Half Past Two by Genevieve Allen The wallpaper was growing increasingly difficult to ignore. That morning, Lyle had felt the same vague distaste for its sugary green and twee mauve flowers that he always had. Then he’d read the paper,…
BackStory: Six Questions with Lourdes Mackey
BackStory: Six Questions with Lourdes Mackey Author of A Despicable Article What inspired you to write ‘A Despicable Article’? I was doing some research on convicts transported to Van Diemen’s Land and came across Red Kelly – Ned Kelly’s father,…
A Despicable Article
A Despicable Article by Lourdes Mackey Kate Kelly to her youngest sister Alice, October 4th, 1898 You asked how it began Alice. Well God and His Mother knows that from the very minute Ned Kelly opened his eyes as a…
BackStory: Five Questions with P Akasaka
BackStory: Five Questions with P Akasaka Author of Haori What inspired you to write ‘Haori’? My grandmother was a seamstress and I always wanted to write something about that life. Wearing a haori was a great status symbol among young…
Haori
Read and listen in English Read and listen in Japanese / 日本語 Haori by P Akasaka 31 August 1923. What the fuck! said Koume. Her name meant “little plum,” but sweet she was not. If an apprentice could wear a…
BackStory: Five Questions with Salena Casha
BackStory: Five Questions with Salena Casha Author of This is not a story about my grandfather What inspired you to write ‘This is not a story about my grandfather’? I grew up hearing a piece of family lore related to…
This is not a story about my grandfather
This is not a story about my grandfather by Salena Casha On July 26, 1956, my grandfather’s suitcase hit a seabed at the bottom of the Atlantic just off the coast of Nantucket. While made of newly flogged leather cinched…
Timeline: FlashBack’s Twelfth Season
Timeline: FlashBack’s Twelfth Season The end of season twelve is also the end of our fourth year of publishing historical shortform prose, something we couldn’t have predicted when the idea for our journal was birthed on Twitter. It’s been a…
BackStory: Five Questions with J.B. Stone
BackStory: Five Questions with J.B. Stone Author of Amber Rose What inspired you to write ‘Amber Rose’? I originally wrote Amber Rose as a submission to an Anne Sexton-themed submissions call from the folks over at Fairy Tale Review. I…
Amber Rose
Amber Rose by J.B. Stone After Anne Sexton’s “Briar Rose” When you crawled out of your pod, slinked unto the branches: a newborn insectoid, exploring the earth eons ago, you were told you would rise into a throne of horns,…