by Christy Tending | May 17, 2024 | flash fiction
Let’s say they believed her.
Let’s say she was born into a different age. That she wasn’t the one who burned. Or:
Maybe in another life, she is the favorite camp counselor. She teaches the kids to ride horseback. She tells them to get back up when they fall. She wipes tears, and if they’re really too afraid, she lets them stand next to her at the center of the ring. She rubs their backs to release the last of the adrenaline. You can try again tomorrow.
There is no shame.
Maybe she’s the one who teaches the kids to juggle during a break between activities, to sword fight with branches they found on a hike. She prances, one foot in front of the other, across the fallen log across the river. Maybe she’s suspended by invisible wires. Come on! You can do it! She gives the kids encouraging smiles as they stretch their arms out wide for balance. In her mind, she counts each one as they safely make it to shore again.
Maybe now, when god speaks to her, it’s in the campfire songs and handclap games. She hears that clear voice in the musical shuffle of leaves in the wind. In the low hoot of the Great Grey Owl, the rare owl that hunts by day. In the high bark of the coyote. But still, every version of her can hear it.
Maybe in this plane of existence, she’s the one to teach the kids archery: the grace and precision of the bow and the power of the wind. She passes on what her ancestor-self knew. She teaches the children to whittle, to carve small idols with their knives, a reminder of the way we pray with our feet on the forest floor, our eyes skyward. She teaches them ax-throwing, just in case.
Maybe when the sun goes down, she’s the one to build the fire. Her keen fox eyes have been on the lookout. Her rough hands gathered kindling all day. She’s the one to show the shy girl to tilt the logs toward one another, to make a spark with a flint, to alchemize that potential into a bonfire to keep all the kids warm. She shows them how it sends crackles of heat into the purple night.
Maybe, even now, there’s a part of her that smells the smoke and shudders. Her skin prickles and recoils from the heat that feels too familiar.
But maybe, still, there’s the part of her that relishes this sweet ritual. She places a graham cracker in the palm of a child, and a square of chocolate. She shows them how to select thin, green sticks; to puncture the soft white marshmallow; to dangle them close to the heat. She laughs as she blows out the ones that catch on fire, explaining that the burned ones are her favorite. She laughs harder at the irony, stamping out the embers inside her that want to remember out loud. She uses a second cracker to extract the marshmallow from its spear, handing the sandwich to each precarious child. Not so much younger than she was when she first rode into battle. She wants the sweetness to keep them safe for as long as it can. She wants them to remember when days could end like this, when fires served this purpose alone, when this was the most sincere form of communion.
Maybe in this lifetime, this is how she puts herself to work. She learns other ways to wield a weapon. She learns other ways to talk to god. Maybe this time, she learns it’s safer to keep her business to herself.
by Z. K. Abraham | May 13, 2024 | flash fiction
We carry out the unction for our aging father on the dining room table, anointing him with a variety of substances: stale lake water, ripe oil that dripped down the jagged walls of caves back home, that spiced, buttery potion that our mother makes just like her own mother did, brewed on the stove for an hour with cumin and coriander, turmeric and cardamom pods, entire cinnamon sticks, three drops of blood.
Rubbing that old magic, that oily-shine, all over his limbs.
He slaps our hands away but remains flat on the table. A stained undershirt hangs loosely around his soft, pale brown shoulders. He falls asleep several times, snoring like a low fog horn, awakening to our glistening hands on his legs, his dry feet.
I’m not dead yet, he screams. Repeats it in our language. I’m not your plaything, your wedding goat, your serpent, your village child, your white devil.
It’s the third equinox of his illness. The magic is failing him, his mind is going, and he is a long way away from home. We, his children, have only known these East Coast American winters of bitter snows and purple-hued skies. We have come to spend time with our father. Trying to learn the old magic again, trying to see through the dark weave of his curse. There is nothing to be done, says our Aunt. We ignore her. We discuss a trip back to the homeland, to the daughter of the old witch doctor in the old village. He is too frail to travel. We repeat after our mother, chanting the old prayers to the gods, for the first time in years. Our mother takes over, reciting the spells she learned from her mother and her mother’s mother and that we can no longer follow. We turn to our father, half-asleep in his chair. We chant before each meal. We eat rice and chicken, sour flatbread, and ripe cherries. Then we push our father onto the table, roll up his sleeves and his pants legs. Unbutton his shirt. Rub the hallowed oil into his skin. Lay the amulets on his chest.
