Views

Looking at Bartleby Snopes
A Talk with April Bradley & Nathaniel Tower

For the second in our series on literary magazines publishing flash fiction, we’ve a focus on Bartleby Snopes. A summary of the magazine on the Review Review website says “Bartleby Snopes is an online literary magazine with several goals in mind. We want to publish the best new fiction we can find. We want to give the many writers out there an opportunity to publish their best work. We want to inspire you to create great works of fiction. We currently publish two stories per week and end each month with a Story of the Month contest. We also publish our favorite stories in a semi-annual magazine format available as a free pdf download every January and July.” To find out more, I interviewed Associate Editor April Bradley and founder Nathaniel Tower.
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Bystanders by Tara Laskowski
Reviewed by Eileen Merriman

This month I’ve had the pleasure to read Bystanders, a compelling collection of short stories by writer, columnist, and editor of SmokeLong Quarterly, Tara Laskowski.

Bystanders is an apt title. A bystander, by definition, is a person who is present at an event or incident but does not take part. This is the theme running through the stories in this collection, whether it be a woman who becomes obsessively sympathetic to the driver involved in a hit-and-run; a new mother whose baby monitor shows her a chilling truth; a house-hunting couple whose relationship has recently been tested by an affair; or an investigative reporter whose alias likes to ‘ruin other people’s careers.’
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Interview with Tara Laskowski
Writer and Editor at SmokeLong Quarterly

Tara Laskowski

Tara Laskowski‘s short story collection Bystanders was hailed by Jennifer Egan as “a bold, riveting mash-up of Hitchcockian suspense and campfire-tale chills.” She is also the author of Modern Manners For Your Inner Demons, tales of dark etiquette. Her fiction has been published in the Norton anthology Flash Fiction International, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Mid-American Review, and numerous other journals, magazines, and anthologies. Since 2010, she has been the editor of the online flash fiction journal SmokeLong Quarterly.

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Seek Adventure:
An Interview with Bud Smith

Bud Smith

Bud Smith has written the novels Tollbooth (2013) and F250 (2015), published and edited the Kathy Fish/Robert Vaughan flash collection Rift (2015), and had his own stories widely published by the likes of SmokeLong, Hobart, Wigleaf, the Newer York, Drunk Monkeys, Funhouse and many more. His latest book is the novella I’m From Electric Peak (2016.) His website is www.budsmithwrites.com

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Collaboration:
A review of Rift by Kathy Fish & Robert Vaughan

rift In Rift, stories by Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan, published in 2015 by Unknown Press, lovers of flash fiction have a new Must Read, a new entry to the list of flash fiction classics that show the power and depth possible in stories compressed into a page or two.

Even the one-word, four-letter title conveys more than the sum of its parts. As a noun, rift means a break in something. A crack. A split. A flaw. A breach. A fracture. A cavity. An opening. A serious division in friendly relations.

The book Rift contains four escalating sections: Fault, Tremor, Breach, and Cataclysm. Each section has around eighteen stories that alternate between writers.

The table of contents is the only place Read in Full

Interview with Peter Blair
Bath Flash Commended

Flash 8.2 cover

Peter’s flash fiction Shadowtrain, commended by Tania Hershman in our February Award, began as a gentle parody of a colleague’s wonderful prose poems then went off on its own journey. In this interview he tells us more about the development of the story and what he likes about reading and writing flash fiction. With his colleague Ashley Chantler, Peter founded and edits Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, a biannual literary journal for stories and reviews of up to 360 words now in its sixteenth edition. He enjoys the incredible variety of subjects, settings and styles that a limited word count makes possible.

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Interview with
Clodagh O’Brien
Bath Flash Prize Winner

clodagh

Clodagh embarked on reading all the unread novels on her shelves in order to inspire her to write flash fiction. We think reading one form of fiction to prompt ideas to write in another is a great idea. Her third prize winning story, Billy is a wonderfully creative response to the novel ‘An Ocean in Iowa’ by Peter Hedges. In this interview Clodagh also tells us about her love of flash fiction, her favourite writers and where she best likes to write.

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Interview with Al Kratz
Bath Flash Prize Winner

Al Kratz with beer

Al tells us how his second prize-winning story was sparked off by the title, which came into his head on the way to work. This great ten-worder, You have so many more choices than fight or flight posed questions about human existence and allowed Al to write in the second-person, a voice he wouldn’t normally use. We think he’s definitely created a ‘kick-ass’ flash fiction.

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Interview with
Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Bath Flash Prize Winner

Ingrid tells us how persistence pays off when you’re faced with a blank screen. It certainly did when she cast about and discovered the idea for Roll and Curl, her first-prize winning flash. In this interview, Ingrid tells us more about this story and shares some of her writing methods.

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Guest Interview: Michelle Elvy

Michelle Elvy

Michelle Elvy is a writer, editor and manuscript assessor based in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands. Her poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and reviews have been published in numerous print and online journals. She lives on her 43’ sailboat with her husband and two daughters and is presently exploring the waters of East Africa. She edits at Flash Frontier: An Adventure in Short Fiction and Blue Five Notebook and is Assistant Editor, International, of the Best Small Fictions series, by Queens Ferry Press.
www.michelleelvy.com

Bath Flash Fiction Award

International Rolling Flash Fiction Competition

Views

Looking at Bartleby Snopes
A Talk with April Bradley & Nathaniel Tower

Bystanders by Tara Laskowski
Reviewed by Eileen Merriman

Interview with Tara Laskowski
Writer and Editor at SmokeLong Quarterly

Seek Adventure:
An Interview with Bud Smith

Collaboration:
A review of Rift by Kathy Fish & Robert Vaughan

Interview with Peter Blair
Bath Flash Commended

Interview with
Clodagh O’Brien
Bath Flash Prize Winner

Interview with Al Kratz
Bath Flash Prize Winner

Interview with
Ingrid Jendrzejewski
Bath Flash Prize Winner

Guest Interview: Michelle Elvy