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Reckoning Flash
An Interview with Tommy Dean by Mandira Pattnaik I have been writing Flash Fiction for about three years now. As a new writer, I read a lot. Most literary magazines have archives that are free to read, and full of gorgeous pieces. I’ve learned structure and narrative nuances and have discovered some great Flash Fiction writers.…
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Beginnings
An Interview with Lyndsey Ellis by Michaella Thornton I had the good fortune of being introduced to Lyndsey Ellis’ phenomenal writing through a creative writing teacher and indie publisher we both love, Christi Craig of Hidden Timber Books. Once I read Lyndsey’s debut novel, Bone Broth, last summer, I was in awe of how Lyndsey…
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The Story Behind the Idea
An Interview with Edward A. Farmer by Stuart Phillips Edward A. Farmer’s novel, Pale (Blackstone 2020), follows the course of several years on a plantation in the Mississippi Delta, interweaving themes of race, power, and the stultifying effects of the inhabitants’ connection to the land. In the end, the novel plays out the entire Southern…
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Flexing My Creative Muscles: Art Nights, Line Art, & Daily Doodles
by Melissa Llanes Brownlee If I told you that I once got busted for doodling in my Composition Notebook in math class, my hearts carved into its speckled black and white cover, stars streaking across polynomials, dragons roaring at word problems I didn’t want to solve, would you believe me? Until that day, doodling in…
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Healthy Habits: Interdependence
by Valerie Peralta When my doctor’s phone number flashed on my caller ID a month after my biannual blood work I wasn’t worried. “I’m sorry it took so long to call you with this information,” the nurse said. “I’m glad you didn’t call sooner,” I responded. She would have called immediately if the results had…
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Altered Earths: Beyond Dystopia
Tackling the Narrative Challenges of Climate Change, On and Off the Page By S.E. Hartz This past weekend, I coped with a particularly bad bout of climate anxiety by watching seven straight hours of Stranger Things. Something about witnessing a group of young kids repeatedly face down various iterations of the same catastrophe, beating back…
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Soundscapes: Radio Lessons
by Erin Calabria The first time I heard the world through a field recorder, it was like falling into a parallel dimension. Here was another universe rubbing shoulders with ours, where everything looked the same but sounded completely different. Ears cocooned in heavy foam headphones, I slowly rotated the levels to pull this alternate reality…
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The Fractured Mirror
Results will Vary: The Disruptive Necessity of Story by Edward Karshner Folklore is the rawest, most subversive type of literature. It adheres to no genre. It belongs to the people, the folk, not institutions or mass media conglomerates. As David Southwell writes “any folk culture that could not be regarded as heretical is short-changing the…
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TV Time: Revision as Time Travel
by Sonia Alejandra Rodriguez My favorite type of time travel shows and films are about changing the past. I’m obsessed with the “what-ifs” of what my life could have been: what if I had grown up with citizenship, with money? Would that have prevented the domestic violence and emotional abuse? I long to know more…
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Intoxicated by Stories
by Nick Rees Gardner While at a residency last month, I sat with a group of artists and writers circled on adirondack chairs sharing some of Vermont’s finest IPAs. At my feet was a fresh four-pack of The Alchemist’s iconic Heady Topper and in my hand I held a Lawson’s Sip of Sunshine. I had…