This unction is not a Catholic or Orthodox sacrament but a sacred rite untouched by Jesus or modernity or civil wars. It is the same words spoken thousands of years ago, words that hold magic from our ancient, fragrant hills—anointment of ‘abo. We are trying to heal him. Dad keeps forgetting why we are anointing him, starts crying as he hears the sacred words, keeps forgetting the day, the hour, though not yet forgetting our names. Sometimes, he remembers it all so clearly that we realize we are the ones who have forgotten the truth; he is our father, we are the children. Sometimes, he falls asleep and wakes up confused, thinking he is back home, tracing divination signs in the air. We tell him we have to continue, for his own health, to consecrate him, to summon lost spirits, to save him, to save us. Death and time whisper in our ears; we see all the magic we have forgotten, that we never knew. We see our father in a new light.
He is angrier and softer than he has ever been. Where have you been? he barks. New York. Denver. Minneapolis. A few months finding myself in Chile, Cuba. What? He barks. Cubans still remember their old magic. Santería… He loses track of himself.
Later, we find black and white pictures of him in his twenties. White-robed, black bodies around a fire. It looks like back home. Our father shifts, the hard wood of the table pressing into his spine. We believed in something.
Did they really do this for their elders back home? We ask. Oh yes, our mother says from the other room, sleepy. In stone houses and courtyards with lean chickens and bright burgundy flowers, when fathers would return, we would do the rites before we ate. Pour the lake water over their heads, wash their hands in the limestone oil of our caves. Read from the scrolls. On holy days, as they lay down to rest, we would rub their hands with that venerated, amber substance. Only the most respectful, the most faithful of children would do this. You are not those things. Keep trying, though.
Dad says he doesn’t like this frankincense stink, that it reminds him of when he was first learning the rituals, afraid of the dark, afraid of cold stone and dark-eyed wizards. Still, he was obedient, a brave boy. Once, he learned the spells, but he left the magic behind a long time ago. Left the spirits behind with a lifetime of loss. We want to learn the witch-magic. The spells are tradition. They are a procedure, we explain, with clinical purposes. He nods. Now you care. Belief is a long way away, but his love for order remains; it contained him before, and it can contain him again.
He’s telling us old stories, suddenly complacent as a lamb. Tales and incantations pour out of his mouth. His eyelids grow heavy. He coughs, and oil drips out of the side of his mouth. We have built him up again, in our fear, in our confusion. We forget the wounds, the resentments, the unheard spirits, the unvoiced truths like unbloomed seeds. It all fades. Things are simplified. Oil paintings of anger, regret, and yearning, rendered in crayon. He glistens, slick skin, blessed shine. Turning over, he spits up the oil and butter. Lifts his hand in the air, waving to an invisible crowd, but he has a grimace on his face, solemn as a saint. Hello my children, he chokes, thank you. He gives up on talking as the aromatic oils coat his tongue. Stares off into distance towards a path we cannot follow. Our compass is shattered; it reads strange directions.
by Christina D’Antoni | May 9, 2024 | flash fiction
I ran over a nightjar with my car. It wasn’t my fault—it sat there roosting in the right lane of the road. I was on the phone with my brother when it happened; he’s apprenticing in ear-nose-throat. He’d changed rotations, went straight there from gyno. They’re all mysterious cavities, you know?
I thought of swim days, when my parents would go on a date to the local pool. I’d stay home alone, stand in the foyer mirror with my head between my legs and try to see inside myself. I’d just watched Mean Girls, wanted to know if I had a wide-set-vagina-and-a-heavy-flow like the girl in the movie.
It’s like when a woman brags at the table while ordering lunch, I’ve got such a small stomach. I can’t eat much. How does she know?
I’ve got the nightjar in the backseat, wrapped half-dead in a coat. It’s my boyfriend’s wool hoodie, the one that cloaks the back of the chair every night when he comes home from work. I felt so restless, staring at its volume, I tossed it in the truck.
