Crafting Meaning in Flash Nonfiction

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:00]
Sue, well, hello, Sue. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so happy to have you on, and it’s so wonderful to see you again.

Sue William Silverman [0:09]
Thank you so much. Really, it’s such a delight for me. I loved talking to you last time, and this is just great. So, thank you.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [0:19]
Well, I’m really excited that we get to dive into yet another of your books. For those who didn’t listen last time—maybe you’re a new listener—I’m just going to hold up, for those on YouTube, a copy of your first book that we talked about, Acetylene Torch Songs, which isn’t your first book, but it’s the first one I interviewed you for.

Now we’re going to talk about Selected Misdemeanors, which is your new book. I definitely want to start with the title. But before we get to that, what would you like us to know about the book and about you in general, for people who are new to your writing?

Sue William Silverman [0:58]
Thank you. Yes. So, I mainly write creative nonfiction. I’ve written some poetry, and I started out writing two full-length memoirs with a straight-through narrative. Then I wrote two essay collections with long personal essays.

This new book is a collection of flash pieces. I’d never written flash before, so I wanted to challenge myself with that. I also teach creative nonfiction at Vermont College of Fine Arts, which is a low-residency MFA in Writing program.

So basically, that’s my life. I write and I teach—that’s pretty much what I do. Oh, I finally did get a hobby! I do some horseback riding, which is nice—but very slow horseback riding. So that’s pretty much my life.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [1:57]
I love that you’re horseback riding. I’ve only done it once, and it was pretty fun—and also so high up! I have a friend who’s an avid rider and actually competes. My dad started riding horses when he was older, and he said, “There’s so much to learn and so much to do with trusting the horse.”

Sue William Silverman [2:22]
Yes, and the horse has to trust you. But I should say, I don’t ride—I sort of plod along with the horse.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [2:32]
I think that’s about what I did the one time I was on a horse, and it’s probably all I would do as well.

So, I think that’s a nice segue into your book, because when I think about horseback riding, I think about that one specific moment—and this is a book of singular moments that immerse us in your life.

We’re going to talk about a few of those today, but I want to start with the title. How did you come up with it? I know what it means in my head, but what does it mean to you—Selected Misdemeanors—and I’ll read the full title along with the subtitle: Selected Misdemeanors: Essays at the Mercy of the Reader.

Sue William Silverman [3:25]
Right. So first of all, this wasn’t the original title. I worked on the book for maybe four years, and it went through five different titles.

I ended up with Selected Misdemeanors because the essays—there are 71 in the book—are meant to be ironic. The title itself is ironic. A reader might think, “Well, these are the selected ones—how many other misdemeanors are there?” which could get a reader thinking.

But it’s also ironic because the misdemeanors aren’t literal. I should hasten to say I’ve never served jail time—they’re not crimes in the legal sense—but rather emotional misdemeanors.

That title kept rising to the surface after I tried about four others. The emotional misdemeanors—really, they’re transgressions, miscalculations of love, internal and external betrayals. Describing them as misdemeanors felt like a new way of looking at those emotional experiences.

Some misdemeanors are against other people, but mainly they’re against myself. If I’d used a word like betrayal, it would sound too rigid and not ironic enough. I wanted the title to reflect the tone of the book, which is pretty much ironic.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [5:13]
I love that. When I was thinking about the misdemeanors—you talk about how they’re things perpetrated against others and against yourself—but I also felt like some of these misdemeanors were things other people perpetrated against you.

Sue William Silverman [5:33]
Well, yes, absolutely—that’s true. I certainly claim everything I’ve done wrong in my life, but yes, people did betray me—mainly some men. My father, for one, mis-loved me.

One misdemeanor I write about is when I went away to college. I was a freshman and immediately had an affair with a man old enough to be my father—who was married. I obviously had some role in that—I could’ve said no, theoretically—except that’s what my father had taught me: you don’t say no to men, particularly older men. He certainly took advantage of me as well.

So, it’s looking at misdemeanors broadly. As I say, I’ve never been to jail!

Lisa Cooper Ellison [6:43]
I love that last part. When I was thinking about this book, in addition to seeing these as infractions against self and others, there’s also a really unique construction in the book. You have these flash essays—the 71 essays you crafted—but you also included faux postcards and photos of yourself.

