A great review of BEST SMALL FICTIONS 2023 at The Loch Raven Review! Read the review here: thelochravenreview.net/the-best-small…, and buy the book here: altcurrentpress.com/2023/12/08/bes…!

“It felt like relief for as long as the cold lasted. Pretending the impossible when a life plan was meaningless, really. When everything could be gone any second.”

Eileen Tomarchio in Variant Literature variantlit.com/cold-war-days/

Populations of earthworms in UK have declined by a third over the past 25 years.

Survival of human civilisation depends on a few inches of topsoil. Destroy that, we lose everything.
theguardian.com/environment/20…

'... the baby cooed before he picked up a women’s shoe, inspected its contours before tasting the salt of the dust, the patches of dirt, flower seeds and a squashed bug...'

Love this richly-detailed gem by Tara Isabel Zambrano in The Disappointed Housewife-SUBMISSIONS ALWAYS OPEN 🥰

My latest Book Riot post is live! In which I discuss my love for genre-blending short story collections, with work by Bora Chung, Kim Fu, Talia Kolluri, Kelly Link, Premee Mohamed, Doctora Malka Older, Brenda Peynado, Karin Tidbeck, Cathy Ulrich, and Helen Oyeyemi!

Happy Total Eclipse Monday! Here's a throwback for the moment: an essay about the 2017 eclipse that captures the joy & awe of sharing a spectacular event:
tahomaliteraryreview.com/selections/a-s…

“In one dream, I saw a remnant of myself…”

An amazing flash by Eileen Tomarchio in Variant Literature!🔥

So grateful to be a Variant editor. There are twelve amazing poems in this issue - take some time to read them! variantlit.com/issue-eighteen/

The ice cream bombe volatile in my hand, chocolate shell decoupling, cherry core unstable. Me like Spock in Wrath of Khan, or a Red Dawn Wolverine, neutralizing the weapons of madmen and evil empires. Folly and glory.

Love! Read Eileen Tomarchio in Variant Literature!

It’s live. Again, got a story in here called GUN SHOP. Mad love for the love on that. The series of escalations of greatness from working with these folks to now having read these, taking a backseat to those fine artists, man, my dang heart can’t take. Show Variant Literature the love.

So thrilled to have 3 Flash Essays included in this new issue of Variant Literature ! Thanks so much to the editors for the careful edits and for believing in my work ❤️

'I loved drawing the pollution sunsets that spread across Hudson-Union-Essex like frozen atomic bombs. A Secaucus sun chemical-pink as the cheery center in the tartufos I stole from the walk-in.' Love this journal and this writer!

Please read/bookmark/soak up this latest issue, packed with exquisite writing 🖤

“My body in pale outline on my bedspread, vaporized there at the last dropped words of our last fight.”

Vivid, brilliant flash by ⁦Eileen Tomarchio⁩ in Issue 18, ⁦Variant Literature⁩ 🖤 Read here: variantlit.com/cold-war-days/

I was just on a panel of editors saying I'd love to see more CNF about work and here's a great story by Eileen Tomarchio in Variant Literature that starts, 'The first job I ever got fired from was waiting tables at the Plankboard Inn in Jersey City Heights, late winter…' Love it.

LOVE when something gets written for/inspired by/etc. a call, misses it, but then gets accepted and published elsewhere!!

'I especially notice an oil landscape that depicts a buffalo hunt. Cowboys baring their teeth, horses with gaping eyeballs, the terrifying gallop down a verdant slope of sod, rifles blazing...'

Nobody renders scene and place so winningly as Dan Crawley. READ NOW in Variant Literature 😍

Really happy to see my story in the new issue of Variant Literature, birthed from a missed HAD call. A kick writing about another fraught time, the 80s, the global and the personal. Can't thank the remarkable Catherine Roberts enough for her grace and keen editorial eye. 🥰

'I’m glad she’s dreaming about dragons instead of trash bags in dumpsters or crawl spaces, like I do. The thick, green algae that cover the bottoms of lakes.'

This haunting flash by Dawn Tasaka Steffler in Anti-Heroin Chic soars. 💔

Issue Eighteen of Variant is now live! variantlit.com/issue-eighteen/