For cer­tain, almost always, rarely nev­er, flash fic­tion demands a word count, not the out­dat­ed kind once done by count­ing words per line of type and mul­ti­ply­ing by the num­ber of lines, but the pre­cise count of tech­nol­o­gy. 100 exact­ly. Not a word more than 750. At some point (500 or less?) it’s microfic­tion, a […]

by Rachel Kol­man In a genre that empha­sizes word count, close read­ing flash fic­tion can be a won­der­ful teacher. Inten­tion­al­ly slow­ing down one’s eye to con­sid­er care­ful­ly each word and phrase makes us even more aware of how we can achieve the desired effect in our own work. And then, of course, all of these […]

Due to the ongo­ing pan­dem­ic, many inter­views are now done via Skype, with the inter­vie­wee seen in front of their pri­vate book­case. These book­shelves have proven to be quite reveal­ing. First in the series, Don­ald Trump.

An excerpt from “Wrote This Just Now” by Knott Intu­it, the world’s worst flash fic­tion writer. We were teenagers, just over two in dog years. Her name was Carey; mine isn’t impor­tant. What is impor­tant, very impor­tant, is that we did what young peo­ple did in those days who had just got­ten their driver’s licens­es. […]

As part of an ongo­ing series, we present some old Mad Mag­a­zine Snap­py Answers to Stu­pid Ques­tions. In the orig­i­nal, the last bub­ble was left blank, but for your enjoy­ment, we filled it in with our take. Enjoy.

As part of an ongo­ing series, we present some old Mad Mag­a­zine Snap­py Answers to Stu­pid Ques­tions. In the orig­i­nal, the last bub­ble was left blank, but for your enjoy­ment, we filled it in with our take. Enjoy.

As part of an ongo­ing series, we present some old Mad Mag­a­zine Snap­py Answers to Stu­pid Ques­tions. In the orig­i­nal, the last bub­ble was left blank, but for your enjoy­ment, we filled it in with our take. Enjoy.

Dan’s worked out a search and cap­ture mis­sion to the largest tree lot in Oak­land, where one tree won’t be missed. He’s done the pre­lim­i­nary recon. Gina will be look-out. He’ll snatch the tree and tie it to the roof of the car.  “We don’t need a Christ­mas tree,” she says. “Where would we put it?” “Shit, […]

Mon­day I left a lit­tle late for work and hur­ried to the bus sta­tion, when I real­ized I couldn’t remem­ber where I worked. I looked at the route map and chose to go down­town. In one of the alleys, I met my son. He asked me what I was doing there. I told him I […]

Aziza pulled at the heavy entrance door to the flat until it closed qui­et­ly. She picked up Hamid’s coat, brushed her hands over it and hung it up while putting her own coat away. She fold­ed her head­scarf into a square and put it in the near­by draw­er with her oth­er out­door scarves and mother’s […]