I began Googling nightjars, how they’re called goatsuckers cause they’re storied for sucking the milk from goats. I think that through from both ends, from the vantage point of a worn goat’s nipple, and from the short beak of the bird. All that giving-and-receiving. I think about the gas station I never reached, how I was in the process of turning right when I hit the bird, to fill up. You can watch the price go up and up; imagine the gas pumping in, but you never see inside the tank.
I had a dream last week that I pulled a salamander from myself like its tail was a tampon string. Are other people like this? I ask my brother. I’m always thinking about my insides, what I can’t see.
He tells me he’s glad to be out of neurology, a brain laid on the table, portioned out like cheese. Sometimes it’s best that we don’t see, he said. The organ donor was a woman who bent down to pick up the newspaper, sneezed, and had a fatal stroke.
I think of my friend Lucy, the way she looked at me when I’d told her I’d cheated last year—the way she grew quiet. I watched her chest rise, her lungs filling with what she would not say.
I dreamt of a balloon that night, popped inside of me, the puckered rubber knot hanging down. My subconscious always brings me back to the womb—all the ways I could be broken.
I’m startled by a honking car, get the motherly instinct to check the backseat. The nightjar is legs-up, as dead as it can be.
by Fractured Lit | May 8, 2024 | contests
judged by Maurice Carlos Ruffin
May 11 to July 14, 2024
This contest is now closed. Thank you to everyone who submitted and trusted us with your writing!
Since this was one of our favorite contests last year, we had to bring it back! From May 11 to July 14, 2024, we welcome writers to submit to the Fractured Lit Flash Fiction OPEN.
We want your most creative and resonant flash and microfictions. No themes. Send us those pieces that hum with life, velocity, and intimacy. Write that story you’ve been thinking about for months, the one that needs to exist, the one that caught you in its glare of white-hot inspiration. Please don’t forget that we love stories that involve actions, reactions, and reckonings. Write and submit the stories only you can tell!
Fractured Lit publishes flash fiction with emotional resonance, with characters who come to life through their actions and responses to the world around them. We’re searching for flash that investigates the mysteries of being human, the sorrow, and the joy of connecting to a diverse population.
We’re thrilled to partner with Guest Judge Maurice Carlos Ruffin, who will choose one grand-prize winner and 15 finalists from a shortlist. The first-place winner will receive $2,000 and publication, while the 15 finalists will receive $100 and publication. All entries will be considered for general publication.
Good luck and happy writing!
Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author of the new historical novel The American Daughters, published in February 2024 by One World Random House. He is the recipient of the 2023 Louisiana Writer Award and the Black Rock Senegal Residency. He also wrote The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, which was published by One World Random House in August 2021. The collection was the 2023 One Book One New Orleans Selection, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and longlisted for the Story Prize. The Ones was also selected to represent Louisiana at the 2023 National Book Festival. His first book, We Cast a Shadow, was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the PEN America Open Book Prize. It was longlisted for the 2021 Dublin Literary Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. The novel was also a New York Times Editors’ Choice. His work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Oxford American, Garden & Gun, The Kenyon Review, and Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a professor of creative writing at Louisiana State University, and the 2020-2021 John and Renee Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. Find him on Twitter @MauriceRuffin.
guidelines
- Your $20 reading fee allows up to two stories of 1,000 words or fewer each per entry-if submitting two stories, please put them both in a SINGLE document.
- Writers from historically marginalized groups may submit for free until we reach a cap of 25 submissions in this category. No additional fee waivers will be granted for this contest.
- We allow multiple submissions-each set of two flash/micro stories requires a separate submission accompanied by a reading fee.
- Please send flash and microfiction only-1,000 word count maximum per story.
- We only consider unpublished work for contests-we do not review reprints, including self-published work (even on blogs and social media). Reprints will be automatically disqualified.
- Simultaneous submissions are okay-please notify us and withdraw your entry if you find another home for your writing.
- All entries will also be considered for publication in Fractured Lit.
- Double-space your submission and use Times New Roman 12 (or larger if needed).
