In “Phantom Drive,” published in Navy Pen's Issue IV: MINUTE, Alaina Hammond begins with what appears to be a confession: the character Barry believes he has struck and killed someone with a car. There is only one immediate problem with his account. Barry has never driven.
From that contradiction, Hammond builds a work of flash fiction that is both darkly funny and emotionally sincere. Barry's distress is treated not as a setup to be dismissed but as a genuine experience, even as the story uses compression and unexpected logic to create humor.
That balance reflects Hammond's wider creative life. She works across fiction, poetry, playwriting, performance, visual art, and education. More than fifty of her plays have been produced off-off Broadway, while her poems, fiction, nonfiction, and artwork have also appeared in publication.
In this written conversation, Hammond discusses the boundaries between artistic forms, the peculiar strengths of flash fiction, the relationship between art and teaching, and the stubbornness required to build a creative life.
This written Q&A has been lightly edited for formatting.
Henry Fisher: You work across poetry, fiction, playwriting, and visual art. What tells you that an idea belongs in one form rather than another?
Alaina Hammond: If I hear characters talking to each other in my head, it's a play. If I mostly hear the narrator talking, it's a short story.
For poetry, I'm far more disciplined. I stick to an extremely tight rhyme scheme and syllabic structure. My poems do not “just come” to me. I sit down and consider what concept I want to express, and then I work within my very rigid self-imposed guidelines. I find the restraints beneficial to both my process and my product.
For visual art, it's just: “Oh hey I've never drawn Weird Al Yankovic!” Or “I can't believe I haven't painted anything primarily purple in over a year.” And then I remedy that problem by drawing Weird Al Yankovic, painting grapes, what have you.
Fisher: More than fifty of your plays have been produced off-off Broadway. How has seeing your words interpreted by actors and directors changed the way you approach writing on the page?
Hammond: Consciously? Not at all. Subconsciously, however…yeah, maybe a bit. To quote my brilliant high school French teacher, who's since retired, “practice makes better.” He was talking about French fluency, but it applies to art as well. The more plays I write and get produced, the more confident my voice as a playwright becomes.
But I've never thought, let me rewrite this monologue with a particular actor's voice in mind. While I try to be a team player in the broadest sense, I don't directly collaborate in that way.
The play is mine, and mine alone, until it's performed. Only then does it belong to the director, the actors, and the audience. To everyone BUT me, really.
I've occasionally directed my own plays. I'm a relatively hands-off, minimalist director. I trust the playwright (me).
When I've acted in my own plays, I've been like…ugh, why is this dialogue so pedantic? What is wrong with the playwright? Does she ever shut up?? I can't memorize all this!!
Sorry, Alaina!
Fisher: Are there themes, images, or questions that continue to appear across your writing and visual artwork, even when you are not consciously pursuing them?
Hammond: Yes, several. To name one: Even when it's not directly related to the plot, postmodernism often gets insulted in my work. Not that postmodernism notices or cares.
Fisher: “Phantom Drive” begins with an apparent confession to vehicular homicide before revealing that Barry has never driven a car. What first led you to that premise?
Hammond: Oh, I don't know. Once I've written the story down, the spark of inspiration that prompted it has sublimated into the air. The writing process itself is ephemeral; it's what's written that has substance.
To answer your question more succinctly and less pretentiously: No idea!
Fisher: The story uses dark humor while still treating Barry's distress seriously. How did you approach balancing comedy with compassion?
Hammond: I'm so happy to hear that you perceived the narrative compassion at the heart of the story. That you also saw the humor in it means I did my job as a storyteller. I think flash fiction as a medium lends itself to dark comedy, precisely because its compression often reads as humorous.
Fisher: Did your experience as a playwright influence the dialogue, pacing, or compressed structure of “Phantom Drive”?
Hammond: Probably.
Fisher: Has your definition of a successful creative life changed over time? What matters to you now that may not have mattered when you began?
Hammond: I was called to be an artist far before I was called to be a teacher.
Being a teacher has made me a better artist, inasmuch as there's so much of our profession that can be mined for both comedy and drama. In general, I very rarely write characters that are based on me. My fictional prose isn't autobiographical; neither are my plays.
But I've written too many protagonists who are teachers for it to be a coincidence. They're not always women, either. The underlying emotion is there, even when the details don't align with my experiences as a teacher at all.
And being an artist has absolutely made me a better teacher. For reasons too numerous to name.
Am I able to balance motherhood with artistry? Ask my son ten years from now, when he's fifteen. He seems happy, so I must be doing something right. Or maybe that's entirely my husband's influence.
But seriously, I feel incredibly blessed to have the life that I do, wherein I get to create so much art, in multiple forms. And I hope, on balance, I've contributed to education in a positive way. I continue to strive to be a better teacher.
I thought I had something of artistic value to contribute to the world— consciously, deliberately—when I was as young as nine. And casually, even earlier than that.
I was correct. I applaud my youthful arrogance.
This assessment that even the very young have something substantial to say? Yeah, it drives my teaching philosophy. There's no greater pleasure than nurturing a budding artist.
I always cared about other people's art. But I didn't see myself as directly responsible for cultivating it.
Now, though. The art of my students means almost as much to me as my own creations. Note I said “almost.” I became a teacher; I did not become a selfless saint.
But yeah, my work as an artistic mentor is a crucial part of my identity.
As for my own professional success, well. At nine I decided to become an actress; I became an actress. At fourteen I decided to become a playwright; I'm a produced and published playwright. At nineteen I developed my own rhyme scheme; my poems with that rhyme scheme have been published. In my twenties I got serious about visual art; I'm a published visual artist. In my forties I committed to getting my fiction published; at 45 I'm a mother [redacted] award-winning fiction writer. Oh, and I've had some non-fiction published as well, because why not.
Talent is subjective, but you've got to hand it to me: I'm stubborn. I'm committed.
God help the world if I ever take up knitting. The blanket I make might not be beautiful or well-constructed, but it'll stretch to Florida.
Fisher: What are you currently creating, and is there a form or subject you still hope to explore in a new way?
Hammond: I've already written my unpublishable novel. Don't get me wrong—I'm proud of it! I'm also not being self-deprecating, so much as accurate in my self-assessment, when I refer to it as “unpublishable.” It's a 400-plus page philosophical novel. Yeah, I know, it's not getting commercially published any time soon.
I'm currently working on a second novel. While it's not exactly bound for the bestseller list, I think this one might actually have a chance at getting me a literary agent. That is to say, it's at least somewhat plot-driven, compared to the other one.
And hey, if it doesn't work out? Well then. Two unpublished novels are better than one!
For Hammond, a successful creative life is not organized around a single medium, title, or conventional measure of arrival. It includes continuing to make her own work while helping younger artists recognize the value of theirs.
Her answers are funny because they resist the solemn mythology often constructed around artistic work. Inspiration disappears. Plays become irritating when their author has to memorize them. Novels can be both cherished and accurately recognized as commercially impossible.
Beneath that irreverence, however, is an unwavering seriousness about creation itself. “Practice makes better,” as Hammond's former teacher once told her. Across decades and disciplines, she has continued to test that principle, combining youthful arrogance with adult perspective and, perhaps most importantly, the stubbornness to keep making things.