Just One Thing with Claudia Monpere

Claudia Monpere’s flash “Girl Locks” closes in on us, the tight prose showing us a grim reality for a young woman.Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

“I wrote my first draft of "Girl Locks" on the plane flying to the 2024 AWP. The notion of flight triggered the story idea. A few weeks earlier, I'd been in a Sarah Freligh class, and one of her prompts asked us to write a flash story using a poetic form. I'd enjoyed doing this, so I decided to see if this story concept would work as a kind of sestina. Reproductive freedom has been on my mind constantly since Roe v. Wade was overturned. "Locks" and "girl" came quickly as end words; I knew they needed repetition throughout.  But it took a while to come up with the other four end words. Writing different drafts, I ended up sometimes breaking out of the sestina form, which seemed fitting for this story.”