About Fissures: One Hundred 100-word Stories
In Fissures, a collection of one hundred 100-word stories, Grant Faulkner uses the fixed compositional lens of the 100-word story form to evocatively capture the drama of the lacunae we live in, whether it’s the gulf between a loved one, the natural world, or God.
“I’ve always thought life is more about what is unsaid than what is said,” he says. “We live in odd gaps of silence, irremediable interstices that sometimes last forever. A lingering glance averted. The lover who slams the door and runs away. Unsent letters.”
Faulkner, the executive director of National Novel Writing Month and the co-founder of the lit mag 100 Word Story, has focused on longer narrative forms for most of his writing career. He wondered, however, if instead of building an entire world with text—to sew connections, to explain—he did the opposite.
“What if instead of relying on the words of a story, I relied on the spectral spaces around those words? What if I privileged excision over any notion of comprehensiveness, and formed narratives around caesuras and crevices?”
The Details
Publisher: Press 53 (May 1, 2015)
ISBN-10: 1941209203
ISBN-13: 978-1941209202
Address: Press 53, PO Box 30314, Winston-Salem, NC 27130-0314
Raves
“There is danger in these pages, to be sure, but it is peril experienced through a series of sharp revelations, each positively embracing human nature on the fearless edge. I keep returning to these people and their lives, trying to learn more, reaching into the crevices, taking their risks and my chances—and enjoying the ride. Again and again. A hundred times.”
—James Thomas, editor of Flash Fiction International: Very Short Stories from Around the World
“Fissures is disjunction at its most disruptive—Faulkner’s stories are ‘spectral spaces’ captured with ‘hard borders’ and his dangerous eye for truth.”
—Pamela Painter, author of Wouldn’t You Like to Know
“Grant Faulkner’s stories are poetic and creepy and funny and touching and you’re going to have a swell time. I wish I had written some of them.”
—Lou Beach, author of 420 Characters
“Grant Faulkner is the impresario of 100-word stories. The 100 tantalizing fictions in shock and please—a precious pile of sparkling surprises.”
—Jane Ciabattari, author of Stealing the Fire and California Stories
“Grant Faulkner’s sharply observed, darkly funny, heart-breaking bursts of highly compressed prose offers a startling view of what reality might look like through a funhouse microscope. Fissures pushes the boundaries of flash prose, and thank goodness for that. Sometimes less is so much more.”
—Dinty W. Moore, author of Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals
Reading from Fissures
At Why Are There Words, March 12, 2015
Excerpt from Fissures
Several of the stories in Fissures are available online. Please see the Stories page of this website to read more.
The Toad
Flattened by a car, its arms spread out, a little like Jesus. The sun had baked it as crisp as a potato chip.
“Poor toad,” Maria said. “Didn’t know how to cross the road.”
“Maybe he thought the car was a new friend,” I said. “Rushing to greet him.”
“Or he was puzzling how such a small thing in the distance could become so large.”
We spent hours in such conversations. It was nice, how we never talked about what was next, who we were together. As if the toad wasn’t part of every story in its way, even ours.
Essays about Flash Fiction
Grant Faulkner has written several essays about writing flash fiction.
Going Long. Going Short.
The New York Times
Writing Flash Fiction: Telling a Story with What’s Left Out
Writer’s Digest
Mini Might
The Writer
100-Word Stories: Writing with Gaps
Brevity
Interviews
An Interview with Grant Faulkner
Necessary Fiction
The Rumpus Interview: Jane Ciabattari and Grant Faulkner Talk Flash
The Rumpus
Five Questions with Grant Faulkner
NANO Fiction
Grant Faulkner Writes about Life’s Fissures
100 Word Story
Interview with Grant Faulkner by Ellen O’Connell
Green Mountains Review
An Interview with Grant Faulkner, Author of Fissures
Superstition Review
An Interview with Grant Faulkner, author of Fissures
Fiction Southeast
Six Questions for Grant Faulkner, Editor, 100 Word Story
Six Questions For …
Ask an Editor Series: Lynn Mundell and Grant Faulkner
Fiction Southeast
Flash! Fiction! An Interview with Grant Faulkner, Editor of 100 Word Story
The Review Review
Reviews
Book Review of Fissures
Bath Flash Fiction
A Micro-study of Micro-fiction: Book Review of Fissures
The Brooklyn Rail
Book Review of Fissures
Necessary Fiction
Fissures: One Hundred 100-word Stories
Puerto del Sol
Review: Fissures by Grant Faulkner
Your Impossible Voice
Microfiction at Work: A Review of Fissures by Grant Faulkner
Atticus Review
Tip-of-the-Iceberg Stories: Grant Faulkner’s Fissures
KYSO Flash
A Review of Fissures: One Hundred 100-Word Stories
decomP Magazine
Fun Facts
Another word for a 100-word story is a drabble.