Ilana Stanger-Ross

One of the old adages about writing is that, for a story to be successful, the characters must change. I don't think too much about rules when I write, but I do think a lot about character, and a lot about change. In my fiction - short stories and now a novel - I strive to convey both the sharp moments that shape lives as well as the slow passing of years that change people so subtly it seems impossible to look back and, pointing, say "then."

As a writer it's my job to do that pointing, to decide: something will happen here. In my fiction those "somethings" arise as the characters confront their own dangers, which often revolve around issues of aging and mortality, memory and forgiveness, the longing for, but fear of, intimacy. I strive to give my characters a full and complex interior world, and then to alter that world.

Ilana Stanger-Ross received her Master's in Fiction from Temple University in May of 2003. Her work has been published in Lilith Magazine, Red Rock Review, and The Bellevue Review and online at KillingtheBuddha.com and Fiction Attic. She is a recent recipient of a Ragdale Foundation Artist's Residency, and is currently working on a novel.
 

Sima sat next to Lev the next time he came over with Art and Connie. He told her a few jokes, made her laugh. She liked the way he looked at her, softly complimented her earrings - nothing, she told him, fake rubies she'd won at a carnival with Connie when they were thirteen. And while she wished she were back there, on the Ferris Wheel holding hands and shrieking, giggling, coasting through the black night above the bright lit-up booths with the buttered smell of popcorn in the air and the excitement of the crowd below and money in their pockets; while she turned to Connie to remind her and saw her arms wrapped around Art's neck and whispering; while she felt inside the downward swoop of the Ferris Wheel as it descended, too quickly, toward the dark parking lot pavement she found herself saying yes, she was free next Saturday night, yes, she'd like to see a movie with him.

In the dark of the theater there was a thickness between them: would he touch her or should she touch him and she could hear in his slow, measured breath that he wanted to and every other minute thought to grab his hand, hold it with her own and, doing so, stop the slow pressure that seemed to be suffocating them both, choking them with the stained red-velvet of the theatre seats. But she couldn't do it. She kept her hands folded in her lap, pretended to watch the film.

She asked questions as he walked her home. What was he studying? What did he hope to do after college? Lev talked the whole way and Sima felt as he described his plans - he studied chemistry, would teach chemistry - that there was a safety in him, that she could know him and not fear betrayal; that he wanted to be listened to and cared for and that she could do that, would like to do that.

She had wished for the security of a hand holding her own, steady, and she sensed that she'd find such a clasp with Lev.

- from Sima's Undergarments for Women