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Rift
A stunning collaboration from Robert Vaughan and Kathy Fish, two masters of flash fiction, who've blended their work together in a vibrant explosion that is all of these things: evocative, heart wrenching, rare in the wild. The stories in RIFT explore the gamut of human connection and conflict, where emotions run deep beneath the surface. Divided into four sections: Fault, Breach, Tremor, and Cataclysm, writers Fish and Vaughan thread together their tales of strange encounters, mishaps, accidents, and disrepair. The world of RIFT is riven, tumultuous, and haunting. In here, danger lurks and the fallible human heart lay exposed and vulnerable. Fish and Vaughan leave their readers spellbound, mystified, and eager for the next story.
216 pages, Paperback
Published December 1, 2015
4 people are currently reading
140 people want to read
About the author
Kathy Fish
21 books314 followersKathy Fish is a core faculty member for the Mile-High MFA program at Regis University in Denver. Additionally, she teaches two-week intensive Fast Flash© Workshops online. Her fifth collection of flash fiction, "Wild Life: Collected Works from 2003-2018" released in late 2018 from Matter Press. Fish's "Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild," which addresses the scourge of gun violence and mass shootings in America, has been widely read, studied, and shared. It was chosen by Sheila Heti for Best American Nonrequired Reading 2018 and by Aimee Bender for Best Small Fictions 2018. The piece will also appear in a forthcoming edition of The Norton Reader.
Fish's flash fiction was also selected by Stuart Dybek for inclusion in Best Small Fictions 2016 and Amy Hempel for Best Small Fictions 2017. Two other stories were selected for the W.W. Norton anthology, New Micro. Additionally, several of her stories have been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50. She has also had stories chosen for the first short story vending machines in the U.S. at Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Cafe in San Francisco.
Kathy Fish's stories have been published or are forthcoming in The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers (Black Lawrence Press, 2015, Richard Thomas (ed.), Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up to No Good (Upperrubberboot Press, 2015) Slice, Guernica, Indiana Review, Mississippi Review online, Denver Quarterly, New South, Quick Fiction, and various other journals and anthologies. She was the guest editor of Dzanc Books' "Best of the Web 2010." She is the author of four other collections of short fiction: a chapbook of flash fiction in the chapbook collective, "A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: Four Chapbooks of Short Short Fiction by Four Women" (Rose Metal Press, 2008), "Wild Life" (Matter Press, 2011) and "Together We Can Bury It" (The Lit Pub 2012) and "Rift," co-authored with Robert Vaughan (Unknown Press, 2016). She has been a fiction editor for Smokelong Quarterly and judged a number of flash fiction contests. She has taught flash fiction to high school students at American University's Discover the World of Communication summer program.
Fish's flash fiction was also selected by Stuart Dybek for inclusion in Best Small Fictions 2016 and Amy Hempel for Best Small Fictions 2017. Two other stories were selected for the W.W. Norton anthology, New Micro. Additionally, several of her stories have been selected for the Wigleaf Top 50. She has also had stories chosen for the first short story vending machines in the U.S. at Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Cafe in San Francisco.
Kathy Fish's stories have been published or are forthcoming in The Lineup: 20 Provocative Women Writers (Black Lawrence Press, 2015, Richard Thomas (ed.), Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up to No Good (Upperrubberboot Press, 2015) Slice, Guernica, Indiana Review, Mississippi Review online, Denver Quarterly, New South, Quick Fiction, and various other journals and anthologies. She was the guest editor of Dzanc Books' "Best of the Web 2010." She is the author of four other collections of short fiction: a chapbook of flash fiction in the chapbook collective, "A Peculiar Feeling of Restlessness: Four Chapbooks of Short Short Fiction by Four Women" (Rose Metal Press, 2008), "Wild Life" (Matter Press, 2011) and "Together We Can Bury It" (The Lit Pub 2012) and "Rift," co-authored with Robert Vaughan (Unknown Press, 2016). She has been a fiction editor for Smokelong Quarterly and judged a number of flash fiction contests. She has taught flash fiction to high school students at American University's Discover the World of Communication summer program.
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September 29, 2022
For Throwback Thursday, 9/29/22, my 2016 review of RIFT.
....................
This review first appeared in the online journal, Literary Orphans
From the pens of Kathy Fish & Robert Vaughan comes Rift, a collection that is a must-add to the bookshelves of flash fiction fans. These are ultra-short stories, many under one page in length, with ample white space due to extra-spaced paragraphs and lines so narrow they can almost be taken in at a glance. White space is not only aesthetically pleasing but also gives these stories breathing room: an invitation to pause and reflect, for these are not stories to rush through.
Rift is arranged in sections that, like the title itself, are geological metaphors that suggest varying levels of human conflict: Fault; Tremor; Breach; Cataclysm. (Conflict being, of course, the one common ingredient to be found in all short stories. The successful ones anyway.) Like songwriters swapping songs, Fish & Vaughan take turns trading stories, seventy-five in all. They often are paired according to a shared keyword, theme, effect, or structure. As examples of common structure, several of the stories are divided into three parts. And the two stories that open the collection, "A Room With Many Small Beds" by Fish and "Galloping into the Future" by Vaughan, each have ten parts. "Room" begins with this haunting sentence:
I am eight years old and this is the year I learn to float.
