Nathan Long’s short story, “Burying Your Dog” appeared in Issue 10 and can be read here.
Tell us a little about “Burying Your Dog.”
While this is based on my experience, I chose second person as a way of encouraging others to have a personal relationship with their pet after death, to at least question or consider what it means to give up the body to a vet, to not know where it goes or what happens to it. Though self burial may seem strange to some, I think the opposite is and I wanted to convey the complex feelings and thoughts that we get to experience when taking in this ritual, even the potentially illegal aspects of it.
What was the most difficult part of writing this story?
Not knowing if it was simply sentimental or of interest to others.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
Justin Torres’ We the Animal. A great use of first person plural as well as flash fiction like small chapters that build into a novel.
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
Haruki Murikami. I’d love to know what he would drink and listen to– he used to run a jazz bar– and I’d love to talk to him about how he creates mystery out of such plain sentences and common images.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
I’m working on sending out a collection of fifty flash fictions called The Origin of Doubts. “Burying Your Dog” is one of the stories in the collection.
Our thanks to Nathan for taking the time to answer a few questions and share his work. Read “Burying Your Dog” here: www.sequestrum.org/fiction-burying-your-dog.
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Nathan Long’s work has appeared in various journals, including Tin House, Story Quarterly, Glimmer Train, and Wilde. His work also appears on NPR and in anthologies such as Strange Tales V and Surreal South. Long lives in Philadelphia and teaches at Stockton University.