© 2016 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License unless attributed otherwise. All rights belong to the attributed authors.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License unless attributed otherwise. All rights belong to the attributed authors.
January 15, 2016 at 7:43 PM
Sonja Livingston: ghostbread (memoir)
Sheila O’Connor: Tokens of Grace (flash novel)
David Swann: Stronger, Faster, Shorter ( collection)
Kathy Fish: Together We Can Bury It (collection)
Rose Metal Press Guide To Flash Fiction
Nancy Stohlman: Searching For Suzi (novel)
Mary Miller: The Big World
Robert Scotellaro: What We Know So Far (collection)
B.J. Best: But Our Princess is in Another Castle (collection)
Kathy Fish & Robert Vaughan: Rift (collection)
Fast Fiction Forward Anthologies
Lauren Becker: If I Would Leave Myself Behind
Etgar Keret: The Bus Driver Who Wanted To Be God and other stories
Jayne Anne Phillips: Black Tickets
A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: 4 chaps: Amy L.Clark, Elizabeth Ellen, Kathy Fish, Claudia Smith
Len Kuntz: The Dark Sunshine
Michelle Reale: The Legacy of the Sidelong Glance: Elegies
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January 18, 2016 at 10:48 AM
Wow, thanks so much, Meg, for including my books in your list. I’m honored. I will post a list too…but right now I’m getting ready to host the amazing Gay Degani here in Denver for the F-Bomb reading! She and Nancy and Sally and I are going to hang out for a couple of days and oh, I should probably clean my house, ha…xoxo
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January 18, 2016 at 10:30 PM
NO, Kathy, PLEASE don’t clean your house! Maybe you can rock a video together for this forum??? xoxo
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January 20, 2016 at 1:07 PM
We did make a video! It’s a little…whacky! But we had a great time. Gay is going to edit it a bit I think…xoxoxo
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January 15, 2016 at 8:03 PM
Wow. So many. In addition to the entertaining and inspiring work done by the women on this panel, some of my faves (and I know I’m going to leave out a bunch) would be Amy Hempel’s “The Collection Stories,” Anne Valente’s “By the Light We Knew Our Names,” Susan Tepper’s “The Merrill Diaries,” and Rose Metal Press’ “My Very End of the Universe,” which features five novellas-in-flash and a study of the form by each of the writers. Reading “Tokens of Grace” now by Sheila O’Connor (based on Meg’s recommendation). Fabulous! I now want to read everything by this writer. “Liar’s Club” will always be one of my favorite memoirs and I recently read Karr’s new book “The Art of Memoir,” which could be the art of any kind of writing. Karr is amazing. She’s a plain-spoken gal like me and she swears a lot, so how could I not love her? My most current “blew-me-away” book is Helen MacDonald’s “H is for Hawk.” Reading this book is like watching Cirque du Soleil. I’ve never read any author that can perform such feats with prose. I read it twice, back-to-back, and I’m now listening to the audio (and stalking MacDonald on Twitter).
Anything by Elizabeth Strout, Alice McDermott, George Saunders, Ann Patchett (although I like her non-fiction best. “Truth & Beauty” was amazing.) I know as soon as I hit “Post Comment” I’m going to feel like a fool for forgetting so many others.
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January 16, 2016 at 8:11 PM
I know, Jayne! There are so many that I am sure I have bypassed WAY TOO MANY! Just thought it would be great to see what everyone’s reading and have read and LOVED! I’m am always excited to find new writers!
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January 17, 2016 at 12:03 PM
Anne Valente is exquisite. Lovely person, too. I took a memoir class from her through The Loft. Loved her story collection and looking forward to the novel she’s working on now.
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January 18, 2016 at 10:32 PM
Can you give me a link to The Loft, Jayne? Would LOVE to check it out!
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January 19, 2016 at 12:46 AM
https://www.loft.org/ No need to reinvent the wheel. They’ve got a great website for their classes and you’d be perfect to teach one. They have very well recognized teachers. Margaret Patton Chapman taught a great fairy tale class and, as I said, Anne Valente taught a memoir class.
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January 17, 2016 at 12:29 AM
This is such a great question, Meg. I also loved “Rift” and the Flash Fiction Forward anthologies.
Some other favorites are:
Sandra Cisneros’ “The House on Mango Street” (a flash novel if there ever was one)
Justin Torres’ “We the Animals” (so many of the chapters feel as if they could be self-contained flash. And that lyrical prose. Wow.)
“SmokeLong Quarterly: The Best of the First Ten Years”
Lindsay Hunter’s “Daddy’s”
Leesa Cross-Smith’s “Every Kiss a War”
Cynthia Ozick’s “The Shawl” (thank you Kathy Fish for the recommendation!)
Aubrey Hirsch’s “Why We Never Talk About Sugar”
Amber Spark’s “May We Shed These Human Bodies”
“New Sudden Fiction,” edited by Robert Shapard and James Thomas
“Microfiction,” edited by Jerome Stern
Not flash but still great:
L. Annette Binder’s “Rise”
Ramona Ausubel’s “A Guide to Being Born”
James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room”
I have a feeling I’ll soon be adding the books you and Jayne recommended to this list!
