The Centifictionist

Jürgen Stahl’s four microfiction stories, “Glienicke Bridge”, “Twenty Thousand Days”, “Thousand Years”, and “A Mother’s Tale”, will appear in the fourth issue of The Centifictionist (Vol. 2, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2021). Jürgen graciously answered a few brief questions for us. Read the interview below.

1. What inspired the stories “Glienicke Bridge”, “Twenty Thousand Days”, “Thousand Years”, and “A Mother’s Tale”?

“Glienicke Bridge”:

I will never forget the events of November 1989, something that I thought I would never see in my lifetime…then it happened within a couple of days. So much optimism for the future when the wall came down…

2. What inspires you and your writing?

Reading great stories that stay with me once I stop reading, learning constantly how to write better, and receiving feedback – good and bad.

3. What keeps you going when experiencing times of misery and despair?

Staying creative – I play classical guitar (badly) and write – microfiction, flash fiction, and working on a novel (contemporary medical drama). Exercise – very important. Staying away from toxic social media, and don’t overdo reading the (mostly) bad news.

4. What advice do you have for microfiction writers?

Keep working, take rejection as a given (80-90%?) and never take it personally. If the editors give feedback – fantastic. And…write – something – every day, and edit, lots.

5. Is there anything else that you would like people to know about you and/or your writing?

Hopefully you will read more about me and my world – anatomical pathologists, the ones who sit behind their microscope all day long, the ones who make all cancer diagnoses (and lots of other diagnoses), all based on tissue morphology.

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Jürgen Stahl is German-Australian and has been living in Adelaide, South Australia for thirty years. He is a medical specialist in anatomical pathology and writes about the people who spend their lifetimes in the medical world. History, ancient and recent, fascinates him too. What happened in his native Germany between 1933 and 1945 is something he is still trying to comprehend, and some of his flash fiction stories reflect that. He currently works on a novel that tells a story in the world of mortuaries, drug trials, and human failure in modern medicine. Twitter: @JurgenStahl1. Facebook. jurgenstahlwriter.com.