What should I read next? It’s a question we all ask ourselves time and again. Even with the countless essays, novels, screenplays, poems, and transmedia pieces to discover, to fall in love with or to detest, it can be a challenge to choose. Enter Expo Recommends, a curated selection of readings brought to you by the editors of Exposition Review.
This month, some of the Expo editors give you recommendations inspired by our Vol. III annual issue theme, “Oribt.”
Exposition Review is excited to announce the winners of Flash 405, August 2017: “Blue”! For our final 2017 round of Flash 405, guest judges David Lott and Michele Raphael, co-founders and editors of Angels Flight • literary west, called for works that would “take us into who and what we are and what we will become.”
Our winning writers delivered with some amazing pieces that take the reader through several lifetimes of emotion, of joy and pain, both real and imagined. Read on to see what our judges had to say:
For our first Flash 405 contest of 2017, judge and Expo editor Lauren Gorski asked for short form narratives that explored “the abnormal, deviations from the acceptable, the outsiders”—and you delivered, with a “monster” number of submissions! From February 4 to March 5, we broke another Flash 405 record for most entries, receiving almost 100 submissions!
Among these entries were stories that scared us, thrilled us, and softened us to the gentle monster within. Lauren wanted “the emotion of Quasimodo compacted to 405 words. The violence of Grendel in 4-5 lines. The conviction of John Proctor in 4-5 pages.” We think she got it. The winners that emerged were able to deftly weave emotion, ugliness, and horror to create very human, but no less memorable monsters. Read on to discover them for yourself!
Continue reading “Flash 405, February 2017, “Monster” Winners”