Seven years ago, I stumbled upon Mark Leidner's writing during a studio visit with the abstract painter Alexander Ross. Flipping through Beauty Is the Case That They Gave Me, I stumbled upon this stanza from the poem Gossip: Talent is to honesty what...
News
Surprised by the Deliciousness of Air: A Second Person Review of Réka Nyitrai’s Conjoined Works Split Split and Game of Little Deaths by Jonathan Cardew
You think there’s something almost kinky about Nyitrai’s two works in one, a book you have to physically flip if you want to read the other. Two works lying in bed together, toe to nose. The middle of the book, a sort of portal, contains the following...
Swetha Amit interviews Preeti Vangani about Fifty Mothers (River River Books, 2026), her new poetry collection
SA: Your book begins with an image of your mother's handwritten diary, showing her name change after marriage. What were your thoughts about including that image? PV: The idea of adding the image came much later, after some poems had been written. One of my...
Review of The Boat With a Girl’s Heart by Neil de la Flor by Jonathan Cardew
In the preface to The Boat with a Girl’s Heart, Neil de la Flor offers a candid account of his process and motivation, framing the book as an homage to his late friend and collaborator, Maureen Seaton. De la Flor explains that he drew from their collaborative...
Swetha Amit interviews Francine Witte about Some Distant Pin of Light (Cervena Barva Press)
SA: Some Distant Pin of Light is a beautiful collection of poems that captures fleeting moments, heartbreak, and longing. What inspired this collection? How long did it take you to put it together? FW: These are poems I wrote over the past five years or so. I have...
Review of Skylighting by Charles Hansmann by Britta Stromeyer
Poetic Exploration of Grief: Charles Hansmann's Skylighting “I feel countless lesions scarring inside me, internal marks to mock my survival.,” writes Charles Hansmann in the opening pages of his short novel Skylighting—an introspective and lyrical...
Review of Brendan Gillen’s Hang Time by Francois Bereaud
As it turns out, there is a wrong way to fire a machine gun. We watch sports for lots of reasons. One of them is to find out what happens next. In any game or event, there’s always the possibility of seeing, hearing, or sensing something for the first time, whether...
Interview with Patricia Q. Bidar about her forthcoming book, Pardon Me for Moonwalking
Swetha Amit: Pardon me for Moonwalking is a collection of bittersweet stories about human connections, love, loss, and isolation. What inspired this collection? How long did it take you to assemble it? Patricia Bidar: Some of these stories began as fragments of...
Review of Kiik Araki- Kawaguchi’s Disintegration Made Plain and Easy by Yetta Stein
In the penultimate poem of Disintegration Made Plain and Easy — the recently published collection crafted by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi — we are running “naked thrashing and failing / Through a storm of yellowjackets”. Or, not we, but the poem’s speaker. We don’t...
Review of Massive Attack’s June 5th performance at Manchester’s Co-op Live by Maia Cardew
Sarajevo Bosnia 1992. The Realness Ball NYC. Trump’s AI Gaza. #BlueAvianMessage. Purchasing tickets for Massive Attack’s Co-op Live Manchester concert, I didn’t realize I was also signing up for a cinematic exposé of socio-political corruption-one that would transport...
Review of Cold Toast by Kathryn Aldridge- Morris by Sarah Freligh
Is there a difference between a collection of pieces and a book? As a fiction writer and a poet, I want to think so—and so, apparently, did Robert Frost when he posited that if there are twenty-four poems, the twenty-fifth poem needs to be the book, that is, an...
Review of Select Screen by Abigail Stewart by François Bereaud
Let’s stipulate that we all spend time too much time on our phones / online (kudos to any of you who don’t). Given that fact, and the associated guilt I feel for falling into the “too much” category, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to enjoy Abigail Stewart’s novel Select...
Review of Other Emergencies by Sarah Freligh, by Britta Stromeyer
Sarah Freligh's story collection, Other Emergencies, explores themes of grief, resilience, family dynamics, and the quiet struggles of everyday life in small-town America. With a keen eye for detail and poetic caress, Freligh creates narratives that are both...
