Human Condition

Flash-Fiction Fairy Tales from Jen Knox

Flash-Fiction Fairy Tales from Jen Knox

Superstition Review
Jen Knox | Dandelion Ghosts by Jen Knox (Unleash Creatives 2021)

Congratulations to Jen Knox for her new book Dandelion Ghosts! Her nine flash-fiction stories explore the human condition in a magical and captivating way. Jen says that these stories are “basically fairy tales for adults.” The book came out in September published by Unleash Creatives.

The story “Dandelion Ghosts” won the Flash Fiction Magazine contest.

In this collection of tautly woven stories, Jen Knox offers us surreal adult parables. The fantastical nudges up against Odd Lots, paying rent, and worrying about aging parents. Logic ricochets off into all kinds of boundless directions, pushing out our sense of the “ordinary” so we learn to expect anything in these stories: a young girl who discovers the backs of her knees spill out coins, an installation artist who talks to the muse in her plump belly. Each character stumbles through a tired, not always empathetic world, but her fears, anxieties and strange talents leave open the possibility for something a little bit better.

Alexandra van de Kamp, author of Kiss/Hierarchy

Jen contributed to Issue 4 and Issue 14. You can buy the book on Amazon and learn more about Jen Knox on her website and Instagram.

Contributor Update, Caitlin Horrocks

Superstition Review

Join Superstition Review in congratulating one of our past contributors, Caitlin Horrocks, on her new book, Life Among the Terranauts, out now. Named a Best Book of January 2021 by Entertainment Weekly and Apple Books, this collection of short stories “demonstrates all the inventiveness that won admirers for Horrocks’s first collection. In “The Sleep,” reprinted in Best American Short Stories, residents of a town in the frigid Midwest decide to hibernate through the bitter winters. In the title story, half a dozen people move into an experimental biodome for a shot at a million dollars, if they can survive two years. And in “Sun City,” published in The New Yorker, a young woman meets her grandmother’s roommate in the wake of her death and attempts to solve the mystery of whether the two women were lovers.”

“Vigorous and supremely crafted, Horrocks’s second collection explores human frailties, desires, and mechanisms for survival… Horrocks’s linguistic finesse and narrative range is impressive, and she brings incisive humor, pathos, and wit to her characters and their predicaments. The result is an immersive and engaging work that astutely captures the complexities of the human condition.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Click here to order your copy of Life Among the Terranauts. Be sure to also check out Caitlin’s website and Twitter, as well as, our interview with her in Issue 9.