Everything about Shiraz’s mom is dark and shiny, especially her black vinyl coat. Her lipstick is the same deep purple as the polish on her long nails and her high-heeled strappy sandals. I once asked Mom to try on…
At first glance, a reader might miss the “i.” And see terror, from the root for “fear,” which many people feel these days. But the French word terroir comes from terra, land, and refers to the quality an environment…
By Jessica Lampard • Revealing character—not just how a character serves the story, but who they are beneath their public persona—is the bedrock of all good fiction. It’s how real truths about human nature take hold within our imagination.…
On the day the buyer is to come, my aunt and I put a green dress on the baby, sleek her hair, and fit a cap on her. The baby’s socks are different―one is yellow with two white stripes,…
When flash fiction works in fabulist ways “The speed is exhilarating,” Philip Pullman says of fairy tales in Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling, a collection of his perspectives on literary craft. Indeed, in little to no time at…
Lilith insists on waiting in line for the photo booth anyway. It’s Friday night, the middle of winter, and her friends are being unbelievably lame—what with Devyn and Wilson on the brink of yet another drunken argument and Jon…
Bedtime in first grade is finger jelly and sock lint. Vaseline rubbed on my bloody, split, vellum-dry knuckles; hands cocooned in white Nike gym socks, wrapped on my wrist with scrunchies. I am told to sleep. Wake up for…
The woman on the cover of Lara Ehrlich’s debut short story collection appears to be almost airlifted from the 1950s—she could be an actor from The Donna Reed Show or perhaps a model for LOOK magazine, all aproned and…
When the drink arrives, it isn’t because I’ve ordered another. The server floats a short glass from her tray to kiss the back of my hand on the table. What was once, until recently, my favorite kind of short…
By Jacqueline Doyle • Flash fiction has gradually come to be recognized as an important literary form, though there are still writers who dismiss flash as a passing fad, less important than the short story. Often, they are the…
