by Dawn Tasaka Steffler
Melissa Llanes Brownlee’s Bitter Over Sweet was the 2023 winner of the Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards. This accomplishment was huge for Melissa, but also for the Flash community. As she says in this interview, and has mentioned privately amongst friends, she wants the world to know that flash is a form to be reckoned with. So, even if you’ve gobbled up (as I have) every story as it was published in various magazines and journals, in this book those once familiar, stand-alone stories are transformed into a totally different reading experience; leaping past the micro-forms they were born into—similar to how Tita escapes her small life in Hawai’i—and blossoming into their full potential: complex, layered, polyphonic, and absolutely stunning.
Dawn Tasaka Steffler: I absolutely love the title and cover of your book! How did this title come about? And did you have input regarding the cover art?
Melissa Llanes Brownlee: Thanks! My original title was The Lives of Tita. But as my collection expanded, I thought that Bitter over Sweet suited the idea of poverty and paradise, which figures prominently in my book. As for the cover, I had hired an artist, but they were unable to complete the commission, so I sent my ideas of bright colors with Hawaii’s flora and fauna, native and invasive, to my publisher, and they delivered this gorgeous cover. I couldn’t be happier.
DTS: How is it working with Santa Fe Writers Project?
MLB: It’s been eye-opening. As you know, I have two previous books, Hard Skin and Kahi and Lua, both with independent publishers. Each experience was so different, but with SFWP, I feel like I am working with a publisher who is all in on supporting me and helping me, from having the best version of my book to social media promotions, reviews, and getting my book in front of prize committees. I have been beyond grateful for this amazing opportunity.
DTS: What was the writing of this collection like? Did the intention come first of writing a series of stories centered on a particular character? Or did the stories happen organically, and lead you to the realization that you had a collection on your hands?
MLB: Honestly, I just kept circling the same themes, writing the same kinds of stories, over and over, and they naturally lent themselves to a collection with a solid narrative through line. There was no intent behind it. I think that some people can have a goal and write to that goal. I just write and see what comes from it.
DTS: This is a related question: has Tita always been a singular entity in your mind, and if so, who showed up first, older Tita or younger Tita? Or, did they show up as several characters and you gradually winnowed them down to one?
MLB: For me, Tita is just an everygirl. She always has been. Every native girl is both Tita-the sister, and Tita-the negative, derogative, diminutive. Tita is not even a Hawaiian word; it’s Hawaiian Pidgin Creole, so for me, it captures the nature of being Hawaiian but not Hawaiian, the liminal spaces of growing up in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, before the renaissance of our native language.
DTS: You tackle some heavy themes in this book: poverty, domestic abuse, resilience, and hope. Are any of your characters inspired by real people?
MLB: I have lived it. My family has lived it. My friends. The people in my community on the Big Island. The students I went to Kamehameha Schools with. Even though this is fiction, there’s truth in almost every story I have written about living in Hawai’i.
DTS: Tita escapes a dead-end life in Hawaii and ends up in Japan at the end of the book, similar to your own history. And I can’t help but wonder, how has living in Japan influenced the writing of this book? Does living somewhere different afford you some sort of geographic, cultural, or emotional distance? Does it make you miss Hawaii more? Or do you think you understand Hawaii better from afar? Do you think you will ever move back?
MLB: When we decided to go to college (we left Hawai’i in 1999), my husband and I had no idea where our future would be. There was always the idea that we might return, but I think that was always a fantasy. There was and is nothing on the Big Island that we could do to support ourselves in the fields we had chosen. We miss Hawai’i, but it’s the Hawai’i of our youth, our hanabata days, so to speak. I started writing about Hawai’i when I attended Boise State, so I do think that distance did help to see that I was filled with an abundance of stories that I could tell and share, showing people what Hawai’i was really like. Japan just kind of happened because I came here for my MFA program, and when we left grad school, we thought, Why not teach English here?, and we’ve been here ever since. I often wonder what would happen to my writing if I lived in Hawai’i. Would it still be rich, evocative, rooted in truth? I don’t know. Hawai’i is both the same but also different. The landscape for young kanaka maoli is so different now, but the shackles of institutional racism still exist to this day, and this is coming from someone who was able to attend one of the best schools in Hawai’i for Hawaiians.
DTS: In my personal opinion, you are the Queen of Micros. I’d love to know more about how you choose the moments you write about. Is it a matter of intensity, compactness, or maybe it’s a moment of heat you keep obsessing about? Do you have a file of story ideas? Or do your stories just happen organically, without much pre-planning?
MLB: Thank you! All of the above? I don’t plan. I do obsess, but I think that’s most writers. I honestly write small because that’s how much time I usually have to write, or that’s the amount of time that my brain wants to spend writing.
DTS: I think I remember you told me once you don’t revise much. What’s the fastest you’ve ever gone, from drafting to publication?
MLB: Less than one day. Sometimes you write something and you just know… this is the one for this place. It doesn’t happen often because I have been trying over the last few years to send my work to places that usually take much longer to respond because I believe in flash, and I especially believe in microfiction, and I want our writing to be more mainstream.
DTS: What’s next for you? I saw in one of your Talk Story posts that you’re working on a novel?
MLB: I have a Tita becomes Pele novel in the works, but writing that long feels so challenging.
DTS: Is there a question I haven’t asked here that you wish I had?
MLB: Yes! What is your favorite ice cream flavor? And the answer is mint chocolate chip. Always.
(DTS: Mine, too! Baskins and Robbins ftw.)
(MLB: Yes!! Remember when pints were 2 for $5?)
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Melissa Llanes Brownlee (she/her), a native Hawaiian writer living in Japan, has work forthcoming in Prairie Schooner. Read Hard Skin (2022), Kahi and Lua (2022), and preorder Bitter over Sweet (2025) from Santa Fe Writers Project. Also, register for her online book launch with Deesha Philyaw and Avitus B. Carle on November 7th at 7 pm EST. She tweets @lumchanmfa, plays her ukulele on YouTube (@melissallanesbrownlee) and Instagram (@lumchanmfa / @lumchanukulele), and talks story at melissallanesbrownlee.com.
Dawn Tasaka Steffler is an Asian-American writer from Hawaii who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She was a Smokelong Quarterly Emerging Writer Fellow, winner of the 2023 Bath Flash Fiction Award, finalist for the 2025 Lascaux Review Prize in Flash Fiction, and selected for Best Small Fictions 2025, and an Anthology of Rural Stories by Writers of Color, 2025 (EastOver Press). Her stories appear in Pithead Chapel, Moon City Review, The Forge, Sundog Lit, and more. Find her online at dawntasakasteffler.com and on BlueSky, Instagram, and Facebook @dawnsteffler.