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...
Retreat - Synergia
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)
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...
Not for the stones or the mountains
Not for the stones or the mountains––they will stay, they will change as the earth moves––but for the living earth as I knew it once, I mourn. As if, as if I alone, I Cassandra, visions draw near–– bring fear, despair, for all that is. At dusk another vision appears––...
Spores
Holding your new baby, you hurry through the night, away from the house, down to the bottom of the garden, to the old railway carriage. It's well past time to introduce him to your family. Late summer throbs from the purple buddleia. No one know how this freight...
Debts You Haven’t Paid
(Sorry--this is late, and really rough! From Prompt #4: Second person, shame. ) Debts You Haven’t Paid 1. The girl in first grade with the big glasses that took up half her face and one lens was smogged up or painted over because she had lazy eye and you asked her to...
Heart Trouble
Her grim face like a melting candle, Paula lumbers to her feet, collecting the paper plates she’d shoveled her homemade cake onto and pushes her way past the screen door to the kitchen. She was hospitalized a month ago for what she called “heart shivers,” and told to...
What Competes in the Room Where She Writes
I'm a bit too likely to exactly mimic people and, while I wanted to write a list of all the incongruous things I removed from my office (teaching at the U.S. Air Force Academy) when I retired from the military, I went with this instead: What competes in the room where...
The People Without Skin
Super rough! Too soon for actual critique, but any first thoughts welcome xo The People Without Skin The people without skin don’t know they are without skin. They don’t remember the molting, the day they ripped through their old lives. The people without skin just...
Items Found in Max’s Red Flowered Hippie Bag, August 11, 2018
Two bottles essential oil blend, ¾ used, myrrh and hyssop. Lip gloss, grapefruit flavored in small tin. Black wraparound sunglasses. Her mother’s lace-lined handkerchief. wadded and stained. Her son’s baby photo, elevated above her ex’s head like a trophy. Beige...
What Their Hands Did
At first all he could do was lie on their sofa fist-scrunching her brick-red wool blanket to his nose inhaling the lingering traces of her linden soap, the amber warmth of her body. He’d stare at the solemn gray of the idle television where most evenings they had...
Red, Rising, 1897
The poem/prose observation prompt, based on my memory of an old B&W I used to have (NOT 1879). Gaaaahhhhh, this was HARD! I am famous for my problems with this particular point of view. Trying to write something without sneaking in what someone is probably feeling...
Late Late Afternoon
Note: I wrestled with this one, following as best I could Prompt 4 (a character defined by action). Late Late Afternoon The child leaned against the doorway between the kitchen and the parlor, while her aunt hovered over the counter, holding potatoes up to the sun....