Flash is fiction’s most compressed form.  If short stories are jewelry boxes, then flash fiction is the tiny velvet box enclosing a jaw-dropping engagement ring. Editors Kirby Johnson and Jennifer Eberhardt learned this early on as classmates in a flash fiction workshop at the University of Houston.  “We were excited about what could be said in so few words,” Kirby remembers.  “A successful flash piece (much like a poem) can knock you on your ass…”

In 2006, Johnson and Eberhardt founded their journal NANO Fiction with the intention of showcasing the TKO-power of their classmates’ work.  But the journal grew quickly and, by the second issue, they were receiving exceptional submissions from all over the country.  In the fine issues that have followed, contributors have included some well-known writers of flash fiction as well as those not often associated with the form, including Matt Bell, Thisbe Nissen, Thom Wallen, Kim Chinquee, Blake Butler, Paul Lisicky, and Jac Jemc.

Now in its fifth year, NANO continues to carve a unique place for flash fiction, prose poetry, micro-essays, and those who write so powerfully in 300 words or less.  To help promote the form to a wider audience, NANO hosts events, most recently expanding their programming to include the Houston Indie Book Festival and the NANO Reading Series at Kaboom Books.  The NANO Reading Series features writers and contributors from the Houston and Austin areas and always includes commemorative chapbooks so the audience can reread these decidedly short pieces.

While events and contests—including the upcoming 2011 NANO Prize—allow NANO to generate funds for printing and general operating costs, the journal remains the driving force behind their mission to advance the genre of flash fiction.  “I want people to feel beat up after reading an issue of NANO,” Johnson asserts.  “I want each story to be a tiny punch that hits the reader hard and stings.”

I’ve been a fan of NANO’s since a story by Kathryn Scanlan gave me a tiny punch in the eye. Her story “Now This” is just seven lines long, but if you read the first line, you might feel a little sting, too: “I’d already washed smoke out of my hair for the day, now this.”  I spoke with founding editor Kirby Johnson over email about NANO Fiction.

What is the role of NANO Fiction in today’s literary community, be it for readers or writers?

My hope is that NANO Fiction is an outlet writers turn to when they have a piece of flash they want to get out there as well as a place where readers can turn for something short and powerful.  There are only a handful of print journals and anthologies that publish flash exclusively, and we are proud to be among that few.

We also feel it’s important to be involved in the online dialog of flash fiction. Around the month of May our web Editor, Sophie Rosenblum, began developing online content, interviews and reviews to compliment the stories we were already posting. (Visit NANO’s archive on their website.)

How do you see NANO’s mission and tastes evolving in the next two years?  Will the rise of digital publishing impact the composition of NANO?

The aesthetics of the editors of NANO Fiction are very diverse, and I feel like this allows for a wide range of work to make it into each issue. I think with time this may change, but for right now it’s working for us.  We seem to be able to strike a balance with the work we accept, and I like that.

I don’t believe the rise of digital publishing will impact the composition of NANO Fiction much. Our submission and selection process should not change. From the journal’s inception, we have been very committed to print publication despite how cost-effective it may be to publish exclusively online or in other digital formats.  It may seem hard-headed or anachronistic, but I like the physical act of holding a book in my hands when I read. With that said, I acknowledge that we cannot ignore the impact of digital publishing, and this month we have released back issues of NANO in various eReader formats on our website for around $2 a piece.

If you could put three items in a time capsule (or USB drive) to be opened in 1,000 years that would provide a snapshot of NANO’s aesthetic today, what would they be?

1. A plastic action figure of a black bear in a plastic, removable space suit
2. A hand-made canoe
3. A photo of my brother as a toddler holding a tall-boy and flipping off the camera

What album is playing on the NANO stereo these days?

Should we break it down by editors?

Kirby Johnson: Shabazz Palaces, Peaking Lights, Neon Indian – Psychic Chasms (kind of stuck on this in a summer way), and DJ Screw – June 27 (feeling nostalgic).

Glenn Shaheen: Songs The Lord Taught Us by The Cramps, Flashmob by Vitalic, Love Comes Close by Cold Cave and 09/17/2007 by Danger.

Eric Todd: the new Dodos and Bibio records and some old J Dilla.

