Nancy Stohlman's Blog, page 52
October 12, 2018
Oct 16: Fbomb Flash Fiction Reading Series! Will the real Fbomb Host please stand up?
(All shows start at 7:30 at the Mercury Cafe, 2199 California Street, Denver)
That’s right! So far we have hosts Girls Just Wanna Have Us, Hillary Leftwich, Roseanna Frechette, Nick Morris, and a host of others all claiming they are hosting! See what happens on Tuesday, October 16! Nancy Stohlman and special guest Nick Busheff will give a little preview of the Oct 26 performance of Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities! There will (hopefully!) be books for sale, hot off the presses, so get your signed one!
Hosts Girls Just Wanna Have Us! Girls Just Wanna Have Us is a flash rock band, comprised of Daryl Gent in the Car, Hall-an and John(athan) Oates Montgomery. If flash fiction tells a story in 1000 words or less, they attempt to cover songs from the 1980s in 1000 heartbreaks or less, 3 chords or less, 2 instruments or less, 1 rehearsal or less. When an Fbomb host suddenly has to cancel at the last minute, they are the only ones flexible, courageous, and beloved enough to replace them.
Featuring Nancy Stohlman and her book Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities! Nancy Stohlman is the founder and curator of the Fbomb Flash Fiction Series circa 2013 and counting! Tonight she will be releasing her new book, Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities! Her other books include The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories, The Monster Opera, Searching for Suzi: a flash novel, and Fast Forward: The Mix Tape, a finalist for a 2011 Colorado Book Award. Her work was recently anthologized in the WW Norton anthology New Micro: Very Short Stories, and she teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder. www.nancystohlman.com
Visit the Fbomb Website here
October 10, 2018
Saturday Oct 13: Quadruple Book Release with Steven Dunn, Jason Arment, Julia Madsen and Nancy Stohlman
Counterpath
7935 E 14th Ave, Denver CO 80220
7-9 pm
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Please join us at Counterpath on Saturday, October 13th at 7pm for a lovely evening of readings and joint book release for Steven Dunn’s water & power (Tarpaulin Sky), Julia Madsen’s The Boneyard, The Birth Manual, A Burial: Investigations into the Heartland (Trembling Pillow Press), and Jason Arment’s Musalaheen (University of Hell Press), and Nancy Stohlman’s Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities.
Steven Dunn is the author of two novels, Potted Meat and water & power. Some of his work can be found in Granta and Best Small Fictions. He was born and raised in West Virginia.
Julia Madsen is a multimedia poet and educator. She received an MFA in Literary Arts from Brown University and is a PhD candidate in English/Creative Writing at the University of Denver. Her first book, The Boneyard, The Birth Manual, A Burial: Investigations into the Heartland, is forthcoming from Trembling Pillow Press.
Jason Arment served in Operation Iraqi Freedom as a Machine Gunner in the USMC. He’s earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Although unagented, he’s collaborated with Fox Sports, been published and nominated in the Best American Essay series, published in the New York Times and just had his memoir Musalaheen come out–of which many pieces have been published in cool/prestigious places. You are probably friends with Jason on facebook.
twitter.com/jasonarment
(He uses twitter as an author bio.)
Nancy Stohlman’s books include Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities, The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories, The Monster Opera, Searching for Suzi: a flash novel, and Fast Forward: The Mix Tape, a finalist for a 2011 Colorado Book Award. She is the creator and curator of The Fbomb Flash Fiction Reading Series, the creator of FlashNano in November, and the co-founder of Flash Fiction Retreats. Her work was recently anthologized in the WW Norton anthology New Micro: Very Short Stories. She teaches writing at the University of Colorado Boulder. Find out more at www.nancystohlman.com
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October 8, 2018
Excerpt: Pen and Muse Interview with author of Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities, Nancy Stohlman!
Where are you
from? Tell us a little about yourself?
I grew up as a military brat, so I lived everywhere: D.C., Arizona, Kansas, Germany, Spain, Nebraska, and then a stint traveling with the Renaissance Festival before settling in Denver and getting serious about writing.