And from there, Fish's story shifts into artful chaos, the narrator's recollections a dream-like sequence of arresting images. A dollar bill on fire. A woman, who, with her hair set in orange juice cans, looks like "a space alien or a sea creature." And the Virgin Mary, ascending to heaven, "wrapped in blue," the little girl alongside her, "suspended in clouds." Conflicts large and small abound: Bobby Kennedy is dead but so are the moths in the jar and so is the mother of the kid standing on the lawn. And the Johnny Mathis record is stuck on marshmallow, marshmallow, marshmallow, and meanwhile, the little girl hasn't had her dinner. Are these the narrator's memories? Dreams? Are memories akin to dreams, just as fluid and only barely more 'real'? As if anticipating the reader's questions, the tenth scene is declared a dream: of "an attic room with many small beds, but there are no little children to sleep in them." Note the story's title, echoed in its poignant, final line.
Next up, Vaughan. "Galloping into the Future" opens with the narrator sitting "flask out, in a bar in Gallup during a thunderstorm," subtly echoing the story's title in the first line and again at story's midpoint, section five, with its "galloping footsteps outside" that sound like "hundreds of cavalry, pummeling the hard packed earth." With evocative prose, the story figuratively gallops forward and back and to and fro in place and time, from New Mexico with its smell of "charcoaled flesh being served to hungry bale-throwing hands," to Paris, "after an unsuccessful evening at a brothel" and crossing paths with "an ever-zealous Edward VII on late summer nights," and back to Gallup, the narrator musing about the ladies in view: "It was as if I were in their movie, and they, in mine. I ordered another whiskey to see what other liquids the evening might hold in store." On the roof, he and a woman watch the stars as bullets whiz past them, "and we stared into each other's eyes like statues." The metaphoric perspectives of statues and film characters are additional levels of alternate reality above and beyond the giant shifts between centuries and continents.
As with Fish's story, we again wonder: Where does reality begin and end in this narrator's world? Vaughan's last line answers this by giving us an image so compelling that both the reader and narrator want badly that it be true. "I bolted up, was it all a dream? No, there was her scarf, fluttering against the wood shingles." Thus, as if in counterpoint to the dream that ends Fish's story, this line pulls these stories together, like magnetic jigsaw pieces, and makes a whole that is somehow greater than its already impressive parts.
A juggernaut of images, dramas, questions to ponder …. and that's just the first two stories!
There are many, many standouts like these in Rift, too many to list. But limiting myself to three more by each author, I took an immediate shine to Kathy Fish's "Birth of the Giant Sand Babe," with its quirky humor and statements that are hard to argue with: "It's hard to be at one with nature because Zach won't shut up about the Siamese twins he saw at 7-Eleven back when he was working there." In "Collection Day," possessions are discarded one by one, including food, leading to an inevitable yet surprising conclusion. "Strings," with prose remindful of the great Annie Proulx, is a mini-drama set on a family farm, packed with confrontation, hormones, and menace, and above it all, kites, their strings decorated with streamers torn from the local paper headlines: Local Boy Bowls 7-10 Split!
For his part, Robert Vaughan impresses with "What Lies Ahead," a tour-de-force, one-sentence story that is a masterful example of the form. In "Dehydration," a lifetime of emotional pain and regret is condensed into two pages. And throughout "Adrift," metaphoric prose dazzles: "And this stilted house is a farce, waiting for the ocean to claim us both, plummeted onto glaciers that no longer exist," the house a raft that drifts to Siberia, where "trying to warm our bones by the lone fire pit, we translate Rasputin into our native Tahltan."
Tahltan, it turns out, is a northwest coast native language with only thirty-some speakers. Thus, as with many of the stories in this collection, we are left happily imagining the characters' untold backstories. After all, flash fiction is as much about "What's Left Unsaid"—to borrow one of the titles in this book—as it is about the words on the page. Simply put, Rift is a collection of stellar examples of an infinitely variable art form, by two writers at the top of their game.
....................
This review first appeared in the online journal, Literary Orphans
From the pens of Kathy Fish & Robert Vaughan comes Rift, a collection that is a must-add to the bookshelves of flash fiction fans. These are ultra-short stories, many under one page in length, with ample white space due to extra-spaced paragraphs and lines so narrow they can almost be taken in at a glance. White space is not only aesthetically pleasing but also gives these stories breathing room: an invitation to pause and reflect, for these are not stories to rush through.
Rift is arranged in sections that, like the title itself, are geological metaphors that suggest varying levels of human conflict: Fault; Tremor; Breach; Cataclysm. (Conflict being, of course, the one common ingredient to be found in all short stories. The successful ones anyway.) Like songwriters swapping songs, Fish & Vaughan take turns trading stories, seventy-five in all. They often are paired according to a shared keyword, theme, effect, or structure. As examples of common structure, several of the stories are divided into three parts. And the two stories that open the collection, "A Room With Many Small Beds" by Fish and "Galloping into the Future" by Vaughan, each have ten parts. "Room" begins with this haunting sentence:
I am eight years old and this is the year I learn to float.
And from there, Fish's story shifts into artful chaos, the narrator's recollections a dream-like sequence of arresting images. A dollar bill on fire. A woman, who, with her hair set in orange juice cans, looks like "a space alien or a sea creature." And the Virgin Mary, ascending to heaven, "wrapped in blue," the little girl alongside her, "suspended in clouds." Conflicts large and small abound: Bobby Kennedy is dead but so are the moths in the jar and so is the mother of the kid standing on the lawn. And the Johnny Mathis record is stuck on marshmallow, marshmallow, marshmallow, and meanwhile, the little girl hasn't had her dinner. Are these the narrator's memories? Dreams? Are memories akin to dreams, just as fluid and only barely more 'real'? As if anticipating the reader's questions, the tenth scene is declared a dream: of "an attic room with many small beds, but there are no little children to sleep in them." Note the story's title, echoed in its poignant, final line.
