Just One Thing with Ani King

Ani King’s flash “Mother-Mother, Wasp-Mother” buzzes with longing, stings with nemory, and sighs with all a missing person leaves behind. Here they share just one thing about the piece:

“This is one of the three stories I've ever written or published that still don't have a Spotify playlist to accompany them. Music really tends to drive and anchor me especially when it comes to stepping back into the mood, cadence, setting of a piece, and usually part of my (very fluid, really it's disrespectful to processes to call it a process) writing process is to throw together something with at least a few songs that embody a character or place. But this one tethered me to it all by itself and I wrote it unaccompanied by anything but house sounds and regular summer background noise.”

A white person smiling, with short, brown and grey hair, large-framed tortoiseshell glasses like their dad probably wore in the 1980s, and a medusa piercing. Subject has a beam of a beam of pale blue light cutting across their eyes — Photo credit: Matt Goias

SLMFebruary 22, 2024blog, just one thing