Jess Simms
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 of open mic, book launch, workshop, or other type of lit event happening just about every night here, so it’s an easy place to find other writers to geek out about words with.
I’m one of the co-founders of Scribble House, which is a writing organization focused on helping and connecting writers in Western PA. We run events like an open mic series, publishing and writing craft workshops, a publishers meet-up group, and an annual lit fest that happens every November. I’m also in a couple of writing groups and teach workshops through Write Pittsburgh, which is another wonderful organization for writers in the city that does cool things like free workshops for teens.
So I’d say I’m mostly involved as a writer, but I also love getting the chance to share the things I’ve learned with other writers, especially folks who are fairly new to the craft, or are just shifting from writing for fun to trying to get their stories and books published.
BWG: What are you working on now?
JS: My main writing project at the moment is an apocalypse fantasy/sci-fi novel that I’m in the process of drafting. It’s been slightly slow going—the primary characters are all folklore creatures, and I’m using a lot of different groups. Plus, there’s an alien culture involved that I made up from scratch, so I’ve been needing to do a lot of both worldbuilding and research as I write. But I’m about halfway through the manuscript now, and I’m hoping to have a rough draft done by the end of the year.