I've been enjoying R. K. Narayan's retelling of The Mahabarata, much condensed from the full epic. It maintains the basic structure and themes, with a cheeky voice, occasionally nodding to the improbability of the events narrated. Highly recommended for anyone dipping their toes into the world of Indian epic.
Love as a Driving Force by Manahil Bandukwala
A Dream Wants Waking, Lydia Kwa. Wolsak & Wynn, 2023
Lydia Kwa’s A Dream Wants Waking promises a dreamlike narrative through its title and cover, and the short novel certainly delivers. The book opens with a list of characters from the past timeline in Tang China from 644-904 CE and the present timeline of Luoyang in 2219 CE. Told through short chapters that switch back and forth at a rapid pace, Kwa immediately immerses the reader into both timelines of the story.
Editorial Assistant Anastasios Mihalopoulos' Interview with 2023 Fiction Prize Winner Melissa DaCosta Brown whose story "Husbands" was published in Issue 298 (Winter 2024)
Anastasios Mihalopoulos: The opening of your story references Crystal Lake from Friday the 13th stating that this place was horrifying “but not in that way.” Do you see this story interacting with the horror genre or our general definition of ‘horror’ in a particular way?
Editorial assistant Tommy Duggan reviews Back to the Land of the Living by Eva Crocker (Anansi, 2023)
Eva Crocker’s Back to the Land of the Living begins with our protagonist Marcy Pike moving to pre-COVID Montreal from St. John’s on a journey of self-discovery and newfound independence.
We're excited to announce that Melissa DaCosta Brown is the winner of our 2023 Fiction Contest and $2000 prize! Her story "Husbands" will be featured in the upcoming Winter issue of The Fiddlehead (FH298).
Melissa DaCosta Brown is a graduate of Duke University and has a masters in Journalism from Northwestern University. She worked for MSNBC and ABC News affiliates. Her short stories have been published in Waccamaw, Subnivean, Ponder Review. Her work has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Lascaux Prize.
Excerpt
"Husbands" by Melissa DaCosta Brown
Winner of the 2023 Fiction Prize
The Raw Light of Morning, Shelly Kawaja’s debut novel and winner of the $12,500 BMO Winterset Award in 2022 for outstanding literary work by a Newfoundlander or Labradorian, is at the same time a compelling story of domestic violence, poverty, and trauma, and a 1990s western Newfoundland coming-of-age character study of a young woman of remarkable resilience. This is Laurel’s story, and she is 14 in the opening scene, and forced to intervene to protect her mother from life-threatening violence.
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.
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!
