The Editor-Author Relationship
“I often describe the role of editor as similar to that of midwife—we’re helping something come into the world, but it will not be our baby.”
Blog
Best Small Fictions Nominations
Congratulations to these four pieces we chose to nominate for the Best Small Fictions anthology, which seeks “flash and micro fiction, haibun stories and prose poems published in 2019”:
Why We Like It: “Reverberation” by Nancy Chen Long
Nancy Chen Long’s poem “Reverberation” fights back against silence and erasure. The poem’s title points toward the resonance of sound, and this is exactly what Chen Long’s words do: even in stillness the music of her language ripples across the page.
Half-Off Holiday Sale!
Half off all subscriptions through December 19!
Why We Like It: “Operation Rhododendron” by Samyak Shertok
In the opening lines of Samyak Shertok’s “Operation Rhododendron,” everyday objects transform into makeshift weapons for role-playing scenes of war.
Pushcart and Best Microfiction Nominations
Check out our nominations for the Pushcart Prize Anthology and Best Microfiction!
What We’re Reading: Spider Love Song and Other Stories by Nancy Au
Spider Love Song and Other Stories by Nancy Au is a short-story collection about stories—how narratives can be used to construct and deconstruct lived realities.
microreview & interview: Taneum Bambrick’s Vantage
I was first drawn to Taneum Bambrick’s full-length debut Vantage (Copper Canyon, 2019) because it had “an ecological eye,” but after reading the collection, I realize how much of a disservice it is to characterize this book solely as environmentally urgent.
excerpt from “Duluth” by Ira Sukrungruang
My family feared white people. White people, after all, danced on our newly paved driveway, leaving gym-shoe footprints. White people threw rocks and rotten eggs at our windows. White people stole my family’s first big purchase, a ’72 Thunderbird that was found two months later—stripped—in a steakhouse parking lot off Cicero Avenue. White people were …
Blackifying Stories
I noted that I’d been writing the stories I wanted, kind of, but I’d also been including other people’s ideas of blackness. I started writing stories that contradicted some folks’s view of blackness but felt true to my actual world and my created ones.