Alongside each photo, we have the word Misdemeanor—two words—and I’ll read one of those. This is from page 119:

“Misdemeanor considers the time she stood under the boardwalk at the New Jersey shore, a location so distant from love that the pillar was all that held her up in the face of the oncoming storm. Jacket, black leather. Girl, waiting for trouble. Smile, knowing.”

When I look at this photo, there’s a carving that says Love Is Here Every Day. I’m holding this up for those who haven’t yet seen or purchased the book—which you should definitely do right now.

That’s the photo. Tell us what you were trying to do by playing on the words in your title and by inserting these photographs.

Sue William Silverman [8:11]
Sure. So initially—this is kind of interesting—I had the photographs from the beginning. The persona Miss Demeanor was originally “the girl.” I’d write, “The girl did this.” But that felt too abstract, so I wanted something more specific.

Then it hit me: Miss Demeanor—Miss, M-I-S-S, and her name is Demeanor. It was just staring at me.

I really call the photographs “essay photographs” or “essay photos,” because each one stands alone—it doesn’t refer to another essay in the book. The long part you read is like the title of the essay, and the short lines at the end are the text itself.

There are about 13 of these in the book, and they serve two purposes. First, they’re a unifying device—by sprinkling them throughout, we keep returning to Misdemeanor 13 times. Second, they offer a visual perspective on the emotional material—a different way of looking at the narrative.

As I mentioned, I’d never written flash before—maybe one or two pieces—but I didn’t really understand the form. I wanted to grow as a writer. I’d written memoirs and essay collections, but I wanted to evolve and try something new.

So, I challenged myself to see if I could sustain a book-length collection of flash essays. It was a challenge—but also fun.

There are also about six postcards sprinkled throughout—another unifying device and another way for the narrator to envision the events in her life. It’s just a different way of looking at narrative. You can look at narrative through a photograph or a faux postcard.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [11:01]
It creates an additional layer of poetry in what you’ve made. For me as the reader, I felt more connected to the narrator because of those visuals. They remind us that this is a person with agency—someone who may have made decisions she wishes she hadn’t, but who was so young.

We really see the innocence, the other side. That added a richness to what you were exploring in the flash form.

You’ve mentioned several times that you’d never done flash before and wanted to attempt something new. It feels like flash is very popular now, but we don’t always know what it is. Could you tell us what you see the flash form being, and how you approached it as you were writing this book?

Sue William Silverman [12:07]
For me, my definition of a flash essay is that the narrative is short but revelatory. It’s an intense and focused look at what it means to be human—how we gain insight into our lives in these flashes of time. I like to think of them as quick, shimmering epiphanies.

The outer form—the shell—is small, but it still has to be meaningful. It can’t just be an anecdote, as in “this happened to me.” That’s not literary. You have to crack open the form, and inside you should find metaphors that resonate universally with the reader. That’s how I approached each one.

I’m a very obsessive person, which is actually good if you’re a writer—because writers like to write about their obsessions. Each flash essay, to some extent, is one of mine. They may circle similar themes, but each approaches the obsession differently.

So, step one for me is to look at what my obsessions are. Step two is to ask: what kind of imagery would reflect that obsession? I’ll give you an example. On the cover of the book, there’s a goldfish in the corner—but the goldfish is belly up. This goldfish appears in one of the essays.

In that essay, my boyfriend—who doesn’t really love me but strings me along—has to go away to boot camp; he’s in the military. I do two things: I buy a goldfish for company, and I have an affair with his roommate. During the course of the short essay, the roommate breaks up with me. I’m so distraught about that breakup that I forget to feed the goldfish—and it dies.

That’s another misdemeanor. Actually, there are two in that piece: the affair with the roommate and letting the poor goldfish die.

Now, if I just told you that story, like I did just now, it would be an anecdote. As a friend, you might say, “Oh, that’s too bad,” but it wouldn’t carry meaning. In the essay, though, the goldfish becomes a metaphor—a metaphor for loss, for betrayal, because I betrayed the goldfish.

That’s important because a reader may not have had my exact experience—no boyfriend at boot camp, no affair with a roommate, no goldfish. They can read it and be interested, but what does it mean?