There’s a lot going on at NANO this summer (in and outside of hand-made canoes). Writers of flash fiction, prose poetry, or micro-essays that pack a punch should consider entering the 2011 NANO Prize. The contest fee is $15 for three pieces, and all entries receive a complimentary subscription. The deadline is August 31; for full guidelines, see the contest webpage.

As NANO unveils their new website, go online to see back issues for the first time in eReader formats, for only $2 a piece.

And for the Houston readers, NANO is hosting a few events this summer, including a fundraiser at a local art space called The Joanna on August 26. (More details will be posted here.)

As a special bonus to readers of Fiction Writers Review, we’ll be giving away three free subscriptions to NANO Fiction! And because NANO wears its love of flash fiction on its sleeve, we’re also giving away three NANO Fiction t-shirts. Those t-shirts come in decidedly larger sizes than the word “nano” suggests. If you’d like to be eligible for this week’s drawing (and all future ones), please visit our Twitter Page and “follow” us.

A friend recently posted on Facebook that she was 100-odd pages into Infinite Jest and running out of steam. Lots of people might have (and, in fact, have) given up in situations like that, but she was determined to finish.

Why do long books sometimes get such a hold on their readers? The Millions has a great piece up about the “Stockholm syndrome” theory of the long novel:

Perhaps I’m stretching the bonds of credulity by implicitly comparing William Gaddis to a FARC guerilla commander, but I’m convinced there’s something that happens when we get into a captive situation with a long and difficult book that is roughly analogous to the Stockholm syndrome scenario. For a start, the book’s very length lays out (for a certain kind of reader, at least) its own special form of imperative—part challenge, part command. The thousand-pager is something you measure yourself against, something you psyche yourself up for and tell yourself you’re going to endure and/or conquer. And this does, I think, amount to a kind of captivity: once you’ve got to Everest base camp, you really don’t want to pack up your stuff and turn back.

For those finding a looooong novel just a little too long, however, here’s a way to take a break. The site Six Word Story Every Day offers (surprise!) a really, really short piece each day, complete with eye-catching artwork. One of my favorites:

Image via six word story every day

Short Story Month wouldn’t be complete without some first-rate flash fiction. This morning, enjoy the following selections by Tara L. Masih, editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction and author of the excellent collection Where the Dog Star Never Glows (Press 53, 2010) and the flash fiction chapbooks Fragile Skins and Tall Grasses.

Below are first-line teasers; click on each story title to read (or listen to) the rest.

From the FWR Archives:

• In 2009, Sophie Powell reviewed The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction, edited by Tara L. Masih.

In honor of the online literary community, which we discussed this week in Celeste’s blog post about Virtual Book Tours and my interview with flash fiction maven Meg Pokrass, we’d like to feature online literary journal Storyglossia this Thursday morning.

“Storyglossia” is a term coined by Editor Steven J. McDermott, with an impressive etymological explanation on the Storyglossia site, which you can read here. Their first online issue debuted in March 2003, and since then 41 issues of the journal have gone up – every one of which you can peruse on their easily-navigable site. In addition to Meg Pokrass, Storyglossia has published stories by Matt Bell, Benjamin Percy, Laura van den Berg, Julee Newberger, and Sung J. Woo – among many, many others.

One of the things I love about browsing their author index is finding and reading stories by the same writer over time – what was X writing in 2004? In 2009? It’s interesting to see a vision progress, and encouraging to see a place where writers want to return with work again and again. From flash fiction to 5,000-word tales, one of the things Storyglossia delights in is being the first to publish a writer’s fiction. So sift through the goldmine of stories on the site, and then get to work – it could be your name on the contributor’s list for issue 43.

One of the highlights of working with Fiction Writers Review over the past two and a half years has been watching our readers’ own writing take off—from first published stories to debut novels and collections, to all the interesting projects our contributors and community have going on around the world. When it comes to sheer energy, creativity and community-building, Meg Pokrass sets a high bar. You may remember her launch of A Barbaric yAWP last year, an online-community alternative to AWP for the many writers out there who couldn’t make the trip. Meg held a second yAWP this year, replete with writing prompts, contests, animated mini-movies, hilarious videos, and sponsorship from Press 53.