- Please include a brief cover letter with your publication history (if applicable). In the cover letter, please include content warnings as well, to safeguard our reading staff.
- We only read work in English, though some code-switching/meshing is warmly welcomed.
- We do not read anonymous submissions. However, shortlisted stories are sent anonymously to the judge.
- Unless specifically requested, we do not accept AI-generated work. For this contest, AI-generated work will be automatically disqualified.
The deadline for entry is July 14, 2024. We will announce the shortlist within ten to twelve weeks of the contest’s close. All writers will be notified when the results are final.
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OPTIONAL EDITORIAL FEEDBACK:
You may choose to receive editorial feedback on your piece. We will provide a global letter discussing the strengths of the writing and the recommended focus for revision. Our aim is to make our comments actionable and encouraging. These letters are written by editors and staff readers of Fractured Lit. Should your story win, no feedback will be offered, and your fee will be refunded.
by Fractured Lit | May 6, 2024 | news
Twenty-five fresh and original takes on this contest’s themes are headed to our guest, Judge Aimee Bender! We can’t wait to reveal her selections!
- Dear Goldilocks
- Heart of Stone
- The Incantation
- The Nesting Doll Paradigm
- The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep
- Heterothermy
- He is the River Monster
- The Cycle
- Her Little Animal
- Narrative Seeds
- Cordelia’s Ghosts
- Our Lady of Clean Kitchens
- Black with Ash, Red with Grinding
- Second Sight
- To Pay the Piper
- The Last Time I Saw Frank
- A Fairy Tale for Florida Girls
- The Pebble and the Witch
- To the Tower
- Animal Nature
- Thank You For Coming
- Mama Bear
- At Whistling
- The Desert Sound
- Let Down
by Chelsea Stickle | May 6, 2024 | micro
Now that the Arctic isn’t cold anymore, The Blob is awake and tearing through malls like a post-breakup trust fund baby. After it drinks the oceans dry, The Blob returns to North America. The 24-hour news cycle was made for this. On their websites, you can watch the feed from the helicopters shining a spotlight on its backside. In the corner of your favorite sitcom, there’s The Blob inhaling a Chinese restaurant in Vermont. On news panels, so-called experts speak in circles. Kids blame billionaires for destroying the environment and failing their fellow humans. Billionaires blame scientists who knew this was coming and didn’t do anything to stop it. Scientists blame the governments who ignored their warnings and denied funding. Governments blame their citizens for their consumption cravings, for not recycling, for not riding the bus that doesn’t come to their area, for not spending money they don’t have on solar panels, for wanting to eat something other than canned beans. But no one ever asks The Blob who it blames for its solitary existence on Earth. They see a monster and don’t ask what’s behind that flubby exterior. And since all the humans are so busy watching The Blob and discussing The Blob, they don’t actually attempt to stop it. So, The Blob rolls alone, searching for another of its kind, one it can merge with and become whole. It consumes what it can to maintain its optimism, but rolling through skyscrapers in the city moonlight, it feels emptier than ever.
by Sara Hills | May 2, 2024 | micro
For only seventy-seven dollars, the TV preacher promises God will grant me a miracle. He clasps his hands in prayer, gold rings glinting, while I clasp the telephone, punching the numbers from the TV screen that casts the room in a greenish glow.
“There, there,” the woman in the phone says, shushing me, and already I feel the miracle of Mama refilling my cracks.
The woman waits while I tiptoe through our dark trailer, careful not to step on the stain, careful not to disturb the steady rasp of Daddy’s sleep-breathing or his one arm hanging off the bed. I find his jeans in the empty dent on Mama’s mattress side and slide the V-I-S-A card from his torn leather wallet.
Stretching the phone to the dawn-lit window, I whisper the bumpy numbers, which the woman makes me do twice, asking how old I am (7), asking if I have any pets (yes, a dog: Roy), asking if I ever planted seeds at school (not at school, with Mama), and did I know seeds grow miracles and more seed money helps God save the world?
I sink down against the wall, burying my fingers into the knotted fur along Roy’s ridges where the fat ticks hide, while the woman calls me honey and God’s little angel and tells me all about which money-seeds we can plant for different kinds of miracles.