Review of Hey You Assholes by Kyle Seibel, by Francois Bereaud
I was walking with a friend recently when she began to complain a bit about the guy she was dating. One of her main issues was that she organized all of their outings, he seemed happy to go along with whatever she wanted to do. I kept my mouth shut, but knowing what a...
Review of Kurt Baumeister’s Twilight of the Gods, by Al Kratz
Twilight of the Gods, the second novel from Kurt Baumeister is so big, so fun, so electric, it could almost use its own entrance song. Multi-colored lights. Smoke machine. That guy yelling into the microphone that it’s time to rumble. I’m sure it was one hell of...
Review of Freda Epum’s The Gloomy Girl Variety Show, by Britta Stromeyer
“No matter my current place of residence, my identities follow me. I’ve told you I’m searching, that I’m on the market for belonging,” writes Freda Epum in her memoir The Gloomy Girl Variety Show. Epum’s debut is an impressive, and incisive exploration of...
Conversation with Mandira Pattnaik
By Swetha Amit SA: Glass/Fire is an emotional and riveting narrative of threads that explores the lives of daughters of a family impacted by reverse migration from New Jersey to their ancestral home in India, capturing their trials and tribulations. How and when did...
Review of Tina Barry’s I Tell Henrietta by Britta Stromeyer
Tina Barry's I Tell Henrietta, a collaboration with artist Kristin Flynn, is a riveting miscellany of poetry, prose, and art that defies traditional genre boundaries. This imaginative collection reads like a novella, weaving together fragments of a life story...
Review of Luke Wortley’s Shared Blood by David John Baer McNicholas
Shared Blood is a 2023 full length book of poetry by Luke Wortley. While reading it, I was reminded of the sinisterness of shadow puppets and that my father keeps a part of himself locked in a tiny metal box, and that he never shares it with anyone. I'm used to...
Review of Steve Passey’s In Line At Walmart With All The Other Damned by Francois Bereaud
Steve Passey is from Alberta, Canada, a place I take to have lots of space and relatively few people. In his remarkable collection, In Line At Walmart with All the Other Damned (Cowboy Jamboree Press), Passey manages to give us both the intimacy of lives lived hard...
Conversation with Francine Witte
by Swetha Amit SW: RADIO WATER is a beautiful collection of flash stories dealing with poignant themes. What inspired this selection, and how did you put it all together? FW: I published a book last year, Just Outside the Tunnel of Love, and found that there were...
Review of Luke Johnson’s Quiver by David John Baer McNicholas
“For he is not mad, he through whom the abject exists.”—Julia Kristeva I. Cruelty is God. Thou shalt have no other God before cruelty. Thou shalt make no serene images. Thou shalt kill what offends thee. Thou shalt kill what entices you out of sheer blank-faced...
Review of Melissa Flores Anderson’s A Body In Motion by Francois Bereaud
“Here, you are only a body. You have no future, no hopes, no dreams. You are a heart that beats too fast.” The opening line from “A Body in Motion,” one of the creative non-fiction pieces in Melissa Flores Anderson’s debut chapbook with the same title published...
Review of Laurie Marshall’s Proof of Life by Francois Bereaud
“At first, you think it’s snowing.” This opening line of “Some of Your Favorite Things Aren’t Made to Last,” the first story in Laurie Marshall’s masterful flash collection, Proof of Life, sets the tone for an unexpected and wild, but, ultimately, very...
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...
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...
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 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...
My Fave Five with Alina Stefanescu
April 2020 Series Curator: Jonathan Cardew April Selector: Alina Stefanescu 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...
My Fave Five
My Fave Five… March 2020 Series Editor: Jonathan Cardew March Selector: Jude Higgins 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 and flash writing from the previous month. In this edition, we...
Shame by Iris N. Schwartz (reviewed by Paul Beckman)
Shame . Shame on Iris Schwartz. She’s at it again. She has no shame. It’s all in this book. Coming on the heels of her critically acclaimed collection, “My Secret Life With Chris Noth” is her new short story, flash fiction, & micro-fiction collection,...
