Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities
Big Table Publishing, 2018
Finalist for a 2019 Colorado Book Award!
Step right up and meet a woman so determined to be a star she’ll try anything, including spray on Instant Fame! Meet her reflection, who dreams of a life of her own and manages to find lone on the internet! See the man desperately trying to earn a world record in the most bizarre way possible! Learn the origins of the Four-Legged Woman and the Human Skeleton! Clown mothers, suicidal ringmasters, cult leaders who teach the cha-cha and Alaska Jackson’s Traveling Medicine Show…each one takes center stag in this vaudeville of flash fiction. Flash Fiction, microfiction, short-short stories…regardless of the name, it’s all the same–a compressed story that packs a punch. Enter a cabaret of the weird, the absurd, and the bizarre with this bold and bawdy new collection from Big Table Publishing.
Read the Reviews!
“In essence, Oddities is just that—a carnival ride through fame, misfortune, and more misfortune. Usually all three at once, with a cheap bottle of absinthe thrown in. True, there are the freaks (the Human Skeleton, the Ape Lady, the Electric Lady, Boy with Breasts, etc. etc.) but Stohlman holds a mirror to our own vanities and insecurities like we’re wobbling through our own peculiar halls of mirrors.”
by Jonathan Cardew in Bending Genres
“Much like the two-faced lady or the conjoined twins, Stohlman seems to be running alongside of her twin from another dimension, a more popular, put together version. But with anything that reflects bigger, better, and brighter, Stohlman summons emotions in each piece that can’t be blurred or escaped from. That’s what makes this mixed bag of oddities about as real as it can get.”
by Hillary Leftwich in Heavy Feather Review
“Well, readers, I promise you this collection is like none other you’ve read…The pieces are so inventive and daring, with a voice that leaps off the page. Nancy deals with deep truths in a way that bucks straight realism.”
by Kathy Fish on Flash Fiction Retreats
“If you want an easily labeled genre that best defines this work, you may have to make one up. In Madam Velvet’s Nancy continues to explore the multi-dimensional frontiers of earlier works…and challenges the idea that a work of prose must be confined to the page. ”
by Jonathan Montgomery on Boulder Poetry Trib
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The Vixen Scream and other Bible Stories
Pure Slush Press, 2014
“The Vixen Scream is a collection of compelling and strikingly origial stories – an imagination functioning at full throttle. Nancy Stohlman is a word-alchemist, and here is her book of wonders!” – Robert Scotellaro, author of ‘Measuring the Distance’
“Hilarious, irreverent, twisted, bawdy, brilliant – these short shorts by Nancy Stohlman feel like a series of off-kilter encounters with the strangest characters you swear you’ve met before in a previous, more interesting lifetime. With sly humor and daring, Stohlman weaves tiny tales reminiscent of Etgar Keret, but with her own inimitable stamp. The Vixen Scream and other Bible Stories is an amazing collection. Do not deny yourself the pleasure of reading it.” – Kathy Fish, author of ‘Together We Can Bury It’
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The Monster Opera
Bartelby Snopes Press, 2013
(BARTLEBY SNOPES PRESS, 2013)
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“What is most fascinating about Stohlman’s work is how freely it shifts back and forth between different artistic forms…The Monster Opera is a bold attempt to carve out a space for the flash novel as a distinct category within the fiction landscape. In doing so, the work also raises questions about how art forms like opera can sustain an existence today, as well as the sacrifices demanded of those involved in the act of creating art.”
“Nancy combines the head of a novel and the body of an opera with the impatiently erect penis of flash fiction to form a creature so bizarre and hideous you cannot look away.”
“The Monster Opera is a brilliant and beautiful work, a rising crescendo of action in a haunting tale of love. Many authors strive for that perfect note, yet Stohlman does the unbelievable, turning words on the page into a truly operatic monster which comes alive in the very first scene.”
–J.A. Kazimer, Dopesick: A Love Story
“In a swell of lyrical prose that drips itself across the borders of music and literature, Nancy Stohlman delivers a self-aware story that sings out from the page like an opera trapped in the belly of an Old World curse. A love affair drunk on magical realism, somehow as ancient as it is avant-garde. “
–Kona Morris, Godless Comics
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Searching for Suzi: a flash novel
(Monkey Puzzle Press, 2009)
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“There is an immediacy that keeps one turning the pages . . . This is a great romp into the world of stripping. Page by page our plucky narrator reveals more of herself until the perfect ending lays it all bare.”
Barcelona Review
“The exploitation has to be turned around on itself at some point. Searching for Suzi tells the story of Natalie, an ex-stripper who reflects on her life as she returns to Omaha, Nebraska where she grew up. Discussing the obsession with appearance and the concept of sexy that ranges from the glamour and stripping industry down to childhood beauty pageants, Searching for Suzi is a fascinating and very highly recommended read.”
Midwest Book Review
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Fast Forward: The Mix Tape
*Finalist for the 2011 Colorado Book Award in Literary Fiction
Fast Forward Press, 2010
editors K. Scott Forman, Kona Morris, and Nancy Stohlman
“If you’d rather be rapt for a moment reading a flash than strung out for pages in a novel, Fast Forward is for you. It’s the best flash fiction around– a book full of raptures” —Robert Shapard, editor of Flash Fiction Forward and Sudden Fiction series.
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Other books by Nancy Stohlman
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