With her runner-up essay in the Q3 2026 Creative Nonfiction Essay contest, "Big Fist: What to do When the US Begins Bombing Your Immigrant Husband's Home Country", Nicole Brogson gives readers a uniquely personal perspective of an event that to many of us was just a far removed event, a flash on our daily newsfeed.
Nicole Brogdon is an Austin TX trauma therapist interested in strugglers and stories, with fiction in Vestal Review, Cincinnati Rev, Cleaver, Flash Frontier, Bending Genres, Centaur, SoFloPoJo, Cafe Irreal, etc. Best Microfiction 2024, Best Microfiction 2025.
You can find Nicole on Bluesky @NBrogdonWrites!
WOW: Your essay "Big Fist: What to do When the US Begins Bombing Your Immigrant Husband’s Home Country" begins on the first day of the United States bombing of Iran in February 2026. But it feels like it has bigger themes. Family. Distance. When you read your essay what do you feel it's about?
Nicole: In non-fiction connected to a world event, it’s important and tricky to find a personal way into the story, without culturally appropriating someone else’s experience. Perspective. Being respectful of even a spouse’s subjective emotional experience. It’s equally important to find a subjective human personal resonance, compassion, with many of the troubling political issues that are afloat in this time.
For this essay, I wanted very much to empathize with immigrants in this country, whose birth countries are experiencing war and conflict far away. Of course, on a personal level, I have a dear husband who migrated from Iran, and many Iranians in my life. Being an immigrant is a special kind of split consciousness. We can all relate to that split experience, as humans – childhood “Home”, and where we are now, as Adult individuals— particularly since we are all born from generations, immigrants, and travelers who embarked on a great journey. People traveled far, physically, geographically, genetically, to result in the “I” who is here now. Myths and stories are about journeys, our personal psychology is a journey, and our genetic histories as individuals, no matter how far back we need to go to find migration, are rooted in journeys.
WOW: Is there a common theme to your writing or do you write about many different topics?
Nicole: I am particularly interested in struggles. In fact, I have a flash piece in the lit magazine Ghost Parachute called “Strugglers”, that’s dear to my heart. The human condition is struggle. Fiction, of course is interested in heroes’ journeys, conflicts, struggles. There are many small, absurd struggles, too, in our everyday lives, even if we’re lucky enough to have relative comfort.
Absurdism, surrealism, parables, dark humor, gothic elements, interest me as natural writing elements to use in depicting any of these absurd, perplexing problems of daily life. Dream logic, actual dreams, are rich fodder for our own fiction and poetry writings. I’m interested in the drip, drip of problems and absurd happenings on the characters in my stories. And ultimately, in the resiliency and overcoming of problems.
WOW: Do you feel your work as a trauma therapist affects your writing?
Nicole: Absolutely. I try not to think of direct individual clients when I’m writing, out of respect for them, for confidentiality, and for my psychotherapist day job. But after 20 years working as a therapist, I believe more acutely what I’ve always believed: Everybody has a story, we just don’t know what it is yet. I tell myself that, when I encounter someone odd, rude, or struggling out in the real world. We don’t know what they’ve been through. We’re welcome to back off, use boundaries, whatever, but, ‘There but for some grace—and luck—for now, go I.
WOW: Do you have any favorite writers? What have you learned from them?
Nicole: I love all the great masters of the prose poems – the inevitable Charles Simon, Russell, Edson, Ada Limon, as well as other poets, such as Jericho Brown. These feel like virtuosos in terms of language. In my early adulthood, I read many Latin American, magical realist writers, particularly Gabriel Garcia Marquez. I love a good novel and someone who is skillful with letting dialogue reveal. I have recently been reading books by the talented Irish writer, John Boyne, as well as more prose poems, for their musicality.
WOW: Do you belong to any writing communities (virtual or real life)? How do they help you with your writing?
Nicole: Trusted beta readers help us grow. They need to “get us”, and they are hard to find. Right now, I belong to two different small group writing groups who are invaluable readers and now great friends to me. One group is a trio I formed, after looking for two years for the right people to share work with, in short term online writing classes. I met and subsequently chose these two women whose feedback and writing styles were admirable and resonant for me, in a writers.com online flash fiction class six years ago. The second group was formed by a male colleague at a writing retreat, when at the end, he invited three of us to join him for a monthly zoom meeting/writing exchange. I think it’s important to name the group, creating the feeling of a unified team. Thus, the first group is the Chicas, and the second group is the Moose. Makes me chuckle every time one of us says the group names.
In both groups, in addition to critical feedback, I hear, and am emphasizing, stylistically what each one of us does best, so that each writer can continue to grow his or her authentic, self-at-best writing voice. Invaluable.
WOW: I find in intriguing that your writing groups concentrate on specific writing pieces but also the broader "this is who I think you are as a writer" question. What are you working on now?
Nicole: I am working on a larger project, called, “Mom Gets Around”, which I first pictured as a “novel in flash“, is now more like a novel, with chapters of varying lengths.
Conversely, I’m also deeply reattached to reading, studying, and writing prose poems. I’ve had many pieces (that began as prose poems) published in various literary magazines, sometimes as “flash fiction” submissions (when I see, or add in, more escalation).
Of course, a clear distinction is not always obvious between microfiction and prose poem. I do like the freedom of thinking of short pieces as “prose poems”, where I’m able to focus on surreal subjects, lyrical sounds, and poetic language, and get in and get out in a short word count, often about 100–220 words. If it really wants to turn into more of a story, then I think in terms of escalation, adding in or working in three parts, beginning, middle and end, with escalation tending to occur in the middle.
Furthermore, I’ve benefited greatly from the poet Jose Hernandez Diaz’ zoom classes in prose poem (available usually as a package of 4 Sunday classes). He provides a weekly curated reading worksheet, small group discussion, and several in class 10 minute writing prompts—great for developing more writing fluency!
WOW: The idea that your writing has presence, "If it really wants to turn into more a story..." will stay with me. Thanks for your time and we look forward to hearing more from you.
