The novel is a painting. The short story, a sketch. Flash fiction is a photograph, and, as we know, worth a thousand words. Personally, I prefer a word count between 200 and 500. I like flash fiction that plays with form, that turns the reading into a game. In my own work I often seek [...]
Christopher Bundy: Short Stories Are a Cure
For the past couple of years, I’ve been working on the long form and haven’t written much short fiction. But whenever I feel like I need to step away from the novel I’ve been immersed and possibly bogged down in for months and recharge the imagination, I find that working on short fiction is the [...]
Randall DeVallance: Short Stories Are Catnip for Amateurs
I remember reading somewhere, about five years ago, that more than half of all Americans between the ages of twenty and forty reported being in a band. The commentariat felt that this boded ill for the future of the music industry, having more participants than audience members. The same thing seems to be happening now [...]
Rebecca Kanner: Short Stories Dwell In Possibility
What I love most about the short story is that you can do things that you can’t in a novel. Especially the short-short. Italo Calvino’s “All At One Point,” is one of my favorites. Who would read a whole novel about the fact that all matter and creation used to exist in a single point? [...]
Kurt Mueller: Flash Fiction is Like Poetry, Built of Baking Soda and Cocaine
Flash fiction is different. You don’t see it all too much, but when you do it stands out. Rather than a full-length short story that focuses on character and plot and motivation and verisimilitude and all that annoying shit they teach you as highly important in MFA school, a flash piece allows a prose writer [...]
Aaron Jacobs: Short Stories Provide a Pleasant Discomfort
Imagine the scene in that Florida hotel room in the hour after Seymour Glass rid himself of half of his skull. Or picture how Hulga managed to get out of the barn and make it home once Manly Pointer took off with her prosthetic leg. And what did he do with the leg, sling it [...]
Katrina Gray: James Joyce’s Ubiquitous Story “Araby”
In June 2004, I searched for 7 Eccles Street in Dublin. I never found it. I didn’t find it because it’s no longer there, the victim of nuns who extended a maternity hospital. I looked for the address because James Joyce made it famous in Ulysses, and Ulysses made me feel like fiction is alive. [...]
Sarah Malone: Short Stories are an Arrival. Flash Fiction is a Journey.
With stories whose endings are visible from the first sentence, or inferable from the length of web browser scrollbars, I don’t release my awareness of real time as I do with narratives long enough to settle into an illusion of merging with them. Instead I become acutely aware of surface tension, the bent boundary between [...]
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Simon Kearns: Flash Fiction Is Worth a Thousand Words The novel is a painting. The short story, a sketch. Flash fiction is a photograph, ... -
Christopher Bundy: Short Stories Are a Cure For the past couple of years, I’ve been working on the long form and haven’t ...
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Randall DeVallance: Short Stories Are Catnip for Amateurs I remember reading somewhere, about five years ago, that more than half of all Americans ...
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Rebecca Kanner: Short Stories Dwell In Possibility What I love most about the short story is that you can do things that ...
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Lady My friend’s mother gropes a metal grocery cart, yells at sidewalks, flails her broad arms ... -
Publisher Throws Cracked Reading Glasses in the Ring Bleary-Eyed Book Monger Joins Club and Breaks Rules, All Before Reading I’ve decided to do ... -
(Life Is a) Book Review Blog Carnival Welcome to the 60th edition of the Book Review Blog Carnival, and the first of ... -
Atticus Review: Six Degrees Left of Literature KENSINGTON, MD — Atticus Books publisher Dan Cafaro has organized a small team of conspirators ...
