{"id":472,"date":"2015-03-04T11:13:41","date_gmt":"2015-03-04T16:13:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/?p=472"},"modified":"2015-03-04T11:13:41","modified_gmt":"2015-03-04T16:13:41","slug":"mar-asks-george-choundas-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casit.bgsu.edu\/marblog\/mar-asks-george-choundas-answers\/","title":{"rendered":"MAR Asks, George Choundas Answers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"George<\/a>
George Choundas<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How can you possibly not <\/em>read a contributor interview in which the writer describes his story as \u201cLittle Red Riding Hood kicks all manner of ass?\u201d So please, read on and learn more about George Choundas, whose fiction and nonfiction appear in over twenty-five publications, including The Southern Review<\/em>, The American Reader<\/em>, and Subtropics<\/em>. He is\u00a0winner of the New Millennium Award for Fiction (Winter 2014-2015), a former FBI agent, and half Cuban and half Greek. His darkly imaginative short story, \u201cThe Girl Who Not Once Cried Wolf,\u201d appears in MAR<\/em> 35.1.<\/p>\n

Quick! Summarize your story in 10 words or fewer.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Little Red Riding Hood kicks all manner of ass.<\/p>\n

What can you share about this piece prior to its MAR publication?<\/strong><\/p>\n

My daughter is four years old. She likes her bedtime stories. I read them to her sometimes, and sometimes I make them up. In the fall of 2013 I launched into a telling of Little Red Riding Hood. I realized by Sentence Three that Riding Hood had no need of hunters. And that Claire\u2014born in the Year of the Tiger, on Bastille Day, with enormous eyes of mischief green\u2014had no need of stories suggesting she was less than. I told her a different version. The story grew each time I told it. Longer, more detailed. Finally I wrote it down. I spent nine months revising and editing. And engineering progressively more disgusting ways to describe wolf innards.<\/p>\n

What was your reaction upon receiving your MAR acceptance?<\/strong><\/p>\n

You read and write short fiction for years\u2014decades. For decades you admire this icon called Mid-American Review<\/em> and the stories in it because they\u2019re good and, well, it\u2019s iconic. And one day you receive an email that this same institution would love\u2014\u201clove\u201d\u2014to publish your writing. You do not fully comprehend this. You cannot reconcile it with what you know. So you do three things: First, you keep your reply email short for fear of writing something that inadvertently confirms some background suspicion on the editors\u2019 part that this acceptance is not simply implausible but in fact a mistake. Second, you continue thereafter to play along and pretend everything\u2019s cool, everything\u2019s as it should be. Third, you show fate some gratitude the best way writers can: you keep writing.<\/p>\n

My reaction? One day I\u2019m daydreaming about space and rocketships, the next I\u2019m in an astronaut suit bearing a NASA insignia going, This is fucked up.<\/p>\n

What do you consider your biggest writing-related success? <\/strong><\/p>\n

I recently learned I\u2019d won the New Millennium Award for Fiction for a story that originally appeared in the Michigan Quarterly Review<\/em>. That was kind of incredible. Then I learned that the award\u2019s founding editor, Don Williams, called it among the best stories to ever win the prize. That was kind and incredible.<\/p>\n

Your biggest writing-related regret?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That I did not realize at a much earlier age that writing has little to do with knowing what to write about, or with having something to write about, but rather with writing and having written and determining to write some more and thereby finding out, to your surprise and (ideally) delight, what there always was to write about.<\/p>\n

Tell us one strange thing about yourself that does not involve<\/strong> writing.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t shoot pool or play a musical instrument without sticking out my tongue. It\u2019s an unconscious tendency over which I have no control. It\u2019s as if my tongue needs to get out and aloft to receive some kind of homing signal. This is a problem because my son five years ago agreed to play the cello if I learned along with him, and now I\u2019m the one whom the instructor gently chides for resembling at our summer recitals an overheated dog, and at our winter recitals a deranged one.<\/p>\n

Thanks for an entertaining interview, George!<\/strong>
\nLaura Maylene Walter, Fiction Editor<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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