Jess Simms of Pittsburgh took an Honorable Mention in BWG’s 2025 contest for their story “The Fish Man of Mahoney Creek.” Jess is a freelance writer, co-founder of Scribble House, and the managing editor of After Happy Hour Review. They are the author of the flash fiction chapbook Cryptid Bits (Last-Picked Books, 2024) and have published stories and essays in Mythaxis, Orca, SLAB, Atlas Obscura, Rinky Dink Press, and elsewhere. Find them online at https://jesssimms.com.
BWG: What inspired your story “The Fish Man of Mahoney Creek,” which received an honorable mention in our 2025 contest?
JS: I came across a creature called the Kushtaka when I was doing research for another project. It's an arctic otter-human hybrid, so a different kind of creature than in this story, but there's one aspect of its legend that caught my interest: In some versions, the Kushtaka saves people from drowning or freezing to death by turning them into a fellow Kushtaka. This is seen as a mixed blessing—the person doesn't die, but they still have to leave their community. I wanted to play with that idea but shift it down into Western Pennsylvania.
I'd also been researching a lot about Northern Appalachian towns that were profiting from their local monster by holding festivals or opening attractions like museums. A lot of those towns were struggling financially and got a much-needed revenue boost from the tourism their local cryptid drew. In a sense, these towns were revived by something supernatural, just like the people helped by the Kushtaka in its legend. I decided to combine these ideas and "The Fish Man of Mahoney Creek" grew out of that.
BWG: From your website, short stories seem to be your preference vs. novel-length works. What draws you to that format?
JS: I do write novels, too (my first one to be published is coming out in November, which is very exciting!), but the types of novels I tend to write are heavy on the worldbuilding and take a long time to finish. That's why I write a lot of short stories, too. It's nice being able to actually finish some things while I'm slogging through the novel writing process. I also like that it gives me the chance to explore more ideas, characters, and settings. I do love going deep into worldbuilding and character development for a novel, but it can start to feel a bit claustrophobic if all my creativity is focused in one world for a long span. Short stories are a chance to play in some different sandboxes and get a bit of a palate cleanser so I can come back to that bigger novel world with a fresh perspective and don't end up getting bored with it.
BWG: In what genre do your stories generally land and why? (Since you’ve written a book on cryptids, I’m guessing horror, but your extended bio also points to science fiction/fantasy.)
JS: This is actually a weirdly hard question for me to answer because a lot of my work straddles genres. I tend to write things that fall under the general speculative umbrella, but a lot of times they exist between genres, or mix different genres together. I've also written some purely realistic literary stories, and others that are in a slipstream, slant-reality kind of space, where they're mostly realistic but just a few details are surreal or speculative. The stories I've been writing lately have been mostly contemporary fantasy and supernatural horror, but the novel coming out in November is hard sci-fi and the current novel-in-progress is a fantasy/sci-fi blend, so I'm kind of all over the map genre-wise.
BWG: You are active in the Pittsburgh writing scene. Can you tell us more about that? Are you involved as both a writer and a writing instructor?
JS: We have a fantastic writing community here in Pittsburgh. I always feel very lucky to be living in this city! There's some kind