Bending Genres Q & A with author William R. Soldan
Bending Genres Interview with Author William R. Soldan: What went into the decision to attend the Taos Mabel Dodge Bending Genres July 2018 Writing Retreat? -With the exception of attending a weeklong writing workshop in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 2014, after being...
Postcard Poetry Contest #2
Bending Genres Postcard Poetry Contest—December 2018 Guest Judge: Sara Comito The premise of the contest is simple: write a poem, one page or less, using the front and back of the "postcard" below as a prompt. You could be the person that sends it, the postperson...
The Virginia Project Diaries, by Tina Barry
Welcome to the Virginia Project Diaries. This is the first of four focused interactions with writer Tina Barry, and her upcoming exhibition, The Virginia Project. Tina Barry has long had a fascination with Virginia Haggard, the partner of the artist Marc Chagall, and...
50 MM Microfiction Contest
Microfiction Contest—May 2018 50mm Fiction is our new Bending Genres microfiction contest. The premise of the contest was simple: write a piece of fiction, 50 words or less, using the 50mm photo as a prompt. Here is our photo prompt. This month’s contest will be...
Bending Genres New 50mm MicroFiction Contest
50mm Fiction is our new Bending Genres microfiction contest. The premise of the contest is simple: write a piece of fiction, 50 words or less, using the 50mm photo as a prompt. Here is our photo prompt: This month's contest will be judged by none other than...
Postcard Poetry Contest
Bending Genres Postcard Poetry Contest—January 2018 Guest Judge: Samuel Fox Postcard Poetry is Bending Genres first 2018 contest. Our very own poetry editor, Samuel Fox, is the judge. Find out more about Sam and his work here. Also read one of Sam's pieces...
Blog?
Visit our BLOG page for Bending Genres editor Jonathan Cardew's Microviews column, and craft essays. Also Bending Genres editor Corey Holzman's Ask The Editor and Previous Contributor Updates. Will also include q & a's with various authors.
Ashley Yang-Thompson Interviews Mark Leidner/ Micro-review of Elegy for Pangea
Seven years ago, I stumbled upon Mark Leidner's writing during a studio visit with the abstract painter Alexander Ross. Flipping through Beauty Is the Case That They Gave Me, I stumbled upon this stanza from the poem Gossip: Talent is to honesty what...
Surprised by the Deliciousness of Air: A Second Person Review of Réka Nyitrai’s Conjoined Works Split Split and Game of Little Deaths by Jonathan Cardew
You think there’s something almost kinky about Nyitrai’s two works in one, a book you have to physically flip if you want to read the other. Two works lying in bed together, toe to nose. The middle of the book, a sort of portal, contains the following...
Swetha Amit interviews Preeti Vangani about Fifty Mothers (River River Books, 2026), her new poetry collection
SA: Your book begins with an image of your mother's handwritten diary, showing her name change after marriage. What were your thoughts about including that image? PV: The idea of adding the image came much later, after some poems had been written. One of my...
Review of The Boat With a Girl’s Heart by Neil de la Flor by Jonathan Cardew
In the preface to The Boat with a Girl’s Heart, Neil de la Flor offers a candid account of his process and motivation, framing the book as an homage to his late friend and collaborator, Maureen Seaton. De la Flor explains that he drew from their collaborative...
Swetha Amit interviews Francine Witte about Some Distant Pin of Light (Cervena Barva Press)
SA: Some Distant Pin of Light is a beautiful collection of poems that captures fleeting moments, heartbreak, and longing. What inspired this collection? How long did it take you to put it together? FW: These are poems I wrote over the past five years or so. I have...
Review of Skylighting by Charles Hansmann by Britta Stromeyer
Poetic Exploration of Grief: Charles Hansmann's Skylighting “I feel countless lesions scarring inside me, internal marks to mock my survival.,” writes Charles Hansmann in the opening pages of his short novel Skylighting—an introspective and lyrical...