Next up, Vaughan. "Galloping into the Future" opens with the narrator sitting "flask out, in a bar in Gallup during a thunderstorm," subtly echoing the story's title in the first line and again at story's midpoint, section five, with its "galloping footsteps outside" that sound like "hundreds of cavalry, pummeling the hard packed earth." With evocative prose, the story figuratively gallops forward and back and to and fro in place and time, from New Mexico with its smell of "charcoaled flesh being served to hungry bale-throwing hands," to Paris, "after an unsuccessful evening at a brothel" and crossing paths with "an ever-zealous Edward VII on late summer nights," and back to Gallup, the narrator musing about the ladies in view: "It was as if I were in their movie, and they, in mine. I ordered another whiskey to see what other liquids the evening might hold in store." On the roof, he and a woman watch the stars as bullets whiz past them, "and we stared into each other's eyes like statues." The metaphoric perspectives of statues and film characters are additional levels of alternate reality above and beyond the giant shifts between centuries and continents.
As with Fish's story, we again wonder: Where does reality begin and end in this narrator's world? Vaughan's last line answers this by giving us an image so compelling that both the reader and narrator want badly that it be true. "I bolted up, was it all a dream? No, there was her scarf, fluttering against the wood shingles." Thus, as if in counterpoint to the dream that ends Fish's story, this line pulls these stories together, like magnetic jigsaw pieces, and makes a whole that is somehow greater than its already impressive parts.
A juggernaut of images, dramas, questions to ponder …. and that's just the first two stories!
There are many, many standouts like these in Rift, too many to list. But limiting myself to three more by each author, I took an immediate shine to Kathy Fish's "Birth of the Giant Sand Babe," with its quirky humor and statements that are hard to argue with: "It's hard to be at one with nature because Zach won't shut up about the Siamese twins he saw at 7-Eleven back when he was working there." In "Collection Day," possessions are discarded one by one, including food, leading to an inevitable yet surprising conclusion. "Strings," with prose remindful of the great Annie Proulx, is a mini-drama set on a family farm, packed with confrontation, hormones, and menace, and above it all, kites, their strings decorated with streamers torn from the local paper headlines: Local Boy Bowls 7-10 Split!
For his part, Robert Vaughan impresses with "What Lies Ahead," a tour-de-force, one-sentence story that is a masterful example of the form. In "Dehydration," a lifetime of emotional pain and regret is condensed into two pages. And throughout "Adrift," metaphoric prose dazzles: "And this stilted house is a farce, waiting for the ocean to claim us both, plummeted onto glaciers that no longer exist," the house a raft that drifts to Siberia, where "trying to warm our bones by the lone fire pit, we translate Rasputin into our native Tahltan."
Tahltan, it turns out, is a northwest coast native language with only thirty-some speakers. Thus, as with many of the stories in this collection, we are left happily imagining the characters' untold backstories. After all, flash fiction is as much about "What's Left Unsaid"—to borrow one of the titles in this book—as it is about the words on the page. Simply put, Rift is a collection of stellar examples of an infinitely variable art form, by two writers at the top of their game.
August 25, 2016
My best friend is from the same small town I'm from. We grew up together but didn't decide we were best friends until after we didn't live there anymore. She goes back home more often than I do, but when I go, I go for longer stretches. That town is a haunted place and we feel it, the sickness of it, all the time, and moreso as we get older.
About six years ago I lived at home for a five-month period. It was a bad time. My best friend and I started writing stories back and forth to each other. We still do. We probably don't quite have two hundred pages. But over a hundred, easily. I wrote a page or so today.
I've been co-editing an anthology series for three years. I don't seek out the contributors, but I see the work when it comes in. We had a story for our latest volume from Robert Vaughan and I thought it was quite good. About six months into the process of putting together the book, I was going through those old hidden emails that Facebook decides you don't need to read, and I'd gotten a note from Robert. He'd written to me because he'd looked me up, and realized that his mother was from the same small town I'm from. As Robert put it, "the world is infinitely small."
Robert sent me a copy of his latest book and I took a long time to pick it up. Strange energy. It's called RIFT and it's a collaboration in flash fictions. I've written mainly flash fictions for the past six years. In RIFT, two authors are writing to one another. Robert Vaughan and Kathy Fish are playing a game: one of them writes a short piece, and the other answers. One small detail might repeat -- an incident in a store. A lost lover, a parent's death. I couldn't tell you exactly what the rules are; the rules aren't laid out. The book barely bothers to mention who has written what. It doesn't care. It does not want you to care. It's not handing you the rules.
Kathy's stories are visceral, condensed, with details cast into the periphery as she focuses on moments, senses, frozen pieces of time. Every one feels true until you realize that's impossible.
Robert's stories are architectural, roomy, often funny, and bizarre. Every story feels like a saturated photograph, a choreographed series of specialized movements leading to the final sentence.
Kathy's condensed stories are longer. Robert's roomy stories are shorter. Between them they are switching modes on almost every page, riffing, watching one another, upping the ante.
I'll tell you something. I am about thirty pages away from finishing RIFT but I had to stop what I was doing and clear my head. Once upon a time, the only person I've ever met who writes short stories as short as the stories I write wrote to me and he said, 'the world is infinitely small.'
Synergy: strange energy. I could tell you the lines I've circled but I'd prefer it if my life, for once, started getting less weird instead of infinitely weirder.
About six years ago I lived at home for a five-month period. It was a bad time. My best friend and I started writing stories back and forth to each other. We still do. We probably don't quite have two hundred pages. But over a hundred, easily. I wrote a page or so today.
