Chelsea Stickle
Chelsea Stickle’s debut flash fiction chapbook Breaking Points was the Editor’s Choice in the Spring 2020 Black River Chapbook Competition and was released by Black Lawrence Press on October 2021. A second flash fiction chapbook is forthcoming from Thirty West Publishing in January 2023. It contains stories of strangeness.
Her work appears in Cheap Pop, Chestnut Review, CRAFT, matchbook, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, among others. Stories from her Screaming Meemies series can be found in Milk Candy Review, Janus Literary, Five South, Gone Lawn, Tiny Molecules, The Los Angeles Review and others. She’s an Assistant Fiction Editor for Pithead Chapel and an Associate Fiction Editor for Pidgeonholes.
In 2022, her micro “If You Want It Bad Enough” was selected for Wigleaf‘s Top 50. She’s been nominated for Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize. “Postcard Town” was selected for Best Microfiction 2021. In 2019, her story “I Told You I Would Take Your Hand” was a runner-up in the Mslexia Flash Fiction Competition.
She has a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and a Diplôme de Pâtisserie from Le Cordon Bleu.
She lives in Annapolis, MD with her black rabbit George and a forest of houseplants. In her spare time she embroiders and plays bass.
Twitter: @Chelsea_Stickle
Instagram: @Stickle_Chelsea
What’s your favorite comic strip or graphic novel?
Everyone loves Fun Home by Alison Bechdel (of the Bechdel-Wallace Test fame), but the follow-up she wrote about her mother called Are You My Mother? reached into my chest and rearranged things. I can’t recommend it enough to people with complicated relationships with their mothers.
Have you ever experienced Imposter Syndrome?
Of course. I don’t really trust anyone who hasn’t. Writing is so subjective. Sometimes I think I should’ve entered a field with objective, measureable results. But I wouldn’t be satisfied creatively. Making weird stuff that you love is a unique experience and a reward in itself.
Favorite non-reading activity?
A tie between baking (one of my first loves) and embroidery (one of my newest loves). They both allow me to step outside myself, to do something mindless outside the world of storytelling, and focus on the task at hand. At the end you get something delicious or something beautiful, which is pretty amazing. And they’re objectively, measurably good!
What’s the difference (at least for you!) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?
Anyone who writes is a writer. An author is published. I’m always a writer. Sometimes I shift gear into author mode. Author mode is more formal. As a writer I don’t have many boundaries with the blank page. As an author I need boundaries for me and the people who are interested in my work.
If you could create a museum exhibition, what would be the theme?
Teapots in different styles from all around the world, historical and modern. They have the ability to combine form and style in gorgeous ways. There’s so much room to play and experiment while still making something useful. That’s the best of both worlds.