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January 18, 2016 at 10:33 PM
Excellent list, Leonora!
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January 18, 2016 at 10:33 PM
Paul Beckman: Peek (story collection) LOVE!
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January 19, 2016 at 12:52 AM
I love Paul. He totally cracks me up.
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January 20, 2016 at 1:09 PM
Ooh, I need to read Peek!
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January 20, 2016 at 1:29 PM
Paul’s work is very whimsical.
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January 22, 2016 at 12:04 PM
Need to add to the list “Brevity and Echo” an anthology of flash. Recommended to me by Kathy and, as usual, she was right. Some great work in here.
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January 24, 2016 at 1:51 AM
This is a list I put together with some brilliant folks that I was on an AWP flash fiction panel with a few years ago (Robert Shapard, Tom Hazuka, James Thomas, Kim Chinquee, and Leah Rogin-Roper).
FLASH FICTION RECOMMENDATIONS
Anthologies:
Fast Forward: Flash 101: Surviving the Fiction Apocalypse
Fast Forward: The Incredible Shrinking Story
Fast Forward: The Mix Tape
Fast Forward: Volume 2
Flash Fiction Funny
Flash Fiction: 72 Very Short Stories
Flash Fiction Forward: 80 Very Short Stories
Micro Fiction: An Anthology of Fifty Really Short Stories
New Sudden Fiction: Short-Short Stories from America and Beyond
Sudden Fiction: American Short-Short Stories
Sudden Fiction International: 60 Shorts
Sudden Fiction Latino: Short-Short Stories from the U.S. and Latin America
Sudden Flash Youth: 65 Short-Short Stories
You Have Time For This
Books on writing and teaching Flash Fiction:
Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Fiction: Tips from Editors, Teachers, and Writers in the Field
The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises that Transform Your Fiction
Flash Fiction Authors:
Atwood, Margaret
Almond, Steve
Baxter, Charles
Brasca, Raúl
Brown, Laynie
Buzzati, Dino
Carlson, Ron
Calvino, Italo
Carver, Raymond
Cheever, John
Chinquee, Kim
Cooper, Bernard
Coover, Robert
Cortázar, Julio
Czyniejewski, Michael
Dinesen, Isak
Davis, Lydia
Dybek, Stuart
Eggers, Dave
Elena, Albert Garcia
Ellison, Harlan
Fish, Kathy
Flick, Sherrie
Fondation, Larry
Forché, Carolyn
Francis, H.E.
Freele, Stephanie
Hawkins, Bobbie Louise
Hazuka, Tom
Hemingway, Ernest
Holst, Spencer
Kawabata, Yasunari
Keret, Etgar
Kicknosway, Faye
Loory, Ben
Lovelace, Sean
Lutz, Gary
Martone, Michael
Morris, Kona
Murphy, Yannick
Oates, Joyce Carol
Orner, Peter
Phillips, Jayne Anne
Reno, Sally
Rogers, Bruce Holland
Rogin-Roper, Leah
Shapard, Robert
Shepard, Sam
Shua, Ana Maria
Stohlman, Nancy
Thomas, James
Tuite, Meg
Unferth, Deb Olin
Stories:
“Happy Endings” Margaret Atwood
“The Cliff” Charles Baxter
“The Hole” Raúl Brasca
“The Falling Girl” Dino Buzzati
“All at One Point” Italo Calvino
“The Father” Raymond Carver
“Popular Mechanics” Raymond Carver
“Reunion” John Cheever
“The Gym was His Playground” Kim Chinquee
“A Fable” Robert Coover
“A Continuity of Parks” Julio Cortázar
“The Blue Jar” Isak Dinesen
“Accident” Dave Eggers
“Ashes” Albert Garcia Elena
“The Colonel” Carolyn Forché
“Sitting” H.E. Francis
“Even Greenland” Barry Hannah
“Homeward Bound” Tom Hazuka
“A Very Short Story” Ernest Hemingway
“What Happened During the Ice Storm” Jim Heynen
“On Hope” Spencer Holst
“Crazy Glue” Etgar Keret
“Forgotten” Anne Mazur
“Confession #3” Kona Morris
“First Virtual” Kathleen O’Donnell
“Mother” Grace Paley
“Wedding Picture” Jayne Anne Phillips
“Noel” Michael Plemmons
“Little Brother” Bruce Holland Rogers
“Elena Wants to Have a Baby” Leah Rogin-Roper
“Exercise” Bruce Taylor
“Currents” Hannah Bottomy Voskuil
“The Flowers” Alice Walker
“Sleeping” Katharine Weber
“Pendergast’s Daughter” Lex Williford
“The Lampshade Vendor” Allen Wodman
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January 24, 2016 at 11:12 AM
What a fabulous list, Kona. I feel like reading it all would be equivalent to an MFA in flash! Copied it to a word doc for my file. Thank you!
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January 24, 2016 at 4:48 PM
Okay, Kona! Holy Shite amazing!!! I’m going to add a flash memoir I’m reading now: Bone Black by bell hooks! Yes yes and yes!!!
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January 24, 2016 at 8:04 PM
Flash memoir? A combo of my fave genres! Got to get it. Thanks, Meg.
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