Coming up tomorrow, April 7th at 3 pm Pacific and 6 pm Eastern, on Zoom. As a part of Rochester Institute of Technology’s Alumni Actor, Artist & Author Series, I’ll be doing a talk on Everyone’s a Writer: Reading and Writing Flash Fiction. The talk is aimed at a general audience, and will be of particular interest to people who have always dreamed of writing but have been intimidated by it or simply have never made time for it. I came to writing after a stint in market research, and I will make the case for Flash as the perfect genre for beginning writers with a lot of experience of the world, that it allows us to share our tales with a wide audience. (And for people who don’t even know what Flash is, I promise to lay out a definition.) Please, preregister for this Zoom webinar!
Tag: flash fiction
I Give Up in Mumber Mag
My flash “I Give Up” is now available in the second issue of Mumber Mag! I’m grateful to the editor Harry Leeds for his thoughtful comments on this piece, helping to make it less wordy and amplifying the sense of movement and breathlessness with which its overwhelmed speaker addresses the world.
The next crayon hit him right between the eyes. The next two hit the windshield and the car swerved, coming dangerously close to a refrigerator truck. My husband screamed.
In response, the two-year old started screaming.
https://www.mumbermag.me/2020/12/28/i-give-up/
The Mumber Two (OMG that title) is a delightful issue all around, worth reading cover-to-cover!
Companionship short listed for Brilliant Short Fiction Award
My flash fiction “Companionship,” which won the Litquake contest last year, was short listed for “Wow Us” contest by Brilliant Flash Fiction. The magazine published it on their website here. Scroll down to read my story that begins with this:
At three years old Michael did decide to return to his mother’s stomach. His mother shifted things around and made room under her heart. . . .
The Cove
Welcome to The Cove, a new Bay Area literary and art magazine — it enters the scene with the issue centered on Fire. 
I feel privileged to have four (non-fire related) very short stories featured in this issue, alongside the work by Genine Lentine, Susan Griffin, Dan Coshnear, and so many amazing artists and writers.
Generosity up on The Museum of Americana
My story Generosity is up on the museum of americana. I wrote this story some years ago, after attending an event, dedicated to Brazilian literature. Hearing the questions the visiting writers were being asked set my imagination reeling.
“The two Russian writers were young—billed as under forty—but in the month of touring the United States, they’d acquired heft and world-weariness. Seven days a week they answered questions: What does new Russian writing offer readers in the United States? and Do you see yourself continuing the great Russian novel tradition? . . .”
Continue reading here.
Blan-Manzhe with the Taste of Pear and Cream in Lunch Ticket
“Her husband had said of the last bonbon, “These are not bad.” So, Victoria saved the green wrapper with the drawing of pears and a few weeks later, back at the Russian grocery, showed it to the cashier. “These were a part of last month’s assortment.”
The cashier disappeared in the back. . . .”
Show Her a Flower, a Bird, a Shadow
Peg Alford Pursell is one of the writers whose work I’ve been following for some years, having met her when she moved to the Bay Area and became a regular, for a time, at the San Francisco Writers Workshop. It’s a particular pleasure to hold in my hands a book that I feel I already know intimately, from having seen some of the stories in drafts, from knowing the author’s aesthetic and using that as a jumping off point into the reading. 
But what if the book proves to be too familiar, too well-known, its movements too predictable? Will the writer still surprise, like a partner after many years of marriage? The risk is high, and the reward — oh the reward. Being allowed into the inner world of another human being, being encouraged to examine the corridors of her heart, laid out in all of their complexity, the dizzying sensation of falling into the words as into a looking glass.
Show Her a Flower, a Bird, a Shadow delivers all that. I’m about halfway through. Looking at its cover, I thought of describing it as baroque for a kind of exuberance in the detail of the bird and the petals. Such a perfect cover to this book, where the sparseness of language coexists with sudden proliferation, of streamlined sentences opening unexpectedly into luxurious, and soaring, flourishes.
Olga Zilberbourg 