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James R. Gapinski’s chapbook-length collection, Messiah Tortoise, will be published by Red Bird Chapbooks later this year. The collection features 10 flashes and stories, each set in the same ficticious zoo.
James is managing editor of The Conium Review and associate faculty at Ashford University. Follow him on Twitter and/or visit his website for more.
The micro-chapbook is finished for Brian Phillip Whalen’s And It Will Be Called The Highway of Holiness. Take a look at some preview photos below.
This limited-edition title will be released next week as a pre-order bonus for Melissa Reddish’s Girl & Flame. Only fifty numbered copies of this micro-chap will be released! Supplies are expected to run out soon. If the bonus micro-chap is still listed the Girl & Flame pre-order page then we’ve still got copies left.
Last month, Melissa Reddish guest edited a special “Fragmented” call for submissions. After careful deliberation, Melissa selected Brian Phillip Whalen‘s “And It Will Be Called the Highway of Holiness” for publication. The piece will be made into a limited-run micro-chapbook, and it will be delivered as a free pre-order bonus with Melissa’s new book, Girl & Flame.
Brian Phillip Whalen’s poems and stories have appeared in Beecher’s, The Chattahoochee Review, Cream City Review, J Journal, Lake Effect, Mid-American Review, North American Review, RHINO, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Iowa State University and a PhD from SUNY-Albany. He lives in upstate New York with his wife and baby daughter.
Here’s what Melissa had to say about her final selection:
“Brian Phillip Whalen’s story, ‘And It Will be Called the Highway of Holiness,’ is part-hymn, part-celebration, part-dirge for Georgia, poor pup with staples in her gut who eats everything, babies and tinsel and foxes and trikes and Christmas trees, until her inevitable end. The people who orbit around Georgia have a particular feel: blue-collar rural Americans with F-150 flat-bed trucks and tractors and percolators and steel wool under cupboards, each battling their own particular demons. More circular than linear, more poetry than prose, the piece skips and glides with linguistic playfulness and clever asides, the format fragmenting then reassembling, creating meaning even as it dismantles it, all while retaining the emotional heart at the center.”
—Melissa Reddish, author of Girl & Flame
The “Fragmented” call for submissions is open now through July 15th. This theme celebrates the upcoming release of Melissa Reddish’s new book, Girl & Flame: A Novella. Melissa will act as guest editor, selecting a single piece to be published as a micro-chapbook for distribution alongside Girl & Flame pre-orders. You may interpret the theme loosely (explore structure, style, theme, character, etc.), as long as it involves some form of fragmentation. Full guidelines are available here.
During the “Fragmented” reading period, we’re also hosting a Goodreads giveaway for Melissa’s new book. You can enter the giveaway for a chance to win a free advance copy of Girl & Flame.
Matt Tompkins’s Souvenirs and Other Stories hits shelves on June 15th.
To celebrate the book’s release, Matt Tompkins will be guest editing a special call for submissions. From June 1st to June 15th, submit flash fiction (1,000 words or fewer) centered around the theme “Dis/appearances.”
In Matt’s forthcoming book, the title story involves a number of souvenirs spontaneously appearing and gradually filling the narrator’s apartment. This call for submissions plays off that idea, but you can interpret the theme broadly. Your submission doesn’t necessarily need to be about the appearance (or disappearance) of objects, but the piece should include some form of unexpected arrival or departure.
Full guidelines will be posted within the next week or so. Start brainstorming now, and see if you can come up with a story that’ll knock Matt’s socks off. Hey, maybe you can write about disappearing socks?