The State of Flash Fiction

A man missing an arm and part of his jaw knocks on the door. He smells like a brewery and claims he's a family relation. That's how the story "Related" begins. It's under 500 words. Or consider "Oriole," which opens, "My father's hands fit around my throat" and lays bare what's going on at home in under 1,000 words. These stories feature hookups and breakups, substance abuse, and violence so casual it's as natural as jagged breathing.

This is the work of Len Kuntz, sui generis even in the gonzo world of flash fiction, and he's published a lot of stories to prove it. When David Galef, a fiction writer and critic, set out to write Brevity: A Flash Fiction Handbook (Columbia University Press), this was the kind of material he was searching for: visceral as a gut-punch but with a real narrative to pursue, a turn in someone's life encapsulated in a couple of pages. Flash fiction is ubiquitous these days, but it can still turn up something new, like a small miracle. We recently asked Kuntz and Galef to chat about the world and the art of flash fiction: where the form stands, where it's headed, whether brevity can be pushed further, and which were their favorite one-line stories of the year.