Recent flash nonfiction
iō Literary Journal
In creeps violence, as it always does. Cram, gorge, inhale, attack, wolf, rend, gnaw, sever, snap, crunch. Nip turns to nibble turns to chomp, to obliterate, to dilapidate, dismantle, defeat, devour. Ruin.
Upstreet
The ABCDEs of Melanoma
To my daughter, my skin is normal. My bumps another texture to experience alongside blocks and blankets and butterfly kisses.
River Teeth
I find, as I age, that I better understand the proclivities of witches.
Motherwell Magazine
My dad started gifting me flowers the first Mother’s Day after my daughter was born. I’ve never told him why six roses the color of blood might wound me.
Typehouse Literary Magazine
I think he kicked then. Softly, softly. Or did he? Now my belly feels different: lighter, hollower. Or does it? I don’t remember what it felt like yesterday.
Invisible City
Supplications to the Gods of Can, selected as a finalist in the magazine’s 2021 CNF Flash Contest by Heather Christle
Davening. Head bowed between feet, kissing forehead to earth, paper body folded on the sun-splashed kitchen floor. My toddler is keening in supplication to the Gods of Can.
Critical writing
Brevity
It was a simple enough idea: Read five years of Brevity, log each piece in an Excel database, then tickle the data until it tells me something useful about the common features of flash nonfiction essays.
We want. Feel. Need. A hand to hold. A dog at the door. A little something. Maybe nothing. Words that make a world.
There appear to be three categories of flash essay: the nearly-if-not-exactly-single-sentence, the balanced essay, and the choppy essay. But to prove this theory, I’ll have to analyze sentences and paragraphs simultaneously, and I need to work myself up to that level of math.
Leslie Stonebraker 