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Review of A World Beyond Cardboard by Jonathan Cardew (by Dan Crawley)
by Dan Crawley | Aug 19, 2022
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...
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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...
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...
Underwater Haibun Near Garraf
My wife says every poem must include a feather just as every season and state has a bird. I could list here but last night we swam a storm. Lifeguards beckoned, waves passed, a pigeon had eaten all our potato chips. I returned to peel, slice, change the fryer oil....
I’m Tough Enough
don’t need to be told I’m beautiful to know it don’t need to be force-fed your version of love to feel it don’t need a beast of burden to claim my freedom don’t need to be woke cause I’ve never had a yoke don’t need to be fixed cause I’ve never been broke ...
Evolution of a Screen Shot
The exit stage right is a vacuum that sucks the performer into the black hole of artifice. Spirits are not sucked into it. For them, it is their entry into the present ongoing. For us, the viewer, it is on our left side, and exists as a nebulous space where scenery is...
From the Mouths
I've been unable to write anything new for months. I tried a few whimsical ones for this prompt, then decided to rework on old CNF draft (started in a previous BG workshop). I've worked apartheid into it, inspired by the redacted/censorship concept in the prompt....
Take 2: Because Every Transformer Needs Hummingbirds in its Crotch: Poem on a Theme by Tony Hoagland (after Dean Young after Koss after)
I have a big DECEPTICON. Most ANIMAL RITUAL goes into it. Destroyer god with one thousand INTERCHANGABLE PENISES and center of SNAILS. Gigantic ENIGMATIC TRANSFORMER. I’m sure glad I’m not trying to pass through airport security with this big ACTION FIGURE. Those of...
Superhero Dialogue
The movie director yells cut. "Cut!" the movie director yells. "Popeye" is supposed to be dead in this scene," the director screams. "But Popeye can't die," Popeye replies. The director shoots him dead. Pink Panther steps away for a cigarette break and says nothing....
Poem on a Theme by Tony Hoagland (after Dean Young after Koss after)
(this is a redaction piece) I have a big DECEPTICON. Most ANIMAL RITUAL goes into it. Destroyer god with one thousand INTERCHANGABLE PENISES and center of SNAILS. Gigantic traumatic TRANSFORMER. I’m sure glad I’m not trying to pass through airport security with this...
SECOND TRY – A Randomly Selected Email From My Famous Ex-Husband (Redacted Version)
All xxxxxxxxxxxxxx recollections xxxxxxxxxxxxxx are character xxxxxxxxxx distorted xxxxxxxx versions xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx that actually happened. Tempting xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx to correct the record xxxxxxxx myself, I’m not going to xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx. The point here is...
Geotraumas
Geotraumas Birdstorms and similar phenomena became known as geotraumas, closing airports and pedestrian zones and certain zip codes of consciousness. Avian clouds spirited through vast swathes of sky, heaving and shifting in dark amoebas, their screams razoring the...
The Howl of a Cat
A rush of warm liquid puddles between my legsthen another gushes outsaturates the hospital bedpush the red button with the white outline of a...
Review of A World Beyond Cardboard by Jonathan Cardew (by Dan Crawley)
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...
A Review of Leigh Chadwick’s YOUR FAVORITE POET by Dan Crawley
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...
Michelle Ross’s They Kept Running, review by Dan Crawley
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...
Scream
by Rod Martinez
Kelsey heard it first. She shared this huge ancient wood frame house with her grandmother, her baby brother, and her cousin Joey. Many of her...
Baggage
The woman I met that night at the bar later became my wife. Then a little over a year ago my ex- wife. That night we were drinking on the patio and...
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