In this article, we interview Elise Scott, WINNER of the January 2026 Not Quite Write Prize for Flash Fiction with their story, Watching Jude Law’s Critically Acclaimed Performance in the Movie Gattaca at Four-Seventeen A.M. on a Thursday.
Hi Elise, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing backstory?
Absolutely! Let’s see. I’m a disabled solo parent living with my kiddo in Connecticut, on the East Coast of the U.S. I’m outside of the ‘norm’ in any number of ways, and the older I get, the more comfortable I become letting who I am rise to the surface. Writing has been instrumental to me on that journey.
I’ve wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. I started out writing poetry as a teen and young adult, and then branched out to working on novels. When I was in my early 30’s, I received some toxic feedback about my writing from someone I deeply trusted and admired. It banged up my confidence pretty badly, and I stopped writing for nearly a decade, but I’ve been back at it for… well, I suppose that has also been about a decade!
You WON the January 2026 Not Quite Write Prize for Flash Fiction. What did/will you spend your prize money on?
I paid a few bills (I know, yawn!), and then I bought myself a really lovely coffee table so I can comfortably write in my living room as well as at my desk. I bought my daughter, who just turned 9, her birthday presents and took her on a road trip to visit her beloved Aunties, Alice and Monica, in Massachusetts. And I bought all the supplies for a keyboard-building party. It’s time for my daughter to start learning to type, which she’s very excited about, because she’s already writing her own stories, but hates writing by hand. Her Auntie Alice is an expert at building custom keyboards, so I bought different bases, switches, and keycaps and we all built our own dream keyboards. Mine is black and red and glittery, and gives off a lovely, thocky sound when I type on it. It really helps me rein in my neurosparkliness and get fully absorbed in the drafting process.
I also got my daughter and her two half-sisters their first ever horse-riding experience, but shhh… don’t tell my kiddo… it’s a surprise!
A big part of what drew us to your story was the sense of a deep human truth being shared through the unique experience of one character. We often advise writers to strive for this effect because we believe it results in excellent storytelling. Is this something you consciously set out to achieve?
Yes, and not in small part because of your advice! My writing, especially short fiction and screenwriting, has levelled up massively thanks to the Not Quite Write podcast, especially the daredevil episodes. You often talk about how, when a writer is drawing on their own truth or experience, the authenticity of that shines through into the story they’re writing and makes it more resonant and compelling. So, the core element of that story, watching a movie with really brutal disability representation after becoming disabled, comes directly from my own life experience. So do a number of the sensory experiences and key moments, including the turning point, where the character gets out of bed and has to crawl to the bathroom. Offering the juxtaposition of these real-life moments with the scenes in the movie felt like a potentially impactful way to paint a picture the divide between what being disabled really means and how it is often perceived or portrayed.
You also made the Not Quite Write Prize for Flash Fiction longlist a year previously, winning third place with your story Rule of Thumb. Both stories were ripped from painful aspects of your own lived experience. What drives you to write about these things?
I LOVE these questions! What a great interview! As we were discussing above, writing about these evocative experiences can be a great way to offer readers a moment of empathy, or a chance to feel something that may be vastly different from their own life. For me, that’s the magic of good writing, whether I’m creating it or consuming it. I believe that every written work is an act of co-creation between the author and each individual reader, and there is such power and beauty in readers making a choice to feel something difficult and maybe see the world differently afterward.
I also work through a lot of my subterranean… stuff… through writing. Old trauma, facets of myself or my identity I haven’t learned to embrace yet, hopes and fears… all of these things come up for me as I’m writing, and sometimes only later do I realize how deeply I was pouring truth out onto the page.
Many of our entrants will know you as one of our guest judges for the Not Quite Write Prize for FLESH Fiction. You generously helped judge 4 of the 6 erotic fiction categories over countless hours (often around four-seventeen A.M. on a Thursday!) Can you tell us about what the judging experience was like for you?
