Photo submitted by author
Interview by Renee Cronley
Finnian Burnett is a writer and educator with a doctoral degree focused on using story-based pedagogy to establish equity in multicultural classrooms. Several years ago, we connected through the Facebook group Canada Writes and I became an avid fan of their work. So I was thrilled to read their upcoming novella-in-flash, The Price of Cookies (Off Topic Publishing, 2024), in advance and conduct this interview. The Price of Cookies is a compilation of flash fiction stories that delve into the complex tapestry of human emotions. Through interconnected narratives set in a small town, the collection provides various viewpoints on individual characters, all tied together by the symbolic presence of cookies. It is a gentle reminder to be mindful of the fact that there are always multiple perspectives, each person carrying their own untold story.
Renee Cronley: Your novella is filled with a range of characters, all grappling with significant, life-changing events. Can you elaborate on your approach to selecting these characters and what aspects of their personalities or experiences resonated with you?
Finnian Burnett: I chose the stories on a number of factors—how they fit into the theme, how the characters fit into the overall arc, the differences in their stories. They had to all connect, but I also wanted them all to have a reason to exist. Even the awful ones (looking at you, Mr. Leopold) have a place in the tapestry. I live in a small town and we are such a fishbowl of personalities all trying to exist as neighbours. That’s the feeling I wanted to show with each of these characters.
RC: Why did you choose to use food, particularly cookies, as the shared thread that linked your characters’ narratives together?
FB: I have a lifelong, complicated relationship with food, both as a celebratory experience and as a punishment. I struggled with disordered eating most of my life. I’ve heard or been told that cookies are evil so many times, it’s almost ingrained in my head. Even though I can mostly eat a cookie now and enjoy it, I still have that voice in the back of my head that I’m somehow failing at something when I do so. And yet, cookies and other baked goods are the backbone of social relationships. When a person dies, we bring baked goods. When you go to someone’s house, you might bring them muffins or bread or cookies. Food is such a complex and glorious subject and I wanted to show the power it holds both in hurting and healing.
RC: The stories that center around Sal and Adam are my favourite. Were there any additional details surrounding their stories that were left out of the final version?
FB: Yes. I almost brought Adam to life—not in a supernatural way, but in giving him a story from before he died. I started writing it, but I realized I liked that he was only known through the people grieving him and their shared memories. In a way, Adam gets to be the only character without any flaws because we tend to gloss over people’s complexities after they die. Adam didn’t have to worry about disappointing people because he could only be what they wanted him to be.
Sal was the fun aunt, the one who shows up with presents, and then leaves before the dust settles. When she suddenly found herself the mom instead, it was traumatic. Suddenly she has to be the bad guy, she has to make decisions that could affect their lives. She loves the boys, but she had always loved them from afar and I didn’t spend as much time exploring that change in relationship as I would have in a longer work. Sal had more to say—I wrote two more stories about her and Lana adjusting to life as new mothers to grieving children. They didn’t end up fitting thematically, but I’m playing with the idea of writing a novel about Sal and Lana and their lives as unwilling parents.
RC: You have built a reputation for your flash fiction, not only as a writer but as an educator who has facilitated numerous online classes on the subject. As a writer, what is it about flash fiction that captivates you, and why did you select flash fiction as the medium to portray the stories of multiple characters in your novella?
FB: Flash fiction is almost like poetry in story form—the brevity of language, the lyricism, the way characters come to life in such small bursts. I was intrigued by the form from the moment I was introduced to it. It appeals to me aesthetically, but also because I have ADHD and live with depression and those things sometimes combine to make sustaining the work of a novel difficult. Flash fiction gave me a way to focus my creative energy in short bursts. It’s also a challenge as so many writers are drawn to long explanations or detailed descriptions of characters and in flash, that has to be left out without making the reader feel as if they’ve lost something.
For this novella, I wanted the reader to experience the lives of my townspeople the way you often experience the lives of strangers or acquaintances. You may see the man who runs the bakery every day, but what do you really know about his life? When you interact with the school secretary, do you wonder what’s really going on behind the perfectly applied makeup and the carefully styled outward appearance? I wanted the stories to read almost like those glimpses you sometimes get of your neighbours, the things we only find out when someone gets divorced or someone dies, or someone gets in trouble with the law.
RC: What I appreciated most about your novella was the exploration of multiple viewpoints. Through the lens of a small town and its accompanying assumptions, you highlighted the value of perspective by allowing the reader to explore one person’s story from multiple angles. Was this strategically done, or did it happen organically?
FB: Point of view is the most powerful of the craft writing tools. I love how we can change a story by deciding who gets to tell it. And though most of the stories in this collection happened organically, I knew I wanted to add the viewpoints of different characters, to show that things aren’t always as cut and dried as one person might insist. Sometimes, an off-stage character would change the trajectory of a person’s life—Adam is a great example. He affected more than just the original character and I wanted to show how we all experience these things in different ways that are still quite real to us.
RC: It is easy to lose sight of the importance of community when we are focused on our own individual problems. Did it hold significance to you to delve into the theme of community and its intrinsic value while developing your novella?
