Just One Thing with Vanessa Hua

Vanessa Hua’s flash “Forecast” shows us how destruction of one kind leads to another, a cascade of disappearing. Here she shares just one thing about the piece:

“My story was inspired in part by a conversation I had with my twin sons a couple years ago, when a wildfire haze hung over Lake Tahoe in the heat of summer. One wished out loud that we had picked somewhere cool during the summer, and that he planned to live somewhere not too hot when he grew up. We suggested foggy San Francisco; I didn't tell him about predictions the fog might someday disappear due to climate change. I started thinking about what life might be like, when that day arrived.”

In May, I was delighted and dazzled by students at Lowell High School, who read my debut novel, A River of Stars, which is set in San Francisco. Their final assignment: to create board games based upon the characters, significant objects, and questions drawn from the novel. The model of the Golden Gate Bridge impressed me—those spires which for now still get fogged in.