Category: Features

Who can resist the title of this debut short fiction collection? Like cyclists in the eponymous event — a protest against fossil fuel consumption, among other things — Lisa Fishman’s 40 pieces, a collage of micro, flash fiction and narratives of greater length, flout convention. Vanity of vanities, the Pushcart Prize-nominated poet seems to say of the standard short story and its clothing/trappings.

I could think of no better way to begin this review than by diving immediately into the free-flowing, elusive, and mystical current that is Alycia Pirmohamed’s mind in her debut book, Another Way to Split Water.

The epigraph to Lisa Alward’s new story collection, Cocktail, is an epiphanic moment from Virginia Woolf ‘s To the Lighthouse, in which the artist Lily Briscoe strives to resurrect and memorialize her dead friend through painting her portrait. Moved to uncharacteristic emotion by a sudden realization of the brevity of life, Lily laments, “Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world?

The Fiddlehead is pleased to announce the finalists of our 2023 Fiction Contest, judged by Jack Wang!

The natural disaster has been a trope in fiction (and movies) for decades. Usually what happens is that a group of strangers becomes isolated by an unexpected and massively destructive event. The ensuing drama chronicles the efforts of the unlucky individuals to cope with the challenges, dangers and deprivations they suddenly find themselves facing.

By happenstance, I picked Anne Marie Todkill’s “Storm Damage” as this year’s winner shortly after a citywide July storm cracked the trunk of a much-loved dozy Manitoba Maple out back. However, it matters little whether one has recently encountered and grieved a fallen tree, when it comes to this axiomatic and spellbinding piece. Todkill’s eulogy for a basswood undone by a Gilgameshing derecho’s “unmethodical and ghoulish mangling” will beguile anyone lucky enough to read it.

We're excited to announce that Anne Marie Todkill is the winner of our 2023 Creative Nonfiction Contest and $2000 prize! Her essay "Storm Damage" is featured in the upcoming autumn issue of The Fiddlehead (no.297).

Anne Marie Todkill’s story “The Makeweight Piece” won The Fiddlehead’s 2021 fiction contest and appeared in issue no. 291. Her book of poetry, Orion Sweeping (Brick Books), was shortlisted for the 2023 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. “Storm Damage” is from a collection of essays in progress.