Interview with Kelli Leiner, Runner Up in the Q3 2025 Creative Nonfiction Contest

 

While she obviously left her heart in San Francisco (and the surrounding Bay Area), Kelli moved to the other coast nine years ago where she currently resides in Wilmington, North Carolina with her husband, 15-year-old son, and their menagerie of critters. Kelli has worn a variety of ‘hats’ over the years, from school psychologist and grant writer to a brief, though misguided flirtation in software technical writing (read: technology is not her friend). But her very favorite writing will always be creative, especially stories that illuminate women’s experiences. As such, she is currently nearing the final pre-submission draft of her debut women’s fiction novel and hopes to get it out of the gate sometime soon. When Kelli’s not reading or writing about messy humanity, she can be found hitching a ride on (someone else’s) boat, drinking good wine, or cheering for her son at his basketball games. 

 ----------Interview by Renee Roberson 

WOW: Congratulations, Kelli, and welcome! Your essay about your mother’s final days, "The Blink of a Life," provides a heartfelt takeaway at the end. Having lost both of your parents in a short amount of time, how often do you think of them when wrestling with your own questions about parenting your son? 

Kelli: I think about my parents almost every day, particularly when I’m getting a dose of typical teenage behavior (take what you will from that, lol). It’s very humbling. The hubris I once had pre-kid (for example, “I will never do xyz with my own child…”) died a quick death after becoming a parent. Having a teenager keeps adding nails to that proverbial coffin! I regularly think about what I would say to my parents now and without a doubt the short version would be, “I’m sorry and…thank you!” 

WOW: How did your first draft of this essay change by the final version? Do you have any editing tips for our readers just starting out in this genre? 

Kelli: After I shared the essay with one of my writing groups, I kept most of the content but took some of their advice and changed the order a bit to add more interest to the beginning. Readers know what draws them in and keeps them reading. With that being said, the following are a few editing tips that have worked for me: 

1. Get other eyeballs on your work. There’s no replacement for outside feedback no matter how many times you’ve fine-tooth combed your piece. You might find that something you wrote seemed incredibly clear to you but doesn’t quite land in the same way for others. However, keep in mind that one person’s feedback is not the end all, be all. I usually split the difference. For example, if I’m getting the same feedback from multiple sources, it’s pretty solid. 

2. Walk away. Come back a few days—or, if needed, weeks—later and try to read it with new eyes. Does it still have the same impact? 

3. Read your work out loud. If something doesn’t flow well, consider rewording until it does. 

4. Trust your instincts. It’s easy to have too many voices in your head when you’ve been receiving feedback, a lesson I’m still learning. At the end of the day, however, this is your work. Your voice. If you can maintain anything in the editing process, let it be this. 

WOW: I love this advice. What inspired you to enter this particular writing contest? 

Kelli: I’d been following WOW! for some time and had just finished revising my essay with a local writing group when I stumbled on the contest. It seemed kismet. I must confess, though, that my submission was impulsive, as it needed to be. I struggle with the vulnerability of being judged and other than a nonfiction essay contest in high school (many, many eons ago), I’d never entered one. I made sure to submit it before I lost my nerve! 

WOW: That's incredible! I'm so glad you decided to submit it as it obviously struck a chord with our judges. You mentioned finishing you are working on a novel in the women’s fiction genre. Could you share what some of the themes in it are? 

Kelli: My book,"Wild Bend," currently in its third draft and making its way around beta reader groups, deals primarily with grief and the emotions that often accompany it. I’m a huge fan of messy humanity on the page, so the story also touches on mental illness (including inequitable access to care), romantic love, friendship, found family, and self-forgiveness. 

WOW: Who are some of your favorite writers and what books of theirs would you recommend to us? 

Kelli: I adore anything by Barbara Kingsolver, a writer who makes prose sing like poetry, and Emily

Henry, whose books pose as fluffy beach reads on the shelf, but sucker punch you with an incredible amount of depth, entertainment, and wit. I’m currently reading a book by Amy Jo Burns called, "Mercury" and am digging it! I’m thinking about using it as a comp title and would highly recommend it to anyone who loves to dive deep into messy family stories tinged with intrigue. "The Bright Years" by Sarah Damoff is also one I would recommend in this category.

WOW: Kelli, thank you so much for being here again today. We loved learning more about you and wish you all the success with your novel!

