Today we are pleased to feature author Pete Stevens as our Authors Talk series contributor. In the podcast, Pete discusses the process of creating the short story “Smoked Fish,” and how, as he states, “This wasn’t the story I [originally] intended to write.”
Originally, Pete says, “Smoked Fish” was a story about “this couple, told through the perspective of “a guy…who [isn’t] really wanting to or ready to get married.” However, as Pete says, “we know as writers and as readers that some of the best results are the results that are unexpected,” so he instead decided to explore the idea of a father-son dynamic, and the “unique conflicts and challenges that would come from that relationship.”
Eventually, Pete states, “it’s the son who understands that he…can mature and progress past his own father,” which leads to his “appreciating all that his father has done for him.” “Even though his father [has set] this groundwork,” Pete emphasizes, “the son, now, is becoming a man.”
You can read Pete’s story, “Smoked Fish,” in Issue 21 of Superstition Review.
On Wednesday June 14th at 7PM, Changing Hands Phoenix will be hosting Paul Brinkley-Rogers as he discusses his new memoir, Please Enjoy Your Happiness. The memoir focuses on his time in 1959 when he had a love affair with an older Japanese woman while serving aboard a US Navy vessel outside of Yokusaka. Paul is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and veteran war correspondent that worked for many years in Asia, covering the war in Vietnam and Camboadia for Newsweek.