Tell us about your book? How did it get started?
I’ve been writing flash fiction (stories under 1,000 words) almost exclusively for the last 10 years, and have been championing the form for as long. So this book started like a mosaic–once I find myself with a deluge of stories I start collecting them together and seeing if the pieces are talking to each other. For what became Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities there was a lot of synergy happening, as I realized I’d been writing about performers and various aspects of identity (the narrator’s reflection is her own character, for instance.) Once I found the mortar between the pieces it was easy to create a cabaret on the pages.
How do you create your characters?
I don’t really create characters—I wait for them to show up and then I listen to them once they do. As a beginning writer I would try to “invent” characters, but they were always just composites of real people or they were idealized in one way or another (and therefore boring and cliche). Caricatures. Now I wait for characters to show up and I almost act as a journalist—letting them pull me around on their adventures while I take notes.
What inspires and what got you started in writing?
I’ve been writing since I was nine years old—I wrote my first screenplay—“Superman, The Musical”, on my mom’s electric typewriter and felt so important sitting there “writing.”
Now with my busy teaching schedule and all the behind the scenes things that come with publishing I find I have to actively guard my “timeless time” for writing. Once I have an idea I can write anywhere—much of my writing these days happens in the in-between spaces—while I’m commuting on the train, for instance (which is why I don’t drive). But the deep, original inspiration always comes from the timeless time—the space I allow for creative play with no expectation to the outcome. Consequently, I get a lot of my best ideas while walking or sleeping or cooking or doing something else.
Where do you write? Is there something you need in order to write (music, drinks?)
It will sound unglamourous, but I write in bed, in silence, with maybe tea or coffee that has gotten cold. I think I need my feet off the ground in order to access my imagination. I have an office, and it has all the things an office should have—desk, file cabinets, bookshelves, pictures of writing heroes and other memorabilia—and I worked very hard to be able to have an office and I love my office. I have pictures of all my book covers hanging up in there. And I pay bills in there and I answer emails in there, but I don’t write in there.
October 5, 2018
JUST RELEASED! Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities–Watch book trailer now!
Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities
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(Big Table Publishing, 2018)
Step right up and meet a woman so determined to be a star she’ll try anything, including spray on Instant Fame! Meet her reflection, who dreams of a life of her own and manages to find love on the Internet! See the man desperately trying to earn a world record in the most bizarre way possible! Learn the origins of the Four-Legged Woman and the Human Skeleton! Clown mothers, suicidal ringmasters, cult leader who teach the cha-cha and Alaska Jackson’s Traveling Medicine Show…each one takes center stage in this vaudeville of flash fiction. Flash fiction, microfiction, short-short stories… regardless of the name, it’s all the same—a compressed story that packs a punch. Enter a cabaret of the weird, the absurd, and the bizarre with this bold and bawdy new collection.
Buy from Amazon
(or better yet)
Buy signed copies direct from author below!
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Creatively Speaking Radio: Live Tomorrow!
CREATIVELY SPEAKING RADIO: LIVE TOMORROW!
9 am PST
12 pm EST
Click http://tobtr.com/10995725 next Saturday 10/6 @ 9am PT to listen to @nancystohlman discuss her forthcoming collection of flash fiction, Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities.
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/creativelyspeaking/2018/10/06/episode-67-nancy-stohlman
From the website: Nancy Stohlman is a writer and professor with 7 books of flash fiction (either anthologies she’s edited or books she’s written). Nancy’s new book, Madam Velvet’s Cabaret of Oddities, is releasing this October. Flash fiction, you may or may not know, are stories under 1000 words, and lately there have even been subcategories such as microfiction that are under 300 words. The skills required to create stories in these tiny spaces is amazing, and the stories are brilliant. Flash fiction is really taking off in the underground and Nancy loves being on the forefront. To learn more about Nancy Stohlman and her work, please visit: nancystohlman.com, flashfictionretreats.com, and the link to find out more about her performance is: nancystohlman.com/madam-velvets-cabaret-of-oddities.
