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Matt Tompkins’s Souvenirs and Other Stories comes out this June from Conium Press. We’re excited to unveil the cover mock-up! Pre-orders for this surreal and whimsical short story collection go on sale later this year.
Studies in Hybrid Morphology, by Matt Tompkins (forthcoming Conium Press author) is now available from tNY Press as a $1.00 ebook. From the publisher:
“Studies in Hybrid Morphology is a story collection trapped in the body of a scientific journal. Presented as a series of faux-scholarly articles, this genre-bending mash-up offers an array of surreal stories and flash fictions exploring the beings we want to be, can be, should not be, and will never be. A man with lobster claws for hands. A woman who grows a blanket of feathers. A talking cow. A baby born from an egg. A hu-manatee. Modeled after a scientific journal, divided into articles and complete with abstracts and end-notes, Studies in Hybrid Morphology includes more than a dozen surreal stories exploring the intersections of human and animal, head and heart, science and fiction. The strange characters who populate these stories, human and non-human animals alike, seek something fundamental meaning, identity, self-worth, comfort, connection. In most cases, they come up short, or land wide of their targets. After all, how often is anything quite what we’d hoped or expected? Instead, in the space of these pages, the reader is invited to eschew expectation, revel in the joy of unforeseen discoveries, and entertain the question: what does it mean to be alive and self-aware?”
Matt Tompkins’s Souvenirs and Other Stories is forthcoming from Conium Press this June. Get an early taste of his writing for just a buck!
The Conium Review has expanded over the past year, and we’re excited to make books and chapbooks a regular part of our publishing platform. In 2016, Conium Press will be releasing two standalone titles: Girl & Flame, by Melissa Reddish and Souvenirs and Other Stories, by Matt Tompkins.
We’ll post incremental updates about both of these releases as the 2016 publication calendar moves forward. Thanks for reading, writing, and supporting our small press.
Girl & Flame is a novella told in a series of innovative flash vignettes. The protagonist bonds with a piece of flame leftover from an inferno that consumed her brother, father, and lover. Through this relationship, the protagonist explores her complicated family history and her place in the world. Melissa’s novella pairs experimental syntax with magical realist and surrealist snapshots into the lives of the girl, the flame, and the ghosts and ashes left behind.
Melissa Reddish’s short story collection, My Father is an Angry Storm Cloud, was published by Tailwinds Press earlier this year. Her flash fiction chapbook, The Distance Between Us, was published by Red Bird Chapbooks in 2013. Her work has appeared in decomP, Prick of the Spindle, and Northwind, among others. Melissa teaches English and directs the Honors Program at Wor-Wic Community College.
Follow Melissa on Twitter @MelissaReddish, or visit or website at MelissaReddish.com.
Souvenirs and Other Stories is a collection of six absurd and surreal stories, each presented as a first-person monologue. Throughout the collection, a father evaporates, items mysteriously appear and fill an apartment, an eye surgery causes optical hallucinations, and more. These strange occurrences are often paired with touches of earnest humor, but they also probe authentic emotional responses when the levity fades.
Matt Tompkins is the author of Studies in Hybrid Morphology, forthcoming from tNY Press in 2016. His stories have been published in H_NGM_N, Atticus Review, Cheap Pop, Post Road, Gigantic Sequins, and elsewhere. Matt works in a library and lives in upstate New York with his wife, daughter, and cat.
Visit Matt’s website at NeedsRevision.com.