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Alumni Spotlight: The Art of Perfect Constraint - Trina Young's Flash Fiction Success
by Writing Workshops Staff
A week ago
When Trina Young found the call for submissions from Vestal Review, she faced a challenge many writers would find daunting: cutting her 1,000-word story down to exactly 500 words. But constraint, as she discovered, can be a gift. Her flash fiction piece "Obligation," published in Vestal Review Issue 66, emerged stronger and more focused through this rigorous editing process—a perfect example of how limitations can unlock creative potential and lead to publication success.
From 1,000 Words to Perfect Precision
Trina's journey with "Obligation" illustrates the transformative power of editorial constraint. "I had cut this story from around 1000 words to somewhere around 600-700 for some openings and thought it was complete," she explains. But when she discovered Vestal Review's 500-word limit, she took another look and "found further spots of redundancy and got it down to exactly 500 words."
The result was serendipitous: "their word limit helped me to make it even better, so the fit ended up perfect." This experience reinforced a crucial lesson about persistence and adaptation. After being rejected by Smokelong Quarterly, Trina received acceptance from Vestal Review just three days later—proof that "rejections are not personal and sometimes finding a home for the piece takes time, and that is a good thing."
A Multi-Genre Artist Exploring Identity and Magic
Trina Young is a Black and white poet from Chicago whose work spans poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction. Her writing explores "identity, disability, searching for intimacy and community, non-belonging, horror tropes, processing of social issues and disparity of life, and looking for magic." She draws inspiration from literary giants including Lucille Clifton, Jericho Brown, and Carmen Maria Machado.
Her current projects reflect this range: she's working on "what I want to be a poetry collection about moments of intimacy and reaching out for intimacy in a life not built for you and others." But perhaps most intriguingly, she also wants to "write a clown suite of weird poems that are possibly creepy but evocative and exploring various topics through a clown lens"—a project that promises to merge the unsettling with the profound.
An Impressive Workshop Journey
Trina has taken an ambitious array of workshops with Writing Workshops, each contributing to her craft development:
- Writing Fiction Through Reading Poetry with Elwin Cotman
- As Tears Go By: Poetry & Film with Rosebud Ben-Oni
- Writing Workshops New Orleans with Karen E. Bender
- The Grotesque and the Abject with Javeria Hasnain
Two experiences proved particularly transformative. Working with Rosebud Ben-Oni was especially meaningful: "You could tell she was invested in what each of us poets were trying to do, and gave feedback in service of that and generating more ideas. I made a couple new friends in that class and have them to share writing and resources with now."
The January 2025 Writing Workshop in New Orleans, led by National Book Award finalist Karen E. Bender, was equally significant, "teaching me so much beyond writing as someone who hasn't traveled often by myself. I loved the location, and the feedback I came home with was abundant."
Learning the Art of Collaborative Reading
The most valuable skill Trina gained was learning to separate her ego from her work. During the New Orleans retreat, she was "proud of the close reading I did of my fellow fiction cohort's pieces in preparation" and loved "the experience of reading everyone before meeting them, as this is an insight into who they are but not the whole picture."
This process taught her "how it feels to be among writers who might not write the same way as you or understand the genre or generation you are writing about/toward, but they get the essence of what you're doing and give suggestions in service of that." Most importantly, "the variety of feedback was so insightful and helped me separate my ego/self from the story in order to make it better."
Finding Community Through Shared Analysis
What Trina enjoyed most about her workshop experiences was discovering community through collaborative interpretation. "We always hear writing can often be done in isolation, and I find for myself that rings true. I have connections but am still building my writing community, so being able to talk to other writers about writing was most enjoyable."
In her recent course on The Grotesque and the Abject with Javeria Hasnain, she particularly valued "our discussions about the poems she presented and the time we were able to have to closely analyze and hear each other's perspectives. It's amazing to read a poem one way and then, through the dissection with others, find you were mistaken or didn't see some aspect of it that you now have clarity on through the communication with others."
Embracing the Slow Writing Life
Trina has made peace with her natural rhythm as a writer: "I'm recently learning to be okay with being a slow writer. I do want more output, but there is something nice about taking months to write a poem or story, going back to it little by little, time giving the gift of gathering more to put into it."
She maintains motivation through a structured routine: "Lately I've been trying to have a more structured routine, so I often pair the two like doing 20 minutes of reading and 20 minutes of writing, or vice versa." This balance between reading and writing reflects her understanding that inspiration flows both ways between consumption and creation.
"Obligation": A Study in Transformation
Her published flash fiction "Obligation" demonstrates the sophisticated craft Trina has developed through her workshop experiences. The story follows Mariah, a woman transformed from crow to human, sitting in a school parking lot contemplating whether to abandon her children and return to her crow form. The piece masterfully weaves mythology with contemporary motherhood, exploring themes of identity, belonging, and the weight of chosen obligations.
The story's final image—a silver chain "thin as a fresh cut" and "light as a bird bone"—perfectly encapsulates the delicate balance between constraint and freedom that defines both the character's dilemma and the story's structure.
Building Her Literary Presence
Trina has been published in Superstition Review, Burning House Press, Giallo Lit, Sporklet, Kissing Dynamite, and other online literary publications. She maintains an active presence in the literary community through her Substack newsletter, where she can be "found in conversation with other works," and on Instagram @acrylicclown.
Currently, she's "working on completing poems for a chapbook and building her fiction muscle"—a natural progression for someone who has learned to move fluidly between genres while maintaining her distinctive voice.
A Model for Cross-Genre Growth
Trina Young's story exemplifies how strategic workshop participation can accelerate artistic development across multiple genres. Her willingness to take on challenging constraints—whether a 500-word limit or the complex task of separating ego from craft—demonstrates the kind of openness that leads to both technical improvement and publication success.
Her journey from a 1,000-word draft to perfectly calibrated 500-word flash fiction offers inspiration for any writer struggling with editorial limitations. Sometimes the best version of our work emerges not from expansion but from the courage to cut away everything that isn't essential, leaving only what serves the story's deepest truth.
Ready to discover your own perfect constraints? Explore our writing workshops and learn how expert instruction and collaborative feedback can help you refine your craft across genres.
Read Trina's flash fiction "Obligation" in Vestal Review and follow her continued literary journey at echophrasis.substack.com.
