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AFTER THE RAPTURE is a flash fiction hybrid book written at the intersection between flash fiction and the novel. A leader and innovator of the form, Stohlman fragments the long form narrative into the distilled intensity of micro and compressed fiction while still maintaining a larger story arc. AFTER THE RAPTURE is a flash fiction hybrid book written at the intersection between flash fiction and the novel. A leader and innovator of the form, Stohlman fragments the long form narrative into the distilled intensity of micro and compressed fiction while still maintaining a larger story arc. Nancy Stohlman has authored four previous books of flash fiction including The Vixen Scream and Other Bible Stories, The Monster Opera, and Madam Velvet's Cabaret of Oddities, which was a finalist for a 2019 Colorado Book Award. Her flash fictions have been anthologized in the W.W. Norton anthology New Micro: Very Short Stories and in Macmillan's The Practice of Creative Writing: A Guide for Students. Her flash fiction craft book, Going Short: An Invitation to Flash Fiction, won the Readers View Gold Award and was recently re-released as an audiobook. She teaches at the University of Colorado Boulder and runs workshops and retreats around the world. "In this world of Walmarts, Barbies, Kens, orgies/time-shares, 7-11s, clones, a red Lake Michigan, and dreams, Nancy Stohlman's humor and talent shines. The rapture becomes more than just a rapture: it's a world turning on its head, acceptance, and then finding a new normal. Redeeming and heart-felt, this dystopian novel-in-flashes is one not to forget. AFTER THE RAPTURE is a rapture!"--Kim Chinquee, three-time Pushcart Prize winner, author of seven collections and the novel, Pipette "AFTER THE RAPTURE is a startling, rhapsodic, brilliant tome. Stohlman dares to venture into an intricate mosaic of layered, futuristic identities, individualities, and lives both wasted and yet fully explored. A dazzling oscillation of scintillating prose, on the threshold between the ephemeral and the eternal. After the Rapture is a book full of surprise and wonder, a compelling and majestic book."--Robert Vaughan, author of Askew, Funhouse and Addicts & Basements "Mesmerizing, challenging, funny, awesome, entertaining, bewildering, full of doom, wisdom, absurdity, and heart. I love how gigantic and scary Biblical personages and events are swallowed up by commercial / pop culture. Itís ridiculous, genius, and moving, all at the same time."--Robert Shapard, co-editor of the Norton Flash Fiction anthologies Sudden Fiction, Flash Fiction Forward, and Flash Fiction International Fiction. Hybrid. Women's Studies.
Reviews with the most likes.
I'm so thankful I found this book at my local Powell's a few months ago. I wasn't expecting to be hooked into it right from page one, and certainly wasn't expecting to love it so much that I instantly re-read it. While reading this I took many notes and the best I could come up with in a way to describe it is: A mixture of the humor found in ‘I Think You Should Leave' skits with the brutal honesty of the world from ‘Adam Ruins Everything', but make it funnier, smarter, and a shit ton of Barbie. There were some parts that were so funny that I was clutching my stomach from laughing so much. It wasn't all funny of course, the moments of realizing the truth within these moments, and I think our author Stohlman was masterful in the way she blended in the surrealism and absurdity of what our world has turned into yet... hasn't turned into at all. I've never read anything like this, the closest I can think of is [b:Gutshot 22237153 Gutshot Amelia Gray https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1405015536l/22237153.SX50.jpg 41610669] ( a short story collection that I love but leans towards more of horror and strange). We get snippets of our nameless narrators life - talking about ‘Before the Rapture' and ‘After the Rapture' of our world collapsing and crumbling in. A dystopian in absurdity but yet, you can't help but see just how much of it could happen and how the world would handle a Rapture. Between our nameless narrator - we get infomercials, news articles and broadcasts / and Barbie FAQs. Some of my favorite parts were the “Barbie Blank” infomercials, where we hear of a new released Barbie and how she's handling the Rapture, and the “Karaoke Gang” news articles. The orgy being secretly a time-share selling meeting had me laughing so hard till tears. It's all brilliant. I love this very, very much.