About the Work: “Cowboy” by Francesca Leader

In our “About the Work” series, Olga Mexina and Tom Sokolowski ask recent contributors for insight into their writing or for current sources of inspiration. Read Francesca Leader's work in SER Vol. 42.2.

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"Cowboy" took a long time to coalesce into its final form. I wrote the first draft in 2019, and submitted it to only one magazine, which (appropriately) rejected it. Revising the piece in 2023, I realized it was lacking in the kind of highly specific, sensory details that makes a story feel real to a reader. I delved into my own sense memories from my childhood in rural Montana to find such details. I also worked in implications of the narrator's past and future that transformed the piece from a vignette into an actual story. "Cowboy" is speculative in that it portrays a plausible "what if" scenario. The narrator is a lot like I was in my early twenties; her male counterpoint is similar to boys I knew growing up; the scene in which I placed them resembles a moment that actually occurred. But in most ways, I see "Cowboy" as a story about why some people (myself included) need to leave the place that made them in order to become their true selves, and what can happen if they don't.

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FRANCESCA LEADER is a writer and artist originally from Western Montana. She was named runner-up in the 2020 “Big Sky, Small Prose” flash fiction contest, and awarded first prize in the Society of Classical Poets’ 2021 Poetry Translation Competition. You can learn more about her work at inabucketthemoon.wordpress.com, or find her on Twitter and Instagram (@mooninabucket/@moon.in.a.bucket).

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