🎶 Artists in the Wild (3): Meet Lynn Mundell, Flash Writer & Publisher

On hybrid forms, the fractious world we live in, and the beauty that connects us.

Meeting people from diverse backgrounds is one of the most rewarding aspects of traveling to me. I have the pleasure of getting to know many interesting individuals who are changing the world with their hands and minds.

🎶 Artists in the Wild is an interview series with the creative people I run into on my journeys. This is episode #3.

Meet Lynn Mundell, Flash Writer & Publisher

Introduction

I first met Lynn Mundell through her stories nearly a decade ago. I cannot remember which flash fiction caught my attention, but it made enough of an impact for me to recognize her name when I saw it appear again in another literary journal. She seemed to appreciate my writing, too, and we started to support each other’s work, championing each other’s publications.

When an online critique group I’d recently joined was looking for new blood, I invited Lynn to join us, and we got to know each other even better by sharing story drafts and the life events that kept us (from) writing.

It wasn’t until 2019, however, that we met in real life. We ordered coffees at Caffe Greco in North Beach (San Francisco) and got ourselves a short story from the vending machine at Coppola’s Café Zoetrope. She gifted me a lightweight arty shopping tote that has now travelled the world with me. Daniel and I refer to it as “Lynn’s bag.”

The second time we met live was in LA, where Daniel and I were staying with friends and Lynn was on her way back from a writing retreat. We walked around the Silver Lake reservoir, talking about our artistic aspirations and the challenges of writing. We fell under the spell of a haunted kitchen clock that inspired us to write a story together.

This year, Daniel and I visited her and her husband for a few days at their home in the East Bay, and I was reminded once again what an incredibly funny, clever, and generous friend she is. Please meet Lynn Mundell!

Seven Questions for Lynn Mundell

1. What is your art and what drew you to it?

I wrote poetry up to and past my MFA in Creative Writing. After a long break where I wrote essays sporadically, I began writing in short form, also known as flash, in 2011. I love the density of it, like a delicious treat. I am also fascinated as a writer and a reader by what can be achieved in minimal words. The form really requires you work with white space and fill in just what is needed. I think this is a large part of the art—what can you use to flesh out a story enough for the reader to follow without “wasting” your words on too much backstory or detail.

I’m increasingly interested in the nexus among poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, leading me to found a literary journal called Centaur dedicated to the hybrid form. I feel that flash has really taken off as a genre and attracted more and new writers. I like to get a glimpse into what more can be done with the form in Centaur.

2. Who or what inspires you and how?

I am inspired by all of the writers and publishers working in flash right now. It requires a lot of commitment to be working in a genre that is still somewhat an underdog. I am seeing people being creative, dedicated, and consistent despite raising or caring for families, holding down day jobs, teaching and leading others in the form, and just existing in the fractious world we all live in today. Writers are applauding and promoting other writers, and publishers are encouraging those they publish. I find that not only inspiring but moving. (CP: me, too!)

3. How does your art influence your life or ethics or world view (and vice versa)?

Writing requires a lot of deep thinking and feeling, as well as looking around and making sense of things. I spend time in the past when I write, especially nonfiction, and I am thinking about now — what I see and what concerns me. As a publisher, I am interested in the international flash community, and this demands that I move out of my U.S.-focused view and think globally. All of this is a sort of mental and emotional gymnastics that I hope will keep me flexible and alive even when I occupy a small area of earth.

4. Where are you now and why?

I live in the Berkeley area of Northern California. While it feels like home and very comfortable, there are so many places to travel and things to see in this part of the state that keep it exciting. I never get tired of it, and I have a real love and affinity for so many favorite places: Point Reyes, North Beach in San Francisco, our public parks, Calistoga, Pacific Grove, Mendocino and the wild coast above it, Sea Ranch, Santa Cruz—the list goes on. The paternal side of my family goes back many generations in California, and I sometimes wonder if my feeling like I have to live here is a DNA thing.

5. Where are you headed and what do you hope to find there?

I don’t know—and that is the way it should be. I do know that I will write, publish, and travel more a couple years from now. But where those things will take me is a big question mark, which is exciting. Like most, I am hoping for peace, fulfillment, and happiness.

