All posts tagged: short story

Tiny Molecules: One Summer, by Iceland

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One more piece of news to cap off the year: I’m delighted to have found a home for a new story in the winter issue of Tiny Molecules, an online quarterly literary magazine of small fiction. “One Summer, in Iceland” features the titular island of fire and ice as protagonist, or so it seems: “Yesterday for the first time this spring the rains died the clouds broke and the sun held taut in the sky. The waterfall foam-frothed and rose the way it did and up arced a rainbow. Light pouring over fresh basalt curving out of the ground like a wing plume. Soon the terns and puffins will return to nest above where you stood. Soon the rock and salt and shit will meld and craze into life. As I watch this future happen I will nestle into the cleft between our two stones. When I lay down I will sigh my breath into the wind and take in your old scent.” You can read the whole story and other pieces of flash fiction, …

Flash Fiction Magazine, Last Light

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I have a new piece of flash fiction (stories that are less than 1,000 words) over at Flash Fiction Magazine. “Last Light” uses the concept of lightspeed as a means to convey the time and distance necessary for healing: It’s been a thousand days since the sun died. Our star. My heart. It takes last light eight minutes to kiss the brow of the hill and home where we once were. Where little feet of twins pattered above our heads. Where the pampas grass in the yard grew tall and nodded in the summer breeze. It takes the morning to pack your belongings into the rental sedan. I’ll call you when I settle in. On that final sunbeam you rode away. In the driveway I stood and watched the light go.” You can read the full story and many others, published daily at Flash Fiction Magazine. Read the Full Story Here Photo credit: Jeremy Bishop

Big Blue

Our Museum of the Future – Shenandoah

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Humbled and honoured to contribute a short story to the latest issue of Shenandoah Literary Magazine. I had the good fortune of working on “Our Museum of the Future” with editor Beth Staples, whose new vision for the venerable publication is one I find compelling: “…I consider it my job to privilege voices that don’t fit into that category, not just because it’s the right thing to do to counteract many years of established practice, but because reading is one of a very few ways we can jump into the mind of someone else.” The fundamental purpose of literature in Staples’ view is “to expand the reader’s sense of the world and their place in it. It should also be one of our goals for being alive: stepping into another person’s shoes and practicing radical empathy.” – Radical Rebirth, The Columns “Our Museum of the Future” grew out of the conceit that there exists a public space where words are showcased and curated in the same fashion as bones: “Welcome to a museum of words instead of bones. …

Lungwort Lichen

Regarding Lichen, Tin House Online

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Happy to announce that my short story “Regarding Lichen” has been published on Tin House Online as part of their Flash Friday series. “Lichen” was inspired by the stylings of the late and great Donald Barthelme, in particular one of my favourite story of his titled “Concerning the Bodyguard” which is similarly built on questions hinting at an underlying narrative. “Lichen” takes a different tone and is written as a love story: “What are the odds of the lichen settling on this rock? This tongue of rock, jutting out from a sea of permafrost? Is the lichen aware of other lichens, borne on other winds, clones of itself, diaspores settling on bleached shores, on exposed outcrops, or drowning in bogs?” I hope you enjoy it. I apologize for not posting more in recent months. It’s partly due to the fact that I’m working on a bunch of different projects (like this one) and partly because after a hundred plus essays, I’m running low on stories I want to explore on a deeper basis. But rest assured, …