Little stories by Eliezra Schaffzin, little pictures by Stephen Schaffzin (father to Eliezra). Brought to you by Ethel Zine & Micro Press. Available to order now! Check out all of Ethel’s hand-bound mini-books here.
A hotel waitress flees an act of violence and stumbles into a fabulist slice of desert between Egypt, Israel, and the Gaza Strip, where she experiences a sweeping vision. Second-place winner of LitMag’s 2020 Virginia Woolf Award for Short Fiction.
“Her pupils sat expansively in her eyes, dark lakes on a marked but emptied landscape, the tracks on her forehead ending at the edge of the deep.” Winner of the Calvino Prize, selected by Brian Evenson. Read it in Salt Hill. (And check out the UK-based Sein und Werden, which published an earlier version of the story in its Pharmacopoeia issue.)
“It was far more objectionable, she told me, to be called a boy, or a double-boy, than to be called a goat. And so a goat I became.” A Jerusalem adolescence on the eve of the first Intifada: a Conjunctions online exclusive.
“She was sucking on a clump of moss, emptying it like a juice box. I felt that twinge of pique I get whenever someone slurps in my presence, but I put a lid on it.” Finalist for the SmokeLong Quarterly Award for Flash Fiction. Read it and all the contest winners in SmokeLong’s 15th Anniversary Issue. (And read the “Smoke & Mirrors” interview here.)
“The morning after she said no to the woman she might have loved, she was accosted by her left elbow.” Winner of the 2022 Los Angeles Review Award for Flash Fiction. Selected by final judge Thea Prieto.
“I’m on the rag, sister. I don’t suppose you stop the real war for that, but the Fisher-Price version can sure as hell wait.” In the Harper Perennial anthology of new short fiction, Forty Stories. Finalist in the Glimmer Train Fiction Open.
“There was no such word in their language until my arrival. It is a rare joining: Us, Not. Ma’anu Wei.” Coming soon to the online speculative magazine Kaleidotrope, which publishes work that “falls outside neat genre categories.”
“Every pump, every pump, every pump a human life.” Longlisted for the Disquiet Prize. Read it at Kaleidotrope: sci-fi, fantasy, horror, slipstream. Stories that blur the usual lines. Pub date TBA!
“That sealed it. The baby was Punny; the rabbit was Happening.” In After the Pause.
“We walk a most peculiar shore.” Set to music by the talented composer Rebecca Sacks. Premiered by the Tufts University Chamber Singers.
“An idea twitched forth: what if she did not choose? What if she neither signed nor did not sign?” Read it in Washington Square Review.
“You are the intended recipient of a steganographic message, the kind of secret of which only sender and addressee are aware.” At SmokeLong Quarterly. Read the “Smoking” interview here. Longlisted for The Wigleaf Top 50 (Very Short Fictions).
“We are instructed to keep these in our pockets, in case we might feel an urge to do something undesirable. If such an urge befalls us, we must bring out one orange—in the most dire of circumstances, a double dose—and consume it. And then we must sit willingly still, waiting while the orange travels through our systems and releases what it will into our bodies, so that the urge to act may pass.” In RESIST! Post-genre literature from mixer publishing.
“She explained that she recently recalled something said by former tenant Fanny Vlanic about regular people on the street thinking this was a real church and she wondered what kind of things happen at a real church and she was thinking maybe someone might leave a baby on the steps of the building.” In Barrelhouse.
“You have every appearance, at the present moment, of sitting in your armchair under a reading lamp, modestly still, but perhaps you are struck, now, with the suspicion that you have inadvertently presented your ass for the cupping, and the author has seized the opportunity to reach out and determinedly cup.” At Knee-Jerk.
“We have already informed you of the terms of your release. When will you tell us a story we have not yet heard?” Pentimento to the story “Seesaw.” Originally published in elimae.
“There’s a fish in the swimming pool.” In Pangyrus.
“It took two scientists to come up with the plan: when the mother cat’s litter was delivered at last, they would seize one of the moist balls of fur, find its face, and, before it had a chance to turn its vision onto the world, tape one of its eyes shut.” In the debut issue of Flywheel.
“How had I moved so swiftly from such tragic heartache to the vigorous pursuit of a child’s game?” In The Writing Disorder.
“That other word sounds like ass,” Josh noted. “But I think you’re right to leave the choice to democracy.” An Untoward Magazine Featured Fiction.
“A door the size of the bath mat slid open under the glass window. Furman rose, shook himself, and trotted right through.” At Word Riot.
“Thank you for examining me so thoroughly at the Center for Connective Tissue Disorders last month, and for assuring me that the photograph you took of my tongue would be cropped so as to exclude any of my other distinguishing facial features.” An AGNI Online Exclusive.
“A woman on the ferry to Casablanca told us that in Cuba, no one eats cow but tourists and–Fidel. She did not say Fidel; she stopped short and caressed the air beneath her chin, up and down, where el Presidente’s beard would have been.” To read this one, pick up a copy of Post Road.
“My mother recalls her four ex-husbands in reverse order: the one who loved her because of her lupus, the one who left her because of her lupus, the one who was too interested in me, the one who wasn’t interested in me at all (‘That one was your daddy,’ my mother likes to say).” In Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine.
“A thought comes to him: if he stands up and lifts the rug, he will find something precious underneath.” At the subversive online litmag Work.
Stories for the end of the world. On The Planet Formerly Known As Earth.
Mine will be apocryphal.