Compose Q&A with Reem Al-Omari

Please welcome Reem Al-Omari, one of Compose‘s two fiction editors. 

Reem Al-Omari is an American freelance writer and editor living in Denver, Colorado. She holds a BA in Journalism. She has worked as a reporter, a columnist and editor-in-chief of a newspaper, and more importantly, a Literary Director at Progenitor, an annual award-winning art and literary print magazine.

Who are your greatest literary influences, and which of their works have had the biggest impact on your own writing?

Charlotte Bronte. Jane Eyre. Charlotte and her book taught me that the most powerful stories don’t need flowery language to be, well, powerful.

Ira Levin. The Stepford Wives. Nobody does precise, sharp-as-a-sharpened-razor language quite like Ira Levin. The Stepford Wives taught me that even the most sterile-sounding prose can be super-charged on the human condition.

What books are on your to-be-read list at the moment?

I’m currently in the middle of The Fellowship of the Ring, which I’m loving, so I definitely have The Two Towers and The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien on my to-be-read list. Also off the top of my head, American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

In your opinion, what makes a short story outstanding?

When the editor in me disappears and I’m just reading.

What are your long-term goals for your writing? Where to you hope to be ten years from now?

I wouldn’t say I have plans, so much as I am working toward applying this eye I have for fiction to my own fiction writing. I suppose I hope to be as comfortable a fiction writer as I am an editor of fiction ten years from now.

Where can we read some of your work online?

It’s not fiction (I’m still working on that), but you can read columns I wrote for IntrepidMedia.com. You can also read my writings about Ancient Mesopotamian history on my corresponding blog, All Mesopotamia.

Connect with Reem on Twitter  and Pinterest, and at her blog.