We love learning more about our contributors, and an interview seemed like a fun way to hear more about the writers and artists we publish, so we gave them a choice of questions to answer. We hope you also enjoy hearing more about the artists and their works. Check out Issue 30 to read "Two for the Road" from S.R Kriger.


What was the inspiration for the piece published in the issue?
I wrote the very first draft almost 20 years ago (!) in response to a prompt that asked writers to include a particular phrase. Absolutely no traces of that phrase remain, as the story quickly took a sudden turn into the imagery floating around in my subconscious from summer evenings spent at our family cottage with my grandmother. When I decided to revisit and revise the piece into the version you read now, I discovered threads that newly resonated with me, such as how serving others at the expense of oneself can be simultaneously selfless and selfish.


What is your #1 advice for other writers?
If someone is demeaning about your work, that's about them and not about your writing. (And that includes you being demeaning to yourself!) Criticism is necessary for learning, but cruelty isn't.


What do you do in the rest of your life and how does that connect and/or conflict with your creative life?
As is perhaps peeking through the previous answer, I work in education: I'm a university instructor. Among other things, reading and assessing lots of writing has really helped to give me perspective when I have to take off my "writing stuff" hat and put on my "submitting stuff" hat. It's easier to remember that rejection isn't personal or a referendum on writing ability when I reflect on how many excellent assignments I'd have to "reject" if I were required to choose only a few.


We think of "after happy hour" as the time you can really let loose and be yourself. What is your after happy hour?
For me, as I hope comes across a little in this story, after happy hour is lazy summer evenings with my family.


What is your favorite vice? What are you drinking at happy hour, in a literal or a metaphorical sense?
Murder mysteries! Is that a vice? It definitely is when I'm supposed to be reading or writing or finishing something else... which is most of the time.