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,…
BackStory: Five Questions with Lixin Foo
BackStory: Five Questions with Lixin Foo Author of The Consort of Closed Fists What inspired you to write ‘The Consort of Closed Fists’? I bought a book on famous women from Imperial Chinese harems in high school. As I was…
The Consort of Closed Fists
Read and listen in English. Read and listen in Chinese / 中文. The Consort of Closed Fists by Lixin Foo When the Emperor banished her in chains, her fingers moved on instinct. As a child, she’d made a habit…
BackStory: Five Questions with Marie Hoy-Kenny
BackStory: Five Questions with Marie Hoy-Kenny Author of In the Hours Before the 1959 Auchengeich Coal Mine Disaster What inspired you to write ‘In the Hours Before the 1959 Auchengeich Coal Mine Disaster’? My father’s brothers worked at the Auchengeich…
In the Hours Before the 1959 Auchengeich Coal Mine Disaster
In the Hours Before the 1959 Auchengeich Coal Mine Disaster by Marie Hoy-Kenny You wake, your wife Jean still serene in sleep, breathing deeply beside you. The sky is dark through the cracks between the curtains, but last night you…