Rumpus Original Fiction: Marnie Marie Lit a Match
The only way to guarantee a secret is for the only person to know about it be you.
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Posts Tagged: flash fiction
Science Is Sexy in There’s So Much They Haven’t Told You
In the first story of this collection, a girl learns the shocking truth that the world is made of atoms, that “when you get right down to it, it’s all just studs and holes.”
...moreThe Rumpus Interview with Rion Amilcar Scott
Rion Amilcar Scott discusses his story collection Insurrections, father relationships, hip-hop, knowing when to abandon a project, and choosing not to workshop certain stories.
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The Rumpus Interview with Vi Khi Nao
Vi Khi Nao on her new novel Fish in Exile, why women shouldn’t apologize (even when they’re wrong), moving between genres, and why humor is vital in a novel full of darkness and grief.
...moreA Writerly Conversation with Amelia Gray
In reading short story collections I always gravitated towards the shortest story, curious to find the idea expressed in the shortest amount of time. Over at the jmww blog, Jen Michalski talks to Amelia Gray about short fiction, flash fiction, and fables.
...moreFire, Magic, and Flash Fiction
At WhiskeyPaper, Linda Niehoff writes briefly and beautifully about fire and magic, hinting at post-apocalyptic worlds with lines like, “We’d spent long evenings sewing together old bedsheets and nightgowns, the last pillowcase.” “Elsewhere” brings to mind Ray Bradbury and autumn nights, and is best read in one sitting. It comes with a suggested song—Iron & […]
...moreWords & Music
If you were to hear a story with its own soundtrack, it’s going to affect how you feel and interact with that story, even if you’re not directly paying attention to the music, and vice versa. I also believe that language is the shortened version of music. They’re just different methods of communication. Over at […]
...morePainting a Word Picture
In a column for SmokeLong’s “Why Flash Fiction?” series, author Anne Weisgerber compares writing flash fiction to painting: I realized I could craft flash miniatures that added up to something bigger if I intended them to, like dabs in a Seurat painting. In this way, my reader at novel distance will see the rose window, […]
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The Rumpus interview with Stuart Dybek
Stuart Dybek discusses the forthcoming The Best Small Fictions 2016, the invisibility of anecdote, and why the art of transition is the art of the short story.
...moreThree Flashes of God
The child wanted to name the rabbit Actually, and could not be dissuaded from this. For its final Flash Friday column, curated by Tin House, the Guardian shares three new excerpts from Joy Williams’s most recent collection, 99 Stories of God.
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The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Tara Laskowski
I realized that I’m interested in how people change when something terrible happens to someone else.
...moreStarting in the Middle
In an interview with Flash Frontier, Tara Laskowski, senior editor at SmokeLong Quarterly, talks about her new short story collection Bystanders, the line between fiction and reality, the present tense, and the appeal of flash fiction: I don’t often like to wrap things up neatly. I think that’s why I’m drawn to flash fiction, because you can […]
...moreSleeping with Monsters
Late the next night a noise roused me from my sleep—wailing and cursing and then banging, more banging than ever, both fists full-force against the plaster. Filtered through the sleep haze, I couldn’t make sense of the commotion. Rion Amilcar Scott has a new short story out, “Night of the Living,” part of Entropy magazine’s “Of […]
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The Rumpus Interview with Jane Ciabattari and Grant Faulkner
Jane Ciabattari, Vice President/Online of the National Book Critics Circle, and Grant Faulkner, NaNoWriMo director and 100 Word Story co-founder, talk flash fiction.
...moreMusic in a Flash
Very cool, artsy things are happening in Austin. Together with the literary journal NANO Fiction, Austin-based composer Russell Podgorsek and collaborators have created music to accompany the journal’s fall issue.
...moreThis Week in Short Fiction
This week, Okey-Pankey treated us to not one, but two flash fiction stories from Padgett Powell, whose third collection of short stories, Cries for Help, Various, is forthcoming this September as the first title from the new Electric Literature/Black Balloon Publishing lovechild, Catapult. In true Powell form, the pieces are darkly comic and flirt with […]
...moreThe Horror, the Horror of Short Form Fiction
Despite the publication this past year of behemoth novels like Donna Tartt’s 750 page The Goldfinch and Eleanor Catton’s 850 page The Luminaries, current trends increasingly embrace truncated fiction. MobyLives took the conclusion of the third annual Twitter Fiction Festival as an opportunity to look at short form horror fiction known as creepypasta: This type of […]
...morePut Some Flash Fiction in Your Headphones
Story Tapes is a new podcast created by Bay Area writers Eliza Smith and Faith Gardner to showcase flash fiction. In the past few months, they’ve featured writers reading their own work and others’, as well as answering interview questions about their process, intentions, and choices. The variety of music used for intros and transitions […]
...moreTop Flash Fiction
Wigleaf recently published their annual compilation of the top (very) short fictions. Aimee Bender, Stuart Dybek, and Rumpus columnist Steve Almond are among the 50 writers featured this year.
...moreFlash Fiction Series
Guernica Daily just kicked-off a new flash fiction series “designed to showcase up-and-coming writers and artists.” Check out the first entry of the series and consider flashing them your own piece?
...morePaper-thin People
The winner of this year’s Drue Heinz prize writes flash fiction that bursts with poetic imagery and focuses on lust and the death of beauty.
...moreAnywhere But L.A.
In stories that range through history, serendipity, speculation, whimsy, and horror, Daniel Olivas chronicles the lives of characters who have loved—and lost—Los Angeles.
...moreFUBAR Nation
Chelsea Martin’s strange collection of miscellany evokes the loneliness of life lived through technology.
...moreWhat I Learned at AWP
The Rumpus dispatched dozens of our top reporters to Chicago. None of them were heard from again.
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