Reading — Frequently Asked Questions
Common questions about who to read, where to find the best literary work, and what to reach for next.
Who are the best flash fiction writers?
The writers most associated with flash fiction and the compressed short story form are Raymond Carver (foundational), Amy Hempel (the most technically precise — start with Reasons to Live), Lydia Davis (the most formally inventive), Grace Paley (the most emotionally generous), and Tessa Hadley (one of the most consistently excellent contemporary practitioners). For prose poetry crossing into flash, read Claudia Rankine. For international flash, Yasunari Kawabata’s Palm-of-the-Hand Stories and Borges’s Fictions represent the form at its most compressed and strange. Among living writers, read Diane Cook, Colin Barrett, and Yuko Tsushima.
Best Flash Fiction Stories →What are the best literary magazines?
The magazines that consistently publish the best short fiction and poetry: The Sun (pays well, deeply literary), Tin House (reliably excellent), One Story (single-story format, high selectivity), The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, and Ploughshares. For flash specifically: SmokeLong Quarterly, Wigleaf, Fractured Lit. For poetry: Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, and The Rumpus. For international literary fiction: Granta, The Dublin Review, and The Stinging Fly. The New Yorker remains the most widely read literary venue for fiction. For essays and criticism: n+1, The Point, and the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Must Reads →What should I read if I like Raymond Carver?
If you respond to Carver’s compression, restraint, and domestic subject matter, read: Amy Hempel (all four collections, start with Reasons to Live), Tobias Wolff (The Night in Question), Mary Robison (Why Did I Ever), Richard Ford (Rock Springs), and Bobbie Ann Mason (Shiloh). For the European equivalent of Carver’s minimalism, read Peter Handke’s short prose. For something darker and stranger, read Denis Johnson (Jesus’ Son) and Barry Hannah (Airships). Gordon Lish edited both Carver and Hempel — reading the two together reveals how much of the minimalist aesthetic was editorial construction as much as individual voice.
Best Books If You Like Carver →What are the best poetry newsletters?
The best poetry newsletters for readers of serious literary work include the Poetry Foundation’s daily poem, the Academy of American Poets’ poem-a-day, and The Paris Review’s poetry dispatches. For newsletter-first poetry publishing, Substack has become a serious venue — look for poets publishing original work directly to subscribers rather than aggregating links. Tumbleweed Words publishes original flash fiction and poetry directly to subscribers every week — work written on the road, in the tradition of the compressed lyric. The best newsletters are distinguished by a strong editorial voice and a commitment to original work over curation alone.
Subscribe to Tumbleweed Words →Gritty, minimalist fiction and poetry — written on trains, in borrowed rooms, in cities I am passing through. Over 1,200 readers. Free to subscribe.
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