October 4, 2018
JUST ANNOUNCED! James Thomas will be Madam Velvet’s special guest on Oct 26!
JUST ANNOUNCED! Pre-show surprise: James Thomas, long-time friend of flash fiction and credited with inventing the term in 1992, will be coming to introduce the show and do a live interview with Bryan Jansing: “What the Heck is Flash Fiction?” James is the co-editor of the numerous Norton flash fiction anthologies, including the latest New Micro: Very Short Stories, and will answer questions and share his experiences watching the form change and gain legitimacy in the last 25 years. Interview begins at 6:30 so come early!
The book that started it all in 1992 The latest book: Just released in 2018!
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Reserve Tickets
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October 1, 2018
FlashNano 2018: One month away!
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30 Flash Fiction Stories=30 Days in November
Join us!
Get on mailing list and read last year’s prompts HERE:
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September 28, 2018
Interview in New Flash Fiction Review
Meg Pokrass interviews Nancy Stohlman about her stories in New Micro (W.W. Norton & Co., 2018) and her new forthcoming flash fiction collection, MADAM VELVET’S CABARET OF ODDITIES. T
his interview is part of New Flash Fiction Review’s ongoing New Micro Interviews series
MP : In “Death Row Hugger” I admire how it is written with a great deal of humor. There is that wonderful, fantastical line about prisoners eating steak or lobster or smoking Cuban cigars on their last day, and yet there is a strong feeling of sadness about the story, particularly in the end. How did this piece come about? Can you tell us anything about your relationship to creating comic/tragic stories?
NS: “Death Row Hugger” arrived initially as a dream—many of my pieces do. In the dream I had this strange but very strong sense of loss: I was in a very dark room and I was hugging someone and there was this very sad and almost desperate quality to the hug. I woke up still feeling this hug tingling on my skin and how unsettling it was and quickly jotted down whatever I could remember in the notebook by my bed. This story was one of those special gifts where the whole story rises out of the dream ether fully formed.
In terms of comic/tragic stories—that’s an interesting question because I don’t do it intentionally—I think the world is funny and tragic and raw and beautiful and so maybe the ideas that strike me as worthy of actually writing down always naturally reflect those qualities.
MP : In “I Found Your Voodoo Doll on the Dance Floor After Last Call” there’s a mystical quality. The way you bring in the voodoo doll is very visual and disturbing . We ’re looking at it just as your speaker is, and as the story rolls on, we realize that she is becoming the voodoo doll, rather than the other way around. Here, you open the story up with the doll as metaphor in the first sentence. How important is the first sentence in microfiction?
NS: The first sentence is key in every piece of writing, from fiction to journalism. So on one level the first sentence in flash or micro is not more or less important than the first sentence in a novel—except in a novel we might give an author a paragraph or even a whole page before we stop reading. In microfiction, the paragraph is the entire story. So you really have to jump in and not hold back.
In “I Found Your Voodoo Doll…” the title is a setup into that first sentence, so the story really begins before the story begins, even. Because we are working in such constrained spaces, flash writers have discovered how to make use out of every possible space.
CONTINUE READING HERE
September 25, 2018
How to Write When You Don’t Have Time to Write
Let me be clear—I’m writing this while sitting in the middle of class. My students are free-writing and I am writing with them–because I always write with them and because I get 10 minutes to write.
Maybe that wasn’t the answer you were hoping for. But it’s my reality. Week by week I take stock of my schedule and I try to designate and carve my writing time out. It changes every semester—sometimes it’s during office hours. Sometimes it’s before dinner. Sometimes it’s after the kids are in bed. But increasingly those times are now being swallowed up, too. Office hours and that hour before dinner are now gone with the 4:30 class and the commute. So what to do? Write only on weekends? Wait until Christmas?[image error]
I’m sure you all have some version of this scenario. For many working writers the daily routine of writing is a privilege and a luxury. I have writer friends who just wait until the semester breaks and do all their writing then. That doesn’t work so well for me. I feel like regular contact–however brief—with my creativity is more productive than marathon sessions where the work feels like a stranger.