I've been co-editing an anthology series for three years. I don't seek out the contributors, but I see the work when it comes in. We had a story for our latest volume from Robert Vaughan and I thought it was quite good. About six months into the process of putting together the book, I was going through those old hidden emails that Facebook decides you don't need to read, and I'd gotten a note from Robert. He'd written to me because he'd looked me up, and realized that his mother was from the same small town I'm from. As Robert put it, "the world is infinitely small."
Robert sent me a copy of his latest book and I took a long time to pick it up. Strange energy. It's called RIFT and it's a collaboration in flash fictions. I've written mainly flash fictions for the past six years. In RIFT, two authors are writing to one another. Robert Vaughan and Kathy Fish are playing a game: one of them writes a short piece, and the other answers. One small detail might repeat -- an incident in a store. A lost lover, a parent's death. I couldn't tell you exactly what the rules are; the rules aren't laid out. The book barely bothers to mention who has written what. It doesn't care. It does not want you to care. It's not handing you the rules.
Kathy's stories are visceral, condensed, with details cast into the periphery as she focuses on moments, senses, frozen pieces of time. Every one feels true until you realize that's impossible.
Robert's stories are architectural, roomy, often funny, and bizarre. Every story feels like a saturated photograph, a choreographed series of specialized movements leading to the final sentence.
Kathy's condensed stories are longer. Robert's roomy stories are shorter. Between them they are switching modes on almost every page, riffing, watching one another, upping the ante.
I'll tell you something. I am about thirty pages away from finishing RIFT but I had to stop what I was doing and clear my head. Once upon a time, the only person I've ever met who writes short stories as short as the stories I write wrote to me and he said, 'the world is infinitely small.'
Synergy: strange energy. I could tell you the lines I've circled but I'd prefer it if my life, for once, started getting less weird instead of infinitely weirder.
December 13, 2015
Collaborations in literature are difficult on many levels. With Rift, their new collection of flash stories, Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan – both veterans and esteemed practitioners of the form – make it look easy.
The collection, now available now from Unknown Press, is made up of four sections of about nine to ten stories each from both Fish and Vaughan. The sections are titled in keeping with the collection’s main title and slowly building in scale – Fault, Tremor, Breach, and Cataclysm – with a definition of each word prefacing the section. The structure itself is fantastic, and sets the tone for what’s to come.
Fault
“A break in the continuity of a body of rock or of a vein, with dislocation along the plane of the fracture.”
In this section, it’s Fish’s story “Vocabulary” that perhaps speaks most closely to the definition of a fault. A short (one paragraph) glimpse into the heart of a woman’s early fracture as she sleeps with a stranger, saying “I was his paper.” Like much of Fish’s work, this is achieved in a short space that seems perfect in snapshot, just enough withheld and just enough shared.
In duet, Vaughan’s stand-out story in this section is “She Wears Me Like A Coat.” Here, Vaughan does what he does best – showing the reader the edges of a relationship to make us understand its core. It’s more than a clever, literary trick. In Vaughan’s hands, the technique becomes a perfect brushstroke. This, not to mention the story’s first sentence is a genius example for up-and-coming flash fiction writers everywhere: “The first time it was one of those cucumbers wrapped in plastic.”
Read full review - https://revolutionjohn.wordpress.com/...
The collection, now available now from Unknown Press, is made up of four sections of about nine to ten stories each from both Fish and Vaughan. The sections are titled in keeping with the collection’s main title and slowly building in scale – Fault, Tremor, Breach, and Cataclysm – with a definition of each word prefacing the section. The structure itself is fantastic, and sets the tone for what’s to come.
Fault
“A break in the continuity of a body of rock or of a vein, with dislocation along the plane of the fracture.”
In this section, it’s Fish’s story “Vocabulary” that perhaps speaks most closely to the definition of a fault. A short (one paragraph) glimpse into the heart of a woman’s early fracture as she sleeps with a stranger, saying “I was his paper.” Like much of Fish’s work, this is achieved in a short space that seems perfect in snapshot, just enough withheld and just enough shared.
In duet, Vaughan’s stand-out story in this section is “She Wears Me Like A Coat.” Here, Vaughan does what he does best – showing the reader the edges of a relationship to make us understand its core. It’s more than a clever, literary trick. In Vaughan’s hands, the technique becomes a perfect brushstroke. This, not to mention the story’s first sentence is a genius example for up-and-coming flash fiction writers everywhere: “The first time it was one of those cucumbers wrapped in plastic.”
Read full review - https://revolutionjohn.wordpress.com/...
February 19, 2016
Proud of this collaborative collection of flash fiction with the great Robert Vaughan. Many thanks to Bud Smith at Unknown Press for his tireless efforts getting this book out into the world. Also thanks to brilliant copy editors, Christopher Allen and Aaron Dietz. Our beautiful cover photography is courtesy of Casey McSpadden. Also many thanks to everyone who read, blurbed, reviewed, helped promote this book. We are grateful beyond words.
February 13, 2016
Robert Vaughan and Kathy Fish light fire in this collection, ‘Rift’!
Fault: Tremor: Breach: Cataclysm
four sections that structure this remarkable collaborative.
Each story is its own haunting that envelops and reveals an oppression, a weight that restrains, a hesitation, a sensitivity that unnerves yet strengthens, the small spaces we encapsulate when in survival mode and the universe we wrap our beings around to accommodate and surpass. These characters see beyond the places they are situated in, occupy it, ascend it and take us with them.
Here are some quotes that I pulled from these brilliant stories, but let me relay that every line is its own universe:
“Without the hat, he looked like a toe.”
“As if there is no other way. Like the death penalty or British authors.”
“I like cubicles with partitions so I can pick at my teeth, yawning when I’ve been up the previous night until two in the morning watching re-runs of The Twilight Zone.”
“Her leg kept jittering like a spring outburst of rain.”