Review of Brendan Gillen’s Hang Time by Francois Bereaud
As it turns out, there is a wrong way to fire a machine gun. We watch sports for lots of reasons. One of them is to find out what happens next. In any game or event, there’s always the possibility of seeing, hearing, or sensing something for the first time, whether...
Interview with Patricia Q. Bidar about her forthcoming book, Pardon Me for Moonwalking
Swetha Amit: Pardon me for Moonwalking is a collection of bittersweet stories about human connections, love, loss, and isolation. What inspired this collection? How long did it take you to assemble it? Patricia Bidar: Some of these stories began as fragments of...
Review of Kiik Araki- Kawaguchi’s Disintegration Made Plain and Easy by Yetta Stein
In the penultimate poem of Disintegration Made Plain and Easy — the recently published collection crafted by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi — we are running “naked thrashing and failing / Through a storm of yellowjackets”. Or, not we, but the poem’s speaker. We don’t...
Review of Massive Attack’s June 5th performance at Manchester’s Co-op Live by Maia Cardew
Sarajevo Bosnia 1992. The Realness Ball NYC. Trump’s AI Gaza. #BlueAvianMessage. Purchasing tickets for Massive Attack’s Co-op Live Manchester concert, I didn’t realize I was also signing up for a cinematic exposé of socio-political corruption-one that would transport...
Review of Cold Toast by Kathryn Aldridge- Morris by Sarah Freligh
Is there a difference between a collection of pieces and a book? As a fiction writer and a poet, I want to think so—and so, apparently, did Robert Frost when he posited that if there are twenty-four poems, the twenty-fifth poem needs to be the book, that is, an...
Review of Select Screen by Abigail Stewart by François Bereaud
Let’s stipulate that we all spend time too much time on our phones / online (kudos to any of you who don’t). Given that fact, and the associated guilt I feel for falling into the “too much” category, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to enjoy Abigail Stewart’s novel Select...
Review of Other Emergencies by Sarah Freligh, by Britta Stromeyer
Sarah Freligh's story collection, Other Emergencies, explores themes of grief, resilience, family dynamics, and the quiet struggles of everyday life in small-town America. With a keen eye for detail and poetic caress, Freligh creates narratives that are both...
Review of Hey You Assholes by Kyle Seibel, by Francois Bereaud
I was walking with a friend recently when she began to complain a bit about the guy she was dating. One of her main issues was that she organized all of their outings, he seemed happy to go along with whatever she wanted to do. I kept my mouth shut, but knowing what a...
Review of Kurt Baumeister’s Twilight of the Gods, by Al Kratz
Twilight of the Gods, the second novel from Kurt Baumeister is so big, so fun, so electric, it could almost use its own entrance song. Multi-colored lights. Smoke machine. That guy yelling into the microphone that it’s time to rumble. I’m sure it was one hell of...
Review of Freda Epum’s The Gloomy Girl Variety Show, by Britta Stromeyer
“No matter my current place of residence, my identities follow me. I’ve told you I’m searching, that I’m on the market for belonging,” writes Freda Epum in her memoir The Gloomy Girl Variety Show. Epum’s debut is an impressive, and incisive exploration of...
Conversation with Mandira Pattnaik
By Swetha Amit SA: Glass/Fire is an emotional and riveting narrative of threads that explores the lives of daughters of a family impacted by reverse migration from New Jersey to their ancestral home in India, capturing their trials and tribulations. How and when did...
Review of Tina Barry’s I Tell Henrietta by Britta Stromeyer
Tina Barry's I Tell Henrietta, a collaboration with artist Kristin Flynn, is a riveting miscellany of poetry, prose, and art that defies traditional genre boundaries. This imaginative collection reads like a novella, weaving together fragments of a life story...
Review of Luke Wortley’s Shared Blood by David John Baer McNicholas
Shared Blood is a 2023 full length book of poetry by Luke Wortley. While reading it, I was reminded of the sinisterness of shadow puppets and that my father keeps a part of himself locked in a tiny metal box, and that he never shares it with anyone. I'm used to...
