on never flinching
new award-runner-up fiction published in The Missouri Review's BLAST
My short story, “Thanksgiving, 2001,” was published Thursday, February 26 on The Missouri Review website’s BLAST.
TMR’s online-only prose anthology, BLAST features prose too vibrant to be confined between the covers of a print journal.
“Thanksgiving, 2001” was one of three runners up for TMR’s 2025 Jeffrey E. Smith Editors’ Prize. When we saw the list posted, we were like, oh, how weird is it that my location is Northampton, MA, and another runner-up is in Bothell, WA (it’s weird because I’m from western Washington). Turns out, the runner up from Bothell also graduated from the Eastern Washington University Creative Writing MFA! How weird is that!!
This is what TMR wrote about my piece, and I could not be more honored:
“Thanksgiving, 2001” is a black comedy set in a “pentagram” of punk houses in Olympia, Washington, in the months after 9/11. Never flinching, Liina Koivula’s short story explores queer community, human connection, and the decision to define oneself on one’s own terms.
NEVER FLINCHING!!! The best thing anyone could say about my work. This is the biggest and most gratifying publication of my two-year publishing career. I’ll be retiring now. Jkjkjk.
Back in the fall of 2021, shortly after I began my MFA at EWU, I got a ‘good rejection’ from The Missouri Review, for the story that became my novel-in-progress. I felt from the beginning like TMR was a good fit, and kept submitting to their contest every year, along with a few regular submissions. “Thanksgiving, 2001” was my sixth total submission to TMR, my fourth to their annual contest. I almost didn’t submit! They sent me a freakin’ postcard in the mail, advertising the deadline extension. On the last day, I went to Looky Here’s Submit to Lit Mags meetup. I debated which piece to send. Submitted this one with good vibes. Then ran off to Greenfield’s No Kings rally.
Obviously it would’ve been cooler to win $5,000, but I do get paid $100 for this contribution! The bottom line is, keep submitting when you know the publication is a good fit for your work.
“Thanksgiving, 2001,” takes place exactly as titled, in a fictionalized version of Olympia’s black houses and queer punk scene. I admit I’ve never lived in one of the black houses, although I did view one, once, when we were looking for a new place. I’ve never been in a band. I did live in shared housing in other parts of Olympia, and I did go to queer punk shows every week for several years.
Go read the story first, before I start demystifying it.
This story’s premise is purely fiction, and the characters are in no way based on real people, but it does have more bits of my real life in it than any other piece. The very first scene did happen to my bff, but it happened in the parking lot of the 1970s faux-Mediterranean apartment complex on the west side where we lived when we first moved out. The part about the childhood neighbor’s house getting wrecked by drunk classmates is real, and is the real reason I avoided boys in high school. Someone I loved did say, “My big butch daddy, let me schlob your knob!” after I said I didn’t want to be treated as fragile and feminine, but we broke up a week or two before Yoyo A Gogo, not during. I was the opening manager of a fast food restaurant. My drunk and stoned co-worker, when asked what he really thought of me, did say, “Liina, I think, what the fuck,” and I took it as the highest compliment. Another stoned co-worker did once beg me to make him mac and cheese. I do get brutal period cramps.
On 9/11, my housemate did knock on my bedroom door and say, “They’re blowing up the Pentagon,” and my first reaction was, “Fuck yeah.” I didn’t know about the Twin Towers or the workers in the Twin Towers, I probably didn’t even know people worked in the Twin Towers. We did proceed to smoke pot at 7:30 on a weekday morning.
BUT EVERYTHING ELSE IS FICTION!
This story used to be called “Criminals,” and it is, in fact, based on the Atlas Sound song, “Criminals.”
This criminal
Walked into my room
He asked me
Why do you live this way?
Think of all you could have
What I would take
The first draft of this piece I wrote for PNBA Book Award winner Leyna Krow’s workshop. It had a similar premise but different details and a totally different ending. I remember someone complaining that the original narrator was too much of an edgelord, which was probably accurate. She softened in subsequent drafts. Someone else didn’t know what a ‘punk house’ was. In a later draft, my advisor, Sam Ligon, didn’t buy an alternate ending. It wasn’t true for the story. OK. All right.
I knew for a long time that this story would require a complete rewrite, from zero. I did NOT WANT TO. Finally, a year ago, I sat down to do it.
I made the premise a little easier, and I saw how it connected to other stories in my collection. I stripped it way down. Then added sprinkles. I operated under the principle from Jerome Stern’s Making Shapely Fiction: “if your character is cold and wet, keep your reader cold and wet.” My character is exhausted, with period cramps, and has to get up for work in a few hours. I split the story into quarters, word-count wise, and made sure to mention the ticking clock and the physical discomfort in each segment. It worked!
It is heart-expanding that a funny story about queer stoners in the Pacific Northwest was a runner up for The Missouri Review’s contest. Max Delsohn paved the way! Kaden has been hypothesizing that we are going to see a resurgence of funny fiction, which I am so here for. Kevin Yeoman and I used to commiserate, during the MFA, about how most stuff getting published by lit mags was Grave and Serious™. Those were the last days of the trauma plot.
I have been taking a break from heavy submissions, to finish the second draft manuscript of my linked story collection. In “Thanksgiving, 2001,” you’ll find cameos by characters from “Breeders” and “Wisdom Teeth,” and “Inheritance.” I’m so stoked for you all to see how they all fit together in a book. Eventually.