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Interview with Karin Patton: 2025 Q3 Essay Contest Runner Up

Karin’s Bio: Karin is a long-time West Virginia newspaper columnist who lives with her husband Don in a 120-year-old warehouse they are attempting to renovate, despite it being far beyond their skill set. When not covered in remodeling filth, she enjoys refinishing antiques that are one gasp away from the dumpster. Her day job involves managing a recycling center and re-use store in an area rife with old hippies and young back-to-the-landers. Her newspaper columns were once named Best in the U.S. by the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, a bittersweet win considering the stories were about the diagnosis and passing of her youngest daughter from Spinal Muscular Atrophy. She is currently working on a young adult novel about a girl who grows a tail. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Ladies' Home Journal, Writer’s Digest, Family Circle, Woman's World, and Atlanta Parent, among others. 

If you haven't done so already, check out Karin's award-winning essay "Pinned Hopes" and then return here for a chat with the author. 

WOW: Congratulations on placing in the Q3 2025 Essay Contest! How did you begin writing your essay and how did it and your writing processes evolve as you wrote? 

Karin: Years ago, while lying in a hospital bed after receiving heartbreaking news, I spotted a mostly deflated balloon hanging from a tack in the ceiling. I tried to distract myself from what was happening by imagining the scenarios for how that balloon came to be hanging there. The balloon was such a powerful image to me that I knew I would someday write about it, although it took years before I could. 

WOW: It’s so interesting to learn how a simple image or memory can be turned into a powerful piece of art. What did you learn about yourself or your writing by creating this essay? 

Karin: For much of my adult life, I have dealt with sadnesses by distracting myself. It’s become something of a superpower. Still, it wasn’t until writing this story that I realized where the distracting business might have begun. 

WOW: That’s a powerful realization. What connections, if any, do you see between your writing and your interests in remodeling, refinishing, and recycling? 

Karin: I don’t like anything to be wasted, including experiences. With both writing and refinishing, I’m not always wise enough to recognize the value of what I have until I can strip off the layers. The process of writing allows me to slow down what I have gone through and examine it in a way that isn’t possible as something is happening. I can spend time determining what is worth keeping and what can get tossed. What I start with and what I have at the end is often so different it’s nearly unrecognizable. 

WOW: Quite an apt metaphor for the writing process. Which creative nonfiction essays or writers have inspired you most, and in what ways did they inspire you? 

Karin: The writings of David Sedaris inspire me greatly. His beginnings and endings are exceptional. He will begin by causing a belly laugh and then get into something serious or tragic and then step back out again and cause another hard laugh. He can seem to be veering off subject, yet those offshoots always make his stories even meatier. I don’t know how he does it. I can’t think of any other writer as masterful as him. 

WOW: If you could tell your younger self anything about writing, what would it be? 

Karin: I used to believe I was being responsible when I put my writing on the back burner so I could work a second job or refinish a bunch of furniture or some other moneymaking endeavor. I wish I could tell my younger self to prioritize writing since that is where I find peace and a sense of pride and—please excuse the cliché—the things that money can’t buy. 

WOW: Excellent advice! Anything else you’d like to add? 

Karin: The story that placed first in this contest—"You" by Elizabeth Hoban—that is a must read. Perfectly told. Every word was exactly right. 

WOW: Thank you for the shoutout to fellow 2025 Q3 Essay Contest winner! And thank you for sharing your writing with us and for your thoughtful responses. Happy writing! 

Interviewed by Anne Greenawalt, founder and editor-in-chief of Sport Stories Press, which publishes sports books by, for, and about sportswomen and amateur athletes. Engage on Twitter or Instagram @GreenMachine459.

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Interview with Amy DeFlavis, Third Place Winner in the Q3 2025 Creative Nonfiction Contest

 

Amy DeFlavis resides and writes in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Her short stories, flash fiction, and creative nonfiction essays have earned placements in Writers Digest, NYC Midnight, Tadpole Press, and WOW Women on Writing competitions. Outside her corporate day job, she spends her time editing her debut romantic suspense novel and refining her author website. Her moments of respite are found in renovating her historic home, planning adventures to various corners of the world, and manifesting the life of her dreams.

If you haven't already, please take a few minutes and read "Red, White, and Blueland", then return here for an interview with the author!