By making the goldfish metaphorical—universal—the reader can enter the narrative. Most people have experienced some kind of loss: love, death, or absence. So, by transforming that image into metaphor, it becomes vast inside the small shell.

That’s how I see flash: small in outer form, but vast inside. And the way you make it vast is through metaphor.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [15:58]
I love that. And when you talk about obsession, what I think about is being haunted by something. When you do this well—in flash or in any form—the reader becomes haunted too. The story lingers; you chew on it after it ends.

I found myself doing that with that specific piece. That goldfish stayed with me. I’ve also had goldfish in my life I tried—and failed—to keep alive. Having an image that carries meaning deepens the experience.

When you talk about that vastness inside a small shell, it’s interesting because my instinct would be to zoom out—but what works so well in flash, and what you do so successfully in this book, is the opposite. You zoom in on very specific details. The specificity, combined with metaphor, makes the work powerful and connects your story not just to your life but to our own.

And that ties to something we discussed in our last interview—your idea of reportage versus story. The anecdote is reportage: it’s what happened. That’s where we all start, but the writer’s job is to deepen it by asking, what does this mean? How did this impact me?

There’s one piece I want to talk about—and I didn’t tell you about this in advance—but I’m so glad you mentioned the goldfish essay. I was flipping through my notes, and I love the construction and poetry of The Soft Beauty of an Ordinary Life.

I’m going to read the first couple of paragraphs:

“Before his wife catches you one spring evening in Georgia, you slide onto the passenger seat of Rick’s Jeep Cherokee outside Big Lots. You secretly meet here Thursdays in this anonymous location to head north into the foothills of the Appalachians. At dusk, the lights of this box store appear like an oasis across the vast cement stretch of parking lot, across the endless boredom of the week since the last time you were together.”

Sue William Silverman [18:44]
Another misdemeanor. Yeah.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [18:47]
Can we talk about that essay for a moment and how you constructed it?

Listeners, when you buy the book—because you will buy the book—this is on page 115. I want you to go there. The construction is so interesting. You use this before-and-after structure with a beautiful weave. You could have told this story linearly, and it would’ve made sense, but the way you braid the first and second halves changes its meaning. It gave me a completely different sense of what you were trying to accomplish.

Will you tell us what you wanted to do with this piece?

Sue William Silverman [19:33]
Well, ironically, pretty much what you just said! Writing about an affair in a straightforward way can be boring. I wanted to look at it differently.

Each paragraph begins with a half-line—something like before his wife catches you—and then there’s a paragraph that follows. Then there’s another that starts after his wife catches you—and so on. Each short line sets up a paragraph, and they alternate until the final one, what remains after you catch yourself.

The piece moves through time, but those little hinge lines hold it together. The narrator is reflecting on what happened, seeing it in a deeper light.

At the time, I didn’t have any of those thoughts. It was just, “It’s Thursday, I’m driving out to the Appalachians, I’m going to meet Rick.” Then one night, his wife catches us. In that moment, you’re stunned. You’re numb. My brain went blank.

But through the writing process—what I do—the adult narrator can return and make sense of it. This moment obsessed me; it’s one of my obsessions. So, the writer in me now can revisit it through sensory imagery, reflection, and metaphor to dig deep into what really happened that night and what it meant.

That box store—the Big Lots—becomes part of that meaning. The alienation of those vast parking lots and fluorescent lights mirrored how I felt at the time: anonymous, lost. Box stores are where families shop, but I wasn’t with my family—I was there, committing one of my misdemeanors.

So, the setting itself becomes a metaphor—for both the alienation of the narrator and, I think, the alienation many of us feel.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [23:23]
And I’m going to go ahead and read that final paragraph:

What remains after you catch yourself: you sit in your Ford Escort watching cars pull in and out of the parking lot. No one would find you here among shoppers carrying plastic bags containing towels, shoes, coffee mugs, laundry detergent, toothpaste, T-shirts, baby food, shampoo—tangible things that compose a home, a family, the soft beauty of an ordinary life, one you don’t yet know how to live.

What’s interesting about where you land—and how you use the metaphor—is that if you’d set this up as a straightforward chronological arc, our sense of that big-box store might have been different. You would have landed on the shock and the shame, and that tells a completely different story.