Her voice hums, like bees waking in springtime or when the neighbor’s cat Carlo catches a mouse, and I can almost feel Mama kneeling there next to me, fingernails heavy with dark dirt. Only this time, Daddy’s not shouting, and Roy and me aren’t whimpering. It’s just the woman’s voice filling my belly with dollar amounts and seed names—Resurrection, Recovery, New Beginning—so soft and sure they feel like an already answered prayer.
Originally published in Reflex Fiction.
by Lori D’Angelo | May 1, 2024 | interview
Michael Czyzniejewski, who is the interviews editor at the flash fiction magazine Smokelong Quarterly, has written four collections of short stories. His most recent is The Amnesiac in the Maze (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023), which writer Mark Polanzak describes as a collection of stories that “conjure the heady experiments of Kurt Vonnegut, Donald Barthelme, and Mark Leyner.” These are stories that make the reader think. On the surface, the stories appear to be thought puzzles, but underneath, they reveal deeper layers of human longing and desire.
Lori D’Angelo: You’ve written both flash fiction and more traditional short stories. How would you describe the stories in your most recent collection, The Amnesiac in the Maze?
Michael Czyzniejewski: There are some flash pieces in the book, but it’s more balanced with longer stories, or at least mid-length stories, often around 2,500-3,000 words. There are even a couple that are like novels for me, around 4,500 words. Those were difficult for a flash writer!
Lori D’Angelo: The stories in The Amnesiac in the Maze put your characters in a series of absurd scenarios. In one story, you have a pyromaniac who is stuck on an island surrounded by water. In another, you have a town filled with murdering monkeys. In another, you have a hemophiliac who falls in love with a glass eater. How did you come up with the ideas for these stories, and how did this collection, as a whole, come together?
Michael Czyzniejewski: This is a project I’d been working on for a while, since the late oughts, stories that came together by me writing one story, then writing another that seemed to follow the same pattern; all of a sudden, I had a project. I worked on it off and on for about ten years, finishing it and getting the manuscript out right before the pandemic—and there it froze for a couple-few years as small presses were holding back on their publication schedules.
As you point out, the stories follow a pattern, somewhat like the title of the book, The Amnesiac in the Maze. The stories all feature some stock character or archetype or trope or generality in a situation, often doing things. “The Amnesiac in the Maze.” “The Hemophiliac Engages the Glass Eater.” “The Daredevil Discovers His Doppelgänger.” “The Atheist Reconsiders.” It was a fun format to experiment in, to work with general and often nameless characters, to get into the core of who they were, how their identities shaped them. Or didn’t.
Not sure where the ideas come from, or really, how to answer that question, which I get a lot. My answer is always as straightforward as I can make it: I think a lot. Lots of things pop into my head and some of them are good ideas for stories, things that make me smile, things that excite me. It’s usually not intentional—whenever I try to start something and think, “Okay, what’s a good idea for a story?” I don’t get anything. I guess I can’t will myself to think of ideas, but they come when they come.
Lori D’Angelo: I feel like the titles such as “The Bigamist Gets Ambitious” are doing a lot of work for these stories. In a way, this collection kind of reminds me of Robert Olen Butler’s Tabloid Dreams. Can you tell me more about how the titles are working for these stories?
Michael Czyzniejewski: The titles do a lot of the work in terms of setup, a lot like poems often do—if the title wasn’t there, the reader would have no idea what was going on. Or, at the very least, it would take a lot of the story’s length to figure it out. The title sets up the protagonist, the situation, the conflict. That way, I could hit the ground running, no need for set up or backstory. It’s a neat trick.
Lori D’Angelo: In a lot of the stories in this collection, the main characters are referred to by what they are (e.g., a nudist, an inventor, a hypochondriac) rather than their names (though occasionally, in some stories, their names are referenced). Can you talk about why that is?
Michael Czyzniejewski: I think it was more interesting to try to break down the trope or type or even stereotype than to use a real character, with a real name. That’s what the stories do, pose a certain type of person against their, perhaps, worst fear. I started that way by accident and just went from there—it seemed to be working.
