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The following is another installment of our writers/editors interview series, with Marcelle Heath talking with Northville Review editor Erin Fitzgerald about pop culture, flash fiction, and inside jokes in April 2009. Fitzgerald likes to note that TNR was “named for Northville, CT—a town that Google thinks exists, but was never independently incorporated.” An unintentionally imaginary city, then.

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Marcelle Heath: In addition to operating The Northville Review and your blog, Rarely Likable, you are also a wonderful writer. I really enjoyed “Orange” and your “Dear Wigleaf” postcard in Wigleaf. Can you tell us a little about yourself, your work, and how TNR came about?

Erin Fitzgerald: Thanks so much! I grew up in Rochester, NY. That’s also where I got my first typewriter, attended my first workshop, and broke my first stapler trying to make chapbooks. I’ve lived in western Connecticut with my husband and daughter for a long time now, but we visit Rochester a few times a year to see family and stock up on white hots, Wegmans pop, and Dinosaur BBQ sauce. In other words, we’re expatriates.

Most of my stories are the result of my trying to figure something out—I think clearest with paper or keyboard. That’s meant different results at different times in my life. Right now, it seems to mean flash fiction. Wigleaf is a great place to read flash, and I’m so happy “Orange” found a home there. The “Dear Wigleaf” piece—I was afraid to write that, honestly. But writer-fear is good, even when it’s just about your brain and your bathroom.

I started The Northville Review because I missed being an editor—I had a zine in the 90s, among other things. I also loved the idea of curating something for the Internet, which has given me more than I could ever repay. I’ve been truly amazed by the quality of the work TNR has received. This is an exciting era in which to be a reader and a writer.

Heath: On your submission page, you state that you like work within a suburban and pop culture aesthetic, and several pieces in the current issue address the more menacing side of popular culture (I’m thinking of Roland Goity “Goofy’s Wonderful World of Disney” and Catherine McGuire “The Day I Nuked the Romans“). It seems with work that addresses some facet of contemporary life, there’s an underlying tension between nostalgia and alienation. How do you engage with pop culture and what are some of your interests?

Fitzgerald: The thing I love most about pop culture is that it offers so many different opportunities of ownership. Written response to pop culture, in whatever genre, can be quite good at making that obvious. That’s the case in the pieces you mentioned. Top level, they’re about an amusement park and a video game, respectively—but those are points of reference more than anything. A lot of work in TNR has that foundation. I like to think that TNR’s sensibility encourages people to respond to what surrounds so many, and not feel like they should apologize for it.

Rupert Thompson's novel The Divided Kingdom

I try to be as open to pop culture recommendations as I can. In theory, at least, nothing’s too silly. I like when someone’s very quietly or very openly fooling with an emotional manipulation dial. TV show examples would be Lost, Freaks and Geeks, and Celebrity Rehab. I enjoy the discussion that’s gone on in recent years about how video games such as Braid and Fallout 3 are capable of similar results. I’ve always been fascinated by post-apocalyptic and dystopian themes—my copies of The Stand, Cloud Atlas, Divided Kingdom, and Oryx and Crake are very beat up. I think the movie The Wrestler is another example of the nostalgia/alienation dynamic you mentioned. I love irreverent juxtapositions and the Internet is full of them, like Darth Vader reading “The Things They Carried” at The Nervous Breakdown.

Heath: I love your regular feature, “Inside Jokes, Explained,” in part because an inside joke can never fully be explained to someone outside of it. For instance, in Lauren Becker’s “Dating for Dinner,” a woman goes on Craigslist for free dinners. Her deception is hilariously portrayed, and yet we learn nothing about her. We are as clueless as her dinner dates. Molly Gaudry goes one step further in “Paisley,” by brilliantly eschewing the punchline altogether, offering instead a window into a married couple’s relationship. How did you come up with this feature?

Fitzgerald: A couple of years ago, I went to Vermont College’s Postgraduate Writing Conference and was in Michael Martone‘s short story workshop. In the first session, he asked if anyone included inside jokes in their work—things to amuse themselves that no one else would detect. I was surprised that not everyone did. That got me to thinking about how humor, sharing secrets, and writing are each risky transactions that attempt to forge connections. Explaining an inside joke combines all three, and that made it impossible to resist as a regular TNR feature. Prospective contributors have interesting reactions. When they ask for clarification, there’s not much to do but shrug—there’s no right answer! Those who have accepted the challenge so far have taken it to diverse, interesting places that I never could have anticipated. And the response has been, rightly, quite positive. I hope that future contributors to the feature—we’re always looking for them—will also make it their own.

Heath: TNR is named after Northville, Connecticut. What’s happening in Northville these days?

Fitzgerald: Spring is definitely here. School bus drivers stop a lot more often to yell at the kids than they did a month ago. The farm down the road (run by the encompassing town’s Youth Agency) is planting their vegetable crops. Probably related, I’ve seen half a dozen deer in the last week alone. The neighborhood guinea hen seems really agitated. Everyone who played in the Parks and Recreation soccer league got sunburned last weekend. Team picture day is this Saturday, and no one will have a pen to fill out the order forms. There’s a new Italian restaurant on Route 202, but we haven’t had a chance to check it out yet. Soon, I hope.