6. Can you share a recent moment of kindness, awe, joy, or mindfulness that changed you?

After many days of rain, I was at a hot spring recently where everyone was silently soaking in the water, lost in their own thoughts. A woman near me announced to everyone that there was a rainbow above us. Everyone craned their necks up and there it was, a big, bold rainbow. People proceeded to wonder over it and thank the woman who told us what was right over our heads. I thought this was somehow emblematic of our all being preoccupied while there is still beauty connecting us if we will only look around and be generous and spontaneous to share it with others.

7. What piece of advice do you have for people starting in your art form?

• Read a lot and widely, but write in your own style and don’t try to second guess or imitate in order to gain publication.

• Keep abreast of things on social media, but don’t let it distract you or dim your light.

• Consider taking classes from some of the great writers out there that offer online, weekend, long-term, and even overseas retreats in order to keep growing and connect with others.

• Find at least one writer you admire and trust who you can have read and edit your pieces that are giving you trouble.

• Be a good citizen in the community by following literary journal guidelines and courtesies.

• Thank the editors who publish you because chances are they are unpaid.

• Celebrate your own successes, yes, but also congratulate other writers.

• Take the long view: A flash rejection or a few months of rejections is just a momentary dip.

• Persevere.

More about Lynn Mundell

Lynn Mundell’s writing has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Masters Review, The Sun, Booth, Monkeybicycle, Five Points, New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction (W.W. Norton), Best Microfiction, and elsewhere. Her piece from Tin House earned first place in the 2019 Lascaux Prize in Creative Nonfiction and her stories have been recognized in five annual Wigleaf Top 50 Very Short Fictions lists. Lynn co-founded 100 Word Story and co-edited its anthology Nothing Short Of. Her chapbook Let Our Bodies Be Returned to Us was published by the University of South Carolina in 2022. She is the editor of the literary journal Centaur.

I highly recommend reading Let Our Bodies Be Returned to Us.

A signed copy of her chapbook can be purchased for $12 directly from the author at lynnfmundell@gmail.com.

Lynn Mundell also hopes you’ll read 100wordstory.org and centaurlit.com.

You can find her online on her website, BlueSky, and Instagram.

Three of Lynn Mundell’s Stories to be Read Online

Beautiful Things, New World Writing

“You are eight when on a visit to your father’s aunt you see beautiful things. Great Aunt lives alone in a tiny red cabin on the edge of a small town. Before her husband died, he built shelves throughout to display her collection of little china figurines: A lady in a ballgown hiding behind a fan. A shaggy dog carrying a big barrel around his neck. Two boys pushing a wheelbarrow full of apples together.”

Carousel, Ghost Parachute

“Late, the empty two-lane highway a zipper pulling you through the soft skirt of farmland. The windows down, the sweet scent of almond blossoms, when the car silently quits like a carousel horse out of quarters, not a house or a human for miles. This is the scenario where bad things happen to the good girl, a polite co-ed with a library work-study job, like you.”

Shoeless, Wigleaf

“Her mother is on the phone shouting at Mrs. Bobek. "Lou is 8. She didn't know what she was doing." At Mother's elbow, she watches her doodle a two-headed monster with devil's horns on her shopping list. Through the telephone line one block over, ants carry Mrs. Bobek's voice: "The girls swapped and we're not a family to go back on our word."

Related Posts

🎶 Artists in the Wild (2): Meet Thanh Thanh Nguyễn, Dancer

🎶 Artists in the Wild (1): Meet Auralynn Nguyễn, Ikebanist

Time to Say Goodbye

Daniel and I returned to Los Angeles earlier this week when it was considered safe enough to do so. Our friends’ house survived the flames, but the homes of many people they know did not. The stories of loss and devastation are widespread and heartbreaking. Everyone in this area is affected by the disastrous fires in one way or other. Whether you believe in community or not, we are connected.

Next week this time, I will be in Ecuador. Because I don’t want to be stressed about sending a newsletter while traveling, I’ll prepare something in advance, either on Muir Woods or on getting ready for The Galapagos. Which one would interest you most?

My first report on the Galapagos will follow once Daniel and I have taken residence in a self-sustaining house on a cacao farm on one of the main islands, Santa Cruz.

All my best,

Claire

P.S. What story of Lynn Mundell touched you the most?