Piccolo Fiction to explore monsters, comedy, sports on Saturday

There’s one tradition at the annual Piccolo Fiction discussion that authors must follow. They must start with the prompt, “I ducked into the alley,” and then expand with a new story – or an older one that’s modified.

This can be a creative challenge, especially if the author’s story has little to do with an alley.

Greenville resident Finn Merritt is one of four writers reading at Piccolo Fiction on May 31 — although, as an aspiring stand-up comedian, he thinks being referred to as such is “stolen valor.” He said he struggled with only part of the opening line.

“There’s an alley in that piece,” Merritt said of his work. “I got the alley, it’s just the ‘I ducked in’ part.”

Merritt, who is still making the final edits on his piece for Saturday, said he found the process to be rewarding and a chance to experiment with his creativity.

Charleston author Laurie Devore, Mount Pleasant writer Kate Fagan and Columbia educator Julia Elliott will join him in the short story readings at Blue Bicycle Books for Piccolo Fiction. Each writer infuses the stories with their own backgrounds to make the works wholly distinct, running a little fast and loose with the starting point.

Merritt received the offer to perform at Piccolo Fiction from Blue Bicycle Books owner Jonathan Sanchez after opening for comedian David Sedaris in October 2024.

Merritt approached writing the short story the same way he finds inspiration for jokes. For Piccolo Fiction, his story comes from a visit to an art museum in Austin, Texas, when a security guard followed him around. Merritt thought the guard looked insecure, almost as if he had made the piece of art Merritt was looking at, and was awaiting criticism.

“Every one of my pieces is just one joke that I wrote down,” Merritt said. “However long ago it is. And it’s just something about that joke that is just interesting to me and I want to explore it.”

Monster writing

Elliott, a professor of English and women’s and gender studies at the University of South Carolina, is inspired by teaching classes like “Gender and Monstrosity in Horror Films.” More specifically, the horror films she presents in those classes like The Babadook or Raw serve as influences for her fiction.

Female monsters and the idea of monstrosity are present in Elliott’s work. But these inspirations and influences serve her larger goal as a writer: blending the line between genre fiction and literary fiction.

“I love all kinds of fiction,” Elliott said. “I’m definitely a writer who does a lot of genre bending and jumps back and forth between realism and surrealism, and incorporates fantastic elements.”

Sanchez recommended Elliott’s second book, The New and Improved Romie Futch, for Garden & Gun magazine, appreciating its genre-bending elements.

“A magical realism Southern gothic novel about this middle-aged, often drunk, often broke taxidermist,” he wrote.

So Elliott reached out to Sanchez to find a place to read as part of promoting her short story collection Hellions.

A last minute switch

While Elliott and Merritt have been on the schedule for months, Fagan’s inclusion in Piccolo Fiction came together at the last minute. New York Times bestselling author Patti Callahan Henry was initially the fourth author slated to perform, but she had a scheduling conflict.

So two weeks prior to the show, Sanchez got in touch with Fagan, who accepted. Fagan is a former ESPN writer and author of three books, the most recent of which was her first foray into fiction, The Three Lives of Cate Kay.

With a sports journalism background, Fagan said fiction, to her, is compiling observations about humanity. To infuse her personality into the work, she focuses on the granular details.

“All of a sudden, you’re writing, and you’re like, ‘Wow, I really did love Jolly Ranchers when I was a kid,’ because here my character is eating one,” she said.

With less time to prepare, Fagan said she doesn’t have to follow the rules fully. But fortunately, she relied on the little tidbits she included in The Three Lives of Cate Kay.

“I have this one scene from the book that’s actually in a back alley behind a coffee shop,” said Fagan. “So I feel like that will work for the prompt anyway.”

IF YOU WANT TO GO: “Piccolo Fiction,” 5 p.m. May 31, Blue Bicycle Books. It is free.

Henry O’Brien is an arts journalism and communications graduate of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University.