“Kansas stinks. I may have to puke all the way to Iowa.”
“...hours elongated like taffy.”
“One afternoon in January, when all seems lost, a man coils himself up inside the braided rug in the foyer of his home.”
“Before you dressed in dressing, versed in verses, popular with Pop-Tarts.”
“I am tethered to the planet by a fraying rope.”
JUST JUST don’t miss out on this powerful and mesmerizing collection! Get a copy!
LOVE!
PS I read more than once! This is a book of inspiration. Should stay on your desk!!!
Fault: Tremor: Breach: Cataclysm
four sections that structure this remarkable collaborative.
Each story is its own haunting that envelops and reveals an oppression, a weight that restrains, a hesitation, a sensitivity that unnerves yet strengthens, the small spaces we encapsulate when in survival mode and the universe we wrap our beings around to accommodate and surpass. These characters see beyond the places they are situated in, occupy it, ascend it and take us with them.
Here are some quotes that I pulled from these brilliant stories, but let me relay that every line is its own universe:
“Without the hat, he looked like a toe.”
“As if there is no other way. Like the death penalty or British authors.”
“I like cubicles with partitions so I can pick at my teeth, yawning when I’ve been up the previous night until two in the morning watching re-runs of The Twilight Zone.”
“Her leg kept jittering like a spring outburst of rain.”
“Kansas stinks. I may have to puke all the way to Iowa.”
“...hours elongated like taffy.”
“One afternoon in January, when all seems lost, a man coils himself up inside the braided rug in the foyer of his home.”
“Before you dressed in dressing, versed in verses, popular with Pop-Tarts.”
“I am tethered to the planet by a fraying rope.”
JUST JUST don’t miss out on this powerful and mesmerizing collection! Get a copy!
LOVE!
PS I read more than once! This is a book of inspiration. Should stay on your desk!!!
November 25, 2015
This is an amazing combination. So many different emotions, such tight writing and surprising images. I would have adored the flashed from either of these masters of the form alone, but together they're even more. A veritable symphony swelling up from the component streams of flash, this is a stellar book. Well worth reading and re-reading.
December 18, 2015
One of the best flash collections I've read (easily the best I've read this year). Fish and Vaughan are masters of the genre. I highly recommend Rift if you're a fan of flash or poetry or are looking to learn how to write in this genre.
July 31, 2018
Have you ever signed up for a book subscription? It is like the old Book of the Month Club but in modern form. You enroll and agree to pay for and receive a book each month. There are many of these, some from small presses, some from outlets like the New York Review of Books. You agree to take what you get. It is like Christmas or your birthday once a month.
As I have mentioned before, I have been enrolled in the Nervous Breakdown Book Club since 2015. I haven't loved every book I've received but I have been introduced to many gems I might otherwise not have found on my own or might have passed over. Sometimes I get a brand new hardcover by an author I love for only $9.99, the monthly fee.
However, like other books I buy, I don't always get around to reading them. In fact, out of the 43 books I've received over the years, I have 21 sitting on a special shelf waiting to be read. I feel guilty.
RIFT was the December, 2015 selection and the remaining unread 2015 book. In a rather OCD moment, I opened it to read. As you may also remember, I am not a fan of short stories. RIFT is a collection of stories by two different authors. Not only are these stories short, they are super short and fall into a sub-genre of short stories known as 'flash fiction." Some are only a page long, none are more than six pages.
OK, I thought, I'll read a couple a day. How long can that take? Over the weeks a wondrous phenomenon occurred.
My problem with short stories is they are too short. I like to settle in to a story and stay for a while. I think nothing of reading novels that are 800 to 1000 pages long. As I read these well-crafted though sometimes quirky pieces, I was impressed by how well most of them created in my mind a complete picture of character, place, and even of time having passed.
I have been terribly blocked on my own writing project for a few years. I lost my momentum and have not been able to get it going again. The best I have been able to do is once in a while write a short scene or collection of memories about an incident.
Reading these flashes of writing by Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan, I realized that I have been doing something similar with my project. I checked on the chapter I'd been struggling over for so long and saw that almost all the pieces are there. I have not been writing flash fiction but I have been writing flash autobiography!
I am now well into putting that chapter together. Some of the bits I wrote are in the wrong place and will go into other chapters, but the writing that I thought was just me being lame, or worse, lazy was in fact the way I dealt with my writer's block.
If you are still reading (I thank you and apologize for going on so long) you may be a writer yourself. You may have had a similar problem. I exhort you now to just keep reading books and keep jotting down something at least now and then. You too can break through.
Most of all, I thank Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan and Bud Smith (the publisher of Unknown Press) and Brad Listi, who runs the Nervous Breakdown Book Club, and whatever goddess watches over me, for bringing me just what I needed.
As I have mentioned before, I have been enrolled in the Nervous Breakdown Book Club since 2015. I haven't loved every book I've received but I have been introduced to many gems I might otherwise not have found on my own or might have passed over. Sometimes I get a brand new hardcover by an author I love for only $9.99, the monthly fee.
However, like other books I buy, I don't always get around to reading them. In fact, out of the 43 books I've received over the years, I have 21 sitting on a special shelf waiting to be read. I feel guilty.
RIFT was the December, 2015 selection and the remaining unread 2015 book. In a rather OCD moment, I opened it to read. As you may also remember, I am not a fan of short stories. RIFT is a collection of stories by two different authors. Not only are these stories short, they are super short and fall into a sub-genre of short stories known as 'flash fiction." Some are only a page long, none are more than six pages.
OK, I thought, I'll read a couple a day. How long can that take? Over the weeks a wondrous phenomenon occurred.
