There Goes the Neighborhood: A Review of Benjamin Niespodziany’s No Farther Than the End of the Street In The Poetics of Space, the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard draws a connection between the solitude of human consciousness and the solace of intimate...
Nancy Freund
Review of A World Beyond Cardboard by Jonathan Cardew (by Dan Crawley)
I was ecstatic to find out that Jonathan Cardew published a debut microfiction collection, A World Beyond Cardboard (ELJ Editions, 2022). I have been following his writing for years and greatly admire his talent of creating memorable short fiction. Cardew’s use of...
A Review of Leigh Chadwick’s YOUR FAVORITE POET by Dan Crawley
Leigh Chadwick is the kind of poet who causes me to constantly blurt out, “That is so true!” when I read her superlative writing. And her new collection, Your Favorite Poet (Malarkey Books, 2022) causes me to shout my praises to the top of the sky about her...
Michelle Ross’s They Kept Running, review by Dan Crawley
They Kept Running (University of North Texas Press, 2022) by Michelle Ross is the 2021 Winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction. As I read this gem of a book by one of my favorite writers, I was not surprised this collection of flash fictions...
A review of Jayne Martin’s Daddy Chronicles by Jonathan Cardew
Less is more, so they say. But more what? In Jayne Martin’s case: more devastating, more incisive, more insightful. This book is a case in point. Through 37 bite-sized chapters, each about 100-300 words, Martin recounts her experiences growing up without a...
A Review of Stella Lei’s, “Inheritances of Hunger” by Amy Cipolla Barnes
Pull up a seat to Stella Lei’s word table with her collection Inheritances of Hunger. It feeds the soul in five story courses: “Games,” “Changeling,” “On Building a Nest,” “Graftings,” and “Meals for the End of the World.” Throughout, she...
Triumph of Female Empowerment: a review by Claire Polders of Let Our Bodies Be Returned to Us by Lynn Mundell
I’ve been a fan of Lynn Mundell’s writing ever since I discovered her work in 2015, so when her debut collection won the Yemassee 2021 Fiction Prize, I was not surprised. Mundell is a master of the darkly funny and tenderly magical. In this collection, she...
With the Help of Leigh Chadwick, I Review Shane Kowalski’s Small Moods
by Leigh Chadwick I first came across Shane Kowalski’s writing while doom-scrolling through Leigh Chadwick’s Twitter feed. It was a piece of flash fiction—nothing more than a slight paragraph. It’s been months since I read that piece of Shane Kowalski’s writing on...
How Far I’ve Come by Kim Magowan
How Far I've Come by Kim Magowan, review by Dan Crawley Kim Magowan’s How Far I’ve Come (Gold Wake Press, 2022) is a collection of flash fictions and a few longer works that brought me joy while I read. Yes, I smiled with delight, finding myself smiling time...
A Review Q&A with Myself on the Subject of Dan Crawley’s Collection The Wind, It Swirls with the Principal Answer Being I Couldn’t Put This Book Down by Jonathan Cardew
Q: Could you put this book down? A: No, I could not. I could not put this book down. Q: Why is it you couldn’t put this book down? Can you put your finger on the reason? A: I think there are many reasons. The stories fizz with interesting characters and...
TURMERIC & SUGAR: STORIES by Anna Vangala Jones; review by Dan Crawley
The debut short story collection, Turmeric & Sugar: Stories by Anna Vangala Jones (Thirty West Publishing House), is a feast for the senses and a tour of the challenges of love, triumph, and regret. Throughout, Jones’s prose is a wonderful mix of magic...
My Fave Five- May 2021
May 2021 Series Curator: Jonathan Cardew May Selector: Andrew Bertaina What’s rare, what’s bright, what’s new? This is what we ask a new writer every month in search of the best hybrid, poetry, and flash writing from the previous month. In this edition, we catch up...
MY FAVE FIVE- APRIL 2021
April 2021 Series Curator: Jonathan Cardew April Selector: Minyoung Lee What’s rare, what’s bright, what’s new? This is what we ask a new writer every month in search of the best hybrid, poetry, and flash writing from the previous month. In this edition, we catch up...
BENDING GENRES PRESENTS!!! Meg Tuite interviews Garielle Lutz about writing, life and so much more! So honored to have these two amazing writers in conversation…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTIyc9wIjL0 And you can order Gari's new book, WORSTED, from SF/LD here: https://www.hobartpulp.com/books/worsted
My Fave Five- March 2021
March 2021 Series Curator: Jonathan Cardew March Selector: Hannah Grieco What’s rare, what’s bright, what’s new? This is what we ask a new writer every month in search of the best hybrid, poetry, and flash writing from the previous month. In this edition, we catch up...
