A mom, two kids, a jar of pickles, an abandoned K-Mart, and a flood walk into an Amy Barnes story … For the rest, you’ll have to read Barnes’ new hybrid collection, Child Craft, recently released from Belle Point Press. Whether Barnes’ punchlines hit in the...
Roundtable
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...
Process, Process, Process: A Review of Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash by Michael Loveday (review by Jonathan Cardew)
When I opened up Unlocking the Novella-in-Flash by Michael Loveday, I did what I imagine most writers will do when they get this brilliant guide: I wrangled and chivvied a bunch of flashes into a novella-in-flash. Ergo, this guide works. It’s...
Review of no farther than the end of the street by Benjamin Niespodziany (by Robyn Schindeldecker)
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...
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...
Unknown Rays
Hi everyone! Sorry I've been a little absent. Life happening big time this month. Here's a shortie: Unknown Rays Hannah watches as Mr. Hans gathers his friends, their glasses clinking with jewel-toned drinks they spill over carpets and tables full of half-eaten...
Cento for the Mutilated World
We are all burning in time, but each is consumed in the bounds of white, and heartless fields–– dots of cyclamen-red and maroon. This morning with a blue flame burning, my nerves open to air like something skinned, And the sky! With the steadfast...
heartwood
There is a price to opening one’s heart to beauty. —Jim Harrison let the jazz initiate blow those sour notes of learning though the walls are tabloid page thin distance translates the scales become the disjointed melody of a...
Meta Metaphors
All of the leavings have left me brittle dusty bodies whisper in the night at first light I camouflage myself under a pile of caramel orange leaves slip into inviting earth unsubscribe from my body of pain join the departed Reunite drift up to weightless...
It’s Only Time
This was inspired by the prompt of what you or your character would do if you had only one year to live (or something like that.) Metastasized. But where? Everywhere. No, not possible. There is no appendix, gall bladder, uterus, but … Cancer-thirsty cells...
We Don’t Need Another Birddog
If I ever have a wife, there’s no way I’ll buy another hunting jacket over fixing the leaky toilet and the broken backdoor lock and if I have a family, I won’t drag them from one dirty rental in Jacksonville to another when the rent is late because I spent my paycheck...
Lost and Found at the Furry Convention
LOST AND FOUND AT THE FURRY CONVENTION My kid’s fourteen. One of the few children at the convention. It’s open to all ages until dusk comes, when the adult-only parties begin. She’s not wearing a fursuit. She’s in jeans and a Goblincore tee. But she’s wearing a...
1. Torare, & 2. At the Point of Dismissal
(Two with a common element: Walk through your fear.) Torare Deserve what you get. Wrong place, wrong time, each time, no matter. That walk-through fear quote just grammalot. A motto to repeat. One long shriek penetrates the ear. An image of me projects...
Haunts
I order an old fashioned at Finnegan’s. Lean in, loose and loquacious, and offer to buy the lady next to me a round. She turns white in her twill blazer and vanishes. I tip my glass to the void, noticing for the first time that the whole bar is lousy with ghosts in...