Randall Brown teaches writing at Saint Joseph’s University. He is a Pushcart nominee and holds an MFA in Fiction Writing from Vermont College and a BA from Tufts University. His stories, poems, and essays have been published widely, with recent work appearing or forthcoming in Dalhousie Review, American Drivel Review, Clackamas Literary Review, Vestal Review, Cairn, Hunger Mountain, Connecticut Review, The Saint Ann’s Review, and others. He’s recently finished a collection of (very) short fiction entitled “Mad To Live.” For more information, visit Randall’s website.

Well, Mr. Brown, I had no idea you were a large, green, unidentifiable, furry thing. What do you call yourself?

I call myself CRAZED for once again believing that a Philadelphia sports team will bring the city a parade. This picture is significant because, in his 11 3/4 years as a Philadelphia sports fan, my son has only gotten to dance this one time, when we won a charity auction for him to dance with the Phillie Phanatic during a game two years ago. Every other sports season has ended with his heart being broken. Maybe this year, with the Phils in the playoffs, will be the one that fills all those tiny holes in his tiny tender heart. Go Phils!

The Phils have since been eliminated from the playoffs. In the first round. In three straight games. Go Flyers!

You’ve taught high school and now teach at Saint Joseph’s University. I’ve always respected people who have the desire and ability to teach. Why is this the profession for you?

From teaching for the past fifteen years, I’ve learned how very little I know. That experience, combined with parenting for the past twelve years, has left me very humbled. There are no answers–or at least I don’t have them. And then I stand up there and pretend I’m the Sage on the Stage. Pathetic, really. But those summers off! Woo-hoo!

As a teacher, what works of fiction do you find important for students to read and study? Why?

I read graphic novels, Stephen King, and the crime noir novels of writers such as James Cain, Jim Thompson, and Charlie Huston. I really have no business teaching literature, so I spend most time teaching writing and showing students how to “read like a writer,” a word-package which means “to steal from those who know what they are doing.”

I do think learning to read poetry is worthwhile, if only to realize that Frost’s “Road Not Taken” has very little to do with being a nonconformist. If I’m trying to be literary, I list Robert Frost, Tennessee Williams, and F. Scott Fitzgerald as favorites, and I do love them, especially Frost, with whom I’ve made a really lasting, powerful connection. I think it’s because he’s both playful and serious, and there’s something very human and very dark at work in his poems. At least for me, there is. And snow. Lots and lots of snow.

How do you learn? Are you an active, verbal person? A seeker of visual aids? A critical thinker? Does writing help you learn?

A seeker of visual aids? That explains what I’m doing on the Internet at four in the morning.

You hold an MFA from Vermont College. With whom did you study? Also, you mentioned working on a picture book through their post-MFA program. Tell us more about this endeavor.

In 2002, I decided I’d like to write. So I wrote two stories, sent them in with my Vermont MFA application—and was promptly rejected. For the next six months, I studied “the craft” with some incredible writers. First, with Les Edgerton, and then for the next 18 months, with Terri Brown-Davidson. I applied a second time and got in. Yay! At Vermont, I studied flash fiction with Pamela Painter and Nance Van Winckel, and worked on longer pieces with Abby Frucht and Douglas Glover. I learned that any story has the possibility to suck. Really suck.

I’m writing a picture book because it’s my only chance, I realize, at writing a book-length project. Now, if I could only draw.

How do you write a picture book? I want more details about this project. Loads more!

My wife does therapy work—in hospitals, nursing homes, psychiatric wards, schools—with our Bichon, Theodore. I’ve been trying to write a picture book that she can use for her work in schools and also to raise money for the organization she works for in the Philadelphia suburbs, Pals for Life. I finished a version of the book but feel that it isn’t working too well. Recently, I received an email from Vermont College (where I got my MFA) about their post-MFA offering of a semester spent working on the picture book. I jumped at the opportunity with both paws. I start in January. Hopefully, by next summer, I can answer that question: How do you write a picture book? What I do know is that most publishing companies find an illustrator after accepting the text from an author. That’s good.

