“Radiant Drift” tracks the movement of meteors and of two generations, the narrator and her friend and their parents. Where did the idea of the cosmic and the relational changes over time come from? What do you hope your readers find shifting as they read?
This story was originally an image of two girls lying side by side on the grass, looking at the stars, and when they spoke, their words had to pass through the stars before meaning could reach the other girl. Writing the story involved unearthing the source of the imagined distance between the girls.
I’ve become fascinated by legacy friendships, people you meet who are more like family than friends, who, if you met today, you’re not sure if either of you would go out of your way to become friends, but because the work was done so long ago, you’re bonded now, regardless. It felt undeniable to tie the idea of a hometown friend to a meteor shower: recurring at the same time each year as the Earth passes through the cloud of meteors, as one person returns home, where the light from the meteors is only visible because of their interaction with our atmosphere. The whole thing feels ephemeral and collaborative; it’s an inevitable collision, but only because of circumstances that set us on this path.
Your story moves delicately from the past to the present, and back again. When you write, are you more focused on the past or the future, and why? Do you find yourself preoccupied with one or the other?
For whatever reason, my default setting is first-person present. When I sit down to write, that’s what will come out unless I make a conscious effort to color inside the lines of different perspective rules. Within that present tense, I am always preoccupied with how the past affects the moment shown, how those moments layer on top of each other, and can all be present
at the same time.
How did the structure of this piece come to you? How many drafts, and did you workshop it at all, or have other readers as you edited?
This piece came out of the tap fully formed. I need to be a fervent planner when I write, I need to know everything that’s going to happen and why. I have to be obsessed with mechanics. I don’t have an innate golden thread of a story that I follow when I write, so I need to put in the work beforehand to make sure the road is clear. I brought the second draft to my Montreal
workshop group and received incredibly positive feedback. Once I knew what was working, I cut about two thousand words. I have a writer friend, Jessica, who is amazing, and she helped me slice away almost half of the initial word count without losing anything integral to the piece. I’m very lucky to have a phenomenal writing workshop, an online writer’s group, and several other trusted beta readers to rely on. It also helps that they all work in different genres, such as novels, short fiction, or poetry, so that the eyes I have on my work are looking for different aspects.
Say a little about the choice of second person, which our staff felt really worked in this piece. It’s a hard voice to capture and craft; were there other drafts that used other points of view, or did this piece start there?
“Radiant Drift” was always in second person. A short-fiction-workshop leader once explained second-person to me as ‘a first-person narrator who can’t use the pronoun ‘I’ because they can’t look themselves in the mirror when telling the story.’ I wanted to explore why this might be the case for the narrator in “Radiant Drift,” why she’s unable to look herself in the eye or stamp her name on this part of her story.
Where did this story originate, and did you find there was much “radiant drift” as you worked to tell it?
As soon as I found the entry to this story — the scene with the first knock at the door – everything fell into place. Very little changed through the drafts.
As an editor yourself, what craft angles did you think about as you wrote and edited this piece?
Formal choices I made early on meant that clarity had to be a major focus. There are multiple timelines, the narrator is unnamed, and the dialogue is untagged. This meant that I had to be unafraid of clarity everywhere else, so that it didn’t dissolve into confusion. Signpost often, signpost early: this is “when” and this is “where” we are.
The night sky plays an important role in “Radiant Drift.” What is your relationship with the stars?
I grew up going camping every year. We’d sneak down to the dock at night to watch the meteor shower, even when us kids were really young. There were eight of us: four only-child daughters and our female caregivers (moms and aunts). We’d lie with our heads together in a big circle and point and shriek any time we saw a shooting star. It’s still one of my favorite memories. Stargazing isn’t the same when you do it alone.
Family relationships create pinpoints in this story; yet, there is so much left out of the narrative, leaving the reader to construct the relationships between father and daughter, mother and child, close neighbors blown apart. Can you say a little bit about the choices you made regarding the complex details of the lives of these five characters. What to write in, and what to leave out.
I try, in my writing, to strike a balance so that I’m not oversharing and under explaining. Research rabbit holes I stumble into while writing often end up taking up page space in early drafts simply because I found something interesting along the way, not because the tidbit actually serves the story. Those bits need to be refined so that every word is working. With the families in the story, I wanted to show as little as possible and leave it to the reader to make the connections, and I’m happy with how quiet the characters all feel in this final iteration.
Regret plays a significant part in this story. Tell us about your relationship with regret, and how that inspired, or fueled, “Radiant Drift”?
I find regret is one of the most fruitful emotions – at least for me as a writer. Regret keeps you up at night, it stutters through your body in real, physical ways, and it always comes with a “what-if.” Regret is an engine; it gives my characters momentum to make choices.
In your story, the narrator judges her life against her friend’s pursuits. Against Kraft noodles and PhD’s. How do you think a life should be judged, and how does that align – or drift – from the main character’s sense?
The narrator in this story is sort of reckoning with judgment, and she’s on her way to changing her “judgment” to something softer, like “acceptance,” “understanding,” or even just “curiosity.” She’s on a road to grace for herself and others with that change in diction, and we’ve caught her at the beginning of this epiphany.
What are your current projects you are working on?
“Radiant Drift” is part of a short-story collection I’m planning to start shopping fairly soon, so that’s at the forefront of my priorities right now. However, I also have a creative nonfiction essay collection in the works, which explores loneliness, good intentions, and the years I spent in St. John’s, Newfoundland. A play I wrote, “Pianoland,” was part of the Women’s Work Festival in 2025, and I would like to get it fully composed and staged for next year. Finally, I’m outlining a novel about an estranged prairie family and pitching a TV show. Lots on the go!
What are you currently obsessed with in your work, topics or ideas or structures or?
Second-person perspective, rural Gothic, characters who have big feelings but no words to express them, and how the natural world shapes the way we live.