Bending Genres Reading for SMOLfair- March 5, 2021 at 9:00 p.m. E.S.T. This Friday, we have a great line-up for our Bending Genres Reading for the SMOLfair book fair event happening March 3- 7. Fiction Editor, Meg Tuite and EIC Robert Vaughan will be hosting a...
What Are The Chances? by Robert Scotellaro (review by Paul Beckman)
In Robert Scotellaro’s latest collection of gems, “What Are the Chances” he tells us the chances that way only he could write of lovers, friends, family, and more in a way that leaves you shaking your head in wonderment with these fast-paced stories filled...
Time. Wow. by Neil Clark (review by Jonathan Cardew)
Full disclosure: I am a complete and utter sci-fi nerd. Give me Star Trek. Give me LeGuin. Give me 2001: A Space Odyssey. Give me anything that is not of this planet/ space-time continuum-related/full of stars. So when I first came across Neil Clark’s small,...
Demolition in the Tropics by Rogan Kelly (review by Alina Stefanescu)
Rogan Kelly. Demolition in the Tropics. Lewisburg, PA: Seven Kitchens Press, 2019. 28 pages. $9.00. Some readers expect to be punched in the gut repeatedly. Demolition in the Tropics is not for them. Rogan Kelly's poetic line is wistful, impressionistic, similar to...
Death, Desire and Other Destinations by Tara Isabel Zambrano (review by Dan Crawley)
Tara Isabel Zambrano’s full-length flash collection, Death, Desire, and Other Destinations (Okay Donkey Press, 2020), illuminates, enchants. I’m awestruck with Zambrano’s effortless talent, her swings from stark realism to inventive magic realism. She is...
Ghosts of You by Cathy Ulrich (reviewed by Audra Kerr Brown)
Audra Kerr Brown lives betwixt the corn and soybean fields of southeast Iowa with her husband and two children.
Bending Genres Q & A with author Karen Stefano (What A Body Remembers) and Emily Bertholf
Q & A : Interview with Karen Stefano, author of What A Body Remembers. Emily Bertholf: Your latest book is a memoir about the life-altering night in 1984 when you were violently attacked on your way home from work and your long struggle of dealing with...
We still kiss to Anita Baker in every timeline.
When I am nostalgic for my life, I put on Giving You the Best That I Got. I am floating just above the time-space continuum. I am witnessing the bouquet of possibility. I am glancing at each version of me and you. In one life, I am not a texter. Nearly all of our...
The Crack
I sigh deeply, from the depths not only my chest, but my soul. I resign myself to the fact that I will be stuck in this house out in the country until he returns with our four grandsons. The pendulum swings wide. Joy for the exuberant energy of four filling these...
Mammary Memories
your arm accidentally touches my breast in the middle of the night in that region between wake and sleep I panic I imagine your memories you touching them them touching you you touching you I re-remember me touching you you touching me him touching me me touching him...
Isopropyl
I found a large half-bottle in the makeshift farm vet kit under the sink. Rationed it, bought another as soon as the blank spots on the store shelves began to fill again. C3H8O: colorless, flammable, disinfecting. An azetrope with water, its boiling point is 176.67...
The History of Skin
What am I but the history of my skin moving through the world, the story of my collisions and contusions? Time inscribed in the error of the flesh. Her name was Svetlana, but she had other secret names. One night she pressed her mouth against my mouth and moved down...
The Moth
It was stuck against our screen porch door. In the low amber light, the wings radiated a brownish-red sheen, glistening in the cold midnight air. It was a moth I’d never seen before, gigantic, unlike others my sister had injected with lethal liquid and displayed open,...
Give and Take
Bulges tremor off skin yoking Dad’s innards with Jello mounds of acidic rage. He carries these parasitic planets on his back like the estranged family who carry the true lineage of his genes. Mom lances the herd, one-by-one, in the bathroom while we hide behind the...
Make Way
The Daughter Forty-five minutes you sit behind the steering wheel. Tears run your face. I talk to you through the closed window. You stare straight ahead. No acknowledgement. Not a nod. Nothing. The kids wait. Your grandchildren. Ten and five years old. Thirsty....
One Room: Basement, the editor
Curled in the southeast corner with thin skin sticking to faux-cheetah acrylic, she crams bits of my manuscript into cracked lips, spitting bits onto cement. An amber bulb, cobwebbed and sickly, swings overhead as she guzzles Merlot I serve her. She dials the phone...
Measure of a Fairy Tale
The last time I heard your feet in shoes early in the morning you were coming to tell me of a change in plans. I needed to get dressed quick somehow I was now the right person to travel with you to Cleveland, to the heart clinic. My father, your constant companion in...