Welcome!
You’ve found the website of (very) short fiction writer Randall Brown. Below are some favorite compressed works. Enjoy!
“El Dinosaurio” (“The Dinosaur”), Augusto Monterroso
Cuando despertó, el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí.
(“When [s]he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.”)
“You Fit Into Me,” Margaret Atwood
You fit into me
like a hook into an eyea fish hook
an open eye
from Michael McFee’s The Smallest Talk, one-line poems
Dead Party
Silence is the smallest talk
From Lydia Davis’s break it down
The Mother
The girl wrote a story, “But how much better it would be if you wrote a novel,” said her mother. The girl built a dollhouse. “But how much better if it were a real house,” her mother said. The girl made a small pillow for her father. “But wouldn’t a quilt be more practical,” said her mother. The girl dug a small hole in the garden. “But how much better if you dug a large hole,” said her mother. The girl dug a large hole and went to sleep in it. “But how much better if you slept forever,” said her mother.
From Michael Martone, in The Norton Anthology of Hint Fiction
IN THE TALLADEGA NATIONAL FOREST
Looking for the body, we found hundreds of burned-out lightbulbs in a clearing. Found four bodies, not the body we were looking for.
From Martha Ronk and the Poetry Foundation
In a landscape of having to repeat.
Noticing that she does, that he does and so on.
The underlying cause is as absent as rain.
Yet one remembers rain even in its absence and an attendant quiet.
If illusion descends or the very word you’ve been looking for.
He remembers looking at the photograph,
green and gray squares, undefined.
How perfectly ordinary someone says looking at the same thing or
I’d like to get to the bottom of that one.
When it is raining it is raining for all time and then it isn’t
and when she looked at him, as he remembers it, the landscape moved closer
than ever and she did and now he can hardly remember what it was like.
News
"Lithopedion" was chosen by series editor Tara Masih and judge Robert Olen Butler for BEST SMALL FICTIONS 2015, Queen's Ferry Press.
New work recently accepted by Five Points, SLQ, Funny Bone: Flashing for Comic Relief, Mantis, pacificReview, Chicago Quarterly Review, SLAB, Pembroke Magazine, and Raleigh Review.
New articles at FICTION SOUTHEAST:
- “Giving Readers Something to Love"
- “The Challenge Beyond Craft: Slot-Filling (Parts 1 & 2)”
- “Don’t Write Off the Comments of Workshop Readers—Even If They Are All Idiots”
- “The Reviews are In — And They Are Crafty”
- “The Writing Room: Why Go Back?”
Lee Rourke writes in A BRIEF HISTORY OF FABLES: FROM AESOP TO FLASH FICTION, "One only has to visit sites such as flashfiction.net and smokelong.com or journals such as Matter: The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts to get a real sense of some of the most electrifying and ground-breaking flash fiction published today; displaying work from authors all around the world who manage to compress the weird, the fabulous and the truly astonishing into their fictions."
From the 2011 Novel and Short Story Writer's Market interview with Pamela Painter: "Quite a few writers and editors—Robert Shapard, James Thomas, Dinty Moore, Tom Hazuka, Randall Brown, Mark Budman—are publishing short short story collections and also assembling rich, wide-ranging anthologies."
From The Brooklyn Rail: "Brown is also famous for working with private workshop writing groups at Martin Scorcese’s Zoetrope, groups founded by modern flash fiction torch bearer Kim Chinquee, who has a cult-like following; there is history here and in the making. As the futurists were to early 20th century Italian painting, Brown and Chinquee are to flash fiction."
From Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Flash Writing Flash Fiction: "Michael Martone and Diane Williams are shaping the next generation of flash writers, such as Randall Brown, Kim Chinquee, Sherrie Flick, and Pia Z. Ehrhardt, with their unique styles that all serve as vehicles for some truth."
From Dave Clapper, SmokeLong Quarterly Founder, "But if asked to name one person who has been the most tireless advocate of flash generally (and, to our great fortune, of SmokeLong specifically), I would name Randall in a heartbeat. His blog, flashfiction.net has become a daily must-read for anyone really interested in the form. Submissions to SLQ under his leadership grew from 300 to 1200 per issue. New journals publishing flash could always count on an excellent piece from Randall arriving in their in-boxes."
Interview up at Flash Fiction Chronicles.
Recent work appearing or forthcoming in American Short Fiction, Lake Effect, Descant, Tin House Plotto Challenge, Apollo's Lyre, Drunken Boat, Inch, The Linnet's Wings, The Pedestal Magazine, Necessary Fiction, MHR, Fourteen Hills, Split Quarterly, Barrelhouse, FRiGG, Blink|Ink, J Journal, Gathering of the Tribes, Prime Number Magazine: A Press 53 Publication, and Lit Magazine
Review of Mad to Live up at Brooklyn Rail.
"Instead of the Glass" up at SmokeLong Quarterly
"The Office They Gave Me" up at Moon Milk Review.
Review of Mad to Live by Robert Swartwood & Myfanwy Collins
Interviews up at Richard Hugo House, SmokeLong Quarterly, Southern Indiana Review, and Six Questions
(Very) short fiction up here & here at Straylight.
"The Third Way" at Red Hen Press
Deluxe Edition of Mad to Live now available.
Writing Spaces at Fictionaut
"On Reading" at Laughing Yeti
Journal of Compressed Creative Arts- CNF: Aftermath
- Sphinx of Ink
- Washerwoman of Breton
- Dogs
- pieces of evidence
- “I brought my wife, Ella, to Machala, her first visit to my childhood home.”
- Maximus 3000
- Scenery v. Scene
- A Knife On the Bed
- Trembling, fleeting, and fading in the blue
- FlashFiction.Net
- Flash Reprint: Sean Lovelace's "Endings"
- Flash Reprint: Jerry Dennis's "If You List Your Fears You Will Vanquish Them"
- Flash Reprint: Lesley Weston's "Tonsure"
- Flash Reprint: Jay Merill's "Trev"
- Flash Reprint: Mary Lynn Reed's "Every Week"
- Flash Reprint: Katie Cortese's "Swallowed"
- Flash Reprint: Christopher DeWan's "Hoopty Time Machine"
- Flash Reprint: Paul Weidknecht's "Apart"
- Flash Reprint: Ryan Griffith's "Thrill of Fire"
- Flash Reprint: Virginia Petrucci's "We Want to be Remembered"
- Matter Press Blog
- Top Five: Danna Weiss
- Top Five: Wendy Blankenship
- Top Five: Teresa Milbrodt
- Top Five: Amanda Sherwood
- Top Five: Melissa Bean
- Top Five: Charles Leggett
- Top Five: Robert Hitt
- Top Five: Jennifer Bowering Delisle
- Top Five: Tereza Joy Kramer
- Top Five: Michael Martin