BackStory: Five Questions with TM Upchurch Author of There Will Be No Lace What inspired you to write this piece? I was researching 20th century adoption, reading about a “mother and baby home” that operated from the late 18th century…
There Will Be No Lace
There Will Be No Lace by TM Upchurch Your lips bubble and slurp, a sweet shik-shik suckle of air as I curl around you, smelling your butterscotch breath. You pause to gape a greedy smile, swallowing the night; you are…
Timeline: FlashBack’s First Season
Timeline: FlashBack’s First Season We launched FlashBack Fiction on the 29th of January 2018. Since then, we’ve been absolutely overwhelmed by the number and quality of submissions we’ve had the honour to read, as well as the support and enthusiasm…
Blood Orange
Blood Orange by Sherri Turner I spat out my mouthful, the remainder of the segment glistening red-flecked between my fingers. Ruby juice splashed on the stone floor. “It’s got blood in it,” I said. “It’s not real blood,” my mother…
BackStory: Five Questions with Madeline Anthes
BackStory: Five Questions with Madeline Anthes Author of Declaration What inspired you to write this piece? I often write about women being trapped in some way – by a relationship, by emotion, by nostalgia, etc. In this case, I wanted…
Declaration
Declaration by Madeline Anthes My husband is gone. The other women cry for their missing men. I see them in town, their babies swaddled against their chests. Their eyes are red and swollen. They are the picture of grief. Loneliness.…
BackStory: Five Questions with Gary Duncan
BackStory: Five Questions with Gary Duncan Author of Thrice Around the Walls of Troy What inspired you to write “Thrice Around the Walls of Troy”? I’ve been fascinated by The Iliad since I read it in high school and later at…
Thrice Around the Walls of Troy
Thrice Around the Walls of Troy by Gary Duncan Round and round, thinking: All this, for her? Remembering the stories he’d heard about her: the face, the ships, all that. That first time he saw her, his idiot brother…
BackStory: Five Questions with Fiona J. Mackintosh
BackStory: Five Questions with Fiona J. Mackintosh Author of Postbellum What inspired you to write this piece? That’s a long story. I have spent many years researching the lives of an Anglo-Tahitian royal family in the 19th and early 20th…
Postbellum
Postbellum by Fiona J. Mackintosh January 25, 1867 Somewhere outside Jacksonville, Illinois, the train slows to a crawl. Clara cups her hands and peers into the darkness but sees only the rail bed stones and the ragged edge of a…