 ----------Interview by Renee Roberson 

WOW: Welcome back Amy, and congratulations! We're excited to learn more about you and your process for writing and creating thought-provoking essays. Writing about our personal experiences can be therapeutic, but sometimes it’s difficult to arrange our thoughts into a cohesive essay form. Do you have any tips for writers just starting out in creative nonfiction? 

Amy: I think most writers, whether conscious of it or not, pull from the well of their own experiences. We’re shaped by the world around us and the events that mark our lives. Personally, I never set out to write full-on creative nonfiction, so I’m not sure about tips. Being a romance writer, I’d always preferred immersing myself in a world where I knew a happy ending was guaranteed. But as we all know, real life holds no such promise. And the more I tried to incorporate my experiences through the lives of my fictional characters, the more I realized it wasn’t resonating with me any longer the way it had before. It felt hollow and two-dimensional. Somehow, not genuine. So, I made the decision to drop the pretense and dive into the deep end of creative nonfiction. I thought it was going to be scary to pull back the curtain all the way, but it turned out to be the thing that opened the floodgates to deeper, more powerful writing for me. I began to keep a notebook, jotting down any experience, brief interaction, or conversation that struck me for whatever reason. Then I dug into the memories of things I’d pushed aside over the years—the fear that comes with getting older, my father's death, friendships I’d lost, people I’d met during my travels, and the broken hearts scattered along the way. I pulled all those feelings together and then incorporated them into a specific event or scenario in my daily life. So, I would say if you’re just starting out, make notes of the things that happen to you during the day. It could be a brief interaction or passing someone on the street. Or maybe a song that takes you back to a certain place and time. Were you happy, sad, angry? Sit with those emotions. Write about them under the cover of a fictional character if you have to. And then dissect that character until it’s stripped down to its raw components. You might be amazed that underneath all of it, it’s you. At least I was. 

WOW: That's solid advice! As writers, I believe first and foremost, we are observers. What happens when we mix those daily observations with our memories and emotions is magical. The last line of “Red, White, and Blueland” is so powerful and poignant. Writing the final sentence in any short story or essay can be intimidating. Did you struggle at all with figuring out how to wrap up this piece in a way that would resonate with the reader? 

Amy: I’ve always been more of a panster than a plotter, so it’s rare for me to know how I will close out a piece. This one was no different. I just know that for everything I write, I want to do my best to make it stay with the reader. I love it when art/movies/books make me think about them for days after the movie credits roll or I turn that last page of the book. I want my readers to feel that. I want them to take whatever they can from my work and come to their own conclusions about what it means to them or how it makes them feel. For this one, when I thought about that day in New York, the one thing that kept coming back to me was how cold my feet were. It was bitter, and the wind made standing outside almost unbearable. I even considered abandoning the tour. When I’d gotten to the end of the piece, I knew I had to circle back to my cold feet because, through everything I heard and saw, in the back of my mind was the constant throbbing. My feet were the main character that day—a nagging, inconvenient reminder of how uncomfortable I was with so many things in the world. 

WOW: You have to love the double meaning there and I applaud you bringing that physical and emotional discomfort through in your piece. Like you mentioned above, this winning essay revolves around an excursion you took to New York City as a form of distraction, and you’ve also discussed other trips in other essays. We’d love to hear about some of your favorite journeys! 

Amy: I love learning about other cultures and meeting new people. London has quickly become one of my favorite places. I visited last month and wish I could have stayed longer. I have a soft spot for Italy and hope to retire there someday. Australia and Spain had the best food. The most wonderful thing to come from my writing journey, aside from the creative outlet it provides, is that I’ve made friends all over the world through my various virtual writing groups. After only knowing these supportive, creative, wonderful souls online, it’s been amazing to actually meet them in person when I travel. The world has become so much smaller through the power of the internet. The days of writing letters to a pen pal from middle school French class seem so long ago. Now, I can get on a plane and meet the people I’ve only known through a screen for years, but who’ve had as much of an impact on my life (if not more so) than people I see every day. And with the recent passing of my nineteen-year-old dog, I feel like I’m on the precipice of some pretty cool adventures. I’ll miss her, but Japan has been calling to me in my dreams for a little while, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the wind blows me next. 

WOW: What amazing journeys you've had! I just read One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle and truly felt like I was transported to Positano. I can't wait to visit there and try the food and wine! To many of us, our writing spaces are sacred and help us to be our most productive. Living in a historic home, we’d love to hear about any special areas you’ve created for your writing. 