Eventually, as I wrote more of the stories, I wanted to shake things up, add variety, so I did write more traditional stories with names, real characters, etc. “The Bigamist Gets Ambitious” is one that does that. The bigamist, who is also not the protagonist in the story, just has a name, as do his wives, including the original wife, the protagonist, and the narrator. It just made for a more well-balanced, less repetitive book that tries different things.
Lori D’Angelo: You’ve written four short story collections, including this one. How would you say that your work has evolved from the beginning of your career until now?
Michael Czyzniejewski: I remember just trying to write a good story. Then, for a long time, I wanted to publish one of them, and that took a couple-few years. Then I wanted to do it again. Eventually, I wanted to do it consistently. I’ve always wondered if I would “make it,” if I could sustain a career in writing stories, or at the very least, have a tiny space in the universe. Eventually, after a couple of books, a job as a professor teaching short stories, I kind of figured out that, at the very least, it wasn’t an accident or a fluke. That’s a good feeling, a relief … yet I suffer from stage 4 imposter’s syndrome still.
Lori D’Angelo: I’ve noticed that you’ve published a lot of flash fiction recently. Can you talk about what draws you to the form of flash fiction and what you think makes a work of flash fiction successful?
Michael Czyzniejewski: I like getting full ideas out in one sitting. Flash allows that, while novels and even traditionally sized short stories don’t. I can start and finish a draft of a flash piece in one sitting. Once I get an idea, I can usually write it to its end. That’s empowering, plus it fits with how my brain works, how it can be ultra-focused in short bursts but get sick of ideas—especially my own—very quickly. I’ve tried writing novels and got really far into one—25 pages!—but every time I went back to it after that, I couldn’t be less bored. And if I was bored, then the reader ….
Lori D’Angelo: Which writers would you say are doing interesting work right now in the form of flash fiction?
Michael Czyzniejewski: I’ve read so many people and could fill pages upon pages here with names. I look at Kathy Fish and Pamela Painter as real trailblazers, and they’re still doing consistently great work. Sherrie Flick could be the third person if we needed a trio there. I love a lot of the authors on my press, Moon City Press, even before they were on the press, so it’s no wonder they won our book contests: Kim Magowan, Michelle Ross. Andrew Bertaina. Sarah Freligh, and our forthcoming author, Avitus Carle. Other people are so prolific and do so much great work. Melissa Llanes Brownlee. Erin Vachon. Chelsea Stickle. Kelli Short Borges. Tara Isabel Zambrano. Sudha Balagopal. Tommy Dean. Francine Witte. Mikki Aronoff. Meg Tuite. Now I feel bad because there are so many, but I can’t list every author here.
Lori D’Angelo: It seems like flash fiction has become very popular recently. Why do you think that is? And when do you feel like flash fiction really took off as a form of writing?
Michael Czyzniejewski: Yes, very popular! My guess is that it gives fiction writers the opportunity to work like a poet: Shorter, more focused works that can be written (and submitted) in bunches. I suspect a lot of writers have the same issue with longer works as I do, that they just don’t have the patience. Speaking of, I think it also helps that a lot of online flash journals—and there are a lot of them—respond to submissions in less than a month, sometimes in less than a week; flash is moving and shaking at a faster rate than more traditional lit mag operations. And there are an abundance of great flash journals out there, and a lot of print magazines, mine included, have made special spaces in their pages, or on their websites, for flash.
When did it start? Wow, hard to pinpoint. SmokeLong Quarterly has been around for a long time now, over fifteen years, and I had an early story with them. Then I wrote my second book, Chicago Stories, all micros, and published those in 2011-2012. And then I didn’t pay particular attention for a while, but all of a sudden, in the late twenty-teens, all these journals popped up. I found out about it because these great authors on Moon City Press—like Kim and Michelle—had their work from their books in these journals, journals I hadn’t, at that point, heard of.
Lori D’Angelo: Which writers would you say have had the biggest influence on you?
Michael Czyzniejewski: There’s three that are easy to name. Firstly, I went to college in the early nineties and all my professors were still absolutely obsessed with Raymond Carver and minimalism at that point. They all went to school and got hired in the seventies and eighties, and that was just what writing was: Carver. Short, declarative sentences. Minimal exposition and emotion. That iceberg metaphor. I read all of Carver and his contemporaries—Ford, Wolff, Beattie, etc.—so I wrote, and still write, in that stylistic mode.