This month Press 53 published Meg’s debut, a collection of flash fiction titled Damn Sure Right. It takes a certain amount of vim and vigor for an author to saddle a collection with a title that loudly proclaims this is it!—but the stories in Damn Sure Right have an of-the-moment feeling, brash confidence, and vulnerability that make a reader sit up and take notice.

In addition to flash fiction, Meg writes prose poetry and makes story animations. She currently serves as editor-at-large for Frederick Barthelme’s online lit journal Blip Magazine (formerly the Mississippi Review) and before that, SmokeLong Quarterly. She designs and runs the popular Fictionaut Five author interview series for Fictionaut.

Meg’s work has appeared in more than a hundred online and print publications, including Mississippi Review, Wigleaf, the Pedestal, Everyday Genius, Keyhole, Annalemma, elimae, Gigantic, Gargoyle, Prime Number, Women Writers, Istanbul Review and 3AM. Her work has been showcased for Dzanc Book’s Short Story Month and has been nominated for Dzanc’s Best of the Web, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and Wigleaf’s Top 50 [Very] Short Fictions.

In keeping with Meg’s beautiful economy, here’s a short conversation we had over email during the weeks after AWP and the yAWP, followed by a Meg’s flash fiction story “The Lobby” from Damn Sure Right. Let’s get to it.

Conversation

Lee Thomas: You’ve been published many, many places. Do you remember the first story you had published? Can you describe that experience?

Meg Pokrass: My first story was published in January, 2008—three years ago. The experience was straight-out shock and ecstasy! There is nothing like the first time! The story, “Leaving Hope Ranch,” was published in the online magazine 971 Menu. The story was later republished in Storyglossia and selected for the Wigleaf Top 50, 2009. You can read it in the 971 Menu archive, here.

“Flash fiction” and “short shorts” are new(ish) terms, but the shorter story has been around for a very long time. Have you always written flash fiction?

I wrote narrative poetry irregularly for twenty years, before I found flash fiction (three years ago). My original writing mentor was the poet Molly Peacock. She mentored me by working with me personally and editing my poems. She was letting me knew I had something. At the time I was a struggling actor. A few years later I got married, started a business… and the writing become even more irregular.

Then, a few years ago after an extended illness and a sort of complete mid-life crisis (!) I stumbled across flash fiction online in journals like Night Train, elimae, Storyglossia, and Vestal Review, and I started reading them religiously. I reworked my narrative poems into very short stories—it was exhilarating to do so. I started getting chills when crafting my existing poems into tiny stories: they were clearly made stronger. The flash story freed them, and from that point on, my writing became fluid. In fact, it nearly poured out, and my chronic writing blocks went away.

In your new collection, Damn Sure Right, many of the stories have a very strong sense of place, often West Coast. The first sentence of “California Fruit” is “We were transplanted Pennsylvanians who understood the value of fresh fruit.” I love that sentence because I’ve heard it from so many people who end up in California, or visit, or dream of its year-round growing season.

Yes, it’s true. There is nothing like picking and instantly eating fruit from a tree, especially as a kid. The story you reference, “California Fruit,” began life as a poem called “Fresh Fruit And Sun Damage.” It was first published by SmokeLong Quarterly.

I moved from Pennsylvania to Santa Barbara, California, with my mother and much older sisters, when I was five. Free of my mother’s volatile marriage to my father, our small family was able to breathe. My oldest sister became a successful television actress in Los Angeles, which added something exotic and exciting as well.

Santa Barbara was a sensual place in which to grow up, and I believe the overwhelming physical beauty and nature that was available there helped me to feel rooted again, after leaving my entire extended family back east.

Image Credit: Flicrk

How do you set about nailing down place in a story of only a few hundred words?

A process of severe editing (often discarding 75% of my first drafts) became ingrained in me while editing my narrative poetry for years before writing flash. I always believed that cutting every unessential word was the most important factor in the effectiveness of my writing. So even before writing flash fiction, the idea of short yet mighty was something I had learned to work hard for.

