Fiction Writing
Truth or dare: Who did you lose your virginity to? That sorta-kinda-boyfriend I had the summer before college. We both worked at Six Flags. He: the Texas Cyclone. Me: cotton candy. The days: sweaty, sticky. The nights: sweet licks of clove cigarettes that sparked in the dark. Wait, no. The stoner boy who offered me a stubby joint on someone’s grave. Glazed look in his eyes that I mistook for desire. Wait, no. A man I met at a pet store. Foreplay: he put a goldfish in his mouth. Spit it back into its tank. Wait, what was the question?
Michelle Ross is the author of three story collections: There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You, winner of the 2016 Moon City Short Fiction Award; Shapeshifting, winner of the 2020 Stillhouse Press Short Fiction Award (2021); and They Kept Running, winner of the 2021 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction (2022). Don’t Take This the Wrong Way, a story collection she cowrote with Kim Magowan, is forthcoming from EastOver Press. Her work is included in Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, the Wigleaf Top 50, and the Norton anthology, Flash Fiction America. It’s received special mention in the Pushcart Prize anthology. She is an Editor at 100 Word Story.
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