So, listeners, when you’re thinking about metaphors and arcs, consider the feeling you want to leave the reader with—and what, artistically, you’re trying to accomplish.

Sue William Silverman [24:35]
And we do that through details. If I just said, “I felt shame. I felt betrayed,” those are abstractions—a reader can’t connect with an abstraction. That’s why you dig into small, tangible details—like the goldfish in the other essay, or here, the list of things the box store sells. Those are concrete—things anyone can identify with—and they’re meant to show what the narrator isn’t doing. She isn’t living an ordinary life; she isn’t shopping there with her husband. She’s in this parking lot, abandoned and alone.

By placing her in that setting—sitting in her car by herself in a vast lot while families come and go—you show the alienation without saying, “I felt alienated,” because saying it doesn’t make a reader feel it. You also show that she’s committed a misdemeanor that prevents her from living that ordinary life.

This speaks to the theme of the whole book. The overriding arc is the narrator’s search for home, comfort, safety—all those things she yearns for—while simultaneously committing emotional misdemeanors that sabotage her attempts to find them. There are two warring forces: I want a home, comfort, safety, and I’m committing the very acts that undermine them.

As you journey through the collection, it isn’t tied up in a neat bow, but the narrator gains more of a sense of herself—so maybe she doesn’t have to keep committing these misdemeanors.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [26:45]
Yeah, I loved that—how it explores the ways we sabotage ourselves. That’s so universal. How many people haven’t sabotaged the one thing they really want? We do it all the time.

Sue William Silverman [27:02]
I know—like, what am I doing?

Lisa Cooper Ellison [27:08]
Right? Did I really want that? I don’t know—maybe not.

I want to circle back to something you said that I think is really important: abstraction—and how it relates to metaphor and figurative language. I agree with you 100%: readers can’t understand abstraction. That’s the trouble with feelings on the page. Saying “I felt this, I felt that”—what does that really mean? Or if someone is “gentle” or “kind,” what does that look like? It’s in the eye of the beholder.

This is a very poetically written book—you use language so well. But I’ve found in my own writing that sometimes someone will say, “That’s beautiful, but I have no idea what you mean.” How do you balance big, overarching metaphors and figurative language with clarity, so we’re not asking, “It’s beautiful, but what is it?”

Sue William Silverman [28:19]
The flip, easy answer is revision. And I want to reassure people—I don’t get it right off the bat.

Back to the goldfish. I may have revised that piece ten times—maybe twenty. For a long time, the goldfish was just a goldfish—it swam in its bowl and died. Then I realized: wait, the goldfish is belly up; I need to explore it.

I do an inventory of as many senses as I can—what something smells like, feels like, looks like, tastes like. Doing that makes the image more understandable and keeps it tangible. Then it can be conveyed poetically without losing its concreteness. The goldfish is still a goldfish; the box store is still a box store.

It’s really about not losing focus on the tangible image. Keep it front and center. The goldfish remains on the page while the sensory details flow out from the thing itself. That keeps the reader grounded—grounded in the goldfish-as-metaphor, or the box-store-as-metaphor—so you don’t drift too far from the concrete thing.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [30:27]
Listeners, if you’re only hearing this, you can’t see my adorable cat, Miss Foxy, who totally agrees that specificity—and not losing sight of the tangible—is essential.

As you were talking, I thought about something I do that feels almost improvisational: I riff on an image. The draft balloons and gets big; then I cut ruthlessly. I’ll take an image and ask, “How many different ways can I describe it?” I keep describing, layering sensory details, coming at it from different angles, until I find the right way in.

Sue William Silverman [31:19]
Exactly. And if you don’t get it right away, don’t panic—it will come. We can’t know our metaphors before we start writing, and often not in the first or second draft, because we’re digging deeper into a moment. You can’t rush that.

Be patient; sit with it. Eventually, the metaphor reveals itself. That’s why we write—to discover what something means through reflection and metaphor.

If I sit down and say, “I’ll write about this and discover that,” it won’t happen. You have to trust your words and the process—let the words lead you. I think of it as following a whisper—deeper and deeper into the moment at hand.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [32:39]
Oh my gosh, I love that. I’m writing it on my wall: Trust the Whisper. We do have to trust the whisper and the process. For me, I feel it in my body when it’s right.