In flash, it is not necessary to rely on plot. The “plot”, if there is one, may be something murky, unspoken, and emotional. In order for a story to be successful, something internal (a way of seeing things) changes—leading to an integral, sometimes rebellious shift in a character’s way of seeing things. I’m a strong believer that big life changes originate out of seemingly small, subtle observations and/or shifting awareness toward a situational reality. This has always been true for me.

Image Credit: Flickr

More important than anything in flash fiction is what is not told or said. A story’s intentional “holes” often sing louder than what is written. Absence speaks worlds. I search for this when writing, trying to find a way to allow the writing to get out of the way!

A type of flash fiction that intrigues me is what I call patch-working—pulling out disjointed bits from various prose poems or stories and stitching them loosely together. These stories (my story “Lost and Found” may be my own best example) usually have no linear structure. The overall effect is a sense of a character’s life through scattered written moments like photographs, sort of an emotional slide show. The fun is finding the right fragments and matching them. Later it feels as though they always belonged together.

In reading your collection, especially stories that run only a paragraph—like “Team” or “Stone Fruit” or “The Lobby”—part of the pleasure is a kind of creative exchange between the story and me, the reader. I get a beautiful, full snapshot, or maybe a series of them in quick succession, and begin filling in the edges, hypothesizing, engaging in creation with you, the writer. Do you feel like flash fiction, more so than, say, a novel, demands a kind of reader-writer exchange?

Yes! I agree, but I’m not sure I can explain why—why small, successful pieces do that. I’m guessing it is what is the absence, the what-is-not-said that begs the reader inside so strongly, that creates a unique bond.

What do you read, listen to, or watch for inspiration?

Poetry: Dorianne Laux and Bob Hicok. Short fiction: Brad Watson, James Robison, Lori Ostlund, Mona Simpson, Aimee Bender, Mary Gaitskill, Francine Prose, Raymond Carver, early Lorrie Moore, Richard Ford.

Music: Yo La Tango, Spoon, Hank Williams Sr., Iron and Wine, The Mountain Goats, Belle & Sebastian, ELO, Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Big Star, Wilco and Billy Bragg, Ray LaMontagne, The Roaches, Joanna Newsom.

Film: Desert Bloom, Harold and Maude, The Graduate, The King’s Speech, Fanny and Alexander, Hannah and her Sisters, Best in Show (I have a terrible weakness for the silly, like Christopher Guest’s films and older Woody Allen flicks like Sleeper and Love And Death.).

In your story “Scotts” a woman places a personals ad on Craigslist intended for a coworker named Scott, and gets some unexpected responses. Much of your work, and that story in particular, engages the current culture—online, digital, frenetic, connected, and disconnected—in a very direct way. Do you find the shorter story form particularly suited to some new aesthetic? Have you always written stories of the “now” moment (for lack of a better term)?

Image Credit: Flickr

Writing about new technologies is a bit risky as a writer, in that whatever technologies you write about may be gone or outdated by the time of publication! I wonder if that’s why a lot of writers avoid writing about it.

Having most of my work originally published in online magazines, I found myself online a lot and therefore, well-suited for satirizing the emotional landscape and constant challenges of technology. For example, in the story you mentioned, “Scotts,” too many men named “Scott” reply to an ad on Criagslist.

The subject of humans trying to come to peace with new technologies fascinates me. As a personal example, my closest writing friends are people whom I’ve never met in person. How can it be that we feel so close? We have shared so much of each others’ worlds through our stories—but it is very, very odd!

How do you write?

Notebook and computer. Mostly computer now because my handwriting can’t keep up with my brain.

What was your experience getting Damn Sure Right published, and what has it been like going with a small independent publisher like Press 53? They’re across the country from you in North Carolina. How did you find each other?

I’d received a few nice notes over a time period from Kevin Morgan Watson, Press 53 founder, complimenting a few stories and/or publication wins. It seemed he enjoyed my work. So naturally, when I had a manuscript ready, I queried Press 53. It turned out to be an amazing fit. Watson looks for writing that sticks with the reader, and he has no bias toward form.

Working with Press 53 has been warm, fun, and seamless. The other Press 53 authors are kind and supportive toward each other; it’s been a wonderful place to land!

Would you take us out with a story?

Of course. Below is a story called “The Lobby,” which was originally published in FRIGG, and it gives just a hint of what you’ll find in Damn Sure Right.