Amy: I’ve tried a few different places in my home to write. I’ve tried music, having plants around, and sitting outside on my patio. But at the end of the day, I always seem to end up sitting on my couch with my laptop on my knees. As much as I want to make some kind of zen space for writing, this old couch seems to hide all my creative secrets under its cushions. 

WOW: Ha! I love that. You’ve experienced success in writing competitions and are working on a novel when you’re not at your full-time job. Are there any other dream creative projects on your list to tackle? 

Amy: Right now, I think I need to dust off my manuscript and dive back in. Halfway through the second draft, I lost steam. I turned to writing competitions to keep the creative juices flowing so I wouldn’t become stagnant. But I also found that it served a greater purpose. Pouring my energies into the Flash Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction pieces improved my writing more than I realized. They took me to greater depths with my creativity and helped me understand more fully what kind of writer I want to be moving forward. I have a renewed passion for my novel and am looking at it with fresh eyes and a new perspective. I look forward to completing the edits to produce a more polished and tightly written novel, so I can finally start the query process.

WOW: You've got this, Amy! Looking forward to reading more from you in the future. 

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Interview with Lauren McGovern: Q3 2025 Essay Contest Second Place Winner

Lauren’s Bio: Lauren McGovern penned an insipid novel at fourteen, thinking it’d win the first Avon/Flare Young Adult writing competition and she’d become a famous author. She lost, but was able to get an essay out of that rejection decades later for Midstory Magazine. 

She’s always been a team player. “The Game” has taken many forms over the years, but never published until now. As losses piled up, Lauren turned it into something many of us do: toggle between then and now, before and after. She loves cheering others on, encouraging friends and family to reach their goals, and she’s felt supported and surrounded when dealt a defeating blow herself. She writes often about the grief she carries from the loss of her younger son, Owen, to suicide. Creative nonfiction is a flexible container for holding and sharing that bereavement with the world. 

Lauren does not consider herself an athlete, more an active participant in sports like cycling and cross-country skiing. She also likes to hula hoop in her kitchen. She loves experimenting with old stuff, like antique postage stamps, discarded library books, and boulders she photographs on hikes, to create something new in the studio space she’s carved out in her home in the Adirondacks of northern New York. She is mostly a writer, but pushes herself to make whatever art she wants. Her essays, collages, photos, and graphic narratives have appeared in The Sunlight Press, What’s Your Grief, The Razor, Gordon Square Review, MUTHA Magazine, and elsewhere. Visit laurenmcgovern.online. 

If you haven't done so already, check out Lauren's award-winning story "The Game" and then return here for a chat with the author. 

WOW: Congratulations on placing second in the Q3 2025 Essay Contest! How did you begin writing your essay and how did it and your writing processes evolve as you wrote? 

Lauren: While the story of my athletic prowess has been told and retold at countless family gatherings over the years, I started writing this essay in earnest in 2019. Then I put it on the back burner. I looked at it again after taking a few writing workshops and publishing several essays and creative nonfiction pieces. I thought the story would appeal to WOW! readers, so I returned to it. 

Teachers like Christopher Locke, Sage Tyrtle, and Joni Cole have helped me figure out what’s in service to my story. Do people need to know I’m the oldest of four? Nope. Are the sports where my siblings excelled important to the narrative? Nope. 

I researched the sports pages from the local paper about the game. That’s where I discovered Miss Phil had prepared my teammates for a shootout weeks leading up to the championship. Of course, I still have my diary. Lots of “so psyched” and a paragraph of exclamation points!!! 

In February, a library director friend secured a Poets & Writers grant for me to conduct a public reading of some of my published work and works in progress, including a version of “The Game.” Miss Phil was in the audience. It was so much fun to see her delight in my retelling and hear her kind words about my writing. That vote of confidence pushed me to put some finishing touches on the essay and hit “submit.” 

WOW: That’s an exciting evolution of your story! Thanks so much for sharing the details with us. What did you learn about yourself or your writing by creating this essay? 

