JR Fenn: Tiny Vessels
Welcome again to the new interview series at 100 Word Story to promote forthcoming and recently published books by our contributors. Authors answer five questions, each in 100 words or fewer. If you’re a contributor with a new book and you’d like to be included in this series, please reach out to us at hundredwordstory [at] gmail.com.
This week, we’re delighted to feature an interview with contributor JR Fenn about her chapbook Tiny Vessels, which will be released by Red Mare Press later this week. Tiny Vessels was selected by Rita Bullwinkel as the winner of The Masters Review’s 2024 Chapbook Open. One of the seventeen stories in this collection is “The Matchbox,” which was first published by 100 Word Story in 2025.
Is this the book you set out to write?
This book is a record of the pieces I wrote over the last decade, during which I was pregnant, raising small children, teaching college. When I had my first child, I realized my time on earth is finite, and I needed to go for what I really wanted to do, which had always been writing. I switched fields, got my MFA, and wrote in every moment I could find. These pieces are some of what resulted from that journey. When I pulled them together into Tiny Vessels the different stories resonated in a way I couldn’t have planned in advance.
What is one of your favorite sentences in this book?
Everyone on this mudball’s just trying to do their best. That’s what the mother says to the daughter in “Memory Box,” the first story in the collection. She’s speaking as she’s about to pass, her spirit dispersing through the universe, after being hit in a traffic accident. I find everyday aggression very disturbing. It fills me with dread and sadness. Now, I try to remember the mother’s words when I encounter recklessness, and to wish the person freedom from suffering.
If you were to offer a recipe for how to write this book, what would be the ingredients? Steps?
Start with a kid in Appalachia, running barefoot around a farm with a big yard where there was always a dog. Season with love for tree-climbing, collecting small treasures, singing dreamy songs, and teenage years learning to drive on mountain roads. Add long stretches living in coastal Alaska, Yangon, Devon, and Western New York, plus visits to Maine, Canada, Iceland. Shake in partnership, parenthood, awe for the natural world, a sense of the evolutionary past, and Earth memories translocated to celestial vantage points, the strangeness of which are discoverable only via fictional modes. Cook for a decade. Sprinkle with stardust.
What did you learn while writing this book?
An image, a string of images, isn’t enough. It’s a starting point, the grain of sand under the oyster’s tongue, but the storyworld needs to be set into motion, take on a life of its own, and I can’t make that happen. All I can do is create the conditions. I get into writing any morning I can, at least for a bit. Reading, going to film festivals—following a spark of interest even though I don’t understand why—is part of my method. I need to take in so much of the world for a story to germinate, grow, become itself.
Who do you think would dig this book? Or: Who is this book for?
Dreamers, drifters, children, parents, singers, travelers, lovers, anyone who’s grown up, anyone who’s stood on the edge of one continent longing for another; anyone who cherishes the living planet, the life cycle, our pale blue dot that lifts us up on its mossy ground, all of us connected by the gift of breath. Anyone who’s ever enjoyed a good Apple Danish. Oh, and anybody who loves the sudden illumination of micro and flash, and of course the 100-word story!
This is so inspiring! Sometimes the vision of an entire novel – the weight of it – the demands – the commitment of time and energy can just douse your ability to start. But to think in terms of “just 100 words…” how hard can that be? I think I could do that! Very encouraging – and a lovely interview!