But times changed, and people got sick of that. Carver was dead for almost ten years. His editor, Gordon Lish, was no longer in charge at Knopf. Then I ran across two authors/books right when I was in grad school: The Girl in the Flammable Skirt by Aimee Bender and CivilWarLand in Bad Decline by George Saunders. Absurdity! Humor! Magical realism! Creativity! Description and exposition! Both of these authors really spoke to me, especially with their stylized prose and their imaginations. So, Carver and Bender and Saunders.
Steve Gillis, the editor of my first book, Elephants in Our Bedoom, said my work was “magical minimalism.” That made perfect sense, Mike = Carver + (Bender + Saunders). I don’t think I’ve changed much since.
Lori D’Angelo: You’ve worked as an editor, both at Mid-American Review and now at Moon City Review and Moon City Press. Can you talk about how being an editor has shaped your writing?
Michael Czyzniejewski: I’ve learned a lot. Every time you read something, you get smarter. And reading submissions for a journal is different from reading a published work, a book or a story in a lit mag. Sometimes, you learn what to do. Sometimes, you learn what not to do. Sometimes, you get inspired. Working on a journal, as part of my job, has been a gift—any time you can say you’re going to work, and part of that is reading and discussing stories, which is time well spent. This has been true for my entire career. It’s just great to be spending time on these pursuits, as opposed to welding, lawyering, leathernecking, whatever.
Lori D’Angelo: You’re also a professor of creative writing at Missouri State University. Can you talk about how being a teacher informs your writing?
Michael Czyzniejewski: Kind of the same thing: It’s just great to be able to go to work and read and discuss stories. Students inspire me but in a different way than lit mag submissions. Your brain is in a different mode: Help/Fix, as opposed to the editing/choosing submission mode, which is Yes/No. I’m lucky to be able to earn money by talking about short stories, about writing in general. They don’t let you do that in most other jobs. And being around writing all day fuels me, inspires me.
I have writer friends who are happy to go and do _____ all day, then write when their workday is done. I don’t think it would be like that for me.
Lori D’Angelo: You’ve had a fairly successful career as a short story writer, which is a difficult thing to do. What advice do you have for newer writers who are hoping to write flash fiction and short stories?
Michael Czyzniejewski: Work on it, and don’t stop. I’m convinced the only reason—or most of the reason—I’ve had success is because I was persistent. I read, wrote, revised, and submitted my work without letting up for years—more than half my life at this point. This thing we do, it’s not a lark, not a passing hobby, not something you stumble into. Nobody is looking to publish anyone’s hobby/side hustle, or anyone’s rough drafts. There are so many talented people writing and submitting and pushing the genre of short fiction forward. To be one of those people, you have to work just as hard or harder to break in.
But if you love this, have talent, and were meant to write and publish stories and flash, this shouldn’t be a problem. Even when I was getting everything rejected—and that happened for years—I was never like, “I hate this. Writing stories is so tedious.” I was doing what I wanted to be doing, so working hard at it wasn’t an issue. What else was I going to do?
Lori D’Angelo: What are you reading now, or what have you read recently that you have particularly enjoyed?
Michael Czyzniejewski: I bought a huge stack of books at AWP that I haven’t touched yet, ten weeks later. I have gotten into the practice of seeing friends advertise their new books on social media and then writing them, asking to buy a signed copy—I’ve done that at least ten times in the last month. I am teaching the Contemporary Fiction course in the fall here at MSU and I haven’t read six of the nine books on my syllabus yet. What I’m reading now is student stories and final portfolios: As soon as that’s done, in a few weeks, I hit all that other stuff!
Lori D’Angelo: What are you currently writing, or what are you thinking of doing in terms of your next writing project?
Michael Czyzniejewski: I have two books done, pretty much. One is a mixed collection—flash and longer stories—about dads, dad-child relationships. I was really on that kick as soon as I finished Amnesiac. I finished this dad book, comparatively, pretty quickly, in less than three years, while Amnesiac took about ten. I have been writing flash exclusively for the last few years now. I’m at the point where that might be a book—I should probably count those pages up soon!
