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Bare Ana and Other Stories

        “A pitch-perfect, masterfully wrought collection of fiction short in length but vast in the Big Bang of the human condition.”—Robert Olen Butler, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, author of Late City

       “Robert Shapard co-edited Sudden Fiction, an anthology that predated the term flash fiction, and had a ground-breaking effect on the current lay of American short fiction. It’s welcome now to have Bare Ana and Other Stories, a compelling collection of his own work.—Stuart Dybek, author of Ecstatic Cahoots, winner of MacArthur Fellowship, PEN/Malamud Award

       “I love how these stories seem to configure doors and windows that open onto scenes we recognize from some deep part of our souls and then go places we would never have imagined.”—Christopher Merrill, author of On the Road to Lviv, director University of Iowa International Writing Program

       “Gorgeously written, endearingly weird, hauntingly cool! I like everything about it.”—Tom Hazuka, co-editor of Flash Fiction Youth

       “Who could resist these characters, who embrace you with their eagerness to solve the mysteries of unrelenting life.”—James Thomas, co-editor of Flash Fiction America

“An impressive collection, like an introduction to flash fictions.”—Elizabeth Harris, Gival Press Novel Award, author of Three Lives of a Woman

“In Shapard’s world, it’s always dusk, the light is changing, there’s the before and after of a car crash or dust settling, of illicit love and bourbon tossed back. There’s a simmering repression here that’s not quite rage but is deeply connected to lust and love lost. I glided through these lives, these short bits of lightning, that pulled me gracefully through time, as I hung, glittering like chalk dust in sunlight to the very last word.”—Sherrie Flick, author of Thank Your Lucky Stars

“I loved every story. A remarkable collection.”—Meg Pokrass, author of The First Law of Holes: New and Selected Stories

“One of my favorite stories, ‘Motel,’ would make a great short movie.”—Pamela Painter, author of Fabrications and bestselling writing book What If?

“She unbuttoned the fish,” begins one story in Robert Shapard’s Bare Ana—an arresting statement that turns out to be literal, accurate, miraculous, and perfect. Shapard’s fiction works like that. In a volume of very short stories (some flash or sudden fictions, some approaching the short end of the traditional short fiction range), he displays a tour-de-force capacity for invention and a maestro’s control.”—T.R. Hummer, author of After the Afterlife, former editor of The Georgia Review

“There’s a Black Mirror feel to many of these pieces, which I love. Whether ‘realistic’ or surreal they each stand alone, full of insight and lovely turns of phrase.”—Nancy Stohlman, author of After the Rapture

“The master editor of the flash form offers his own short takes (and a few longer ones) on the world we live in.”—Steve Heller, author of What We Choose to Remember, former director of Antioch-L.A. MFA Program

“Robert Shapard’s luminous collection portrays characters lost in the landscapes of nature and of their own making, and characters confronting that transformative juncture where an accident or event changes all. His ability to find and capture transcendency in the smallest of moments—the click of a camera, a ray of sunlight pooling on the floor—will leave his readers enraptured, enlightened, and with a better knowledge of very short fiction.”—Tara Lynn Masih, founding editor of The Best Small Fictions