We have submitted our nominations for the 2017 Best of the Net anthology, which honors literary work that originally appeared on the internet between 7/1/2016 & 6/30/2017, and they are:
“How to Vomit Living Creatures” – short fiction by Deirdre Coyle (from FLAPPERHOUSE #12)
“Mission Concept” – short fiction by Peter H.Z. Hsu (from FLAPPERHOUSE #14)
Congratulations & best of luck to all our nominees, as well as our eternal gratitude for contributing their amazing work to our weird little zine!
2016 was certainly a very weird, very dark section of time-space, so it’s no surprise that a lot of the weirder, darker pieces we published here this past year attracted so many eyeballs. The 10 most-viewed pieces on flapperhouse.com in 2016 were…
#10. “Doodlebug” by Emily Linstrom is a haunting tale about a family of monstrous immortals hiding out in “a part of London even London has no recollection of…” (From our Spring 2016 issue.)
#9. “How Emma Jean Crossed the River” by Shawn Frazier is a powerfully gothic short story of a woman on the run from the Klan, from our Winter 2016 issue.
#8. “artemis” is one of five sizzling poems that Monica Lewis contributed to our Fall 2016 issue.
#7. “The Invention of H.P. Lovecraft” by Shay K. Azoulay is a fictional–yet, perhaps, plausible?!– theory on the origin of the influential horror author, from our Fall 2016 issue.
#6. “Mothers and Demons and the In-Between” is Janelle Garcia’s haunting flash fiction about creepy monsters & the perils of parenthood, from our Winter 2016 issue.
For another taste of our Fall 2016 issue before it flies on 9/22, here’s “artemis,” one of five sizzling poems in the issue written by the incomparable Monica Lewis. To read all five– plus poetry & prose by 15 more of the planet’s flappiest writers– you can buy a digital (PDF) copy of FLAPPERHOUSE #11 for $3US, or a paper copy for $6US.
(And if you’ll be in the NYC area on Wednesday 9/21, you can hear Monica perform her work– along with seven other stellar writers– at our 10th Reading at Brooklyn’s Pacific Standard!)
{ X }
I KNOW THAT I WAS NOT MEANT TO HAVE YOUR TWINS,
theo and felicity, perfectly, preciously named, because we
would have conceived a tornado: artemis and she would have broken me into
postpartum and I’d have given her a life-long restlessness. I love you
still, and our daughter would have had your sea glass eyes and my wind-twisted,
night flight of curls, skin the color of brown feathered birds, and in her wake, always,
the scent of caribbean salt—but most certainly, a mouth unhinged—sharp & wise & legs always set to go and a hand unrelenting toward any necessary slay – yes we’d have created a warrior in flesh, alit & strong, but instead, I will birth her into words. and she will outlive our love, our could have, should have never been love. our love that would have quaked
a goddess to earth – one incapable of ever splitting herself into two.
FLAPPERHOUSE 