 Flores Anderson

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.

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A boring realist’s thoughts on keeping it real

Why verisimilitude matters in all forms of fiction (with examples)

Note: If you don’t want to wade through this entire post, feel free to go directly to the examples near the end of this post. – AC

I was reviewing some early chapters of a work in progress recently when I discovered a problem with the text that–while perhaps insignificant to the overarching plot–could ruin the story’s credibility and my credibility as a writer if I didn’t fix it.

The novel is set in the early 1980s, and music plays a significant role in it. In one early chapter, I reference a song that, when I was writing the chapter, I was certain was ubiquitous on FM radio during the time frame of this portion of the novel. But as often happens when I rely on my increasingly foggy memory, I did not remember correctly.

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