So how do I write? Here’s what I’m doing this semester:
Schedule my writing time. As in: write it down on the calendar every week just as I would schedule a doctor’s appointment or a conference call. And don’t forget the very important write it down part.
Don’t discount the 10-min slots. A lot can happen in 10 mins (see my old post here). And don’t forget: I’m drafting this article in class while the students are free-writing for 10 minutes. And also don’t forget that 3 classes with 10-min free-writing sessions each equals half an hour of writing. It adds up.
Write everywhere. Not only can you write in 10 min bursts but you can do it everywhere. The 10 mins you waste on social media while waiting for someone in the car, during the bus or train commute, waiting in the doctors lobby—always have a notebook with you ready to go.
Keep a list. Keep an ongoing list of all the stories you want to write. Keep it on your phone or in your wallet and add to it every time you get a new idea—this will allow you to jump right into an idea when you find yourself alone with 10 mins rather than floundering and wondering what to write.
Write it down now. Don’t wait. If the idea is coming, go to the bathroom and write in the stall if you must. Because if you think you will remember this great idea when you get home…you might not. I’ve lost a lot of good ideas this way.
Use voice memos. Sometimes the idea won’t wait for you to find a pen. When you are without paper, speak your writing into a note on your phone.
Block out a weekend or a whole day whenever you can. This requires some planning, so don’t wait. Do it now and write it on the calendar and guard it like date night, like your creative relationship depends on it (it does).
Set yourself up for success. Some people approach writing like exercise—they think they have to work out 3 times a week or it doesn’t count. But it’s easy to falter under such high expectations. Don’t set yourself up for failure with an unrealistic goal.
Be realistic but committed. Have you ever learned an instrument? Carving out just 15 mins a day to practice is powerfully cumulative. And fifteen mins of writing every day will make you and your work progress. It’s not easy, it’s not glamorous, but it will work.
And finally try not to be jealous of those with wide open writing schedules. Assume they’ve paid their dues in other ways and be grateful to be a writer, dammit! It’s truly a gift to be here!
To your writing success!
PS: Do you have other tips? I’d love to hear them! (I really would!)
xoxo
September 21, 2018
Rare Bird Radio Podcast: All About Flash Fiction with Karen Stefano, Kathy Fish and Nancy Stohlman
It was a pleasure to chat with Karen Stefano and Kathy Fish on the Rare Bird Radio! We managed to talk about process, specific stories, and even give a mini workshop. Check it out!
Stefano is Fiction Editor for Connotation Press. Her stories have appeared in The South Carolina Review, Tampa Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, Epiphany, and elsewhere. She was nominated for the XXXVIII Pushcart Prize. To learn more about her work, please visit www.stefanokaren.com.
Nancy Stohlman’s books include The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories (2014), The Monster Opera (2013), Searching for Suzi: a flash novel (2009), Live From Palestine (2003), and Fast Forward: The Mix Tape (2010), an anthology of flash fiction that was a finalist for a 2011 Colorado Book Award. She is a founding member of Fast Forward Press, the creator of FlashNano, the founder and curator of The F-Bomb Flash Fiction Reading Series in Denver, and her work has been recently nominated for The Best of the Web.
Kathy Fish teaches for the Mile High MFA program at Regis University in Denver. Her short fiction has appeared in Indiana Review, The Denver Quarterly, New South, Quick Fiction, Guernica, Slice, BEST AMERICAN NONREQUIRED READING 2018, edited by Sheila Heti. THE LIST: 25 PROVOCATIVE WOMEN WRITERS (Black Lawrence Press, 2014), and BEST SMALL FICTIONS, 2016, 2017, 2018. She is the author of four collections of short fiction: a chapbook of flash fiction in the chapbook collective, A PECULIAR FEELING OF RESTLESSNESS; FOUR CHAPBOOKS OF SHORT SHORT FICTION BY FOUR WOMEN (Rose Metal Press, 2008), WILD LIFE (Matter Press, 2011), TOGETHER WE CAN BURY IT (Lit Pub, 2012), and RIFT, co-authored with Robert Vaughan (Unknown Press, 2015).
