Jessica, I love that you are doing this. It eases my intense and irrational(?) anxiety over a troubling imbalance between the hunger to be heard (getting published in lit mags) and the willingness to listen (read lit mags). I'm one of those braggy oversubscribers, so I can tell you right now that I will NOT be reading the current issue of Ploughshares, which has not yet been released from the plastic film it's mailed in. Not because I don't want to or because I don't like Ploughshares (I do) but I'm just being real with myself (and you).
I am reading Sinister Wisdom 136: Icons. I'm loving the section of Art Essays. The interview with the multidisciplinary artist, Samantha Nye, is putting color in my cheeks and making me feel oh so nostalgic for the good old days when I could still be shocked by art (in a good way).
Amid the visual art in PINCH Spring Issue Vol. 45:1, I found Lindsey Marie's acrylic on canvas: Chicken Spritzer. My. Jaw. Dropped. A convergence of two things I love. And can not explain how this... whaaaa? I love it.
In Epoch Spring issue Volume 72:1 I find Fortune & Favor, a poem by Emma Bolden. The first line is evidence that the poet and I are on the same psychic track, I too "In the first flush of spring tried to catch / a feeling like I was really something, like / a rabbit's foot thumping fast against a patch / of ground as green as luck..." and I so get it, how we can't stop looking at the silent & shapeless." Great poem.
And I picked this up at AWP from Indirect Books: the hour, irrevocable: A L'Esprit Retrospective. They're doing a thing called "Literature Beyond Convention" -- funny, because I literally picked this up at a convention. Ha ha. This literary review is a FREAKING MARVEL! I am shutting myself in my basement office on the only sunny days we will ever have in Portland for a long time in order to read "Light and Shadow: Virginial Woolf and Literary Impressionism" by Nicole Blair, a piece of criticism.
So, not just flash for me, instead a bunch of goodies.
Wow, this is a dream comment! I'm so excited that we are on the same page. Ouuu, you've listed some lit mags I've never heard of--I'm especially excited about A L'Esprit. Also, "color in my cheeks" really got me. Also, also! Are you in Portland, Oregon?!
Wow! I am just astonished that this is flash--the story covered so much time, with so many characters, and yet the story doesn't feel rushed. Just wow.
Jessica! Thank you for your kind words and enthusiasm surrounding my writing and love for flash fiction!
Tommy Dean! Thank you for all that you do for flash fiction. I’ve learned so much from you!
Jessica, I love that you are doing this. It eases my intense and irrational(?) anxiety over a troubling imbalance between the hunger to be heard (getting published in lit mags) and the willingness to listen (read lit mags). I'm one of those braggy oversubscribers, so I can tell you right now that I will NOT be reading the current issue of Ploughshares, which has not yet been released from the plastic film it's mailed in. Not because I don't want to or because I don't like Ploughshares (I do) but I'm just being real with myself (and you).
I am reading Sinister Wisdom 136: Icons. I'm loving the section of Art Essays. The interview with the multidisciplinary artist, Samantha Nye, is putting color in my cheeks and making me feel oh so nostalgic for the good old days when I could still be shocked by art (in a good way).
Amid the visual art in PINCH Spring Issue Vol. 45:1, I found Lindsey Marie's acrylic on canvas: Chicken Spritzer. My. Jaw. Dropped. A convergence of two things I love. And can not explain how this... whaaaa? I love it.
In Epoch Spring issue Volume 72:1 I find Fortune & Favor, a poem by Emma Bolden. The first line is evidence that the poet and I are on the same psychic track, I too "In the first flush of spring tried to catch / a feeling like I was really something, like / a rabbit's foot thumping fast against a patch / of ground as green as luck..." and I so get it, how we can't stop looking at the silent & shapeless." Great poem.
And I picked this up at AWP from Indirect Books: the hour, irrevocable: A L'Esprit Retrospective. They're doing a thing called "Literature Beyond Convention" -- funny, because I literally picked this up at a convention. Ha ha. This literary review is a FREAKING MARVEL! I am shutting myself in my basement office on the only sunny days we will ever have in Portland for a long time in order to read "Light and Shadow: Virginial Woolf and Literary Impressionism" by Nicole Blair, a piece of criticism.
So, not just flash for me, instead a bunch of goodies.
Wow, this is a dream comment! I'm so excited that we are on the same page. Ouuu, you've listed some lit mags I've never heard of--I'm especially excited about A L'Esprit. Also, "color in my cheeks" really got me. Also, also! Are you in Portland, Oregon?!
Awwww. So on the same page. AND the same city! Yep. Stumptown girl here. NEPO.
Portland, just one letter away from Poetland, ya know. :)
Poetland! <3
I really, really like the fiction at Sundog Lit. "Kisses for the Vilkacis" by Anna Schachner was super fun. https://sundoglit.com/anna-schachner/
I loved everything about this piece from Katie Henken Robinson in SplitLip. https://splitlipthemag.com/memoir/0425/katie-henken-robinson
Wow! I am just astonished that this is flash--the story covered so much time, with so many characters, and yet the story doesn't feel rushed. Just wow.
A gorgeous CNF by Julie Cadman-Kim in Ninth Letter:
https://ninthletter.com/2025/02/28/julie-cadman-kim/