Flash fiction
about exile.

Exile is not geography. It is a relationship with every place you are in.

Between belonging · The permanent stranger · Language and loss

Exile in Tumbleweed Words is not always political — though the political form is the most dramatic version. It is also the exile of the class migrant, the person who grew up in one world and now inhabits another. The exile of the nomad who has moved between cities for long enough that no single city feels entirely like home. The exile that is the condition of taking writing seriously in a culture that doesn't quite have a place for it. These are the exile pieces.

"He had been in the city for four years and still felt like he was visiting. He had been visiting Edinburgh for four years before that. He had a theory that home was something that happened to other people."

David — Tumbleweed Words

Exile writing in flash fiction works through juxtaposition — the new place laid over the old place, the current language laid over the mother tongue, the present self laid over the self that left. The compression of flash fiction makes this double exposure literal: past and present in the same sentence, the same image. The exile condition produces naturally minimalist writing because the exile has had to strip everything down to what travels.

David — Tumbleweed Words Flash fiction and poetry written on trains, in hostels, and in city streets. Published in Litro, Adelaide Magazine, Cleaver Magazine. Pushcart-nominated. Read on Substack.