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Fissures: One Hundred 100-Word Stories
Fissures is disjunction at its most disruptive—Faulkner’s stories are “spectral spaces” captured with “hard borders” and his dangerous eye for truth.
—Pamela Painter, author of Wouldn't You Like to Know
Grant Faulkner’s stories are poetic and creepy and funny and touching and you’re going to have a swell time. I wish I had written some of them.
—Lou Beach, author of 420 Characters
Grant Faulkner is the impresario of 100-word stories. The 100 tantalizing fictions in Fissures shock and please—a precious pile of sparkling surprises.
—Jane Ciabattari, author of Stealing the Fire and California Stories
Grant Faulkner’s sharply observed, darkly funny, heart-breaking bursts of highly compressed prose offers a startling view of what reality might look like through a funhouse microscope. Fissures pushes the boundaries of flash prose, and thank goodness for that. Sometimes less is so much more.
—Dinty W. Moore, author of Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals
—Pamela Painter, author of Wouldn't You Like to Know
Grant Faulkner’s stories are poetic and creepy and funny and touching and you’re going to have a swell time. I wish I had written some of them.
—Lou Beach, author of 420 Characters
Grant Faulkner is the impresario of 100-word stories. The 100 tantalizing fictions in Fissures shock and please—a precious pile of sparkling surprises.
—Jane Ciabattari, author of Stealing the Fire and California Stories
Grant Faulkner’s sharply observed, darkly funny, heart-breaking bursts of highly compressed prose offers a startling view of what reality might look like through a funhouse microscope. Fissures pushes the boundaries of flash prose, and thank goodness for that. Sometimes less is so much more.
—Dinty W. Moore, author of Dear Mister Essay Writer Guy: Advice and Confessions on Writing, Love, and Cannibals
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
122 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2015
4 people are currently reading
92 people want to read
About the author
Grant Faulkner
18 books116 followersGrant Faulkner is the co-founder of 100 Word Story, the co-host of the Write-minded podcast, and an executive producer on America’s Next Great Author.
He has published three books on writing: The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story; Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo; and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide.
He’s also published All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, a collection of short stories, Fissures, a collection of 100-word stories, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story.
His “flash novel,” something out there in the distance, a collaboration with the photographer Gail Butensky, is coming out in September 2025 with the University of New Mexico Press.
His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton’s Flash Fiction America; New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction; and in several editions of the annual Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction anthologies.
His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Lit Hub, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He serves on the National Writing Project Writers Council, Litquake’s board of directors, the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Words’ Creative Council, and Left Margin Lit’s Advisory Board.
He’s presented at events such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Associated Writing Programs Conference, Book Expo America, the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Oakland Book Festival, the Bay Area Book Festival, Poets & Writers Live, the San Francisco Writers Conference, the Commonwealth Club, the Digital Publishing Innovation Summit, Writers Digest West, the Porchlight storytelling series, Litquake, Lit Crawl, the Mendocino Writers Conference, the Sierra Writers Conference, and the Arizona State Library Association’s YA Summit.
He has published three books on writing: The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story; Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Actions to Boost Your Creative Mojo; and Brave the Page, a teen writing guide.
He’s also published All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, a collection of short stories, Fissures, a collection of 100-word stories, and Nothing Short of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story.
His “flash novel,” something out there in the distance, a collaboration with the photographer Gail Butensky, is coming out in September 2025 with the University of New Mexico Press.
His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review, and he has been anthologized in collections such as Norton’s Flash Fiction America; New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction; and in several editions of the annual Best Small Fictions and Best Microfiction anthologies.
His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Lit Hub, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He serves on the National Writing Project Writers Council, Litquake’s board of directors, the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Words’ Creative Council, and Left Margin Lit’s Advisory Board.
He’s presented at events such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Associated Writing Programs Conference, Book Expo America, the Chicago Humanities Festival, the Oakland Book Festival, the Bay Area Book Festival, Poets & Writers Live, the San Francisco Writers Conference, the Commonwealth Club, the Digital Publishing Innovation Summit, Writers Digest West, the Porchlight storytelling series, Litquake, Lit Crawl, the Mendocino Writers Conference, the Sierra Writers Conference, and the Arizona State Library Association’s YA Summit.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
May 29, 2015
Grant Faulkner is a conjurer. He waves his hands over a page, a few dozen words fall, and from them whole lives echo, small and tinny but going on for hours.