My problem with short stories is they are too short. I like to settle in to a story and stay for a while. I think nothing of reading novels that are 800 to 1000 pages long. As I read these well-crafted though sometimes quirky pieces, I was impressed by how well most of them created in my mind a complete picture of character, place, and even of time having passed.
I have been terribly blocked on my own writing project for a few years. I lost my momentum and have not been able to get it going again. The best I have been able to do is once in a while write a short scene or collection of memories about an incident.
Reading these flashes of writing by Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan, I realized that I have been doing something similar with my project. I checked on the chapter I'd been struggling over for so long and saw that almost all the pieces are there. I have not been writing flash fiction but I have been writing flash autobiography!
I am now well into putting that chapter together. Some of the bits I wrote are in the wrong place and will go into other chapters, but the writing that I thought was just me being lame, or worse, lazy was in fact the way I dealt with my writer's block.
If you are still reading (I thank you and apologize for going on so long) you may be a writer yourself. You may have had a similar problem. I exhort you now to just keep reading books and keep jotting down something at least now and then. You too can break through.
Most of all, I thank Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan and Bud Smith (the publisher of Unknown Press) and Brad Listi, who runs the Nervous Breakdown Book Club, and whatever goddess watches over me, for bringing me just what I needed.
December 13, 2015
I’m reading Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan’s Rift, a collaboration between two short-fiction writers at the height of their games. I’ve turned down the pages of the most compelling stories so far. As you can see, I’m taken with many of them, and I’m not even three-quarters of the way through. Divided into four sections -- Fault, Tremor, Breach and Cataclysm -- each writer’s stories speak to the titles in sometimes subtle, always surprising ways.
The always suave, sneaky/funny Vaughan, writes with the twisted subtext never far from his tightly-wound sentences. The feeling of foreboding is strong in “The Rooms We Rented,” where the carefully observed heroine, in a dress with “lines like the LA freeways,…” is “an undelivered Christmas cactus in the searing desert.” From the Cataclysm section, Fish opens with: “He lived with a woman who sold balloons at the zoo.” Who wouldn’t want to read to the end with a first line like that?
The always suave, sneaky/funny Vaughan, writes with the twisted subtext never far from his tightly-wound sentences. The feeling of foreboding is strong in “The Rooms We Rented,” where the carefully observed heroine, in a dress with “lines like the LA freeways,…” is “an undelivered Christmas cactus in the searing desert.” From the Cataclysm section, Fish opens with: “He lived with a woman who sold balloons at the zoo.” Who wouldn’t want to read to the end with a first line like that?
February 4, 2016
Been a fan of Kathy Fish's flash since I first heard of the term for the form, but I think this is the first I've read of Robert Vaughn's work. This is such a great complimentary pair of collections that in true flash quality got so much more than the sum of the words through the echo of each other's voices. They each have a unique style but. A strong and cohesive harmony together too. There is a poetic impact to all of this. This is a strange connection but it reminded me of reading Morrison's poetry books when I was in college.
May 9, 2016
Having just finished Kathy's flash fiction workshop, I was really keen to read Rift and I recognised some of the techniques she'd taught us, and it made me think 'aah, so this is how it's done! I felt almost as if I were at a photography exhibition as the stories seemed like snapshots of time.
I loved the clever juxtaposition of the pieces so that you were never quite sure who was the author. Those that stood out for me were 'A room with many small beds,' 'Vocabulary,'birth of the giant sand babe' 'life after love,' but really they were all exceptional. I'm sure I'll get even more out of Rift on a second reading.
I loved the clever juxtaposition of the pieces so that you were never quite sure who was the author. Those that stood out for me were 'A room with many small beds,' 'Vocabulary,'birth of the giant sand babe' 'life after love,' but really they were all exceptional. I'm sure I'll get even more out of Rift on a second reading.
August 12, 2016
I love this book. It's a compilation of flash fiction between two authors, Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan, but you wouldn't really notice that it's from two people. Their pieces play off each other so well, each one flows perfectly to the next, like a beautifully composed collection of thoughts, memories and dreams.
'Rift' is strange and surreal at times. It's pulse-pounding. It's heartbreaking. It's a collection of bottled up human emotions waiting to be released, and it's absolutely delicious. I gorged on this book for the last few days, and my life is better for it.
'Rift' is strange and surreal at times. It's pulse-pounding. It's heartbreaking. It's a collection of bottled up human emotions waiting to be released, and it's absolutely delicious. I gorged on this book for the last few days, and my life is better for it.
December 29, 2015
This book made me see flash fiction in another light. I devoured it, but now I want to go back and savor it, story by story. (Full Review coming to Split Lip Magazine's Winter 2016 Issue!)
December 17, 2015
Fish and Vaughan are the perfect duet. Both voices are unique, but bot blend very, very well. The four sections helped break me open and shift my perspective.
January 25, 2016
An amazing collaboration by two authors who bring so much to the table. The prose is clean, the narrative deep, combining for an overall perfect blend of humor, heart, and pathos.
February 16, 2016
Read my review of this stunning collection at Change Seven Magazine!
http://changesevenmag.com/2016/01/26/...
http://changesevenmag.com/2016/01/26/...
October 8, 2020
Rift by Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan is a collection of short fictions that alternates between the two authors. I am familiar with both writers work. I have earlier reviewed Vaughan’s Addicts and Basements and Fish was a consulting editor on Queens Ferry The Best Small Fictions 2015 which I reviewed this last summer. Both writers are well published and this joint collection is both their fourth individual collection.
Small fictions or very short fiction is a unique writing that tells a complete story in few pages or less. Whereas short stories seem to drop a reader in the a middle of a story or pull them out too quickly, short fictions present a whole story. Much like poetry can convey ideas that exceed the words used, short fiction does the same. This collection does not disappoint.
