Shellie Zacharia lives with her husband and two dogs in Gainesville, Florida. In print, her work has appeared in Swivel, Hobart, Backwards City Review, Georgetown Review, Washington Square, Emrys, Opium, Tusculum Review, Zone 3, and elsewhere. Online, you can find her in such publications as Juked, flashquake, Rumble, The Summerset Review, Vestal Review, Insolent Rudder, and Storyglossia.

Much of your fiction is written in a fun, quirky voice that I find very distinct. How did you cultivate this voice, or did it come naturally?

A fun, quirky voice . . . well that’s my voice! I’m a playful person and I suppose it comes out in my writing and in my characters. It’s natural for me – the adrenaline sentences. I write fast. I think fast. So when I sit down to write, I get the voice of the story going and I just go. Somersaults and cartwheels and weird pirouettes. I don’t pause and deliberate over sentences much when I’m drafting. Which is why – ha! – sometimes I go back and think, “Okay here’s a sentence that is six miles long.” Sometimes I leave it like that and sometimes I admit it’s a maniac sentence and cut it down.

As you know, I am a huge Zacharia fan. I can’t wait for the day when I can purchase your work in book length format. So, how about it? Do you have any novels or collections in the works?

Oh wow. From your mouth to an agent or publisher’s ears!

No novel right now, but I actually have enough published and completed stories to make a collection. I’m hesitating because I hear how hard it is to get a book of short stories published. So I’ve been rethinking my work in terms of linked stories.

Which means I have a linked collection in progress. I’m using a story I published in Swivel called “First Draft” as the anchor story. That story has several oddball moments and characters, and the other stories in the collection are spin-offs from “First Draft.” I’ve written maybe half of the pieces for this project. And I really like the idea of linked stories. It lets the reader make connections – “Hey, there’s that performance artist mentioned earlier . . .”

I’m also considering working on a collection of pieces about childhood/youth because I have a good handful of those stories right now.

Okay, so in answer to your question – I hope the day when you can purchase my book is coming soon!

Though you write longer stories as well, you do seem to have a deep commitment to flash. Where does this kinship to the short-short form come from?

Short answer about flash. Flash is cool.

Okay, more maybe, just a bit.

A few years ago I started reading flash fiction. Then I started writing it and found it was easy for me (well, easier than writing full-length stories). Flash can be story and it can be close to poetry. It allows me to focus on language and image.

Done.

You say that you’ve been writing since you were a little kid. Do you remember the first time you actually put pencil to paper and composed something?

When I was a little kid – I guess around 7 years old – I wrote stories and made cover pages out of construction paper. I stacked them in a little red wagon and I walked around door to door in my neighborhood and hawked my “books.” I was fearless then. Knock, knock, knock – want to buy a story? I think I sold them for a quarter.

Writers are constantly borrowing characters and events from their own lives. I won’t ask you to fess up to what you’ve stolen, but do talk about how your friends, family, co-workers, and etcetera, have influenced your writing.

Let’s just say, I piece and quilt. Something that happened to someone I know, something I overheard, a moment in my own life, a memory from childhood – I tumble it all together. And luckily I have a fun family and a funny group of friends. So they give me a lot of material (thanks everyone!). Honestly, I just listen and observe a lot. I see the world in terms of story.

Which character, from your own writing and/or another’s, would you like to see star in a television series?

Now that’s tough. Because I have a really hard time making decisions. I think for me, it would be cool to see a bunch of my characters living in some town together – sort of like Northern Exposure, one of my favorite TV shows. Yeah, that’s what I’d want – a good group of my characters in some small town. They’d meet up at the local tavern or coffee shop and things would happen. Roxy the nutty writer and her sidekick Carol and Juney Teresa Hart the bowling queen and Lucy Sims with her wacked out letters and Sam with his didgeridoo. . . oh wow, it would be wild.

What does your muse look like?

My muse? I wrote a flash about my muse called “70 MPH.” It appeared in flashquake. I guess my muse is someone confident and artsy. Silver jewelry. Wild hair. Gauzy clothes though sometimes she’s in old overalls or in black. Full of laughter. Barefoot. Twirly. Vibrant. She plays guitar. Definitely.

You are a middle school reading teacher for academically advanced students. Name a few of the books your class has read, and tell us what surprises you about your students.

I teach amazing students. They are so bright. At the same time, they are kid-like and funny. Sometimes I’ll just sit back and watch and listen to them and I always find something to laugh at. And they have such a variety of hobbies and interests: soccer, horseback riding, fencing, drama, swimming, violin, karate, ballet, writing . . .

My class is a literature/humanities class. We just finished a YA novel, Shadow Spinner. It’s a re-imagining of the Arabian Nights frame story about the Sultan and Scheherazade. Next we’re going to look at Egyptian mythology. Then we’ll read a middle school friendly version of The Odyssey. Good stuff.

What kind of dogs do you own? Tell us a story about them.

I’ve got two big dogs. Mixed breeds from the Animal Shelter and Pet Rescue. A 100-pound hound mix and a 65-pound shepherd mix.

A story. Hmmm . . . okay, this one doesn’t really have a plot. It’s more of an image. My husband and I have a lot of music. And sometimes my husband will turn the music on very loud. Okay, this happens often. Which sometimes makes me get up and dance in the living room. Because I do things like that. Which makes the dogs crazy. They get up and start barking and jumping at me. I think they are embarrassed for me, actually.

You are a vegetarian. What is your favorite vegetarian meal?

Tofu and veggie stir fry. Or a good black bean and veggie burrito. Yum.

Contact Shellie

Read:

“Parade of Champions”
published in Backwards City Review

“Petals”
published in Ward 6 Review

“After Your Big Sister Calls You An Immature Nuisance”
published in Rumble



Filed Under: The Writer Profile Project |