This Week on Friday Live: Alex Reece Abbott, Emily Osborne, and Epiphany Ferrell

The Home Stretch 

“After all,” Anne had said to Marilla once, “I believe the nicest and sweetest days are not those on which anything very splendid or wonderful or exciting happens but just those that bring simple little pleasures, following one another softly, like pearls slipping off a string.”
                                                                                                               ~ LM Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

Oh, Anne. If you only knew.

In quarantine life it is the simple little pleasures that are splendid and wonderful and exciting. A trip to the garden supply store? Splendid! The local coffee shop open for takeout? Wonderful! The next season of Fuller House now on Netflix? Exciting! (Okay, there may be some disagreement on that one.)

Lest Anne’s wisdom becomes a pearl before a whine, consider this: How nice and sweet have been the days when just this was enough? When a delivery showed up two days early? When someone else did the dishes? When a video conference call actually yielded results? When the grocery store shelves were well stocked? When the house was quiet and the books were read?

With the easing of restrictions, with the re-openings and reconnectings, there is, in many places, a sense that we are in the home stretch. That yes, there might be a Pandemic Part 2 — the catcher might tag us out on our dusty slide to the plate — but right now the third base coach is waving us in.

We’ve made it this far, and I think that is splendid.

Our Friday Live series began as a forum for connecting our authors and artists with you, our readers. A way to navigate this strange new world, together. As Anne reminds us, The world calls them its singers and poets and artists and storytellers; but they are just people who have never forgotten the way to fairyland. Every week, our literary navigators take us along for the ride. They show us how to remember. 

If you, too, have never forgotten the way to fairyland, why not join the writerly adventure that is the Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize? Flash is the zippy day-trip of the fiction world, so hitch a ride on this journey before it ends June 15th! Click here for details.

Friday’s live line-up

Every Friday, from 10:00-10:30am Pacific, we are livestreaming readings featuring three authors who will read their work and answer questions from the audience. This week on Friday Live, we bring you Alex Reece Abbott, Emily Osborne, and Epiphany Ferrell.

Alex Reece Abbott

Alex Reece Abbott  is an emerging New Zealand-Irish writer who has lived in both
hemispheres and worked around the world. Her work has appeared in Pulp Literature Issues 19 and 20. Alex was a finalist for the Tillie Olsen Prize, Maria Edgeworth Short Fiction Prize, Sunday Business Post / Penguin Ireland Short Story Prize, and Bath Novella-in-Flash Prize. Her stories have won the HG Wells Grand Prize, the Northern Crime Prize, and Crediton Short Story Prize. Her novel, The Helpmeet, is a Greenbean Irish Novel Fair winner. Find out more at alexreeceabbott.info or on Twitter @AlexReeceAbbott.

Emily Osborne

Emily Osborne is a poetry editor for Pulp Literature, and the author of the poetry chapbook Biometrical (Anstruther Press, 2018) and a forthcoming book of Old Norse verse translations, Quarrel of Arrows. In 2018 she won The Malahat Review Far Horizons Award for Poetry and received an honourable mention in CV2‘s Young Buck Poetry Award. Her poem ‘Devonian’ appeared in Pulp Literature Issue 17. Her poetry has also been published in The Literary Review of Canada, The Maynard, The Malahat Review, CV2, Barren Magazine, and elsewhere. Emily holds a PhD in Old Norse-Icelandic literature from the University of Cambridge. She lives on Bowen Island, BC with her husband and toddler.

Epiphany Ferrell

Epiphany Ferrell lives on the edge of the Shawnee Forest in Southern Illinois. Her story ‘Every Town Has One’ was published in Pulp Literature Issue 20. Epiphany’s stories appear in Best Microfiction 2020, Corvis Review, Unnerving Magazine, and elsewhere, and she has work forthcoming in the 2020 National Flash Fiction Day anthology. She blogs for Ghost Parachute and is a fiction reader for Mojave River Review. Find her on Facebook or Twitter @EpiphanyFerrell, or visit her website, epiphanyferrell.com.

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