Month: May 2024

Friday Five: fabulous flash

Five great stories I’ve read recently.

As I continue to work on my writing — as I try to learn how to make my writing more compact and forcible — I’ve been paying greater attention to flash fiction lately.

I love how flash fiction writer and editor Tommy Dean describes the genre in a recent Friday Five Q&A on this site. Flash, he says, is “the flash bulb and the reaction in the dark, the scene coming in and out of focus, before being lost.”

I think these five recent flash stories capture that sentiment well. Enjoy.

  1. “Grief and Gravity,” by Barlow Adams (@BarlowAdams on Twitter/X) in The Molotov Cocktail.
  2. “Baby,” by L Mari Harris in Ghost Parachute. She’s on Twitter/X as @LMariHarris. Also check her website for more of her writings.
  3. “Side A: Violent Femmes,” by Sabrina Hicks in Roi Fainéant Press. Find her on Twitter/X at @desertdwellera3 or at her website.
  4. Another from Roi Fainéant Press: “Bon Appétit” by Grace Black. Her nom de Twitter/X is @graceblackink, and she too has a website.
  5. A bit of punk noir from Casey Stegman (@cstegman on Twitter/X): “Watch It All Burn,” in Punk Noir Magazine. Read more of his stuff on his website.

Have a good weekend.

AI-generated image.

Alice Munro’s enduring example

You don’t need to write a novel to be a literary success

I know a lot of readers love to absorb themselves in a thick, juicy novel. I’m not one of them. I do enjoy a good novel, but I’m partial to the short story. As a writer, I prefer to write short fiction. Thankfully, writers like Alice Munro have given us a stellar example of how a writer of fiction can achieve success without ever writing a novel.

A masterful storyteller and perhaps the greatest writer of fiction in the past 50 years, Alice Munro died Monday, May 13, 2024, at age 92.

A selection of clips from CBC interviews with Alice Munro, the Nobel Prize-winning writer who died May 13, 2024, at age 92.
Continue reading “Alice Munro’s enduring example”