Sarah Fawn Montgomery’s small assortment of small essays, Abbreviate, examines how the injustice and violence of girlhood leads ladies to simply accept—and even declare—small areas and tales. Within the interview beneath, Mialise Carney asks Montgomery about crafting temporary essays with complicated threads and the liberty of writing nonfiction in our present political local weather.

Mialise Carney: In Abbreviate, you employ the flash essay kind to discover ladies’ being socialized to take up much less house. How did you resolve to make use of this small kind to inform these tales?

Sarah Fawn Montgomery: Flash was a method for me to acknowledge how women and girls are anticipated to shrink themselves for the world, in addition to to withstand this shrinking by juxtaposition. Most of the essays study the small areas and tales of girlhood and womanhood like girlhood toys or home labor, however most of the essays power very giant tales about issues like home violence or predatory males right into a small house as a reminder of what occurs when the world tries to comprise and silence ladies. I used flash to discover the distinction between expectation and actuality, the methods the goals and needs, hurts and haunts of girlhood and womanhood are so very giant though the world insists they’re insignificant. Reclaiming this small house was a method to make use of the expectations enforced by others as an act of subversion, proving that even once we shrink ourselves to suit into these containers, we are able to nonetheless take up loads of house.

MC: Regardless of their dimension, every essay seamlessly weaves collectively many threads, from mild moments of girlhood companionship to incisive critiques of misogyny to poetic reflections. How do you are inclined to a number of threads in a flash essay whereas nonetheless sustaining a tense tone and focus?

SFM: Our lives are usually not comprised of a single thread, as a substitute a tangled knot of experiences and feelings, so I attempt to replicate this in my essays, regardless of their dimension. I sometimes have a thematic throughline that hyperlinks seemingly disparate threads. For instance, in “Thriller Home” (which first appeared in Brevity) the threads of visiting the Winchester Thriller Home as a lady and later as a younger grownup are woven with threads concerning the traumas my childhood mates skilled and the abuse I skilled in my first relationship. However these are all tied along with a unifying thread exploring how younger ladies grow to be grownup ladies who shut themselves off for cover, ladies the world insists is likely to be mad for merely attempting to outlive. A unifying throughline permits me to attach a number of subjects collectively, regardless of how seemingly unrelated they is likely to be, so long as I make it clear to readers how every topic or thought threads again to this thematic coronary heart.

MC: These essays usually meditate on particular objects, particularly touchstones of 90s girlhood tradition, as vessels to discover bigger themes of gender, abuse, friendship. What do you want about inspecting objects as a method into exploring better themes?

SFM: Exterior objects are a beautiful option to contextualize time and place, in addition to to construct symbols and themes. I’ve at all times beloved utilizing exterior objects to clarify the self as a result of these sources of fascination in our lives reveal a lot about our inside landscapes. On this assortment I used to be notably fascinated by utilizing exterior objects—Polly Pocket, Skip Its, jelly pens, sweet necklaces, black lights, Spice Ladies albums, Tetris, Dungeons & Dragons—to place readers within the 90s nostalgia of my girlhood earlier than turning to darker themes. These objects supplied an anchor level for notably complicated subject material like sexual assault, disordered consuming, and emotionally abusive relationships, which had been too tough for me to write down about with out an exterior object to deal with, and which can have additionally been too tough for readers to discover with out the security of those seemingly benign exterior objects to return to all through the e book.

MC: A central theme within the assortment is efficiency and expectation, in a single essay, you write, “We all know girlhood is a efficiency, womanhood much more so.” How do you navigate the expectations your viewers has of you as a author? Do you ever end up “performing” a task on the web page?

SFM: I really feel little or no stress to carry out on the web page. I’m somebody who internalized most of the messages surrounding efficiency and expectation as a lady and nonetheless carries these—regardless of my finest efforts—into womanhood. However I’ve at all times thought of the web page to be a protected house when the world is just not. I don’t really feel stress to navigate the expectations of an viewers as a result of nonfiction is an invite for readers to inhabit the world I assemble on the web page, relatively than a requirement that I inhabit a selected world off the web page. There’s a freedom within the style that women and girls are usually not afforded in our present cultural and political local weather, one which seeks to disclaim fact with a purpose to acquire management over ladies’ and girls’s lives. Nonfiction permits me to write down the reality of my expertise in a world that seeks to silence this fact. It additionally permits me to reject gendered expectations and in doing so create on the web page the form of world I want to inhabit.

MC: These essays are sometimes set inside confined areas which displays the expertise of dwelling inside a physique tightly managed. In 2025, as politicians foyer for extra restrictions on ladies and ladies’ our bodies, particularly these with intersecting identities, do you see writing and publishing these essays as a method to withstand this policing?

SFM: Completely. Although these essays—and Abbreviate—are small, they declare house for the lives of women and girls which can be more and more below assault. They unapologetically study subjects politics more and more considers taboo—sexual our bodies, queer want, office harassment. And so they voice tales society more and more seeks to silence—sexual assault, home violence, predatory males in positions of energy. It was exactly as a result of the world needs to silence these tales by laws, coercion, and violence, that claiming house on the web page was important for his or her survival. And generally resistance is so simple as survival, however I additionally hope these essays are a name to motion, a reminder that women and girls are deserving of house, and if the world is not going to give it to us, then we’ve the appropriate to assert it for ourselves by any means.
___

Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the creator of the flash essay assortment Abbreviate. She can also be the creator of Nerve: Unlearning Workshop Ableism to Develop Your Disabled Writing Apply, Midway from Dwelling, Fairly Mad: An American Pharma Memoir, and three poetry chapbooks. She is an Affiliate Professor at Bridgewater State College.

Mialise Carney’s writing has appeared in swamp pink, Washington Sq. Evaluation, Sales space, and Barren Journal, amongst different locations. She obtained her MFA from CSU-Fresno, and can start her PhD in artistic writing and literature on the College of Cincinnati in fall 2025.

Tagged: flash nonfiction, gender and style