FB: Community is part of how I survive when I sink into depressive moments or when I’m having imposter syndrome or when the rejection column is getting far longer than the acceptance column. Community in a small town has significant value—I have many people in my life who may not share all my political views and values, but when our town flooded, people stepped up to ensure others had places to stay, food, replacement clothing and furniture. People take care of each other in practical ways—like the day I heard banging outside of my house and went out to find my next-door neighbour was fixing the cracked step on my back porch: to “save you certain death.”
I think a lot about community and how it manifests in different ways and how it changes our lives. One of the takeaways I wanted to share in this work is that we can make people our families. We can be part of something that makes the whole better than the sum of its parts.
RC: Do you think that every story needs a definitive conclusion, or is it okay to leave some lingering questions for the readers?
FB: I am perhaps the worst person to ask this! I love leaving readers with questions at the end and I’m definitely not one for giving a nicely wrapped up ending. When I first started writing, a lot of the rejections I received came with feedback that the ending wasn’t conclusive enough (or happy enough). I always strive to improve my craft based on feedback, but I stuck to my guns about my endings. I like to read stories that leave me with some questions, with something to figure out. I prefer to do the same to my readers. Maybe that’s why flash fiction is so appealing to me. You don’t have to tie everything up. You can leave people wondering.
RC: I’m intrigued by how you manage the time-consuming demands of being a writer and educator. Could you share your strategies for organizing your time and responsibilities?
FB: I’ll be honest, Renee, sometimes I feel as if I’m barely managing to keep my head above water. Other days, I feel as if I’m on top of the world and about to have a breakthrough by developing a crucial system that will make everything else fall into place. I use a combination of a paper planner (I use the Passion Planner which is the only one that has ever worked for me) and my Google online calendar. I have to have things in both, or something will be missed. I recently hired an assistant for the first time and while she has helped with scheduling, it’s still a little panic-inducing to open my calendar and see something there I hadn’t been expecting.
I think self-care is imperative for writers because so much of our writing takes what I call soul energy. I can power through grading papers or setting up a slide deck for a new class when I’m dead exhausted, but I have to be in some semblance of physical and mental health to write well. To that end, I try to get outside every day. I try to drink enough water. I try to balance eating healthy with having good desserts.
As far as writing, I have learned that there’s a delicate balance between giving myself grace and just slacking off so much nothing ever gets done. I think of the way I care for my creative side as nurturing. And when you nurture something, you’re compassionate, yes, but you also push the boundaries of your comfort zone so that you can grow. So, I try to write every day, at least for a few minutes. Sometimes I don’t. Some days, I get hyper-focused and write for ten hours to the detriment of everything else. But mostly, I schedule everything I do during the workday, including meals, in my planner and hope to keep a balance between all the things I have to do for other people and the things I want to do for myself.
RC: What project has your attention right now? Are there any upcoming classes or events that you are organizing or hosting?
FB: I’m obsessed with this series I’m writing with author Andrew Buckley. We’ve just finished the first one, A Murder Most Queer, and we just finished plotting and outlining the second speculative comedy book. The series is basically Shakespeare, but make it gay. Writing with Andrew is so delightful—we laugh through our planning meetings and the joy in our partnership comes through in the writing.
For my solo project, I’ve just finished drafting one of the novels for which I received the Canada Council for the Arts Grant. It’s an epistolary novel about a trans man living in a fat, assigned-female-at-birth body who’s trying to reconcile his complicated relationships with food, gender, fatness, and his dead mother. It’s personal and hits a lot harder than the lighthearted books I’m writing with Andrew, and it takes far more emotional energy. But I love it. I got to interview the mayor of my town for some of the history of Princeton, BC, where my main character grew up, and in the summer, I’m going to London to research where my main character ends up. I think about this book every day, even when I’m not actively working on it. But I’ve given myself a deadline of May 1st to send it to my first reader, so I’m trying to stay on top of it.
I have so many classes coming up, it’s hard to name them all. I’m teaching a novel-writing course and a four-week dialogue workshop for the Alexandra Writers Centre Society. I’ve got several flash fiction workshops happening through Flash Fiction Magazine. I’ll be giving workshops at some British Columbia teachers’ conferences in the next couple of months. For an introverted homebody who feels way safer with dogs and cats than people, I’m travelling a lot over the next few months. I always post my teaching schedule on my website, so if anyone is interested, they can find me there.
Finnian Burnett is a writer whose work explores the intersections of the human body, mental health, and gender identity. They are a recipient of a 2023 Canada Council for the Arts grant, a finalist in the 2023 CBC nonfiction prize, and a 2024 Pushcart nominee. Their work appears in Blank Spaces Magazine, Reflex Press, The Daily Sci-Fi, Pulp Literature, CBC books, and more. Their two novellas-in-flash, The Clothes Make the Man and The Price of Cookies, are available through Ad Hoc Fiction and Off Topic Publishing respectively. When not writing or teaching, Finnian enjoys cold weather walking, Star Trek, and cat memes. Finnian can be found at https://finnburnett.com/
Renee Cronley is a writer from Manitoba. She studied psychology and English at Brandon University and nursing at Assiniboine Community College. Having stepped away from nursing to prioritize her children, she has been channeling her knowledge and experiences into a poetry book about nursing burnout. Her work appears in Chestnut Review, Off Topic, Love Letters to Poe, Weird Little Worlds, Black Spot Books, and several other anthologies and literary magazines. Renee can be found at https://www.reneecronley.com/