Thanks, Meg; it’s been a pleasure.

“The Lobby”

I’m seventeen in the hotel with my father in the suite and the TV on, his wine not chilled as he likes, eyelids already droopy and unforgiving. He wants to play Scrabble with me, it’s the thing we do at night, but I want the man sitting alone in the lobby who’d looked at me with crackling eyes as though he were an eel. When my father finally falls asleep in his bathrobe and shorts I slide out to the red velvet lobby where he is waiting for me. He may be caught between bell boys shifting on their legs, business men loosening their ties; if he’s not there, I will find him in skinny fragments of sashimi. I can wait all night long in a red lobby full of geeks, listening to elevator bells. I can sit dreaming about taking everything away from my father.

Further Links and Resources

Every time I visit Wigleaf, their clean design aesthetic, wide margins and punchy, brief stories of under 1,000 words feel like a cool drink of water on a hot day (even when I am looking at several inches of snow outside the window). Wigleaf started in 2008, and we have Scott Garson to thank for the design and main editing on the site. Wigleaf accepts submissions this year during the months of September, November, January and March. They publish new work at least twice a week – so there’s always some new candy up for your literary jonesing.

Grackles, Image Credit: Flickr

Enjoy your Thursday morning candy. And to our readers in the Southern Hemisphere, enjoy some summertime for me.

What’s not to love? You can finish reading it before your coffee gets cold, you can make a snap judgment whether you like it or not, you could even write and finish a story during the same time you could lose into the black hole of something like … say … that Simpsons episode you’ve seen 7 times already. It’s almost the new year, why not get a jump on it now? Smokelong Quarterly is an online lit magazine that features stories under 1,000 words. That’s right, shorty short. Don’t even try to use your merry-making ways as an excuse, these stories are so short and punchy reading one is like a miracle cure for December lethargy.* You’re welcome.

*No actual curative powers claimed with this statement.

The deadline for the current round NPR’sThree-Minute Fiction Contest has passed, but while judge Ann Patchett decides on the winner, check out some of the entries. All stories for this round include the words “plant,” “trick,” “fly,” and “button,” in any form. Read this opening to “Pearl Cadillac” and I dare you to not read further:

“Grandma is a great heave of a woman in a billowing black dress. Today, this last afternoon of her life, an angry heat rash burns the supple puffs under her neck. Last night, on the front porch of the old farmhouse, we watched the western sky explode.”

Previous rounds included stories inspired by a particular photograph and stories beginning with the sentence “The nurse left work at five o’clock.” Finalists and winners of prior rounds are all available here, in the sidebar. Go on—you know you’ve got three minutes.

photo from the Harvard Book Store website

Boston-area readers know Harvard Book Store as one of the best independent bookstores in the country. The store hosts author events and readings nearly every night, and the knowledgeable staff is always ready to help should you need a recommendation. Now, they’re encouraging writers as well. In honor of the shortest month, Harvard Book Store is running a short-short contest:

Let’s make these 28 days count! Write a short short story (500 words or less). Send us your entries (no more than 3 entries per person) by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, February 17th. We’ll read them, pick our favorites, and, at the end of the month, we’ll print them in a book, using our very own in-store print-on-demand machine, Paige M. Gutenborg!

Entries must be unpublished and written between February 1 and February 17. If your story is chosen, you’ll receive a copy of the yet-to-be-titled collection and will be invited to read their story at the bookstore on March 1. One grand-prize winner will also receive a $50 gift certificate.

Full details and rules are here. And if “Paige M. Gutenborg” caught your attention, check out store owner Jeff Mayersohn’s essay about why he invested in the book-making machine.

For Round II of this contest, NPR invites writers to submit an original work that begins with this sentence:

“The nurse left work at five o’clock.”

Instructions, via the site:

One entry per person, and no more than 600 words, please. Stories must be received by 11:59 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, Aug. 25.

We’ll post a favorite story weekly until the New Yorker’s James Wood picks our winner and reads his or her story on the air. The winner will also receive a signed copy of Wood’s book, How Fiction Works.

(And if you missed FWR’s discussion of How Fiction Works, check it out here.)