I’m excited to share that my micro “The Sky is a Neighborhood” is published in the November issue of Ghost Parachute! It’s paired with an amazingly perfect piece of art, so go check it out – along with all the other fantastic stories and artworks in this issue.
I wrote this story in Nancy Stohlman’s Pop Lit workshop back in September 2022 and am so happy it found a home!
In July, I took part in the Ekphrastic Review‘s Ekphrastic Marathon for my third time! It’s become one of my favorite flash fiction events to do each year.
This year, I wrote 14 pieces inspired by amazingly unique works of art. I submitted five, and two were listed as finalists!
Read “Current” and “Collage”, plus many other amazing pieces, here.
click the pics to read the full pieces
I have a review up for The Dime Museum, a novel in stories by Joyce Hinnefeld!
Check it out at MicroLit Almanac and then get your copy of the book!
Janet Dale and I got to talk Gatsby on an episode of the Book Squad Goals podcast! Mostly we talk about the 2013 film version but we go off the rails in a few (aka many) parts for a delightfully good time.
Check out their podcast page so you can listen via whatever service you use.
I’m honored that Samantha Zimmerman, editor at Pine Hills Review, spent so much time with Green Light: A Gatsby Cycle, and asked such thoughtful questions in this interview!
If you loved Green Light: A Gatsby Cycle because it featured both Janet Dale AND me, then we have a treat for you!
FERAL published our collaborative blackout poem, ‘Why Wouldn’t You Believe a Woman’ in Issue 22 – The Revolution Issue!
We worked together during an online gurkshop to blackout words from Jessica Bennett’s “Why We Love to Watch Women Brought Low” published in the opinion section of The New York Times on May 20, 2022.
Check it out along with the other amazing revolutionary work in this issue!
ICYMI: I previously had six photographs included in FERAL’s Issue 12 – The Time Issue – direct links on my Photography publications page
As with every year, I had a great time writing and submitting to The Write-In on National Flash Fiction Day! It was especially lovely this year as a much-needed distraction over the weekend.
I’m thrilled that 5/5 of my submissions were published! I’m sharing the links here, along with the prompts to give an idea of the guidelines/constraints.
Don’t forget to check out the complete list of prompts and stories!
Four Years: Write a story with two distinct sections, each taking place in a different season
It’s My Destiny: Write a story in which a character is searching for something specific, and unusual
Man’s Best Friend: Write a story involving a caring moment between two people of significantly different ages who aren’t family members
Home for Christmas: Write a story in which at least one character has gone somewhere at an unusual time of year
Sealed Envelopes: Write a flash with an open ending
Head to The Write-In to read everyone’s vastly different responses to these five prompts!
(The featured post image showcases the badges I earned for the pieces I wrote and submitted.)
I’m thrilled to have a 75-word story at Paragraph Planet today. (The link takes you to the author archives, where you can click on my name and read my piece!)
I wrote this piece in a gurkshop with Janet Dale on 1/29/2022. It was originally a freeform prompt using the words “edge / balloons / contusion / words / kindness / breathing / crow / pulse / shapes / taste” – so you can see how I have worked it to death and then brought it back to life again.
I have a review up for Magic Can’t Save Us: 18 Tales of Likely Failure, a collection of short stories by Josh Denslow!
Check it out at MicroLit Almanac and then get your copy of the book!
In June 2021, I took part in Jami Attenberg’s 1,000 Words of Summer. I wrote at least 1,000 words per day for two weeks, and those pieces included all nine flash stories that eventually ended up in Green Light: A Gatsby Cycle. (The first few days of writing were something else entirely… but we won’t go there.)
Janet had already found her poems. In fact, her idea of using the first page of each chapter is why I used a sentence from the first page of each chapter to start a flash story. But we didn’t collaborate. It wasn’t until later that we put it all together and realized… hey, this works!
We sent Green Light out into the world—to nine publishers total! The last submission was to Alien Buddha Press. Red loved the book but had never worked with two authors on one project before, so he encouraged us to each submit our own books instead. And we did! (Janet published ghosts passing through and I published Won’t Be By Your Side.)
However, as the 100th anniversary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby grew closer, we knew we needed to get this book out in the world. With all the excitement celebrating that centennial, it would be perfect timing! So we reached out to Alien Buddha Press once more, hoping that Red would be willing to work with us as a duo since he’d worked with us individually. And he agreed! We streamlined things for him (I hope!) and marketed the hell out of the book for six weeks leading up to its publication date of April 10, 2025 – 100 years after the original Gatsby!
Just for fun, here are photos of my original handwritten drafts of the flash in Green Light.
And for even more fun, here are the word counts – then and now:
Chapter 1: 1057, now 738
Chapter 2: 1008, now 729
Chapter 3: 1064, now 694
Chapter 4: 1013, now 700
Chapter 5: 1126, now 732
Chapter 6: 1023, now 714
Chapter 7: 1002, now 705
Chapter 8: 1117, now 712
Chapter 9: 1074, now 668
Allison Renner Writes 