Tiny Vessels

by JR Fenn

50 pages, Paperback

Published February 5, 2026

About the author

JR Fenn is the author of Tiny Vessels, winner of The Masters Review Chapbook Open and now available from Red Mare Press. Her writing has appeared in many places, including Boston Review, DIAGRAM, Split Lip, and 100 Word Story. Other recognitions include the 59th Annual New Millennium Award for Flash Fiction, Stone Canoe’s 2025 Robert Colley Prize for Fiction, and the Gulf Coast Prize for Nonfiction. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and the Pushcart Prize. She teaches Fiction and Environmental Writing at SUNY ESF and lives in Western New York with her family.

Reviews

[Nadia Ghent · Rating 5 out of 5]

J R Fenn's Tiny Vessels is a journey into the dream-like sense of other worlds that ache with splendor. But it's also the sense that our own world is not capacious enough for all that we want to experience. In "The Matchbox," the narrator ponders the meaning of such containment: "It has sometimes been said that the longing for small things is a longing for life. But what is the longing for a holding place too small to hold much of anything?"

It is this longing that inserts itself under your skin as you read, a longing for connection, for a seed that becomes a universe, for memory, and most of all, for the gorgeous harmony of language that Fenn transmits, through these deceptively brief prose encounters, directly into your consciousness.

The precision of these gem-like stories catches you off guard with their devastating brilliance and beauty. Read slowly--you will want to hang onto every single word.