Lauren: Mostly how lucky and privileged I am to have experienced a positive, healthy childhood and an enjoyable high school career with skilled teachers in a rural area, even though I found soooooo much to lament while growing up. If I owned a time machine, I would go back to those years and reach out and connect with classmates and team members who were probably struggling, feeling invisible, ashamed, unsteady, and anxious. All I can do is recognize the protective factors that have shaped me and how to help build those into young people’s lives now. We cannot have life without loss, but with a team in place, you can keep going. 

WOW: In your bio, you write that you experiment with “old stuff” to create something new. Can you speak to how this process informs your writing practice or vice versa? 

Lauren: My favorite book for erasure poetry is The Woman’s Day Book of House Plants by Jean Hersey with illustrations by Harry Marinsky (copyright 1963). The Household Searchlight Homemaking Guide (copyright 1937) is on my shelf, awaiting some use. Its tabbed sections are calling to me. In Health and Beauty: “Daily Walks - Walk on out-of-the-way streets, or, better still, on country roads where motor horns and traffic do not disturb the smooth flow of your thoughts.” Or Color in the Home: “Psychological effect of color - Colors do not possess physical properties that inflict tangible results, but they do soothe or disturb the mind. Consideration should be given to the exciting effect of red, the warmth of orange, the quieting influence of green, the coolness of blue, the happiness of yellow, and the reserve of violet.” Those books and many others are gifts from my husband to support my writing adventures. 

A couple of summers ago, he and I spent hours talking with artist Ann Breedan at the Spring Woods Gallery in Maine. She gave us a tour of the garden behind the gallery space. It was a beautiful, brambly mess. I spotted a birdhouse that’d blown off its foundation, lying on its side with a hole in its moss-covered roof. I photographed it, knowing I’d use it in some future work. I’ve incorporated the broken birdhouse into the opening panel of a graphic narrative I’m trying to publish now. 

WOW: Innovative ideas! I love hearing about ways art creates art. Which creative nonfiction essays or writers have inspired you most, and in what ways did they inspire you? 

Lauren: This is such a hard question. I spend a lot of time in the lit mag world, reading a variety of prose. Anyone published in Split Lip, Hippocampus, and River Teeth Journal is a mentor for me. I’ve also read stunning CNF in Lunch Ticket, like Liz Breen’s “Regarding the Highchair You’re Selling on Facebook” and Eileen Vorbach Collins’s essay winner “Love in the Archives.” I’ve also been inspired by Kelsey Francis’s flash piece “Teacher who is a Mother who is a Teacher” in Longleaf Review, but anything Kelsey writes is something I want to read. Lucy Zhang is a writer who codes and collaborates; she makes fascinating stuff. Bethany Jarmul and Myna Chang, writers who’ve won WOW! contests have also inspired me. 

I look at the essay structure, especially if it’s an experimental form; I examine ways they balance humor with heartbreak, the use of symbolism, word choice, how much an author reveals and what they leave up to us readers. 

I also read a lot of fiction. I’d read Lily King’s grocery list if she let me. Ditto for Kevin Wilson. 

WOW: Ha! Their grocery list! I love it. And that’s a wonderful list of lit mags and essays, too. If you could tell your younger self anything about writing, what would it be? 

Lauren: You are going to pick up the book SomeBody to Love by Leslea Newman in the Strand Bookstore on your first date in NYC with the man you’ll marry. Your relationship with your body, food, and exercise will be transformed because of the author’s words and that partnership. You will build a home and a life that grows out of that first date. Reading and writing will accompany you along the way. Oh, and the internet is coming. Writing opportunities will explode. It’s going to be wild. Buckle up. 

WOW: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to give our younger selves that kind of preview? Anything else you’d like to add? 

Lauren: I have a mantra that’s a variation on the ubiquitous messaging in airports and train stations: “If you see something, say something.” I reach out to writers when their work has moved me, telling them specific lines I loved, why the opening or closing of an essay worked, and congratulating them on the publication. It builds community and I think everyone should adopt this routine. I love to hear from readers; I treasure the positive feedback people have taken the time to communicate with me over the years. When I'm licking my rejection wounds, I return to those messages for an emotional boost. 

WOW: That is a fabulous idea, and a truly an uplifting way to build community. Thank you for sharing your writing with us and for your thoughtful responses. Happy writing! 

Interviewed by Anne Greenawalt, founder and editor-in-chief of Sport Stories Press, which publishes sports books by, for, and about sportswomen and amateur athletes. Engage on Twitter or Instagram @GreenMachine459.

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