Review of Steve Passey’s In Line At Walmart With All The Other Damned by Francois Bereaud
Steve Passey is from Alberta, Canada, a place I take to have lots of space and relatively few people. In his remarkable collection, In Line At Walmart with All the Other Damned (Cowboy Jamboree Press), Passey manages to give us both the intimacy of lives lived hard...
Conversation with Francine Witte
by Swetha Amit SW: RADIO WATER is a beautiful collection of flash stories dealing with poignant themes. What inspired this selection, and how did you put it all together? FW: I published a book last year, Just Outside the Tunnel of Love, and found that there were...
Review of Luke Johnson’s Quiver by David John Baer McNicholas
“For he is not mad, he through whom the abject exists.”—Julia Kristeva I. Cruelty is God. Thou shalt have no other God before cruelty. Thou shalt make no serene images. Thou shalt kill what offends thee. Thou shalt kill what entices you out of sheer blank-faced...
Review of Melissa Flores Anderson’s A Body In Motion by Francois Bereaud
“Here, you are only a body. You have no future, no hopes, no dreams. You are a heart that beats too fast.” The opening line from “A Body in Motion,” one of the creative non-fiction pieces in Melissa Flores Anderson’s debut chapbook with the same title published...
Review of Laurie Marshall’s Proof of Life by Francois Bereaud
“At first, you think it’s snowing.” This opening line of “Some of Your Favorite Things Aren’t Made to Last,” the first story in Laurie Marshall’s masterful flash collection, Proof of Life, sets the tone for an unexpected and wild, but, ultimately, very...
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...
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...
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 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...
My Fave Five with Alina Stefanescu
April 2020 Series Curator: Jonathan Cardew April Selector: Alina Stefanescu 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...
My Fave Five
My Fave Five… March 2020 Series Editor: Jonathan Cardew March Selector: Jude Higgins 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 and flash writing from the previous month. In this edition, we...
Shame by Iris N. Schwartz (reviewed by Paul Beckman)
Shame . Shame on Iris Schwartz. She’s at it again. She has no shame. It’s all in this book. Coming on the heels of her critically acclaimed collection, “My Secret Life With Chris Noth” is her new short story, flash fiction, & micro-fiction collection,...
Bending Genres Q & A with author William R. Soldan
Bending Genres Interview with Author William R. Soldan: What went into the decision to attend the Taos Mabel Dodge Bending Genres July 2018 Writing Retreat? -With the exception of attending a weeklong writing workshop in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 2014, after being...
Postcard Poetry Contest #2
Bending Genres Postcard Poetry Contest—December 2018 Guest Judge: Sara Comito The premise of the contest is simple: write a poem, one page or less, using the front and back of the "postcard" below as a prompt. You could be the person that sends it, the postperson...
The Virginia Project Diaries, by Tina Barry
Welcome to the Virginia Project Diaries. This is the first of four focused interactions with writer Tina Barry, and her upcoming exhibition, The Virginia Project. Tina Barry has long had a fascination with Virginia Haggard, the partner of the artist Marc Chagall, and...
50 MM Microfiction Contest
Microfiction Contest—May 2018 50mm Fiction is our new Bending Genres microfiction contest. The premise of the contest was simple: write a piece of fiction, 50 words or less, using the 50mm photo as a prompt. Here is our photo prompt. This month’s contest will be...
Bending Genres New 50mm MicroFiction Contest
50mm Fiction is our new Bending Genres microfiction contest. The premise of the contest is simple: write a piece of fiction, 50 words or less, using the 50mm photo as a prompt. Here is our photo prompt: This month's contest will be judged by none other than...
Postcard Poetry Contest
Bending Genres Postcard Poetry Contest—January 2018 Guest Judge: Samuel Fox Postcard Poetry is Bending Genres first 2018 contest. Our very own poetry editor, Samuel Fox, is the judge. Find out more about Sam and his work here. Also read one of Sam's pieces...
Blog?
Visit our BLOG page for Bending Genres editor Jonathan Cardew's Microviews column, and craft essays. Also Bending Genres editor Corey Holzman's Ask The Editor and Previous Contributor Updates. Will also include q & a's with various authors.