***
Michael Czyzniejewski is the author of four short story collections: The Amnesiac in the Maze (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023); I Will Love You for the Rest of My Life: Breakup Stories (Curbside Splendor, 2015); Chicago Stories: 40 Dramatic Vignettes (Curbside Splendor, 2012); and Elephants in Our Bedroom (Dzanc Books, 2009). He is the editor-in-chief of Moon City Press and Moon City Review and the interviews editor for Smokelong Quarterly. He coordinates the creative writing program at Missouri State University, where he also serves as a professor. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize winner and a 2009 recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
Lori D’Angelo’s debut collection of stories, The Monsters Are Here, is being published by ELJ Editions in 2024. She is an alumna of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and a fellow at the Hambidge Center for Creative Arts. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry has appeared in various literary journals including BULL, Drunken Boat, Gargoyle, Hawaii Pacific Review, Heavy Feather Review, North Dakota Quarterly, ONE ART, Potomac Review, Reed Magazine, and Rejection Letters. She is a 2012 recipient of a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. Find her on Twitter @sclly21 or Instagram at lori.dangelo1.
by Gillian OShaughnessy | Apr 29, 2024 | micro
I bury my dead in this garden. Over there, under the cabbage roses. They haunt me through the day. At night, they sleep in the shadow of a fig tree with branches as wide as an archangel’s wings. I used to sit there and knit the smallest of garments. I chose thin needles and fine woollen yarn; I never dropped a single stitch. My husband and I don’t speak of that anymore; I put those tools away at his insistence. Who did he think he was helping? Now I fashion makeshift shrouds from whatever I can find, I pick at fallen leaves and discarded feathers of lucent blue, I peel the soft skin from the paperbarks. I try to keep my children quiet, but their ghosts play ring-a-rosy while I work. The chime of their glass laughter leaves me teetering. I no longer clean the crescents of dirt that crust beneath my fingernails or bother with snags in my hair. When he wraps me in the weight of his compassion, I’m cool as frost. He says I drift away like smoke, but he doesn’t bleed like me, he doesn’t see how tenderly I rest my palm on their cradles of soil, how I nurture every blossom. Ghost babies are born with sharp teeth. They eat through my womb. They wail beneath the fat cabbage roses; they gnaw at my back when I turn my head away. They are ravenous.
*A version of Hunger was longlisted in Reflex in the Autumn award in 2022 and shortlisted for the Bridport Prize for Flash Fiction.*
by Fractured Lit | Apr 27, 2024 | news
We asked for new ways to tell these kinds of stories, and these 52 writers did not disappoint! We’re working on getting down to a shortlist very soon. We can’t wait to send it to our guest, Judge Aimee Bender!
- Dear Goldilocks
- Snow White and the Sleep Study
- Heart of Stone
- What Big Eyes
- The Incantation
- The Nesting Doll Paradigm
- The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep
- The Weeper
- Every Time a Bell Rings
- Heterothermy
- Deliverance
- Enjoy Every Moment
- He is the River Monster
- The Cycle
- The Department of Missed Connections
- Agnes and The Dog Star
- Forgiveness by the Numbers
- Pizza Rat, Don’t Think I Have Forgotten You
- Her Little Animal
- The Rat-Catcher of Hamelin
- Selection Pressures
- Narrative Seeds
- Cordelia’s Ghosts
- The Rattle Grass
- Our Lady of Clean Kitchens
- Blue Dragon
- Dreams of Me
- Second Sight
- To Pay the Piper
- The Last Time I Saw Frank
- A Fairy Tale for Florida Girls
- Selkie’s Stew
- Yellow Eyes Jack
- The Pebble and the Witch
- Wild Horses
- A wommon’s World
- Harpy
- To the Tower
- Godmother Yes
- Is There, Is There Balm in Gilead
- Ratibia
- Animal Nature
- The Riding Hood Effect
- A Goat for Goldstein
- Thank You For Coming
- The Burden of Authority
- Mama Bear
- A New Volcano Friend
- At Whistling
- The Mouth
- The Desert Sound
- Let Down
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