Sue William Silverman [32:57]
Yes—your pulse actually changes. You think, “Oh my God, I’ve got it now.” It’s such a good feeling. And even then, I still revise—refining what’s there. Yes.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [33:18]
I love that. You talk about how many times you revise a piece—I’m like that too. I revise into infinity because I really want to get something right.

We live in a world where social media and so many other things train us to crave instant gratification and quick results. You’ll see posts like “The five things you can do right now,” and if you do those steps, you’re supposedly guaranteed success—which we both know isn’t true. That mindset makes us impatient with the process.

And then, oh my gosh, if you listen to the news—or just live in 2025—it can make you feel hopeless about outcomes. That uncertainty can make the process feel sketchier, harder to trust. You start to wonder, Is it worth it?

You’ve been publishing books for a long time. You’ve had tremendous success and are deeply respected in our field. When I say your name, people perk up—they’re excited about these conversations. What advice do you have for writers who are, first, just trying to navigate the onslaught of 2025, and second, doing it as writers?

Sue William Silverman [34:54]
When things are tough—when times are dark or scary—that’s when you most need to write. Art is what saves us.

At the end of the day, what do we have left? After all the wars, the politicians, all the chaos—what remains solid is art. Think about what’s endured through the centuries: we’re still reading Greek tragedies, still looking at ancient sculpture. Art lasts.

During COVID, I saw so many posts on Facebook saying, “Who’s going to care about my story right now?” But everyone cares. I started writing Selected Misdemeanors during the lockdown—it has nothing to do with COVID—but I needed something to do, something meaningful.

I believe, to the core of myself, that the most important thing an artist can do—especially in hard times—is keep writing personal narrative. That’s how we connect with each other.

When times are stressful or uncertain, if you have a book out there that tells your story, someone will read it and feel connected to you. That human connection keeps us from feeling so alone. And that’s what we hold on to.

So, write your stories. The most important time to write is when things look the grimmest.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [37:00]
And to trust in the power of that work—to transform you, to transform others. It doesn’t matter how big your audience is. Those human connections, those transformations, are why we do this. You never know what the ripple effect will be.

Sue William Silverman [37:19]
You really don’t. Writing has transformed me as a person. I get emails from readers who say, “Thank you for telling my story too,” or “I relate to the emotions, even if my situation was different.”

Those connections make us feel less alone. They’re transformative—for writers and readers alike.

We were talking about flash earlier—what it means. To me, it’s about small moments of beauty, miniature moments of betrayal, snippets of loss. Who can’t relate to that? That’s what flash is: moments in time.

When I first started writing, I thought I had to focus on the big things—my struggles with addiction, for instance. And I did write about those. But really, life is made up of thousands of smaller moments. Those tiny moments between the big ones—that’s what life truly is.

So, when you write flash, when you zero in on those miniature moments, remember: they matter. They make up a life. If you feel like you don’t have a “big” story, that’s okay. Write about the smaller things—and dig into them. You’ll find their significance.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [39:21]
I love that—write about the smaller things and dig into their significance. It’s that significance that connects us to our humanity and helps us see the beauty and magnificence in our lives—and in all lives.

Not everyone has a huge tragedy or life-altering event—and that’s a good thing! The question becomes: how can we find humanity and beauty in everything?

That’s such a wonderful note to end on today—though I’m going to ask you something after we stop recording, so there may be a to be continued, listeners. Be on the lookout for that.

For now, if people want to get your book Selected Misdemeanors, what’s the best way to do that? You’re also on book tour and doing all kinds of things—how can people connect with you and follow what you’re up to?

Sue William Silverman [40:31]
Most of my events are posted on Facebook—just look up Sue William Silverman. My website is suewilliamSilverman.com.

The book is available wherever books are sold—Amazon, Bookshop.org, or through your local indie bookstore. If they don’t have it, they can order it for you.

You can follow me on my website, Facebook, and Instagram—all under Sue William Silverman. Thank you so much.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [41:12]
Thank you—and be sure to request the book at your library too, so others can discover it.

Thank you so much for being on the show today. It’s been wonderful spending time with you.

Sue William Silverman [41:27]
Thank you for having me, Sue. I just love talking with you.

Lisa Cooper Ellison [41:32]
Me too.