Piece of my essence, accept my sorry.

Some people, right? We’ll fold you into sparrows, help you disappear—I’m so glad we found you alive

In this episode of the Strange Horizons podcast, editor Ciro Faienza presents the poetry of the 24 January issue.

Hope without action behind it is only a recipe for deeper heartache.

I love flash fiction for a lot of reasons. There’s the instant gratification of reading a complete work of fiction in just a few minutes. And there’s the way flash lends itself to playful, inventive experimentation with form, prose, style, voice, and subject. I also love the way a flash story can be honed and sharpened as everything extraneous is eliminated, and the way it can capture and convey the essence of something—an emotion, a world, a situation, a possibility, an idea, even a joke!—in brilliant brevity.