You ask most folks in the know what distinguishes a prose poem from flash fiction -- especially microfiction like these tiny 100-word stories -- and they'll tell you, not much. And truth be told, some of these pieces in Fissures do feel a bit more like poetry, or old-fashioned sketches, or vignettes, or disembodied scenes. But that doesn't deprive any of them of their immense power, and even in such impressionistic brevity, most of these stories are true stories, whole narratives tossed on the page with the minimum strokes of a pen, like some Japanese painting.
It helps that so many of the stories are connected -- I look forward to rereading this whole book and piecing together the longer narrative of Gerard and Celeste, or of Zabeth. And of course there is the central eight-story cycle of Alexander, the filmmaker.
But really, there is equal magic in the isolated, momentary lives of Stockton and Sophie postcoital on a Victorian couch, of Tom and his father in the silver LTD, of Margery and George drinking martinis in jelly jars, of all the nameless "I" narrators and "you" subjects and hes and shes of these intimate little worlds.
It's quite a feat, this book, and it serves not only as a beautiful artifact of the microfiction form but also as a kind of textbook. If ever you wanted to know how to write a full story in a mere 100 words, here are your instructions: take up Grant Faulkner, read, and read again.
You ask most folks in the know what distinguishes a prose poem from flash fiction -- especially microfiction like these tiny 100-word stories -- and they'll tell you, not much. And truth be told, some of these pieces in Fissures do feel a bit more like poetry, or old-fashioned sketches, or vignettes, or disembodied scenes. But that doesn't deprive any of them of their immense power, and even in such impressionistic brevity, most of these stories are true stories, whole narratives tossed on the page with the minimum strokes of a pen, like some Japanese painting.
It helps that so many of the stories are connected -- I look forward to rereading this whole book and piecing together the longer narrative of Gerard and Celeste, or of Zabeth. And of course there is the central eight-story cycle of Alexander, the filmmaker.
But really, there is equal magic in the isolated, momentary lives of Stockton and Sophie postcoital on a Victorian couch, of Tom and his father in the silver LTD, of Margery and George drinking martinis in jelly jars, of all the nameless "I" narrators and "you" subjects and hes and shes of these intimate little worlds.
It's quite a feat, this book, and it serves not only as a beautiful artifact of the microfiction form but also as a kind of textbook. If ever you wanted to know how to write a full story in a mere 100 words, here are your instructions: take up Grant Faulkner, read, and read again.
November 28, 2017
Some absolute winners in here! Faulkner creates an astonishing world in so few words. LOVE!
July 19, 2015
Innovative, and both playful and profound.
May 14, 2015
A quick read with deliciously bite-sized snapshots of stories about the human condition.
December 18, 2016
Powerful nuggets. Sometimes a whole relationship is reflected in a shard of mirror.
September 17, 2024
Fissures One Hundred 100-Word Stories by Grant Faulkner is a wonderfully moreish collection—poetic, urgent, and skillfully vast. Verdict: Buy it. You'll want to revisit this one.
December 9, 2017
Each one of these 100-word stories is like looking through a keyhole. You get a tantalizing glimpse of what's happening, but you have to imagine the rest.
December 6, 2022
Interesting concept, really well executed, this collection of one hundred 100-word stories is captivating. Occasionally I wished the stipulation was not so strict and the story could expand, but most of the time, it felt just right.
“Life is suspension, the swaying of another’s disregard.”
“Life is suspension, the swaying of another’s disregard.”
March 3, 2025
not my taste
Less a collection of short stories and more an exercise in bringing up sex every 300 words. The premise was interesting but the execution was repetitive and tried too hard to be shocking.
Less a collection of short stories and more an exercise in bringing up sex every 300 words. The premise was interesting but the execution was repetitive and tried too hard to be shocking.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews