Shoutout Q&A with E.P. Tuazon
Author of “The Fishless Cycle” in Reed Magazine
Welcome back to our Friday feature: Shoutout Q&A.
Check out our archives for access to great short stories published through this year.
E. P. Tuazon is a Filipino American writer from Los Angeles (and October is Filipino American History month.) You’ll remember E.P. from our May Shoutout of their fantastic short story “The Fishless Cycle” (4,150 words) published in Reed Magazine.
I strongly recommend reading this amazing story (via the link above), if you haven’t already, before reading this interview. “The Fishless Cycle” is one of my favorite stories published this year.
Other work of E.P.’s has appeared in The Rumpus, Berkeley Fiction Review, Peatsmoke Journal, and Lunch Ticket, among others.
E.P. received the 2022 AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction for their story collection A Professional Lola, and in 2027 they’ll be releasing Kain Tayo (Let’s Eat!) Or Forever Hold Our Piece, another story collection, both of them through Red Hen Press.
E.P., “The Fishless Cycle” is the most moving short story I’ve read this year, and I want to start by congratulating you on it again. It does so many things well, but foremost among them is that it presents as small and quiet, and it even resolves quietly, but the sum of its parts hits with an emotional wallop I’ve seldom experienced as a reader.
Honestly, now, months after I’ve read it, I’ll be revisited by your characters and some of your scenes while I’m sitting at a stoplight somewhere and I’ll tear up…[read it if you haven’t yet, Shoutoutees, link above - and spoilers below!] Please tell us a little about that story’s conception and design.
Sometimes, what helps you finish writing a story is writing another one.
I was working on another story called “Cyclists” (available to read at Split Lip Magazine) at the time—a story inspired by my uncle who, after retiring, joined an all-Filipino cycling group in Chino Hills. While I toiled on that story, my colleague was telling me about her son’s ill-fated foray into starting his own fish tank.
Just like in the story, the fish died, and she was at a complete loss of what to do. Instead of giving advice, I studied fish keeping. I saw there was a phase of conditioning the fish tank called the “fishless cycle” and the story came naturally after that. It is also worth noting that my colleague’s husband is also a police officer like the character in the story, although their relationship in the story is completely different. I thought it was an interesting dynamic to include—a facet in a life.
Here’s a snippet from a great interview with you and Gillian Gee at Berkeley Fiction Review:
“You also need to read what you want to write. […] How will you know what good writing is, if you haven’t even seen it yet? Some of the things that inspire me the most are the kinds of writing that make me think, “Hey, I could do that. I wonder if I could try to incorporate it in my own writing.”
That’s the premise that Short Story Shoutout is built upon. What writers / works would you say have had the greatest effect on what you choose to write about, as well as your style and voice?
Early on, I was heavily inspired by Sandra Cisneros and Raymond Carver. Stylistically and tonally, they are vastly different writers. But what I like about both of them is that their voices are so clear! When you read them, you know immediately that they are earnestly trying to tell you a story. Ironically, as a fiction writer, I always look for an honest voice in both what I read and write.
You’ve written some longer-form work, a novella and a couple of novels, but your latest work is another story collection. Do you see yourself moving towards novels, or will short stories always be a mainstay for you?
When people ask what kind of writer I am, I tell them that I am a short story writer. Short stories are my world and I feel like it is the best medium of expression for me.
Occasionally, the inspiration to write a longer piece like a novel comes up, but writing a novel becomes life-consuming. I have to spend far longer in the world of a novel writing it than I do a short story. I can’t think of anything else and my short story writing suffers, which makes me depressed :)
What can you tell us about the new work: Kain Tayo! Or Forever Hold Our Piece. An intriguing title. Should we be expecting gunplay? :)
Haha! I don’t think there are any guns in this collection that I remember. Correction—there is one story about hunting giant ants haha!
Anyway, Kain Tayo means “let’s eat.” The book is a short story collection where each story revolves around food—the food itself and the making and consumption of it. Most of the stories included in it were stories I wrote around the same time as the stories included in A Professional Lola and looking back at them now, four to five years later, makes me feel nostalgic. Food is still a major inspiration and subject in a lot of my writing. It’s one of my main joys in life besides writing!
I’ve made it a personal mission, in these Q&As, to resurrect the reputation of the terrible, horrible, short-story-submission-rejection. I think there’s a goldmine of hidden benefits that come with them that needs trumpeting. What can you tell us about your lit pub rejection experiences?
There’s a lot to be said! However, the most important thing I like to tell other writers is that just because a work gets rejected doesn’t mean it hasn’t been read.
There are a million reasons why a piece gets rejected, but that doesn’t necessarily mean whoever read it disliked it. I’ve met many people who have read my work at a magazine or publisher that I was rejected from. When you send your work out, your work sometimes makes an impact on people, even if the decision is no.
Rejections are always discouraging, but please know that people are reading you and some of those people are rooting for you! Keep submitting for them!
Can you shoutout a fellow writer / story / book that you think the world needs to have its eyes on now?
Hands down, my favorite thing I read so far this year is Kim Samek’s short story collection, I am The Ghost Here. It’s one of those books I read and say to myself, “damn, I wish I wrote that!”
Samek is so good at making all of these stories bizarre, funny, endearing, tragic, and a little scary. All things I want my stories to do.
Can you tell us how your short story collections came together? What connected you with Red Hen Press for A Professional Lola? And beyond you winning the Grace Paley Prize for it, what is it about your relationship with them that has you working together again for the new book?
I wrote most of the stories in A Professional Lola between 2015 and 2020. By the time I put the manuscript together, most of the stories had already been published in several magazines.
The title story, “Professional Lola”, brought the whole collection together with its theme of family and connection. It’s probably still my most famous and most personal story to date. I remember hearing about it being taught in college and high school classes and feeling a huge sense of pride that people were talking about my family.
I first submitted the manuscript for A Professional Lola to another publisher who came very close to publishing it (like it was literally between it and another manuscript) but ultimately decided not to. I was crushed, but I didn’t give up. The next place I sent it to was Prairie Schooner for their Raz-Shumaker Prize and got Runner-Up. Again, I was crushed for getting so close, but it also taught me that this manuscript was really something special.
So the next place I sent it to, I went big: I put it up for the AWP Grace Paley Prize—one of the biggest prizes for short story collections—and to my pleasant surprise, Z.Z. Packer selected it as the winner. After that, I was introduced to Red Hen who was the publisher publishing it. As a young writer, I idolized Red Hen in Pasadena, so to be published by them was a great honor.
Working with Red Hen has been an amazing experience. They are a small group but they get a lot done! They help give a voice to a lot of people that need one. I am honored that they are putting out my next collection in 2027!
I look forward to shouting-it-out when it hits :) Thanks so much for your time, E.P.!
Thanks for reading Short Story Shoutout.
Check out our archives for more bracing, new short stories, more about the journals that publish them, and interviews with the writers who brought them to life.
And if you’re feeling it, please recommend us to your friends so we can bring more eyes to writers on the come up, weekly.
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