We recently connected with Avitus B. Carle and have shared our conversation below.

Avitus, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?

I wish I could say I learned how to write creatively early in my career. That I always had this passion for writing, especially flash. They say good readers make good writers and, unfortunately, I had no love for reading.

I grew up reading books where none of the main characters looked like me. During the time of customizable books where a character could have my name but, as my grandmother pointed out, couldn’t possibly be me with her blonde hair, blue eyes, and fair skin doing pirouettes on the page.

Something my brown skin, box-braided hair with beads and tinfoil ends yearned to do.

I found my way out of the required reading list slump while earning my BA from Old Dominion University, long after my love of writing took root in the 6th grade. I wish someone had pointed me to Toni Morrison and Octavia Butler sooner. That, when asked where I found inspiration, I could say from the works of Langston Hughes, Ann Petry, Sonia Sanchez, and Lorraine Hansberry instead of video games.

If I had found myself and other minorities on the covers, giving speeches, winning awards, and going on adventures where they star as the hero or remain the main character, my reading would’ve influenced my writing a lot sooner. Now, I seek to eliminate the absence of Black protagonists in the stories I tell, giving them their flowers as so many BIPOC authors before me have done.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

My name is Avitus B(uckhaulter) Carle, formally known as K.B. Carle. I live and write outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I love the freedom to experiment with my writing and challenge the ideas surrounding a story’s appearance. Why present an internal war in paragraphs when you can use a Venn Diagram? A girl who loves words runs away as told through a crossword puzzle. Even without playing with structure, I love exploring aspects of life through an abnormal lens such as the end of a relationship: Your Husband Wants to be a Cardboard Cutout at the Last Blockbuster on Earth, or abandonment: You Work at the Last Diner in Existence That’s Always Open for Business.

My stories and essays have appeared in SoFloPoJo, Necessary Fiction, The Commuter (Electric Lit.), and elsewhere. My debut flash fiction collection, “These Worn Bodies,” was the winner of Moon City Press’ 2023 Short Fiction Award and will be published on November 1, 2024.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

I wish I had learned about flash fiction and nonfiction much earlier in my career. I would love to see flash added to high school and college syllabi without the judgement that, just because you are tasked with writing something short (1,000 words or less) doesn’t make the story any easier to tell. I’m thankful my MFA program, the Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing, provided a course in flash prose. I’m excited when I see a panel or lesson plan or workshop that includes flash, spread the word about how wonderful and challenging this form can be!

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

What I find most rewarding about being a writer is when teachers reach out to me, telling me that they either plan to add one of my stories to their syllabus or that they’ve shared my work with their students. When I first started writing, I never imagined that my experimental, weird, short-short stories would be taught in any classroom especially as an example of what writing can do and whenever I see a message or am tagged in a new post about someone sharing my work, just makes me smile and keeps me going.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.avitusbcarle.com/
• Instagram: @avitusbcarle
• Linkedin: @avitusbcarle
• Twitter: @avitusbcarle

Image Credits

Featured Image: Ashley Alliano

Book Cover Artist: Shen Chen Hsieh