Fast Flesh Literary Journal

Art by Larissa Hauck

Happy Pride Month!! 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

Our gender issue is out now! Featuring:

- Limousine by Cela Xiè
- Taxonomy by E. Peregrine
- Every Villain is Gay by Hunter Burke
- Selected Passages from Men Explaining Women by Tiffany Harris (@proliffany.bsky.social)
- Artwork by Larissa Hauck

fastflesh.net/issue-11

Signs: The Emperor Has No Clothes, Immigrants Make America Great, No Kings, Diversity Equity Inclusion

NO KINGS

Poem titled unnameable creature by Mai Hindawi

Loooove this poem by Mai Hindawi in @fastfleshlit.bsky.social

Thanks, Haley!!

Artwork for issue 10: “The 12 Caesars of Rome” by Marek Danielewski

We had so much fun reading the submissions for our Experimenting with Form issue! Here it is in all its glory, featuring Marek Danielewski, Mai Hindawi, Lukas Wood, Jonathan McLelland, and JI Kleinberg.

fastflesh.net/issue-10

thank you!!

baby Miles in a Fast Flesh onesie and red flannel pants, looking very surprised by your submissions

our youngest editor, but by far our most discerning. Miles is looking for work that truly surprises him. he wants to read something he’s never read before.

Jack Maes is a Latino teacher and writer from Southern California living in Northern Virginia. He holds a B.A. and M.A. from the College of William and Mary and an M.S. from MIT: He is one of the co-founders of Fast Flesh Literary Journal. We Feral Few There is no carpet in the living room when you arrive. Mom is smiling because you're a chubby baby with enormous eyes, and immediately you're the more honest one. You let it all get to your skin. We grow up together in that house, we navigate and find rhythm. We invent the joke and the cartwheel and the same movie run raw until we know all the lines and pauses. You are my closest friend, but knowing someone is an effort, not a prize. As a twenty-something I visit the house again in winter, pulling up the drive, wary of slick. The tires shuffle loose on the ice like they are absorbing every direction. When I press on the brakes, the chassis settles but does not stop, a gentle mistake. The headlights catch the outside air and betray it. Every moving particle and gust of wind is licked with light and trailed in motion. My blood is moving I think. The pond out front of the drive is only a few yards across and is frozen over, the water swelling just above the calm meter of the surrounding dirt. From the car window where I idle, the marbling from the freeze makes it look like a striped stone, gray and white, something I could pick up and thumb in my pocket for luck. I try to make my blood halt. I really try this time. (image ends but essay continues in the link)

Jack’s essay, “We Feral Few,” is out now in Passengers!

@jackmaes.bsky.social

www.passengersjournal.com/volume-5-issue-4-prose/#maes

#callforsubmissions

you have nine more hours to send us work for issue 10 (Experimental Forms)!

send this to your weirdest friends!

#flashfiction #cnf #poetry #hybrid #art

so, question for other writerly nerds home thinking on a friday night:

what do you think of when you think of experimental form? any favorite stories, essays, books, or journals come to mind? ✍️💙📚

reading through our submissions, I keep coming back to the question “is this experimental?”

there’s a lot of what I’d consider experimental content but not experimental form.

we promise to be extra lazy to balance things out

love to wake up, stretch, and then shape my human form around the devils rectangle so i can read some of the worst words crafted on the lords internet

@sscott15.bsky.social is the skull, @jackmaes.bsky.social is the fencer, @eawest.bsky.social is the unicorn, and @daniellezacc.bsky.social is the ghost vomiting her every thought into this sacred space

the reason for the season (our editors’ group chat)

Started a starter pack!

reskeet w/ controversial book takes 💙📚

the movies based on Stephen King’s books are so much better than his actual books

The Shining and Misery in particular

great premises but goddamn he needed an editor

reskeet w/ controversial book takes 💙📚

my own:

- Hemingway is boring as fuck
- Julia by Sandra Newman was infinitely better than 1984

reskeet w/ controversial book takes 💙📚

just came across 1-star reviews of Frankenstein in an AP Lit group, including “I threw it out my window,” “I’d put this alongside other amateur horror authors like Stephen King” and “I’d rather read the Berenstain Bears”

the Berenstain motherfucking bears

too pretty, too hot, too smart. the ideas are endless

The Essay Daily Advent Calendar The 2024 Essay Daily Advent Calendar is back after a year away from the keyboard! Each year, we publish an Advent Calendar, a new essay each...

So we are here and we want you to know that we are returning in 2025 starting with the 2024 Advent Calendar. We know you need it: www.essaydaily.org/p/the-essay-...

We publish work under 500 words, so there are SO many pieces that just missed the boat with word counts between 400 and 500. If that’s you, don’t fret! There are so many other ways we will honor your wonderful work!

#indielit

Final nomination:

“Last Night” by Ryan Thomas LaBee (@ohthatryan.bsky.social)

We loved the way this subverted our Newborn theme!

www.fastflesh.net/last-night

Second nomination:

“The End of Bluebird Days” by Brandon McWilliams

(unfortunately so appropriate right now)

www.fastflesh.net/the-end-of-b...

We were so excited to send in our nominations this morning! 💙📚📝🧵

The first piece we nominated:

“In Which Michael Myers' Remains are Distributed Across the U.S. in Neatly Wrapped Parcels of Ground Meat” by Sarp Sozdinler

(come on, tell me that title doesn’t intrigue you)

www.fastflesh.net/myers

Stuck in traffic behind a lit mag editor

Who has horror recs? I recently read Gus Moreno’s This Thing Between Us, which explored grief through the story of a cucuy. What else ya got? 💙📚

good choice! I remember loving this one too

absolutely

Attn small press friends!⭐️ It's that time of year again!
Per Write or Die Magazine tradition, I'm putting together our annual literary gift guide to feature books, classes, magazines, merch and more.
Fill out this form to be included! ↓
bit.ly/3Z1PVr0