The authors alternate their stories throughout this collection in chapters named after escalating geologic events. It won’t take the reader long to identify the which author they are reading. They both have distinct styles that are very hard to confuse. Fish starts off with the tone of an east coast Catholic upbringing. From the nuns and Catholic school to the guilt that follows those of our generation of Catholic upbringing all surface in her writing. Vaughan tends to be darker and grittier and in his writing. There is something hidden just below the surface that is secretive and possibly even sinister. With both writers there is a hook, more pronounced by Vaughan, that wraps the story tight, sometimes squeezing the breath from the reader. That turns a short ordinary “memory” into something fascinating.
The two writer’s work play well off each other. The alternating of stories keeps the reader’s mind fresh and moving from one author to the other. They complement each other perfectly. Touching to twisted. Light to dark. Fish seems to reveal common strong feelings between people that make one smile and Vaughan something altogether different -- “Birth of the Giant Sand Babe” to “Fling ~ Fatigue ~ Rejection. The writing is very human in feeling and very real in the ups and downs of a complete life. Each author’s writing is exceptional, but combined together, it exponentially transcends the individual works. Powerful, gripping, startling, and impossible to put down. Definitely, a bang to end this year's reading list.
Small fictions or very short fiction is a unique writing that tells a complete story in few pages or less. Whereas short stories seem to drop a reader in the a middle of a story or pull them out too quickly, short fictions present a whole story. Much like poetry can convey ideas that exceed the words used, short fiction does the same. This collection does not disappoint.
The authors alternate their stories throughout this collection in chapters named after escalating geologic events. It won’t take the reader long to identify the which author they are reading. They both have distinct styles that are very hard to confuse. Fish starts off with the tone of an east coast Catholic upbringing. From the nuns and Catholic school to the guilt that follows those of our generation of Catholic upbringing all surface in her writing. Vaughan tends to be darker and grittier and in his writing. There is something hidden just below the surface that is secretive and possibly even sinister. With both writers there is a hook, more pronounced by Vaughan, that wraps the story tight, sometimes squeezing the breath from the reader. That turns a short ordinary “memory” into something fascinating.
The two writer’s work play well off each other. The alternating of stories keeps the reader’s mind fresh and moving from one author to the other. They complement each other perfectly. Touching to twisted. Light to dark. Fish seems to reveal common strong feelings between people that make one smile and Vaughan something altogether different -- “Birth of the Giant Sand Babe” to “Fling ~ Fatigue ~ Rejection. The writing is very human in feeling and very real in the ups and downs of a complete life. Each author’s writing is exceptional, but combined together, it exponentially transcends the individual works. Powerful, gripping, startling, and impossible to put down. Definitely, a bang to end this year's reading list.
January 9, 2016
Rift is unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and I’m not sure I’ll ever read anything like it again. It’s a rare gem—200-plus pages of flash fiction written by two absolute pros in Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan, exchanging stories, back and forth, like an epic tennis match. Fish and Vaughan put on a schooling in flash, a lesson on economy. While each certainly has his/her own unique style, these pieces flow together so seamlessly that there were several times I found myself flipping back to the Contents, curious to see which of the two wrote a specific story. There are so many great images (“I was swept up by the strings of the Hungarian gypsies playing down a side street,” “The fan’s blowing the little hairs on his chest over the scar that runs like a ladder from the button of his Bermuda shorts to his breastbone”), and countless passages where so much is communicated in such little space (“Later, in bed, he will turn to Marta and she will laugh at him. The rift between them grows. They have not had sex in three years. Marta spends a lot of time in the laundry room.”). The use of varying forms/structures (there are traditional flash pieces in here, micro fictions, longerish pieces and segmented pieces), as well as styles and tones, kept things fresh for me, kept me turning the pages. And I was really intrigued by the overarching structure of the book, the stories divided into four sections representing intensifying geological phenomena. It’s a structure I’m interested in examining further, how these authors came to differentiate pieces as tremors or cataclysms and so on. There were so many highlights in this book for me, but some I really enjoyed include: A Room With Many Small Beds, The Rooms We Rented, No Time For Prairie Dog Town, Night Life, Neil Figgens, When He Left It All to Me, Too Much Oxygen, Sea Creatures of Indiana, The Guy in the Sky, and A Proper Party. Rift is a book I will most definitely keep close and continue to refer back to for both inspiration and technique.
January 29, 2016
Reading RIFT is much like listening to an opera duet performed by two masters of the art -- I see harmonies and overlaps, and all of it sings out with a raw, powerful force designed to evoke emotion and pull at the heart and soul. If that sounds like a forced metaphor, it isn't -- there's music in RIFT, and co-authors Fish and Vaughan are voices that complement one another like Pavarotti and Sutherland.
The ultra-short stories here run the gamut of human existence, and (to follow the opera theme) I find some to be clearly interpretable, while others provide a sense of place or character or situation that I can't quite put my finger on. As a literal-minded reader, I tend to prefer the clarity of the former, but, like the opera duet, there's such beauty and richness of language throughout this book that I'll happily return to the pieces, perhaps straining my literary ears to catch some subtlety that might have eluded me on the first go around.
For those looking for "straight" short stories (à la Jackson or King or Archer or Dahl), I should mention that RIFT's stories tread the broad grey band between poetry and prose--in my mind, at least. They are odd and they are beautiful, and I recommend coming to them with a literary mind and heart. For a taste of what to expect, the first story in RIFT, Fish's "A Room With Many Small Beds" is available online at Threadcount.
