Join host Hillary Leftwich and readers Tara Campbell, Kathy Fish, Trent Hudley, David S. Atkinson, Brian Seeman and Nancy Stohlman for a night of flash fiction at Bookbar! Have some wine, hear some stories, leave with some books!
Sunday, August 19
5:30 pm
So you’ve been writing and editing–now you’re thinking about a book. But how do you put it all together?
Whether you are an editor designing an anthology or journal, an author attempting a collection, or you are embarking on a flash novel or novella, there are new things to consider when you go from the micro to the macro view of a body of work. Learn strategies, avoid pitfalls, and gain new inspiration for how to package flash fiction for the world in this brand new class.
This will be a 4-week online workshop format class with limited availability.
Tuition $159
Other questions? Contact me below:
When St. Joe, Missouri was announced as the Best Place Ever to watch the rapture, the people felt chosen. Not since Lady Gaga had come to Kansas City had they felt so special.
No one was exactly sure what would happen. Some thought it would be a fiery ball dropping from the sky, or ash blocking out the sun until they all choked, or floods, earthquakes, hurricanes or volcanic eruptions. As the day of final judgement drew closer, Motel 6 jacked up its prices to 800$ a night, the porn shop repaved the parking lot, and gun shops ran out of both guns and ammo. Red Lobster, the nicest restaurant in town, put gluten free items on the menu. Dunkin Donuts, overwhelmed by it all, just said fuck it and shut down.
Half a million people descended upon St. Joe. They came with rapture glasses, rapture t-shirts (prepare for the rapture with Pepsi!), and rapture key chains, booking out the KOA and every hotel room in town. When the grass was all claimed the people started pitching tents right on the concrete; rooftops became prime real estate. Dan Rather showed up in a RV. Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Lawrence were spotted raving about “untouched Americana” and eating a hot dog for the first time ever.
The day of the rapture everyone was ready. Some had UV glasses, some had hazmat suits, some were naked and meditating. Some boarded up their windows and the tornado sirens sounded for good measure and everyone waited outside, watching the sky. Crowding the streets and waving fireball pompoms and trying to shove rapture pancakes in their mouths.
As the rapture was about to begin the sky became covered in thick black clouds. It will blow over they assured, twitching. Then a rumor swept through the town that Beatrice, just one hour north, was a much better place to see the rapture. People dropped their pancakes mid bite and fled to their cars and flooded the highways, which became gridlocked almost instantly for 40 miles in either direction, leaving St. Joe like an exhausted whore.
Some that remained put on their UV glasses anyway just in case and they were lucky because hundreds of people went blind without seeing a thing.
About the writer:
Nancy Stohlman is the author of the flash fiction collection The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories (2014), the flash novels The Monster Opera (2013) and Searching for Suzi (2009), and three anthologies including Fast Forward: The Mix Tape (2010), which was a finalist for a 2011 Colorado Book Award. She is the creator and curator of The Fbomb Flash Fiction Reading Series and the creator of FlashNano in November. She teaches college in Denver and Boulder. Her newest book, Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities, is coming in the fall of 2018.
Image: “The Unknown God” by Gary Van Haas. Van Haas was born in Los Angeles. In his paintings, he combines an illusionary vocabulary with non-objective subject matter as a way to impress color and collage, which instead of relying mainly on imagery, responds formally and expressively to the illusionist idea of surrealist space and time.
by Nancy Stohlman
After the rapture, the people began a strange pilgrimage. They traveled from the broken cities, through streets littered with expired business cards, past billboards that had long ago stopped promising anything.
They walked over the Rocky Mountains and across the desert towards Salt Lake City, Utah, and the Very First Kentucky Fried Chicken, the one started by the actual Colonel Sanders when “fried” was still part of the name. It seemed pointless to care about things like cholesterol now; those who had been vegetarians and those who didn’t eat fried foods journeyed side by side.
The route to the Very First Kentucky Fried Chicken was marked by cairns and amulets. People who were interviewed along the way said they felt a certain calm on the months-long journey, that it was good to be away from the normal pressures of daily life and just be one with the scorching 100-degree temps of the high Utah desert, where understandably a certain number of pilgrims would not make it and their bodies would be left as they fell, adorned by the pilgrims to follow like roadside altars.
For those who made it, a large yet modest daily buffet awaited so pilgrims would not be forced to choose between original and extra crispy chicken, and there was both brown and white gravy and some even claimed to find a real lump in the mashed potatoes. And the fountain drinks ran freely and people shared their sporks under the grinning life-sized Colonel Sanders, decorated with beads and sunglasses and candles and smudge sticks and good luck fortunes left in thanks for a safe journey.
And then the people, desperate to avoid what came next, took their chicken bones and kept walking. They walked west for many days towards the setting sun until they reached the edge of a vast hole. But no matter how many bones they threw over the edge, they couldn’t fill the great, yawning silence that followed them back to the remains of their ruined lives.
*
Editors Santino Prinzi and Alison Powell
This seventh annual and established flash fiction writers. The authors have cooked up a smorgasbord of entertaining, moving and tantalising flashes for your reading delight. From fudge to oysters, apples to mangoes, gingerbread to (of course!) cake, there’s something in this anthology for everyone to sink their teeth into. Authors include: Alison Powell, A. E. Weisgerber, Abi Hynes, Alan Beard, Alicia Bakewell, Amanda O’Callaghan, Angela Readman, Anita Goveas, Anna Rymer, Anne Summerfield, Calum Kerr, Catherine Edmunds, Charlotte Wührer, Charmaine Wilkerson, Christopher Allen, Christopher M Drew, Claire Polders, Damhnait Monaghan, David Cook, Deborah Meltvedt, Diane Simmons, E. P. Chiew, Elaine Dillon, Emily Devane, Emma Harding, Erica Plouffe Lazure, Fiona J. Mackintosh, FJ Morris, Frankie McMillan, Gay Degani, Gemma Govier, H Anthony Hildebrand, Helen Rye, Ingrid Jendrzejewski, Ioanna Mavrou, J. E. Kennedy, Jacqueline Saville, Jan Kaneen, Jennifer Harvey, Joanna Campbell, Jude Higgins, Judy Darley, Kevlin Henney, KM Elkes, Kymm Coveny, Laura Pearson, Leonora Desar, Lisa Ferranti, Meg Pokrass, Megan Giddings, Nadia Stone, Nan Wigington, Nancy Stohlman, Nuala O’Connor, Olga Wojtas, Philip Charter, Poppy O’Neill, Rachael Dunlop, Rebecca Field, Robert Scotellaro, Ros Woolner, Sal Page, Santino Prinzi, Sara Chansarkar, Sarah Evans, Sharon Telfer, Sophie van Llewyn, Stephanie Hutton, Sylvia Petter, Tara Laskowski, Tim Stevenson, and TM Upchurch.
Nancy Stohlman 