Michelle Wright, Fall 2014 Orlando Short Fiction Winner
It’s so hard to create a world and draw living characters and make the reader feel something, all in just a few short pages–“Moon Shiny Night” did all of this beautifully. Without even naming the characters I felt connected to these girls, felt their brief, wondrous connection to the old man next door–and I ached, knowing it would all be over, and the old man would be left alone.
—Vanessa Diffenbaugh, Fall 2014 Orlando Short Fiction Finalist Judge
Congratulations to Michelle Wright on the selection of her story, “Moon Shiny Night,” for the Fall 2014 Orlando Short Fiction Prize! “Moon Shiny Night” will be published in Issue No. 17 of the Los Angeles Review.
We asked Michelle to talk about her story and to tell us what publication means to her. She replied:
Through this piece I think what I wanted to capture was the feeling of things coming to an end – whether that thing be a season, an encounter or adolescence. I wanted to examine that time in teenage existence when we vacillate between self-absorption and an interest in the wider world, between insouciance and responsibility.
I write about people and situations that I feel the need to write about, especially those who don’t have much of a public voice or presence. I use my writing to express things that I feel are worthy of exploration and discussion. Publication gives me the chance to put those situations and characters out for others to encounter, reflect on and maybe gain an insight into.
Michelle Wright lives in Melbourne, Australia where she writes short stories and flash fiction. She’s won the Age, Alan Marshall and Grace Marion Wilson Prizes, and placed second in the Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction. She was awarded the 2013 Writers Victoria Templeberg Residential Writing Fellowship and spent six weeks researching stories in Sri Lanka.