Disclosure: I received a copy of RIFT for review from the author. I was not asked to write a positive review. All views and opinions are solely my own. I received no compensation other than receiving a copy of RIFT.
The ultra-short stories here run the gamut of human existence, and (to follow the opera theme) I find some to be clearly interpretable, while others provide a sense of place or character or situation that I can't quite put my finger on. As a literal-minded reader, I tend to prefer the clarity of the former, but, like the opera duet, there's such beauty and richness of language throughout this book that I'll happily return to the pieces, perhaps straining my literary ears to catch some subtlety that might have eluded me on the first go around.
For those looking for "straight" short stories (à la Jackson or King or Archer or Dahl), I should mention that RIFT's stories tread the broad grey band between poetry and prose--in my mind, at least. They are odd and they are beautiful, and I recommend coming to them with a literary mind and heart. For a taste of what to expect, the first story in RIFT, Fish's "A Room With Many Small Beds" is available online at Threadcount.
Disclosure: I received a copy of RIFT for review from the author. I was not asked to write a positive review. All views and opinions are solely my own. I received no compensation other than receiving a copy of RIFT.
December 17, 2015
This enjoyable collaboration between Robert Vaughan and Kathy Fish is sure to get your motor running. Sharply focused and carefully honed, each story is presented in an alternating style that is both complementary and unique. Some of the stories in Rift feel straightforward, light and amusing, while others are complex, brooding and deep. Because they are masters at their craft, Fish and Vaughan succeed wonderfully in drawing the reader into the raw, visceral undertow of their words. On several occasions I emerged from a story with lingering thoughts of the people I’ve known or the places I’ve been. This cornucopia of delightful short stories and flash fiction can be devoured quickly, but the real flavor of this book improves when savored slowly. Magical and entertaining, yet meaty enough to challenge any imagination, Rift does not disappoint!
Disclaimer: I am related to Robert Vaughan. I was not asked to post a positive review and my comments are not slanted as a result of our relationship.
Disclaimer: I am related to Robert Vaughan. I was not asked to post a positive review and my comments are not slanted as a result of our relationship.
March 16, 2016
This book is a master class in microfiction. The two authors, Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan, take turns one-upping each other, experimenting with so many voices and tones, and leaving a long trail of rewards for the reader: images, phrases and scenarios that will linger long in your mind. But the book is more than just an exercise in writerly virtuosity, because Fish and Vaughan never lose sight of the real goal of their stories: to rip open small tears in the fabric of our lives, through which to reveal the sadness and longing that lies beneath.
Don't read this book too fast. Take time. Let its stories gnaw at you slowly. It's worth it.
Don't read this book too fast. Take time. Let its stories gnaw at you slowly. It's worth it.
May 2, 2016
It’s like chocolate meeting peanut butter: Kathy Fish’s graceful candor crossed with Robert Vaughan’s colorful sincerity. In Rift, the two authors dovetail perfectly, one story in conversation with the next, the back and forth dialogue of nostalgic meeting illicit, sassy meeting melancholy, heartbroken meeting jubilant.
August 27, 2016
The short stories conjured up in "Rift" are an absolute delight. Robert Vaughan and Kathy Fish beautifully complement each other. These brilliantly captured slices of life, from two writers at the to top of their game, move, upset, and delight. I highly recommend "Rift."
September 8, 2016
I read this slowly over the summer, a little bit here and there. Really creative flash-fiction conversation of sorts - a call and response - between two authors. I admire the writing here so much.
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June 14, 2021Two masterly creators of flash, trading blows and ideas, unpacking relationships and personal histories, with humor, passion and sadness.
June 10, 2017
I read it in bits, here and there and Kathy Fish won me over. It was a delight to read and to learn from.
November 24, 2024
4.5 stars. A wonderful collection of flash fictions by two talented creators!
April 1, 2019
This remarkable collection of flash fiction is the first of its kind that I’ve ever encountered. Many of the stories happily defy traditional expectations of the short story narrative arc, while often donning the non-conformist attitude of poetry in structure and diction.
Some pieces meander between floating subconscious and lucid imagery; others between immediate dialogue and conversations echoing from fields of memory. Still others read like a lyrical essay with concrete, seemingly-autobiographical passages spliced with the ponderous and poetic. Regardless of content, every piece calls upon the reader to reexamine the human experience in a non-linear way.
This collection obliterated my expectations for what a poem or a story can or should be. This text was a fitting complement to “Architectures of Possibility,” considering they both prompt the reader to complicate and challenge the ways we traditionally interact with and create art. The underlying message of both these texts is to appreciate being confronted with disorder and bewilderment—both in the artistic realm and as we live and breathe.
Some pieces meander between floating subconscious and lucid imagery; others between immediate dialogue and conversations echoing from fields of memory. Still others read like a lyrical essay with concrete, seemingly-autobiographical passages spliced with the ponderous and poetic. Regardless of content, every piece calls upon the reader to reexamine the human experience in a non-linear way.
This collection obliterated my expectations for what a poem or a story can or should be. This text was a fitting complement to “Architectures of Possibility,” considering they both prompt the reader to complicate and challenge the ways we traditionally interact with and create art. The underlying message of both these texts is to appreciate being confronted with disorder and bewilderment—both in the artistic realm and as we live and breathe.
November 6, 2021
A really good collection of flash fictions.
April 11, 2016
There are stories in this collaborative collection by Kathy Fish and Robert Vaughan that contain the complexities and subtleties of novel-length work. There are characters who will create new wrinkles in your brain, who will settle there and teach you things about the world as they struggle in their own. There are stories that complement other stories, even though each contains the distinctive flair of its respective writer. I am better for reading this remarkable book and will return to it often.
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