It was SUCH a delight! Every single story I read was such a gift! I felt all kinds of things, both naughty and nice, and I am even more blown away now by how incredibly difficult your jobs are, having to choose who rises to the top in each competition, because there were so SO many stories that I loved, and sometimes I loved such different things about them it felt difficult to even compare them. Hence my massive notes to you, which you were very patient and kind about!
After you blew us away with your detailed judging comments, we knew we wanted to invite you to become an assistant judge for the Not Quite Write Prize. When you took home the January trophy, it felt like fate! Can you tell our entrants what you will be looking for as you help judge the upcoming April 2026 write-off?
I tend to be moved, above all things, by a character I can really be drawn into. I love reading everything, from the cozy and sweet to the dark and terrible. But most of my favorite stories have an unforgettable storyteller or main character at their heart. Giving me space to connect with someone deeply in just 500 words is an immense challenge, which is why I always hear you say on the podcast that most times, you only really have room to do one scene well. Of course, like anything, there are exceptions to that advice, but if in doubt, I’d encourage writers to really zoom in on the heart of the story.
I am also wildly fond of a beautiful bit of writing. The ways words can rub up against one another and spark or splinter or hum or whisper is such a glorious thing to me, I will never tire of reading the kinds of grammatical and structural creations and verbal antics that could only be conceived of by the fierce wildness that is the creative human mind. If you surprise and delight me with your prose, I’ll for sure give your story a second read-through just because I can’t resist it.
You will be releasing your debut novel The Black Cat Detectives under the pen name Kit Gray in May this year. Can you tell us a little bit about what drew you to write in the ‘cosy mystery’ genre, and the type of readers your book might appeal to?
Most of the novels I’ve written have been dark speculative fiction, usually featuring apocalypses. But then I had a terrible year where I lost all five of my elder cats, one after another, to different illnesses. I was a wreck after that. When I sat down to work on my next book, I realized I needed to write something that would help me reconnect to my joy. Naturally, I turned to murder! I hit upon the idea of kitten sleuths solving a murder to save their rescuer from the human pound, and I was overcome with the joy of getting this opportunity to bring to life the silliness and fierceness and sweetness and wisdom that the cats I’d been honored to share my life with had brought me every day. By the end, I’d found my way back to my own joy, and now that The Black Cat Detectives is coming out into the world, my deepest hope is that will bring joy to everyone who reads it.
As a cozy mystery, it’s designed to be a friendly, comforting read for adults, like wrapping yourself up in a blanket with a nice pot of tea and a warm homemade cookie. Except with murder. This doesn’t mean it’s frivolous. It explores themes around identity, self-love, and found family among others. But it’s gentle, and as one would expect of a cozy, there’s no blood or swearing or sex. I tried to make it family-friendly and accessible to a wide range of ages. My daughter, who was seven when I finished my first draft, had read the whole thing several times and even wrote her own fan fiction about the three kittens.
About Elise
Elise Scott writes from their lived experiences of queerness, disability, neurodivergence, fat-positivity, and petting three cats with two hands. Their life has been an adventure, from facilitating equine therapy for trauma survivors to counseling at-risk youth with the aid of an inordinately large sub-woofer and beyond. They earned their BA from Mount Holyoke and their MS from Capella University.
Their debut cozy mystery features three kittens with the ability to bend the laws of physics, who must solve a murder to save their rescuer from the human pound. The Black Cat Detectives is forthcoming from Crooked Lane in May 2026. Give your future self the gift of joy by ordering your copy here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/815221/the-black-cat-detectives-by-kit-gray/
Elise’s short work has appeared in The Advocate, Choices: An Anthology of Reproductive Horror, The B’K, Five Minutes, Chaotic Merge, Knee Brace, HerStry, All Existing, and Quibble, among others.
You can connect with Elise at:
https://elise-scott.com/
https://www.facebook.com/AuthorEliseScott/
https://bsky.app/profile/elisescott.bsky.social
https://www.instagram.com/elisescottwrites/
https://x.com/buttonjar1
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/58697146.Kit_Gray
https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/authorkitgray
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