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In one of the dozens of flash fiction stories found in Ken Rivard’s newest collection, Up Front, a teenage girl sits in a high-school classroom and attempts to stop the clock through the sheer power of will.
For anyone who has memories of watching a high school clock tick excruciatingly slow, the idea may seem strange. But as the 500-word story wraps, it becomes clear that the young girl wants time to stop to derail some potent life drama she is experiencing.
Despite its short length and seemingly simple premise, it’s a poignant little story and one that offers a compellingly rich snapshot of the thought process of a teen overcome by adolescent fear and delusion.
“I had heard a story about a girl being pregnant at 16 and I thought what if she wanted all time to stop so the baby would stop growing inside of her,” says Rivard. “I just imagined the story. I could lie to you and say ‘Oh, it really happened.’ But I just made it up.”
Up Front is the second collection of flash fiction by Rivard, whose 2022 book CanalWatch was based on observations he made of the characters he observed along the La Wai Canal on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The inspiration for Up Front was closer to home, drawn from things he witnessed when visiting secondary schools in Montreal and Calgary. In 1974, Rivard visited a high school while writing his thesis at McGill University when he was an English-lit student. Titled The High School Students’ Poetry, it had him turning adolescent poems into short stories. Since moving to Calgary more than 40 years ago, Rivard has made similar trips to high schools and junior highs, often to hold workshops for both students and teachers about creative writing.
He was able to observe students or, at the very least, hear compelling little stories about them from fellow educators. The simplest definition of flash fiction is a literary format that produces short stories that usually clock in at less than 1,000 words. Most of the 50-plus stories in Up Front are in the 500-word range. All have adolescents at their centre, with most adults popping up only as vague, genderless characters that are usually referred to as “the voice upfront.” Often they are teachers or other authority figures who accidentally draw seemingly random — albeit often deep and vivid — thoughts from the young people around them. None of the characters in the book are given names.
“What I’m trying to do is invite the reader to come in and sit in a moment, a 500-word moment,” says Rivard. “Pull up a chair and just sit down with me and with this story. Maybe sometimes the fewer words that are used, the more power a story has. A lot of the stories began with a striking moment based on observations. It could be a particular person or place and often I would just take that image and ask myself ‘What if?’”
Born and raised in working-class Montreal, Rivard has written several children’s books, novels and short-story collections. Nearly a decade ago, he retired from teaching English literature at Mount Royal University to concentrate on writing full-time. The prolific writer recently completed both a novel and another collection of flash fiction. He discovered the genre after reading American writers of flash fiction online.
Many of the stories in Up Front are funny and endearing. Comb on the Range offers a quick snapshot of a teen meticulously grooming himself in front of a bathroom mirror. Lipstick centres on an overweight girl’s desperate attempts to find her lipstick in a large, overstuffed purse. See Me recounts a withering story Rivard heard about a girl who loses the tissues she has used to pad her bra.
“It’s trying to isolate moments where adolescents are struggling, maybe they are awkward like the little girl who stuffs Kleenex in her bra at a school dance and the Kleenex falls out of her blouse. That was a story told to me by a teacher. The stuff in senior high, a lot of them were strictly images or stories that were told to me that I spun into flash-fiction stories. I love the awkwardness of adolescence. That’s why I wrote this book. I love the awkwardness of people in general. There is a certain underlying beauty to being awkward. Sometimes I think I’d rather be around people like that than someone who is like a used-car salesman.”
“A 16-year-old randomly does make connections like that, trying to make sense of their lives,” Rivard says. “Maybe that’s part of the process of trying to make sense, randomly trying to put pieces together.”
As with many works that deal with youth coming-of-age, Up Front has broad parameters when it comes to themes and tone.
“It’s about the art of wondering, vulnerability,” Rivard says. “It’s a book about pain, joy and resilience and what it means to be ever so human. If I were to summarize the book, that’s what it’s trying to do.”
Up Front is now available from Mosaic Press.