Performed by Val Cole

Get to know the writer:

1. What is your short story about?

Kindness. “Gentilezza” is the Italian word for kindness. It’s the story of how a simple, selfless gift to another person can change their life permanently. The story straddles the boundary of fiction and creative non-fiction, because it’s based on a true experience from my life, with a few artistic embellishments added. As the ambiguous ending implies, the gift of a race victory created mixed emotions for me because I felt somehow unworthy of it. But over the course of twelve more years of elite level cycling competition, I won other races outright, and I drew on the confidence gained from Sandro Fortunato’s charity extended to a bright-eyed eighteen year old bicycle racer.

2. What genres would you say this story is in?

Literary short fiction, I suppose. Just over 1000 words, so not quite flash fiction. And as mentioned previously, this could also be creative non-fiction. Names were changed to protect the innocent, and the race details are an amalgam of those from several other competitive experiences.

3. How would you describe this story in two words?

Kindness matters.

4. What movie have you seen the most in your life?

It’s probably a tie between two Zucker brothers’ classics: Airplane! and Top Secret. They are masters of comedy and parody. You can’t tell it from this story, but humor – sometimes dark and sardonic – features in a lot of my fiction.

5. What is your favorite song? (Or, what song have you listened to the most times in your life?)

“Moral Kiosk” by R.E.M., from one of their first albums, Murmur. It’s a great song!

6. Do you have an all-time favorite novel?

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. A close runner-up would be Plainsong by Kent Haruf. I don’t think I’d call either of these novels the most important ones I’ve read, but they are my favorites.

7. What motivated you to write this story?

It initially started as a memoir piece, then drifted into creative non-fiction, and finally landed in the fiction category. I wanted to try my hand at a flash fiction piece, and so this story was distilled from previous efforts. It was a very memorable experience from my youth, and the naturally intense and quickly shifting action of a race situation translates well to short fiction.

8. If you could have dinner with one person (dead or alive), who would that be?

Barack Obama. A polymath and overall impressive human being who carries himself with grace and dignity. I’d imagine he’d have answers, and probably the right ones, to the political turmoil that has roiled the U.S. and the globe since he left office.

9. Apart from writing, what else are you passionate about?

Music. I come from a very musical family and I’m a classically trained bass/baritone singer. I perform with a number of large and small ensembles and it’s a great way to experience communion with others from all walks of life. I still ride my bicycles as much as I can, although I’ve long since stopped competition. My life partner and I run a podcast called Nimble Youth that addresses the youth mental health crisis that she deals with every day as a pediatrician. I’m helping her start her own practice that will focus specifically on youth behavioral health, so this is something else I’m very passionate about.

10. What influenced you to enter your story to get performed?

This festival is such a great idea, and I’m not just saying that for extra points! It’s always so helpful to record your writing, because good writing, whether its poetry or prose, has a rhythm and cadence to it that must be heard to be appreciated (and maybe improved upon). I’ve done some voice acting myself and recorded this piece as narrator, but it’s even more helpful to have someone who is not the author read your work. It was also great to have a woman read this, since the narrator in the story is male, because its a test of the writing’s ability to bridge natural gender-based differences in how men and women approach fiction. I thought the narrator for Gentilezza did a fantastic job with it, and she took it to a level I could not have reached even as the story’s author.

11. Any advice or tips you’d like to pass on to other writers?

Don’t overthink it. Just write! You can always go back and impart intellect and polish to the raw thoughts and emotions that first come out. I’m in my mid-fifties now, but started writing some fiction when I was in college and got lots of good feedback and encouragement for my efforts. But I decided I wasn’t going to be the next Ernest Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy and put my fiction writing ambitions on a shelf. I started dusting them off during a painful divorce a few years ago as a way to make sense of the loss and chaos in my life. Ultimately it doesn’t matter how good or bad a writer you are when you start because it’s a journey of the mind and soul. You improve as a writer by writing, and more importantly, you improve as a person by writing.