Recently, you completed a collection of short-shorts entitled “Mad to Live.” Does this collection have a unifying theme, or are the stories stand-alone? How did you arrive at this title?

The title comes from On the Road. It’s divided into four sections because Sherrie Flick did four sections and won a chapbook contest. They’re all stand-alone except when I’ve plagiarized from myself and had to change that section and/or name and/or ending.

Are you a fan of Kerouac and the Beat Generation?

I like the sense of loss I find in Kerouac’s work, as in this quote from Visions of Cody: “It no longer makes me cry and die and tear myself to see her go because everything goes away from me like that now — girls, visions, anything, just in the same way and forever and I accept lostness forever.” The Beat Generation ended up feeling a bit too afraid of women for me to hop aboard fully. Maybe, I’m reading that aspect of their work incorrectly. Certain lines and themes resonate with me—and they echo throughout a lot of American fiction perhaps. There’s this amazing passage in Gatsby that has that same sense of every moment of consummated desire containing an unrecoverable loss:

His heart beat faster and faster as Daisy’s white face came up to his own. He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.

And how about the way Fitzgerald uses in-carnation with “like a flower.” That’s so good.

You’ve conducted panels, and have given readings, on flash fiction. What sort of topics have you discussed? Do you have any more events upcoming?

I usually talk about flash fiction and try to stay away from what it is and instead focus more on what makes it work. I’m not certain what makes it work, but it might have something to do with finding urgency, charged originality, and emotional resonance through the compression of either narration or language—or maybe both.

I sometimes say puffed up things such as, “Flash has such potential—to go against expectation, to find an alternative to the drawn-out scene of melodrama, to discover in brevity a blinding, bright truth. Its power lies in its ability to burst into a life at the most important, profound time. That’s what you must do.” Jeez.

Let’s talk SmokeLong Quarterly. For many years, you were one of the more visible members of the staff. This last issue, issue 19, however, was your last. What are some of the highlights of your SmokeLong career? What do you miss?

If the “one of the more visible members” refers to my ongoing, never-ending weight gain, then, Kelly, you should be ashamed of yourself.

I miss reading all those stories to find the ones that make you stop reading.

Your flash fiction consistently places in the top three stories workshopped on Zoetrope Virtual Studios. What’s your secret? Do you have any tips on how to write compelling flash fiction?

The secret to the Zoetrope Virtual Studio Top Three? I’ve gotten many, many z-mails, as the Zoetrope Studio calls them, inquiring about such a secret, and I tell them all the same thing. Talent. Loads and loads of it. More than anyone could ever imagine having. Because that’s what the Top Three says more than anything: “You, kid, are full of it.”

As for what makes flash compelling, well, I’m not sure. It has a lot to do with the place from which it comes, some urgent, charged desire in the writer. And no adjectives, adverbs, clichés, glowing alarm clock digits, or talking dead people. Unless it works. Then it’s okay.

Do you have any rituals that you perform before you write? What is your writing routine like?

I must have music and it must come from an iTunes playlist entitled You Will Write Today. This playlist must contain a song from Lucinda Williams, The Smiths, R.E.M., Solomon Burke, Matthew Ryan, The Mountain Goats, Rilo Kiley, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, Belle and Sebastian, Antony & the Johnsons, Magic Numbers, Magnetic Fields, Death Cab for Cutie, Dan Bern, Pink Floyd, Talking Heads, Jonathan Richman, and/or Johnny Cash.

What does Randall Brown do for recreation?

Randall Brown fly fishes (catch & release), most times with his 75 year-old father or his 11-year-old son. He coaches his son’s flag football team. His wife, Meg Boscov, is an incredibly talented cabaret singer, so he also listens to her two CDs, with a third one on the way. And he watches his 9-year-old daughter practicing for their spring horseback riding ranch vacation. Finally, he lets their therapy-trained Bichon, Theo, lick his entire face while the rest of the family makes puking sounds.