PodCastle 425: Flash Fiction Extravaganza! Transformations
Show Notes
Rated PG-13
“Girl in Blue Dress (1881)” by Sunil Patel.
Read by Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali.
First appeared in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination.
Her dress is composed of blues from ultramarine to cerulean, a cascade of hues resolving into one. She stands askew, her expression unreadable, her mouth a blur. The colors in her dress have not faded but her name has. He asked for it, once, but he did not write it down.
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“Mirabilis” by Shannon Peavey.
Read by Jen R. Albert.
A PodCastle original!
No one’s really seen a girl turn to glass. It’s one of those things journalists make up when they’re bored, like the knockout game or the Russian heroin that rots your skin. They show these pictures of sick-pretty starving girls on the evening news, girls with slatted ribs and fierce eyes, and my mama clicks her tongue and I change the channel.
Meanwhile, Zola eats none of her peas.
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“Portrait of My Wife as a Boat” by Samantha Murray
Read by Graeme Dunlop.
First appeared in Flash Fiction Online.
She smells of linseed, of citrus, the oil that she rubs into all of the little tiny cracks in her face. When she leaves she kisses me and I taste the sea.
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About the Authors
Samantha Murray
Samantha Murray lives in Western Australia in a household of unruly boys. Her story “Of Sight, of Mind, of Heart” won an Aurealis Award, and her fiction has been collected in The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror, and The Best Science Fiction of the Year, Volume 4. You can follow her on Twitter @samanthanmurray
Shannon Peavey
Shannon Peavey is a writer and horse trainer from Seattle, Washington. She’s a graduate of the Clarion West workshop, and her stories have also appeared in places such as Apex, Lightspeed, and Beneath Ceaseless Skies. Find her online at shannonpeavey.com, or on Twitter @shannonpv.
About the Narrators
Graeme Dunlop
Graeme has been involved with Escape Artists for many years, producing audio, hosting shows, narrating stories and keeping the websites going. He was born in Australia, although people have identified him as English, American and South African, amongst other nationalities. He loves the spoken word. Graeme lives in Melbourne, Australia with his wife Amanda, and beautiful boy dog, Jake.
Jen R. Albert
Jen Albert is an editor, writer, and former entomologist. She works full-time as an editor at ECW Press, an independent publishing house based in Toronto, where she enjoys working on books of all kinds, including speculative fiction, popular science, and LGBTQ fiction and non-fiction. She became co-editor of her favorite fantasy fiction podcast in 2016; she now wonders if she still allowed to call it her favorite. Along with her co-editors, Jen has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award for her work on PodCastle.
Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali
Khaalidah Muhammad-Ali lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband and three children. By day she works as a breast oncology nurse. At all other times she juggles, none too successfully, writing, reading, gaming, and gardening. She has written one novel entitled An Unproductive Woman available on Amazon. She has also been published in or has stories upcoming in Escape Pod, Diabolical Plots, and FIYAH. Khaalidah also co-edits podcastle.org where she is on a mission to encourage more women to submit fantasy stories. Of her alter ego, K from the planet Vega, it is rumored that she owns a time machine and knows the secret to long youth. She can be found online at http://khaalidah.com and on Twitter at @khaalidah.
