FRIENDS!! My flash novel, 

After the Rapture

is now available from Mason Jar Press!

Thank you to everyone who pre-ordered!

I wrote this book between 2016 and early 2020, finishing it the same week the world went into quarantine. For the next year I watched as the line between truth and satire began to merge, and in the continuing aftermath it’s now impossible to separate the two…

***Signed copies will be available beginning March 15!

AFTER THE RAPTURE: In a world just slant from our own, the people are waiting for the Rapture. But what they get is not at all what they thought it would be. Whether they’re pilgrimaging to the Very First Kentucky Fried Chicken, living in life-sized Barbie houses, taking the Marriott staff hostage, trading Candy Corn on Wall Street or draining Loch Ness to “find out the goddamn truth once and for all,” there is a familiar sort of desperation in this post-Rapture existence. In moments you will laugh at the absurdity of their world, and in other moments the darkness will feel all too familiar…

What people are saying:

“In this world of Walmarts, Barbies, Kens, orgies/time-shares, 7-11s, clones, a red Lake Michigan, and dreams, Nancy Stohlman’s humor and talent shines. The rapture becomes more than just a rapture: it’s a world turning on its head, acceptance, and then finding a new normal. Redeeming and heart-felt, this dystopian novel-in-flashes is one not to forget. After the Rapture is a rapture!” Kim Chinquee, three-time Pushcart Prize winner, author of seven collections and the novel, PIPETTE

“After The Rapture is a startling, rhapsodic, brilliant tome. Stohlman dares to venture into an intricate mosaic of layered, futuristic identities, individualities, and lives both wasted and yet fully explored. A dazzling oscillation of scintillating prose, on the threshold between the ephemeral and the eternal. After the Rapture is a book full of surprise and wonder, a compelling and majestic book.” Robert Vaughan, author of Askew, Funhouse and Addicts & Basements

“Mesmerizing, challenging, funny, awesome, entertaining, bewildering, full of doom, wisdom, absurdity, and heart. I love how gigantic and scary Biblical personages and events are swallowed up by commercial / pop culture. It’s ridiculous, genius, and moving, all at the same time.” Robert Shapard, co-editor of the Norton Flash Fiction anthologies Sudden Fiction, Flash Fiction Forward, and Flash Fiction International

“Nancy Stohlman’s After the Rapture is the most raucous, innovative–and ultimately moving–disappearing act you’ll ever read. Brilliant!” SmokeLong Quarterly

image by Lynn Hough

AFTER THE RAPTURE is a flash fiction hybrid book written at the intersection between flash fiction and the novel. A leader and innovator of the form, Stohlman fragments the long form narrative into the distilled intensity of micro and compressed fiction while still maintaining a larger story arc. Nancy Stohlman has authored four previous books of flash fiction including The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories, The Monster Opera, and Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities, which was a finalist for a 2019 Colorado Book Award. Her flash fictions have been anthologized in the W.W. Norton anthology New Micro: Very Short Stories and in Macmillan’s The Practice of Creative Writing: A Guide for Students. Her flash fiction craft book, Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction, won the Readers View Gold Award and was re-released as an audiobook in 2022.

RECENT PRESS:

People You Know By Heart: AFTER THE RAPTURE / Nancy Stohlman

Fresh Fiction: Nancy Stohlman | Author-Reader Match: AFTER THE RAPTURE

VoyagerDenver: Rising Stars: Meet Nancy Stohlman

Writer’s Digest: The Sacred Clown: From Hysteria to Hysterical When Writing Humor and Satire

Largehearted Boy: “Nancy Stohlman’s Playlist for her novel ‘After the Rapture’

Fangirlnation Barbie Arms and the Antichrist in ‘After the Rapture”

Women Writers, Women’s Books Flash Fiction Meets the Novel or Chocolate Meets Peanut Butter

Fanbase Fiction Press Interview with Nancy Stohlman

Speaking of Travel Podcast: Reconnect Your Imagination with flash fiction author and performer Nancy Stohlman

Shoutout Colorado: Meet Nancy Stohlman, Flash Fiction Writer, Performer and Teacher

Interview with Rob McClennon: 12 or 20 Questions with Nancy Stohlman

Live from The Bunker: An Absurd Afterlife? A Barbie Rapture? Live TV broadcast interview with Nancy Stohlman

UPCOMING LIVE & VIRTUAL APPEARANCES

March 25: Arapahoe Community College Lit Fest presenter

March 30: In-person reading/signing at The Bookworm, Omaha NE

April 7: (Virtual) Fbomb NYC, 6 pm EST featuring Nancy Stohlman with guests Paul Beckman, Meg Tuite, Robert Vaughan, Len Kuntz, Kona Morris, Jonathan Montgomery, Rob Geisen, Sally Reno and Kathy Fish

April 29: The Mercury Cafe for the double book release (Nancy Stohlman and Johnathan Montgomery) “Nine Raptures at Once”. Details coming.

April 17: (Virtual): Shorter is Better: April Book Club Guest

May 18: (Virtual) Hundred Pitchers of Honey Reading Series with Courtney LeBlanc, Yael Aldana, Nancy Stohlman. 7:30 PM EST time.

June 1: In person: Rally Reading Series Pete’s Candy Store, NYC. Full lineup TBA 

June 19: In person: Featured Reader, Spoken Word Paris. Full lineup TBA

June 22: In person: Featured Reader, Paris Lit Up. Full lineup TBA

July 14-16 Reader and Workshop Leader, Flash Fiction Festival in Bristol, UK

August 15-20: Open Your Art: High Altitude Inspiration in the Rocky Mountains Writing Retreat (www.flashfictionretreats.com)

*

I can’t wait to share this book with you!

Love,