Leah Williams - Flash Nonfiction Funny survey responses

Flash Nonfiction Funny in Five

Fiction or Nonfiction? Nonfiction. We humans are ridiculous. I’ll never run out of material.

Is it harder to write funny or sad?

Sad, absolutely. Smiling while I write is so much easier.

Long form or short form?

Short. My dad and I would howl over Dave Barry’s lines when I was a kid. When I joined the newspaper staff in high school, a humor column was my first gig.

Poetry or prose?

Prose. But I love lyric essays, which split the difference.

Boxers or kickboxers?

Kickboxers unless we’re talking Rocky. I’ll watch Rocky XXX.

Piece that you read and said Wish I’d thought of that?

90% of what my students write.

Cloned or frozen?

Frozen. Encountering myself would be terrifying.

Book you read and reread?

Pride and Prejudice. Jane Austen’s humor is my stress relief.

When writing is going well…

It’s soothing but exhausting. Afterward bad TV is the limit of my intellectual capacity.

Desert Island Book?

Catch 22. To remind me there’s no good way out of there.

Leah Williams, a graduate of the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, teaches composition and creative nonfiction at the University of New Hampshire. Her essays have been published in Brevity, The Legendary, and Redivider and aired on an NPR affiliate. You can find her classic film posts at carygrantwonteatyou.com.